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marc129 's review for:
After Sappho
by Selby Wynn Schwartz
“This is a work of fiction. Or possibly it is such a hybrid of imaginaries and intimate non-fictions, of speculative biographies and 'suggestions for short pieces' (…) as to have no recourse to a category at all.” In her afterword, Wynn Schwartz herself indicates how stylistically ambiguous her approach is. I would call it an example of very ingenious docu-fiction. In hundreds of short pieces (rarely more than a page long) Wynn Schwartz portrays the lives of several dozen women from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century: very well-known figures pass by, such as Sarah Bernard, Colette and Viriginia Woolf, and also Nora Helmer from Ibsen's [b:A Doll's House|37793|A Doll's House|Henrik Ibsen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1660268136l/37793._SY75_.jpg|10535173], but most of them are – at least to me – completely unknown women, especially Italian feminists.
I can imagine that many readers won't like Wynn Schwartz's style, because it is very dry, almost purely matter-of-fact and encyclopedic, and told by a collective personality ("we") that has a time-and- place-transcending agency, suggesting a link with a global movement of militant women and especially lesbians. And so not only the subordination of women in that period, and the open or covert struggle against it, comes into focus, but also the breaking of sexual conventions (also open or covert). And then the link with Sappho is not far to seek. In this way, very subtly but well thought out, Wynn Schwartz brings the impenetrable poetry of Sappho (we only have fragments of sentences from her entire oeuvre) to life.
Nicely done, for sure. But as far as I'm concerned, way too cerebral and therefore not really captivating or resonating for me. And inevitably, Wynn Schwartz has been very selective. Her selection of women she portrays is limited to aristocratic and bourgeois epigones, wealthy and privileged, and almost all of them writers, artists and actresses; it's a select club, and almost exclusively European. And, of course, it is also a conscious choice to interpret Sappho's poetry as lesbian, following the classical, 19th century interpretation; but historically this is not entirely uncontroversial, and from a gender perspective, in turn, this is a limitation. The biggest shortcoming of this book however, is that the remarkable women who are portrayed, in my opinion, do not really come to life. Due to the deliberately fragmentary and detached approach of Wynn Schwartz, they remain very ephemeral. In that way they are not unlike Sappho herself.
I can imagine that many readers won't like Wynn Schwartz's style, because it is very dry, almost purely matter-of-fact and encyclopedic, and told by a collective personality ("we") that has a time-and- place-transcending agency, suggesting a link with a global movement of militant women and especially lesbians. And so not only the subordination of women in that period, and the open or covert struggle against it, comes into focus, but also the breaking of sexual conventions (also open or covert). And then the link with Sappho is not far to seek. In this way, very subtly but well thought out, Wynn Schwartz brings the impenetrable poetry of Sappho (we only have fragments of sentences from her entire oeuvre) to life.
Nicely done, for sure. But as far as I'm concerned, way too cerebral and therefore not really captivating or resonating for me. And inevitably, Wynn Schwartz has been very selective. Her selection of women she portrays is limited to aristocratic and bourgeois epigones, wealthy and privileged, and almost all of them writers, artists and actresses; it's a select club, and almost exclusively European. And, of course, it is also a conscious choice to interpret Sappho's poetry as lesbian, following the classical, 19th century interpretation; but historically this is not entirely uncontroversial, and from a gender perspective, in turn, this is a limitation. The biggest shortcoming of this book however, is that the remarkable women who are portrayed, in my opinion, do not really come to life. Due to the deliberately fragmentary and detached approach of Wynn Schwartz, they remain very ephemeral. In that way they are not unlike Sappho herself.