Autism Vox

Reading the Fragments: Sappho, Charlie’s Words, and Autism Speaks

by Kristina Chew, PhD on January 25th, 2007

As I read through the fifteen additional responses on whether or not there is an autism epidemic that appeared on the Autism Speaks website, I thought of what it is like to read the ancient Greek poet Sappho.

Bits of stanzas, words, sentences, letters written on torn and frayed scraps of papyrus and parchment: This is the form in which the poems of Sappho have come down to us. Called “the tenth Muse” among the ancients, Sappho lived in the 7th-6th centuries B.C. on the island of Lesbos. Until very recently we only had three of her poems in more or less complete form; as of 2004, we had a fourth, a new Sappho poem. We know little of Sappho’s life and even of the context in which her lyrics, often about love and with references to myths, were written. What we know best about Sappho is the words she wrote more than two millennia ago. Fragments like these—-”I would not think to touch the sky with two arms” (fragment 52)—-fascinate, but they do not tell us much.

I have compared my efforts to understand Charlie’s fragments of language—like his use of the word “hugg” today—to reading the fragments of Sappho’s poetry:

what he has to say and what I have to say about it are in a ratio of 1 to 100 if not 1 to 1000, 1 to 1,000,000. That’s about the ratio of a fragment of the Greek poet Sappho’s writing, compared to the amount of scholarly, academic research, books and articles about one of her poems. …….. we have 264 fragments–some just a few words, 3 near-complete poems–by her: “I long and seek after” (fr. 36), “O for Adonis” (fr. 168), “honeyvoiced” (fr. 185).

Attempts to decipher Sappho’s fragmented poetry remind me of trying to understand Charlie, whose speech is severely delayed. This is brought home when we are in a public place and he, a tall boy standing past my shoulder, speaks: one word that has no obvious reference to the immediate environment (”beach house”); or, with “I want” or “Go to” tacked on the front, the makings of a sentence (”go to home house”).

When it comes to Sappho and to Charlie, I have to go by whatever words I am given.

Back to the 24 responses regarding “whether or not there is an autism epidemic” posted on the Autism Speaks website. A number more have been posted arguing for why there is no epidemic, though the current title of the website (Is Autism an Epidemic? Your Emailed Response - Yes, It Is! [my emphasis]) suggests otherwise. The name of each writer is included, though the writer’s personal and/or professional affiliation in regard to autism are not consistently noted. It is also not clear in what way each response has been edited (as my own response was), nor the total number of responses actually received, nor how many arguing that “there is no epidemic” or arguing that “there is an epidemic” were received.

If some scholar some generations hence, even hundreds of years hence, even a few millennia, were to read Is Autism an Epidemic? Your Emailed Response - Yes, It Is!, what would she or he think? What gaps or omissions, what insufficiently defined terms, might she wonder about? Why did these people care so much about these terms, “epidemic” and “autism”? What intriguing epistemological questions were these people so caught up in—-what is “better diagnosis“? Were these the only responses sent in to the question in the title—-”Is Autism an Epidemic?”—-and how could they say “Yes, It Is!” when more than a few responses say the opposite?

Thanks to Autism Speaks for posting a spectrum of responses that give some sense—-some fragments—of what those who live in Autismland are thinking.

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POSTED IN: Autism Organizations, Classics, Diagnosis, Epidemic, History, Poetry