The motivic relationship between desire, physical suffering and conflict in early Greek poetry

Abstract

The paper outlines the prehistory of Sappho's and Anacreon's statements on the physical suffering of erotic desire and the physical conflict with the desire (eros) itself in early Greek epic, elegy, and iambos. The poetic texts discussed and their interpretation confirm the basic thesis that the treatment of these motifs in the oeuvre of each poet needs to be evaluated in the context of genre, gender, and the individual poetic programme respectively.