In these and other fragments, she references roses, violets, crocuses, honey clover, a lotus, and hyacinth specifically. Since the blessed Graces look more to the flowerful,īut turn away from the ones without garlands. Weaving together slips of anise with gentle hands: Unfortunately, only fragments of her works remain:Īnd you, Dika, put lovely garlands round your hair,
Her ancient poetry contains many references to flowers and nature, painting a picture of an idyllic pasture where girls and women frolicked adorned in garlands. In 2008, Lesbian islanders sued for their right over the word and lost. Any person from the island of Lesbos is a Lesbian, but Sappho’s heritage spawned the lowercase-L lesbian we know today. Her presence there was so profound that the word “lesbian” originated with her. 570) was a Greek poet who lived on the island of Lesbos, so close to Turkey’s border you can see it from the shore. The floral fascination of queer people may date back to Sappho herself, fabled as the world’s first known woman-loving woman. Sapphic Violets Bird’s-foot violet via Wikimedia Commons Here’s an exploration of the history of four particular flowering plants that have been decidedly queered. Maybe all the buzzing about the north end of the Ramble in New York City’s Central Park is why that cruising ground was nicknamed the “Fruited Plain.” Or maybe it’s why “evening botanist” is one of the antiquated terms for queer men. What’s the story behind all of this floral symbology? Are queer people perceived as delicate? Colorful? Beautiful? Frivolous? As the literary critic Christopher Looby notes in the journal Criticism, Marcel Proust’s 1921 Sodome et Gomorrhe speculated that male-male courting rituals were similar to the process of flower fertilization. A pre-Stonewall gay bar at the corner of Christopher Street and Gay Street was called The Flower Pot. Violets were associated with Sappho herself, and the calamus with Walt Whitman. Oscar Wilde earlier turned the green carnation into a symbol for them across the pond by wearing one on his lapel. The American “Pansy Craze” of almost 100 years ago cemented the use of that flower’s name as a slang term for queer men.