![]() ![]() In her own poetry, Sappho presents women as subjects, and yet she herself has become a story and an object through history’s interpretation of her: the patriarchal myth surrounding her life all too often overlooks Sappho’s own subjective creativity. Indeed, it is Ovid’s version of Sappho that influences how so many people think of her today: the love-sick girl who threw herself off a rock to her doom, because of her overwhelming love for Phaeon. She becomes an object of poetry, rather than a poet. In the passive understanding of the muse, this limits Sappho to an object for male writers to exploit. She is still an inspiration to the male creator, but inspires as a powerless object, as an emblem of idealised female beauty, rather than an active creator in her own right.Įven Sappho, the most famous female poet from antiquity, has been named as the tenth muse. She becomes another part of their creation as they begin to appropriate her, so that our modern understanding of the muse is a passive and objectified woman. However, as male writers and artists begin to shape their own creations, they also shape the muse herself. The notion of the ancient muses seems to enable female creativity: the muses are goddesses, who, in turn, inspire others to create art. There is, then, a paradox at the heart of the concept of the muse. ![]() “Modern female artists are fighting back to reclaim her and to restore her creative power” Traditionally, a muse is always a woman, and the creator who uses her for his art is a man. And yet, when we think of a muse today, we most often picture a passive, reclining female model she is powerless, perhaps nude, and posing silently in front of a man. This seems to suggest that they are meant to be active subjects, creators rather than crafted objects. In ancient Greek mythology, the nine Muses were goddesses who inspired the creation of the arts, literature, music, and sciences. ![]() Female creators have long had a complicated relationship with the figure of the muse. ![]()
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