Sweetbitter
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\"Sweetbitter\" is an epithet of Eros first used by Sappho, poet laureate of the literature of longing. In the fragment that gave Stephanie Danler her book's title, Sappho calls Eros limb-loosening, sweetbitter, the one who can't be fought. Sappho's fragments are fevers of desire and limbo, and it's that same space of almost unbearable want that Sweetbitter occupies: Wanting a place, wanting a person, wanting a life.
It's a beautiful fragment, and its beauty derives, in part, from the fact that it is a fragment. We have a metaphor, but we have no context with which to make sense of the metaphor. Eros melts our limbs. It steals in. It stirs us. It makes us sweetbitter. If we translate as bittersweet we miss something. Sweetbitter and bittersweet. It might just be the difference between a dactyl and an anapest. Maybe if we had more than two lines we would be able to tell.
Mendelsohn is right, of course: Sappho's poems, even in Carson's impressive translation, remain partial, although I'm not sure they are unsatisfying. At the risk of stretching the metaphor, such a partial and unsatisfying representation is sweetbitter. Even if they leave us sweetbitter, Sappho's poems, like eros, continue to stir us. 781b155fdc