After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

★★★★

“Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time.”
• Sappho, fragment 147

“Who was Sappho?” this novel asks in its prologue. An ancient Greek lyric poet whose work survives only in fragments; most of her life the subject of fanciful speculation. We know she was from Lesbos; we know she was exiled to Sicily; we know that she had an island and was, as the prologue says, “garlanded with girls.” So much of her work has been lost, but Sappho herself survives in collective human memory as an extraordinary woman from history, and as an artist who blazed her own trail and became legend.

For the women in this novel, and for the narrators who chronicle and comment upon the unfolding events like a Greek chorus, Sappho is the flame that kindles their creativity, the beacon the guides them; igniting their love and passion, turning their eyes towards the sea, and lighting the way into new, uncharted waters. The use of “we” as the collective chorus narrator becomes the “we” of all women who break new ground, transgress societal boundaries, love other women, and from that love seek to emulate Sappho by leaving an artistic legacy of their own.

In her debut novel, Selby Wynn Schwartz presents a lavish, vibrant, kaleidoscopic re-imagining of the lives of late nineteenth century and early twentieth-century Sapphic feminists. With a narrative structure echoing the fragmented nature of Sappho’s surviving poems, their stories play out against the backdrop of a world advancing rapidly in some areas, but still intransigent when it came to acknowledging the rights of women. Initially focusing on Italian feminists Rina Faccio, who was to become author and poet Sibilla Aleramo, and feminist writer, playwright, and poet Lina Poletti, we called upon to witness the slow, painful process of recognising women’s rights in law. One 19th century Italian politician is quoted as saying, “In Italy, the enslavement of women is the only regime in which men may live happily”, giving the reader a devastating illustration of both the mentality and the system that women were up against. The novel is peppered throughout with similar background information on the legal and political battles faced by feminists in Europe, living through an era of profound and radical change.

The primary focus, however, is the women themselves – their lives, their loves, and their work. The story expands across Sappho’s Mediterranean to encompass key female figures in the art, literature, and politics of the time. From Ukrainian-Italian activist Anna Kuliscioff to American writer and literary salon hostess Natalie Barney, English poet Radclyffe Hall to American painter Romaine Brooks, actresses Eleonora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt, dancers Isadora Duncan and Ida Rubenstein, and writers Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, among others, a dazzling array of women free themselves from the constraints imposed upon them, establishing their own artistic communities and political movements independently from men. Blending history and fiction in a lush, sensual, evocative style reminiscent of lyric poetry, we follow each of these ground-breaking women carving out new lives for themselves, embracing lesbian relationships, supporting each other’s endeavours, and taking upon themselves the legacy of Sappho to create art and blaze trails that will similarly resonate for future generations.

In a similar vein to Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships, After Sappho flits from one woman’s story to another in often non-linear style, weaving a patchwork pattern of intertwined lives and relationships. With a scope so wide, the episodic nature of the novel can occasionally seem almost too fragmented and, at times, the vignettes move back and forth at so fast a speed that it leaves the reader wishing they could stay a bit longer with each woman and explore that particular part of their lives in more depth. However, this, too, can be seen as reflective of the fragmentation of Sappho’s surviving work, and the frustratingly elusive knowledge we have of this great poet and other women in history like her.

Nonetheless, Sappho and the work she left us permeate each of the stories with incisive and relevant excerpts of her poems, creating absorbing, sweeping, romantic snapshots of lives coming together and breaking apart, freedoms discovered, passions experienced; all leading to an extraordinary flowering of female creativity and advancement. Towards the latter part of the book, as we move into the twentieth century, the world begins to darken as fascism rears its head, and, as a counterpoint to the idealism of Sappho, the figure of the great Trojan prophetess Cassandra becomes ever more prominent; the woman destined always to speak the truth and never to be believed, her warnings unheeded amidst a descent into tragedy and war. In a time in which the gains of feminism appear to be on extremely shaky ground, this book serves as a timely reminder of the interconnectedness of women across the generations, and of how the women who came before can inspire in us the hope and courage to keep going, to keep fighting, and to keep creating.

Jo-Anne Blanco for BookBrowse

©Jo-Anne Blanco 2023