In this clip from the end of the Bette Midler vehicle, The Rose, Bette plays the eponymous singer/rock star who finally gives up the ghost after enduring an abusive relationship with her manager, and with various mind-altering substances. As she prepares for her final song--her swan song, as it happens--she passes dead away on the stage, and as the credits roll, Bette croons her final tune from beyond the grave, the haunting priamel known as The Rose.
This song works brilliantly in terms of Sapphic poetics. Compare the famous priamel opening of Sappho 16:
Sappho 16
Some say an army of horsemen.
some of footsoldiers, some of ships,
is the fairest thing on earth,
but I say it is what one loves.
Bette Midler, opening stanza:
Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed,
Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed,
Some say love, it is a hunger--an endless aching need,
I say love, it is a flower--and you, its only seed.
The poetry works identically in each instance: the views of others are rejected, and the poetess instead expounds her own world-view in the final line. For Sappho, the charms of war are nothing compared to the charms of the beloved; she rejects the epic emphasis on armor, and embraces--quite literally--physical desire. Bette rejects commonplace metaphors for love (water; metal; hunger), and instead dwells on its vegetal aspects: compare the trampled hyacinth and the discarded 'purple flower' of Sappho 24. For early archaic poetry, imagery of the garden abounds when dealing with the emotions and rituals of young girls, and even not-so-young girls. Entirely without intention, Bette taps into millenia-old traditions of comparing women to flowers (with or without their thorns).
