Several aspects of the work of the classical lesbian poet Sappho came to be admired and developed by the decadent poets of the nearly two and a half millennia following the his era. The mixing of gender aspects and themes of male power and female desire in "To Anaktoria" and "Seizure" almost prefigured the radical combinations of worldly imagery and metaphysical meaning of decadent works – in particular, Verlaine's explicit homage, " Sappho Ballad". Furthermore, Sappho's position as a classical lesbian poet made her an attractive forebear of a genre so interested in hollowing out social mores and finding unique ways to express a modern form of desire. "Sappho Ballad" heavily incorporated female homosexual love into its expression of male heterosexual love through its unique use of the language of lesbianism, a sexual orientation that decadents found particularly attractive due to its perceived purity and position outside of the commonly accepted morality of society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Sappho's lyric poem "To Anaktoria" exhibits many of the literary qualities that would come to define decadent poetry. The work begins with a series of male-looking military images: "cavalry", "infantry", "fleet of long oars", "supreme sight", "black earth". Thematically, this stanza is almost reminiscent of an epic poem, and the romantic quality of the poem is briefly toned down. This misleading aspect is reflected in several Decadent works. Early decadent Baudelaire deliberately disguised dark themes and sudden, depressing climaxes with harmless, gentle openings to great effect. For example, "A Carcass" begins with "Remember, my love, the object we saw / That beautiful June morning," and then turns into a long, explicit, and almost startling reflection on a rotting corpse. Baudelaire's poem begins sweetly and ends horribly; “To Anaktoria” works in reverse, starting with images of war and moving towards a personal romantic message. In addition to being an expression of Sappho's desire, the poem contains an implicit theme of anticipating the triumph of love over war. Military images are used as an artifice to construct a strong declaration of love. This is comparable to several decadent poems that use the language of military or imperial force without expressing a military or historical narrative; for example, Verlaine's "Languor", a contemplation of art and boredom that places the speaker as "the Empire at the end of decadence". That Sappho also fashioned love poems from the language of masculinity and history indicates her concern with love above all else. The final message of "Ad Anaktoria" is Sappho's willingness to give up the concreteness of "dazzling chariots and armored hoplites" for the less tangible "soft step" and "radiant face" of Anaktoria. Decadent literature at its core was also a repudiation of realism and an escape into the intangibles and luxury of art – for example, Verlaine's "lazy acrostics". “Seizure” runs through a series of disturbing physical metaphors. “Subtle fire runs like a thief” through her body, and she is “paler than grass.” She becomes "intimate with death", but cannot die and must "suffer everything". This convolution of metaphors is similar to the symbolists' "jungle of symbols". The terrible desperation expressed by the final lines shares an emotion with the symbolists' fascination with death and other realms, as well as with the poet's immortality. The end of "Sequestration" even seems to imply that Sappho must livethanks to his poetry. Throughout “Sequestration,” Sappho maintains control over her language even as she appears to succumb to physical torment. Despite the brevity of the poem, it flows at a frenetic and powerful pace; since decadents would later deal with sensation, Sappho expressed it here. Just like the decadent poets, Sappho also used allusions to express herself. It references the Iliad, but focuses on the details of the deleterious nature of Helen's love for a man to describe Anaktoria's love, presumably also for a man. Interestingly, Sappho also seems to confuse Anaktoria with Anaktoria's love. First, it is what Anaktoria loves that is contrasted with the "supreme sight" of an army. Yet the poem's conclusion contrasts a "dazzling" force with Anaktoria itself. Sappho winds through the poem to the expected conclusion of her love for Anaktoria, but she gets there by starting with Anaktoria's beloved. A similar thing happens in "Kidnapping." “That man is equal to a god” only because of his closeness and his effect on Sappho's beloved. Although Sappho still explicitly expresses female homosexuality, she uses the powerful norm of heterosexuality to get to that point. Essentially, heterosexual desire gets in the way of her lesbian desire, and she uses this as a jumping-off point to create both serious conflict and a sense of understanding in her poems as she peers into the window of woman-man love. The empathy implicit in Sappho calling Anaktoria's heterosexual love "the supreme spectacle" in a love poem dedicated to Anaktoria herself is comparable to decadent poets who express heterosexual love through homosexual premises – for example, the "Sappho Ballad" by Verlaine. Verlaine and other decadent poets had a contempt for social mores and empathized with alienation from society