Lover’s Leap, by Joseph Addison

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There was a promontory in Acarnania called Leucate,* on the top of which was a little temple dedicated to Apollo. In this temple it was usual for despairing lovers to make their vows in secret, and afterward to fling themselves from the top of the precipice into the sea, where they were sometimes taken up alive. This place was therefore called the Lover’s Leap; and whether or no the fright they had been in, or the resolution that could push them to so dreadful a remedy, or the bruises which they often received in their fall, banished all the tender sentiments of love, and gave their spirits another turn; those who had taken this leap were observed never to relapse into that passion. Sappho tried the cure, but perished in the experiment.*

by Joseph Addison 1672-1719

abridged

Abridged from an essay by Joseph Addison in ‘The Spectator’ Vol. III No. 223 (Thursday November 15th, 1711) collected in ‘The Spectator’ (1841) by Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729). Additional information from ‘Sappho’ (1920), by Henry Thornton Wharton (1846-1895); ‘Lyra Graeca’ Vol. I (1922), edited by J. M. Edmonds; and ‘Heroides’ by P. Ovidius Naso (Ovid) (43 BC - AD ?18).

* That is, the Lefcadian cliffs, a tall finger of land which projects southwest from Lefkáda (Lefkas), one of the Ionian Islands. Leucātē is the Latin form, used e.g. by Virgil in Book III of his Aeneid: “Soon the cloud-capt summits of Mount Leucate open to our view, and the temple of Apollo, dreaded by seamen”. A lighthouse now tops the cape. Acarnania is a region of western Greece, north of the Gulf of Patras.

* In Issue 233 (Tuesday November 27th, 1711) Addison pretended to translate fragments of an ancient document kept at the Temple of Apollo in which Sappho’s fateful leap (among others’) was recorded for posterity. Sappho entered the temple wearing a garland of myrtle and a bridal gown white as snow, said the fictitious record. She hung her harp upon the altar, marched defiantly to the precipice, and after repeating some of her own poetry (‘which we could not hear’) leapt into the sea. Some said afterwards that she had been changed into a swan as she fell; others said it was just her gown billowing in the wind. Addison did not put any of this nonsense into the original, which would have pleased Charles Dickens: see Presumption and Innocence. But he seems to have been worried that love-struck readers might take the legend (and themselves) too seriously. ‘Ridicule, perhaps, is a better expedient against love than sober advice’ he explained.

Précis

Unwilling to face life without Phaon, Sappho went to the island of Lefkada in Greece, and after pouring out her griefs at the Temple of Apollo, threw herself over the cliffs into the sea. She hoped, perhaps, to be one of those who survived the fall, and were always cured of their hopeless love; but Sappho was not so fortunate.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

Sappho went to Lefkada. She went to the Temple of Apollo there. She vowed to take the lover’s leap.

See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.

ICliffs. IIDedicate. IIIResolve.

Précis

Questions for Critics

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