The Songs of Bilitis

The Songs of Bilitis is a collection of erotic poems, essentially lesbian in theme, published by Pierre Louÿs in Paris in 1894. The book was presented as the translation of the poems of an ancient Greek woman poet, Bilitis, supposedly a contemporary of Sappho and born in Pamphylia, whose work was said to have been found carved on the walls of a tomb in Cyprus. The fiction was elaborate: the volume includes a supposed biography of the poet, an account of the tomb's discovery by an invented archaeologist, and a list of "untranslated" works. For a time it fooled even expert scholars, and only later was it revealed that Louÿs himself had written the poems.

The work grew out of a trip Louÿs made to Italy with his friend Hérold, where they met André Gide, who told them of his experience with a young dancer in Biskra, Algeria. The poems are dedicated to Gide and mention Meriem, the girl in question, which links the fiction to a real experience of its authors.

The collection is divided into three cycles that mirror phases of Bilitis's life: the "Bucolics" of Pamphylia, concerned with childhood and first sexual encounters; the "Elegies" of Mytilene, centred on sensuality between women and her love for Mnasidika; and the "Epigrams" of Cyprus, where the now-courtesan protagonist lives in loneliness and oblivion. Each cycle closes on a melancholy note, and her view of the world moves away from a mythical universe of satyrs and naiads toward a more complex experience.

Stylistically, Louÿs displays wide knowledge of Greek culture and ancient poetry. Many poems derive from epigrams of the Palatine Anthology, and some verses are borrowed from Sappho. The writing blends languid sensuality with a highly polished, Parnassian manner, though a subtle French undertone runs beneath it that the author could not entirely escape.

The book had lasting influence. It inspired composers such as Claude Debussy, who set several of its poems to music, and in the United States it gave its name to the Daughters of Bilitis, one of the first lesbian civil rights organisations, founded in 1955. Despite being a literary forgery, it became a cult object within the twentieth-century lesbian underground.