Saturday, April 26, 2014

The poet Sappho

As I said in my older posts Sappho was a feminist. She has teached young girls to be feminine and love their femininity. Sappho loved art and beauty in all of it's forms, the beauty of flowers, stars and young girls, the beauty that was inspiring her. Unfortunately most of her poems have been destroyed by the byzantine misogynist  christians.
This is my oil on canvas painting of the poet Sappho next to Gongyla, one of her muses, the girl she wrote the poem below for.

Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.

Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech

Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Sappho's rose

One of Sappho's poems has inspired me to make this drawing of a beautiful woman with a rose that makes her look more feminine a and beautiful. Looking at this drawing I can almost feel the perfume of the rose, her perfume and I wish I could touch and kiss her red rose lips and hersmooth white skin.
This is the poem.

If it pleased the whim of Zeus in an idle
Hour to choose a king for the flowers, he surely
Would have crowned the rose for its regal beauty,
                        Deeming it peerless;

By its grace is valley and hill embellished,
Earth is made a shrine for the lover's ardor;
Dear it is to flowers as the charm of lovely
                        Eyes are to mortals;

Joy and pride of plants, and the garden's glory,
Beauty's blush it brings to the cheek of meadows;
Draining fire and dew from the dawn for rarest
                        Color and odor;

Softly breathed, its scent is a plea for passion,
When it blooms to welcome the kiss of Kypris;
Sheathed in fragrant leaves its tremulous petals
                        Laugh in the zephyr.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Corinna from Ovid's Amores

Corinna, oil on canvas painting
This is my oil on canvas painting of Corinna, Ovid's muse, the woman who has inspired him to write Amores. I am proud to bear her name. The roman poet Ovid described her as a very beautiful and sexy woman.
This is Ovid's poem.

        Book I Elegy V: Corinna in an Afternoon



It was hot, and the noon hour had gone by:
I was relaxed, limbs spread in the midst of the bed.
One half of the window was open, the other closed:
the light was just as it often is in the woods,
it glimmered like Phoebus dying at twilight,
or when night goes, but day has still not risen.
Such a light as is offered to modest girls,
whose timid shyness hopes for a refuge.
Behold Corinna comes, hidden by her loose slip,
scattered hair covering her white throat –
like the famous Semiramis going to her bed,
one might say, or Lais loved by many men.
I pulled her slip away –not harming its thinness much;
yet she still struggled to be covered by that slip.
While she would struggle so, it was as if she could not win,
yielding, she was effortlessly conquered.
When she stood before my eyes, the clothing set aside,
there was never a flaw in all her body.
What shoulders, what arms, I saw and touched!
Breasts formed as if they were made for pressing!
How flat the belly beneath the slender waist!
What flanks, what form! What young thighs!
Why recall each aspect? I saw nothing lacking praise
and I hugged her naked body against mine.
Who doesn’t know the story? Weary we both rested.
May such afternoons often come for me!