Alexander Trocchi — Sappho of Lesbos [1960]

First released in America in 1960 through Castle Books under the editorial pseudonym Michel Darius, bearing the subtitle ‘The Autobiography of a Strange Woman’, this is the one erotic title of Trocchi’s not to be released as part of Maurice Girodias’s erotic series for Olympia Press in Paris. The novel is a ‘found document’ translated from the medieval Latin by an “old gentleman” who located the manuscript in Soller, Mallorca, and sent his translation to America via Italy “just before his death.” This manuscript was lost, however, so Sappho of Lesbos is a “prepared version of what purports to be” an authentic autobiography, presented in the 1986 Star Books paperback by Alexander Trocchi himself (with the subtitle ‘An Amorous Odyssey’). The novel is similar to Trocchi’s other ‘erotic’ novels, i.e. not overly erotic at all and more picaresque adventures with occasional tame sexual or sadomasochistic scenes, with more literary language than the reader of a cheap pornographic paperback might expect. Trocchi handpicks various popular beliefs about Sappho’s life for his novel, such as her marriage to the wealthy merchant Cercylas (named Cercolas here), and that she hurled herself from the Leucadian cliffs out of love for ferryman Phaon. In this version, however, she faked her own suicide to leave Lesbos and live with Phaon (a relationship that itself turns out to be ill-fated and leads Sappho to abandon men for a life of Sapphic pleasures, some of which are politely (and weirdly) described in the novel, such as: “Virginia’s long flanks were soon interlaced with my own and the soft petal of her mouth fed on my trembling lips with all the gentle passion of her sex. Her caressing fingers moved smoothly like trembling feathers at my sensitive skin. I felt the dark sliding motion of my blood in all my limbs as they trembled at the edge of ecstasy and, breathing deeply, my lips fastening at her slender neck, was the willing witness of the sultry uncontainable movement of my own loins as fire darted there, up . . . hair on hair in a strange noctural breeding, the rise of juices, the threshing heats of flesh, and my desire like a needle of mercury in a capillary tube expanding, and then the secret burst, the thin clear bubble of blood under the weight that transported me to deliverance! Ah, Virginia!” (p107-8) This positions the novel on the side of a Sappho as a feminist icon. Her brother Charaxus is depicted as a controlling buffoon and a lover named Alexander (wink) appears as an heroic rescuer during one of the frequent swashbuckling scenes. Fragments of poems in imitation of Sappho are also included. This isn’t a hoax on a par with Trocchi’s ‘fifth’ volume of Frank Harris’s My Lives and Loves, which was accepted as real for a humorous while. All of Trocchi’s novels are worth reading as the content surpasses the standard blandness of erotica (in this novel’s case the sex scenes are the worst scenes) and reaches always for more literary respectability—the Olympia novels were published alongside Lolita, after all. His two essential works are Young Adam and Cain’s Book. The others are out of print or available in shocking bootleg ebook forms (to be avoided).

Editions:

Hardcover, Castle Books, 1960.

Paperback, Universal-Tandem Publishing Co. Ltd., 1960 (1971?)

Paperback, Star Books, 1986.

Bibliography:

Novels:

Helen and Desire, Olympia Press, 1954.

The Carnal Days of Helen Seferis, Olympia Press, 1954.

My Life and Loves: Vol. 5, Olympia Press 1954.

Young Adam, Olympia Press, 1954.

White Thighs, Olympia Press 1955.

School For Sin, Olympia Press 1955.

Thongs, Olympia Press, 1955.

Sappho of Lesbos, Castle Books, 1960.

Cain’s Book, 1960, John Calder.