The Songs of Bilitis

Rating:
Summary: great literary hoax
Review: In the late 1890's this book was published as an ancient and recently unearthed work written by a disciple of Sappho, but it was really written by a young French erotic photographer/poet named Pierre Louys. Even the scholars of Greek antiquity and ancient Greek literature were at first duped! But despite Louys' deception, these poems are very nice, worth reading if you enjoy ancient love poetry with slight lesbian undertones.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Rating:
Summary: Literary joke becomes sensual masterpiece...
Review: No one knew sensuality like the "Sapphic" Greeks and no one knew the "Sapphic" Greeks like Pierre Louys... well at least he liked to pretend that was the case. The fact is he (or his imagination) was so completely immersed in this culture that his images/syntax/symbols were authentic enough to dupe contemporary classics scholars of his day. Bilitis could have been a protege of Sappho... a literary force in her own right.