Love comes in different mental and emotional state. It is normally a strong feeling and a positive experience. There are different types including loving food, loving a mother and loving a spouse are both different version of love. It is also a great virtue representing personal compassion and kindness. Your exposure of love in your poem, Hyme to Aphrodite is creative, emotional and educative. The moral lesson that love should not be forced is both true and educative. When someone loves an unwilling participant, the love will not blossom. According to my experience, when there is no spark between the lovers, the love will not blossom, instead there will be heartache.
I was wondering why the speaker had to ask help from the Aphrodite and naturally, you know Love cannot be forced. Through mourning for the lost love, I realized the speaker’s love is passionate, the way he speaks shows that he is in grief and he needs her lover back. Through words like grief, aching pain, anguish and demented heart, the speaker expresses a great pain of losing a lover. I know the feeling of heartache and your explanation on heartache has added a lot of imaginations and insinuation that heartache can happen to anyone. That feeling that the world has stopped, low self-esteem, self-pity lack of appetite for what you always enjoy and helplessness can be brought by heartache.
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The expression of the heartache in stanza one arouses those feelings of self-pity, “child of Zeus, Wile-weaver, I now implore you, don’t beg young lady with pain and torments crush down my spirit.’’ It leads to prayer, prayers to the supernatural being seeking help. I understand the fact that you had to direct your prayers to the Aphrodite without reminding yourself that love cannot be forced. The belief that the Aphrodite will help in persuading your lover to return is barbaric. However, I am amazed by the message you get from the Goddess, that instead of following your lover, you should wait for the spark to glow, you should be patient and she will return. “Now she runs away, but she’ll soon pursue you; gifts she now rejects, soon enough she will give them; now she doesn’t love you, but soon her heart will burn though unwillingly.’’
The flow of the stanza while expressing your anguish of being left has taken me to the world of great imaginations. The way you consult the goddess with high hopes is also very creative and interesting. I imagine how the goddess answers the challenging questions that you impose on her about your lost love. “Deathless face alights with your smile, you asked me, what I suffered, and who was my cause of anguish, what could ease the pain of my frantic mind and why had I called you.” After reading stanza four on the question that you impose on goddess Aphrodite, I sympathized with you on the pain that you go through after losing your loved one.
If you have experienced the heartache before, you will not be worried because the pain would not last forever, you will heal with time and you will realize that you can still find love and a better person. Your faith towards the goddess Aphrodite seems so strong and that explains the reason why you believe the goddess will help you. It’s great that at the end of the stanza, the goddess turned out to be the solution to your love problem. “I have also seen how religion is also very important to you, believing in the goddess Aphrodite to solve your love issues sounds interesting. I once overcame heartache through prayers to God and believing that there is a reason for everything, religion offers a great consolation and hopes for better relationship ahead.
It is because of love that your ego has been challenged to a point of begging. Love is a very powerful thing that can turn someone into a beggar, begging for affection that you won’t get, I feel sympathy when you beg so much to get the love and attention from someone who doesn’t feel the same, ‘I beg you, lady with pains and torments, crush down my spirit.’’ The feeling of rejection from the one you love is very traumatizing. I know your expectation of sharing your love was very high. All you wanted is to share your love and dreams to your lover, but things did not go the way you wanted. The torment expresses how deep and pure your love is towards the unwilling lover. However, I admire the fact that you are still hopeful and believe that it is possible for your lover to return after seeking help, and if she doesn't return you can get help from the Aphrodite-like other times, you are still going to overcome the pain and move on.
That love that has consumed you is so passionate and passion can also cause pain and it is associated with reason. Why is the object of your affection sounding feminine? I get to think of lesbianism when you refer to a woman when expressing your love. I wish you could mention the name of your lover, is she a woman or a man. Aphrodite being a goddess symbolizes a woman. You are very passionate about women, your words about love have concentrated on the pain and anguish of the lost love, but I don’t know the name or nature of your lover, feminine pronouns are used instead of the lover’s names.
References
Sappho. (1997). Hymn to Aphrodite Links to an external site. [E.Vandiver, Trans.]. Retrieved from http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/vandiver.shtml
Sappho., & Balmer, J. (1993). Sappho . New York: Carol Pub. Group.
Wilson, L. (2013). Sappho's sweet bitter songs . Routledge.
Wilson, L. (1996). Aphrodite in Sappho’s Sweetbitter songs. Routledge.
