Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

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16 memory and the goddess of love. Reference is often made in Sappho’s poems to
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and to Mnemosyne, the muse of memory.
17 grass. Sappho and her great poetic colleague, Anonymous, have both referred to
grass and the delights of nature in their poems. “A Woman’s Song: To Her
Indifferent Lover” written in Latin in the eleventh century includes these lines:
“Tu saltim, Veris gratia / exaudi et considera / frondes, flores et gramina; / nam mea
languet anima”. Gillian Spragg has translated this poem and the verse reads:
“You, at least, for the spring’s sake, / listen, and give your mind / to the flowers,
the leaves, the grasses; / my spirit pines”. See the Babel Building Site on the
internet at: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/bb/piglet/somewind.htm. Gillian
Spragg has also translated, Sappho’s Fragment 31. Spragg's translation goes as
follows: “cold sweat pours down me, and in every part / shuddering grips me; /
I am paler than summer grass, / and seem to myself to be at the point of death”.
Gillian Spragg. “Divine Visitations; Sappho’s Poetry of Love”. In Elaine Hobby
and Chris White (Eds.). 1991. What Lesbians Do in Books, p.55. See my poem
“Seized: Variations on Sappho’s Fragment 31”. In Susan Hawthorne. 1999. Bird,
pp. 71-74.
18 Basket. Gertrude Stein had a series of dogs, all called Basket.
19 suck at mangoes. Cathie Dunsford describes how to eat mango Pacific style in The
Journey Home / Te Haerenga Kainga (1997), p. 108.
20 pineapples bananas. Jordan, in Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson (1989), goes
in search of such fruits and the paradise they represent.
21 savour its juices. “Hugged her and kissed her: / Squeezed and caressed her: /
Stretched up their dishes, / Panniers and plates: / “look at our apples / Russet
and dun, / Bob at our cherries, / Bite at our peaches, / Citrons and dates, /
Grapes for the asking, / Pears red with basking / out in the sun, / Plum on their
twigs; / pluck them and suck them, / Pomegranates, figs.” Christina Rosetti.
1994. Goblin Market and other poems, p. 10. This passage is replete with sexual
innuendo, with so many of these fruits being associated with women’s sexuality.