Lesbos and the Sapphic Ideal

Lesbos is inseparable from Sappho's literary afterlife, but the ancient poet's world cannot simply be recreated from modern ideas about her. Natalie and Renée Vivien found in Sappho a language for desire and art; their interpretations tell us about their own era as well.

The story of a proposed circle of women poets on Lesbos belongs to early twentieth-century artistic imagination. It should be distinguished from the life of the ancient poet and from later realities of the Rue Jacob salon.