12-3-2002

  

Gaius Valerius Catullus

c. 84 - c. 54 BC


Catullus was still alive in 55-54 BC on the evidence of four of his poems and died young, according to the poet Ovid at the age of 30. He was born at Verona in northern Italy and owned an estate at Sirmio, the modern Sirmione, on Lake Garda, though he preferred to live in Rome and owned a villa near the Roman suburb of Tibur, in an unfashionable neighbourhood.

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Catullus’ poetry reports two emotional crises, the death of a brother whose grave he visited in the Troad, in Asia Minor, and an intense and unhappy love affair, portrayed variously in 25 poems, with a woman who was married and whom he names Lesbia, a pseudonym for Clodia, one of the three Clodia sisters of Cicero's enemy Publius Clodius Pulcher, all three the subject of scandalous rumour. If so, she was most probably the one who married the aristocrat Metellus Celer (consul 60 BC, died 59 BC), who in 62 BC was governor of Cisalpine Gaul. It may have been at that time that the youthful poet first met her and possibly fell under her spell.

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Knowledge of Catullus’ poems depends on a single manuscript discovered about 1300, copied twice, and then lost. Of the two copies, one in turn was copied twice, and then it was lost. Ancient citations indicate the existence of at least five more poems. In his longer poems Catullus produced studies that deeply influenced the writers and poets of the Augustan Age. Virgil imitates Catullus without naming him, even going so far, in the Aeneid, as to borrow whole lines from him as many as three times. Catullus' 116 extant poems were mostly written between 61 and 54 BC but cannot be dated exactly.

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In his lifetime, Catullus was a poet's poet, addressing himself to fellow craftsmen (docti, or scholarly poets), especially to his friend Licinius Calvus. He belonged to a group of poets called the poetae novi or "Neoterics" (new poets), who preferred the works of the Alexandrian poets to the grander but archaic fashion of Roman poetry. To the degree that Catullus shared such conceptions of what might be called poetic scholarship, he is to be numbered in the company of Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound rather than with the Romantics. The 25 Lesbia poems are likely to remain the most memorable, recording as they do a love that could register ecstacy and despair and all the divided emotions that intervene. Two of them recall Sappho, the poetess of the Aegean island of Lesbos, as also does his use of the pseudonym Lesbia. As read today, these two seem to evoke the first moment of adoring love.

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Carmen V

 

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

 

Viviamo mia Lesbia ed amiamoci
E consideriamo un soldo bucato
I mormorii dei vecchi troppo severi.
I giorni possono morire e ritornare
Ma, quando per noi questa breve luce
Muore dovremo dormire una notte eterna..
Dammi mille baci e ancora cento
E poi altre mille e ancora cento
Sempre, sempre mille e ancora cento.
E quando alla fine saranno migliaia, li mescoleremo
Tutti, per dimenticare
E perchè nessuno ci possa invidiare sapendo
Che esiste un così grande numero di baci.

   

 

Carmen VII

 

 

Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes
tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque.
quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae
lasarpiciferis iacet Cyrenis
oraclum Jovis inter aestuosi
et Batti veteris sacrum sepulcrum;
aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,
furtivos hominum vident amores:
tam te basia multa basiare
vesano satis et super Catullo est,
quae nec pernumerare curiosi
possint nec mala fascinare língua.

 

Mi chiedi con quanti baci, Lesbia,
tu possa giungere a saziarmi:
quanti sono i granelli di sabbia
che a Cirene assediano i filari di silfio
tra l'oracolo arroventato di Giove
e l'urna sacra dell'antico Batto,
o quante, nel silenzio della notte, le stelle
che vegliano i nostri amori furtivi.
Se tu mi baci con cos’ tanti baci
che i curiosi non possano contarli
o le malelingue gettarvi una malia,
allora si placherá il delirio di Catullo.

 

Carmen IX

Verani, omnibus e meis amicis
antistans mihi milibus trecentis,
venistine domum ad tuos penates
fratresque unanimos anumque matrem?
Venisti.
O mihi nuntii beati!
Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
narrantem loca, facta, nationes,
ut mos est tuus applicansque collum
iucundum os oculosque suaviabor?
O quantum est hominum beatiorum,
quid me laetius est beatiusve?

 

Veranio, amico più di tutti i miei amici
(e fossero migliaia), sei tornato?
alla tua casa, ai tuoi Penati,
ai fratelli riuniti, alla tua vecchia madre?
S’, tornato. Che parola meravigliosa.
Ti rivedrò incolume, ti udrò narrare
dei luoghi dell'Iberia e delle cose, delle genti,
come tu sai: le braccia intorno al collo,
ti bacerò gli occhi, la bocca ridente.
Fra tutti gli uomini felici,
chi più allegro, più felice di me?

 

 

 

Carmen XIII

 

Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me
paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus,
si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam
cenam, non sine candida puella
et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis.
Haec si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster,
cenabis bene; nam tui Catulli
plenus sacculus est aranearum.
Sed contra accipies meros amores,
seu quid suavius elegantiusve est:
nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque;
quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis
totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.

 

Se dio vorrá, uno di questi giorni,mio Fabullo, da me cenerai bene:
ma con te porta una cena abbondante
e squisita, una ragazza in fiore,
vino, sale e tutta la tua allegria.
Solo cos’, ripeto, amico mio,
cenerai bene, perchè il tuo Catullo
ha la borsa piena di ragnatele.
In cambio avrai un affetto sincero
e tutto ciò che è bello e raffinato:
ti darò un profumo che la mia donna
ha avuto in dono da Venere e Amore.
Quando l'odorerai, prega gli dei,
Fabullo mio, di farti tutto naso.

