Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 41

[Late 1880-early 1881] Keats House, Tite Street

Dear Mr Tadema, There is a good deal of difficulty in obtaining a really correct idea of Greek writing at the time of Sappho: Sappho is so early, 610 B C, that we have no inscriptions at all contemporary, and the earliest Aeolic coin is about 550. Taking this as my starting point and following out the Aeolic shapes of the letters, which are quite different from the Attic, I have drawn out the enclosed list, which is as accurate probably as one can get it.

The early shapes are curious and I imagine are conditioned by the material on which they wrote – paper or parchment – as opposed to the later forms when stone inscriptions became usual: and the lines consequently more rigid and straight, and, it seems to me, less beautiful.

I have written Mnasidika instead of Mnasidion as in your letter; all the MSS read Mnasidika in the line from Sappho, and besides Mnasidion is a man’s name. Gyrinnos is the Aeolic form for Gyrinna.

I remember your talking about Catullus the other night – one of the most beautiful of his poems is taken from a still extant song of Sappho’s beginning,

I don’t know if you would care to strike that literary note and scrawl it on your marble?

I hope that whenever you want any kind of information about Greek things, in which I might help you that you will let me know.

It is always a pleasure for me to work at any Greek subject, and a double pleasure to do so for anyone whose work mirrors so exquisitely and rightly, as yours does, that beautiful old Greek world. Believe me sincerely yours

OSCAR WILDE