If Not, Winter made waves in the field of translation not only for its exquisite poetry but for how the book honors the poems’ fragmentary condition. Autobiography of Red was published four years before If Not, Winter (2002), Carson’s translation of nearly all of the surviving fragments of Sappho’s lyric poetry. Through translation she transports and transforms. The section in Autobiography of Red titled “Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros,” in which Carson’s loose and inventive translation of Stesichoros’ surviving 'Geryoneis' fragments sets up the sprawling plot of Autobiography of Red: A Romance, embodies Carson’s unique approach to translation. This is why her works in translation continue to be revelatory she approaches translation with an artist’s eye. Carson is infatuated with the possibilities of fragments: how the void of those empty, missing spaces might be, or become, full with meaning. Anne Carson doesn’t think of fragments as a roadblock to translation neither does she simply take them for granted as an occupational hazard. While an apple with a chunk taken out of it is obviously still an apple, a poem with missing lines is a far more mysterious object, for there’s no telling how that missing piece would transform the whole.

I've changed that to 'Midnight slides by me' to meet the needs of the meter.Any translator of ancient literature confronts the challenge of fragments: works that are only partially preserved.

For example, the phrase that runs over from line 2 to line 3 means, 'It is the middle of the night'. In order to replicate Sappho's meter, I've altered a few line-to-line meanings. (Note that I intend 'Pleiades' to be spoken with the accent on the second syllable, as in Greek, not on the first syllable, as in English.) I have also matched the position of key vowels, although I had to juggle the four long vowels in the last line that give the poem's closing its plaintive feeling in Greek.

I've also been mindful of the caesura (the mid-line pause in Classical verse): in lines 2, 3 and 4, it falls in the same place as in the Greek. 168b), I've maintained the syllabic count of the Greek lines and echoed the meter as closely as I could.

In this translation of one of the best known fragments attributed to Sappho (no. Many translators simply put the poet's thoughts into modern English, without trying to reproduce Sappho's music. Anne Carson says, 'Sappho is a musician,' and her own Sappho translations are some of the most musical English versions of Classical Greek poetry I've ever read (see the first link below).

Anne carson sappho translation