Symmachos esso: Theatrical Role-Playing and Mimesis in Sappho fr. 1 V.

The paper gives a new reading of Sappho's controversial and almost obscure fr. 1. It focuses on the structure, on the rhetoric strategy, and its cultural implications for the primary and secondary recipients in a metapoetic perspective. The poem therefore emphasizes the concerns of Sappho as a poet and performer of love songs that have their 'Sitz im Leben' in the hic et nunc of the circle of maidens but also aims at later receptions and the poet's afterlife. Through a linguistic trickery, mimesis, and the final call on Aphrodite to become her fellow-fighter Sappho reasserts her strength after total self-humiliation. The song is theatre in nuce , theatricality in a completely different context compared to tragedy where according the Dionysian perspective the protagonists' behaviour is always problematic. Whereas the involvement in a dramatic role and plot can make it necessary to deploy the symmachos -metaphor in connection with a specific god in a situation of crisis, in Sappho it seems to be the occasion of the song itself. The contribution argues that fr. 1 does not reflect a single story about one girl as one single instance of unreciprocated love, an emotional cry for help. But Sappho sings about an endless chain of very personal visits that culminate in the last very intimate meeting with Aphrodite becoming her real ally, i.e. the poetic inspiration, essence in atmosphere, setting, form, and content, in the poetic performance bound to the erotic aesthetics. Re-enacting this divine fellow-fighter in the very performance the song makes Sappho merge with Aphrodite.