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Sappho and Other Sanskrit Love Poets by Phiroze Vasunia
April 8 @ 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai, and the Museum Society of Mumbai cordially invite you to a special lecture, Sappho and Other Sanskrit Love Poets, by Phiroze Vasunia on Tuesday, 8th April 2025, at 6:00 PM at the Premchand Roychand Gallery, CSMVS.
This lecture is organized as part of the Ancient World Gallery Project at CSMVS, Mumbai.
Please join us for tea at 5:30 PM.
About the Lecture
The ‘other’ in the title of this lecture is, of course, a provocation. Sappho did not compose her poems in Sanskrit. She composed in Greek and lived in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.
Her compositions include poems of exquisite beauty and touch on themes such as love, longing, the body, the senses, and sexual jealousy, and in that respect, she calls out for comparison with early Sanskrit poets who also wrote poems of surpassing beauty on love. The lecture explores compositions by Sappho and lyric poems by women in South Asia and compares the verses of these diverse ancient traditions.
The poems will be quoted in English translation.
About the Speaker
Professor Phiroze Vasunia is Head of the Department of Greek and Latin at University College London. He has written on a range of texts and periods, from antiquity to the modern era, and has research interests in the study of cross-cultural contact and colonialism.
He is the author of The Gift of the Nile (2001) and The Classics and Colonial India (2013) and the co-author of Postclassicisms (2019). He is the editor of several books, including a volume just published (April 2025) on Classics and Race: An Historical Reader (with Sarah Derbew and Daniel Orrells).
He is also the general editor of the book series Ancients and Moderns, published by Bloomsbury.