due to their own deviant artistic expression. Lesbians were forced to turn their backs on society, and their form of exile was particularly fascinating. Sappho in particular was both a lesbian writer and a poetic innovator. He expressed the misery of unrequited desire and social ostracism through his art. His desires were difficult to satisfy due to classical morality; as a result, his writing took on a kind of furtive quality, as seen in the apparent intertwining of heterosexual and homosexual lust in some of his stories, despite his clear desire for another woman. Furthermore, the erotic aspect of lesbian alienation was a serious point of interest for decadent poets. Lesbians were seen as people who had sex solely for the sake of pleasure, a concept that threatened Christian morality and conventional male sexuality that decadents disliked and, at the same time, reflected the decadent credo of art for art's sake . Thus, Sapphic love was the purest form of love and desire that decadent writers were fixated on. Furthermore, lesbians were immune to male attraction. The decadent lesbian writer Renee Vivien declared that Sappho's songs enchanted "the Sirens themselves" and that, symbolically, lesbians were "eternally under the spell of the Past", i.e. the Sapphic writings. The idea of ​​this sort of lesbian immunity inspired a masochistic impulse among decadent writers to find pleasure in denial. Verlaine's "Sappho Ballad" exemplifies this impulse. "Sappho Ballad" is a love poem that imagines the eroticism between the speaker and the beloved to whom he is addressing. As in "To Anaktoria", male language emerges as a point of contrast. Indeed, there is a sort of androgynous aspect to the speaker. His hand is "gentle" and "that of a lover", yet it is like an animal whose "wild head" would like to "roam andburrow". His body is that of an "athlete" and "victory and defeat" are knowing "in a battle fought with the heart and the head". Yet the speaker insists that he is "like the great Sappho". There is a servile aspect to this. The speaker only wishes to give pleasure to his beloved. She is constantly complemented throughout the poem: her skin is a "feast", her body is "splendor", she has a "secret glory" full of "flavors". He experiences pleasure at a basic level, that is, pleasure for its own sake. He wants to liberate her, even artistically: "Let your poet's soul wander / Where it wills, fields, woods, hills / As you wish and as I so desire." Verlaine essentially seeks to express his sincere desire to physically please a woman through the language of Sappho, whose lesbian love she considered the most truthful and equal to her own love. Throughout In Poetry, Verlaine insists that she is "like the great Sappho": that is, that she can please a woman with the purity of lesbian love, and that she can liberate a woman's artistic soul through her "skillful traits of new art Yet the". the poem subtly contrasts this with its references to masculinity While Sappho used masculine language to draw a contrast between the ideal love of a woman and the more tangible love of a man, Verlaine seems to use it almost to remind the reader of his own masculinity and his own masculinity. insist that a man can love a woman the way a woman can love a woman. The sensuality in "Sappho Ballad" is particularly tactile. His hand "slips" and is "destined to serve her" with "skillful blows." the "wild head" is sent to "wander and dig" "among the flavors" of his "secret glory"; in the end, his body is "hard and soft again" in "battle". The poem moves with the frenetic pace and emotion of "Seizure", arousing strong emotions with its fast, explicit language and powerful erotic metaphors. Another way to read this is to note the speaker's apparent androgyny, and how the decidedly masculine language used to describe the speaker mixes with comparisons between the speaker and Sappho and the speaker's explicit desire to physically serve a woman like a woman would. The androgyny of Verlaine's speaker in "Sappho Ballad" is similar to the playful bisexuality expressed in many of Sappho's poems, including "To Anaktoria" and "Seizure," which begins with the misleading line: "For me, that man is equal to a god." Of particular note is Verlaine's phrase: "To send it with the skillful strokes of a new art." The heavy, decadent sensuality of this poem is the art he mentions here, and he considers his own art - as well as his aesthetics of pleasure - that "new art" that induces rapture. The idea that art itself can or should cause such physical pleasure is a strong decadent ideal, which contributed to the decadents' admiration of Sappho. Sappho herself was an artist of a new form who sought to express sensuality, desire, and the pain caused by both through her poetry. His aim was not far from that of the Decadents. His skillful strokes are alluded to throughout Verlaine's poetry, just as his own lust is used as a point of comparison for Verlaine's male lust. Complementing the skill of her new art and consequently comparing himself to Sappho, Verlaine syllogistically complements Sappho and praises her ability to use language as a force for luxury. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Essentially, “Sappho Ballad” is not simply a love ballad for an unnamed object of desire, but.