2.1 “here”: adverb of place that means “hither, to this place” with verbs of motion or “here, in this place” with verbs of rest, often used as an interjection “Come on! Here now!” when followed by an imperative verb. Notice that the imperative verb evoked by this adverb, for which the whole poem with its slow weight of ono- matopoeically accumulating clauses seems to be waiting, does not arrive until the very last word: “pour” (16). Arrival is the issue, for it sanctifies waiting:attente de Dieu. The poem is a hymn of the type called “kletic,” that is, a calling hymn, an invocation to god to come from where she is to where we are. Such a hymn typically names both of these places, setting its invocation in between so as to measure the difference—a difference exploded as soon as the hymn achieves its aim. Inherent in the rationale of a kletic hymn, then, is an emptiness or distance that it is the function of the hymn to mark by an act of attention. Sappho suspends attention between adverb at the beginning and verb at the end: the effect is uncanny—as if creation could be seen waiting for an event that is already perpetually here. There is no clear boundary between far and near; there is no climactic moment of god’s arrival. Sappho renders a set of conditions that at the beginning depend on Aphrodite’s absence but by the end include her presence—impossible drop that saturates the world. “God can only be present in creation under the form of absence,” says Simone Weil, in Gravity and Grace, translated by Arthur Wills.
