Seventy years ago – can it be so many years, gone so quickly, insubstantial as a dream? – in the sixth form at Queen’s Royal College in Port-of-Spain, our literature teacher departed from the well-beaten path of the set syllabus to tell us about Sappho, the Greek poetess.
He said she was the greatest of all lyric poets of ancient Greece. She lived in the sixth century before Christ. Hardly a single poem of hers has come down to us whole and intact but the fragments that have survived are so beautiful, so perfect in their grace and passion, that her name and work have become immortal.
The crystal, perfect fragments of poetry by Sappho which our eccentric teacher read to us were more memorable than anything in the syllabus. Young imaginations, preparing to receive the glories of the world unfolding, yearn for such teachers out of the ordinary. I remember him – thick spectacles which made him goggle-eyed, a red rash of small boils circling his neck – and thank him and praise him down the years. My love of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins I owe to him and my first hearing of Sappho’s immortal fragments, tears of unrequited love distilled in exquisite, shining vials, I also owe to him. It is by chance that we benefit from such teaching when we are young.