 

 

Carmen XXI

Aureli, pater esuritionum,
non harum modo, sed quot aut fuerunt
aut sunt aut aliis erunt in annis,
pedicare cupis meos amores.
Nec clam: nam simul es, iocaris una,
haerens ad latus omnia experiris.
Frustra: nam insidias mihi instruentem tangam
te prior irrumatione.
Atque id si faceres satur, tacerem:
nunc ipsum id doleo, quod esurire
mellitus puer et sitire discet.

Quare desine, dum licet pudico,
ne finem facias, sed irrumatus.

 

Padre di tutti gli affamati che conosci
e di quelli che furono, sono e saranno
negli anni da venire, tu Aurelio,
desideri inculare l'amor mio
e non ne fai mistero: appiccicato a lui,
giochi, ti strofini, le provi tutte.
Non servirá: mentre mi tendi queste insidie
io prima te lo ficcherò in bocca.
E pace se tu lo facessi a pancia piena,
ma non posso tollerare, accidenti a me,
che il mio ragazzo impari a patir fame e sete.
Piantala dunque, giusto finchè sei in tempo,
che tu non debba farlo a cazzo in bocca.

 

 

 

Sobre Catulo e outros poetas latinos do séc. I. a.C., ler:

Carlos Ascenso André, Caminhos do Amor em Roma: Sexo, amor e paixão na poesia latina do séc. I. a.C., Livros Cotovia, Lisboa, 2006, ISBN 972-795-155-4

LINKS:

EDIÇÕES:

Rudy Negenborn

Richard Bullington-McGuire

Harry Walzer

Perseus.tufts

Geoff Harrisson

  

Biografia de Catulo

Wikipedia (Latin)

Sobre Clodia Metelli

The Poems of Catullus: A Bilingual Edition

Peter Green
University of California Press: 340 pp., $24.95

Review by Anthony Day

March 19, 2006

THE Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, who lived his short life in the tumultuous last years of the Roman republic, wrote some of the loveliest lyric poetry in the Latin language. Some of it was sweet and joyful, the rest moving and sad, singing to us of the poet's ancestral homeland; the love of a mistress; the death of a dear brother; the goddess Diana, revered by the Romans as the embodiment of hunting and healing.

And some of Catullus' verse is a raspy and highly personal form of satire — the other word that aptly characterizes it is "bitchy," explains Peter Green, translator of "The Poems of Catullus" and a respected classicist whose books include "Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age." Countless British and American translators through the centuries considered much of the sex talk obscene, but Green argues most plausibly that the obscenity charge comes from our mouths, not from the Romans' — their notions of sexuality had not yet been influenced by Christian mores when Catullus was writing.

Most of the supposedly obscene erotic poems, Green asserts, are just high-spirited playing around in the style of your regular Mediterranean man, whose attitudes are on display to this day. Perhaps this is so. The sharp-edged satire and the frank eroticism of some of Catullus' verses are not without interest, but today erotic candor and corrosive personal commentary are not novelties. Over this long distance of 2,000 years, it is Catullus' singing voice — his lyric tone and notes — that resonates the most in our ears.

The singing is what we wish to hear, but Green's approach limits this. He does not attempt to write English poetry in these translations; instead, he puts the Latin into English words strung together like beads with a beat that's Latin, not English. Thus, he argues, the modern reader can get a taste of the underlying force of the Latin poetic line. It is meant to be an intellectually defensible approach — Green is not the first to tackle translations from Latin into English in this way — but to this reader it doesn't work as intended.

Take, for example, the last two lines of Catullus' famously poignant farewell to his dead brother, to whose burial place Catullus has brought tokens of love: "accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, / atque in perpetuum, frater, aue atque uale." The poet and artist Aubrey Beardsley turned those lines into passable English poetry this way: "Take them, all drenched with a brother's tears, / And, brother, for all time, hail and farewell." Here is Green's version, which is certainly not without poetic merit in English, but it does not sing: "Accept them, soaked as they are with a brother's weeping, / And, brother, forever now hail and farewell."

Green's version has the virtue of a closer word-for-word translation that can help those readers who know some Latin as they try to work out their own versions. But, as Green freely admits, his method of translation is not memorable poetry in English — the modern reader struggling to grasp just what it is about Catullus that makes him worth reading today may well be left wondering.

If it is true that no translation can ever do perfect justice to the original — and it is — if you have a little of the home language and a translation at hand to help, your own discoveries can be a delight. So in Green's pages we encounter this marvelously balanced epigram: "Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? / nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior." Green renders this as: "I hate and love. You wonder, perhaps, why I'd do that? / I have no idea. I just feel it. I am crucified."


And here is one of the most marvelously passionate, erotic poems around, which builds to "a perfect frenzy of kisses":


Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus …
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.


Green's version captures its sense while enabling us to discover it for ourselves:

Let's live, Lesbia mine, and love …
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
then a thousand more, a second hundred,
then yet another thousand then a hundred —


Green has gone at this work with great energy and obvious love for a sometimes intractable poet, and if his version manages to engage more readers in the work of Catullus, so much the better. He has supplied many helpful notes and a thorough glossary of Roman people, gods and places to help us get our bearings. Any fan of the Latin language, any student of the Roman Empire, which is so like and so unlike our own, must be grateful to Green and his publishers for such a useful and handsome book.


Anthony Day, former editor of The Times' editorial pages, is a contributing writer to Book Review.