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Catullus 8 and 76

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. Dyson
M. Dyson
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Extract

Two of the most moving personal poems of Catullus, 8 and 76, present the reader with difficulties of interpretation which highlight the inadequacy of a very widely-held view of the nature of Catullus' personal poetry. In this view the poet is regarded as handling his own actual experience directly, so that the poems present reality, perhaps not entirely, but certainly to a degree that is not the case with the elegiac poets or with the Horace of the Odes. Extreme forms of this view may be seen in the old idea that Catullus threw off the Lesbia poems as the odi or the amo of the moment constrained him, and in the more recent view that the poems can usefully be seen as either attempts to contain an overpowering wave of emotion or to state, and so get to grips with, a baffling personal problem. The first of these extreme forms has been long discredited, but the second still exerts a persuasive pressure, to judge by recent discussion of Catullus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , May 1973 , pp. 127 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1973

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References

page 127 note 1 This article is largely an expansion of parts of a paper entitled ‘Some Ways of Looking at Catullus’ which was read to the Australian Society for Classical Studies in Sydney, August 1971. I have benefited from comments made on that occasion and from discussion with Mr. K. W. Mills of Durham University. The theory of the constraint of immediate emotion is that of Munro, H. A. J., Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus (London, 1905);Google Scholar the problem-solving theory and derivatives have a host of exponents, notably Schafer, E., ‘Das VerhAltnis von Erlebnis and Kunstgestalt bei Catull’, Hermes, Einzelschriften Heft xviii (1966);Google Scholar the most prominent departure from autobiographical premisses is made by Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar

page 128 note 1 Catullus, A Commentary (Oxford, 1961), introduction and notes to 8. Similar considerations to those in the text can be brought against the formulation of Quinn, K., Catullus, The Poems (Macmillan, 1970), p. 118: ‘The questions are rhetorical in the sense that they do not expect the answer “nobody” or “half of Rome”; still less “a rival”, who could be named; their purpose is to challenge Lesbia to admit that theanswer is “not Catullus”.’ But since Lesbia can accept this challenge with equanimity, cf. nunc jam ills non uolt, one still may ask why Catullus threatens her with these consequences. And though Catullus is not asking ‘who?’ with a view to finding his rival's name, the series surely suggests growing realization of some rival in the offing.Google Scholar

page 128 note 2 Catull, Carmen 8, Athenaeum, xlv (1967), 278–93.

page 129 note 1 Op. cit., p. 287, ‘Es ist die Sprache eines Mannes, der sich bewusst ist, welchen Weg das von ihm einzig geliebte Mälchen gehen wird and der idealen Liebe, die nun endgiiltig vorbei ist… das Verhältnis einerganz gewöhnliche Gassenhure gegenüberstellt’; ‘ūber diesem Zukunftsbild aber steht Catulls Beschimpfung scelesta, die den Ton der folgenden Verse anstimmt’.

page 130 note 1 ‘Style and Meaning in Catullus’ Eighth Poem', Latomus, xxvii (1968), 555–74.Google Scholar

page 130 note 2 ‘Notes on Some Poems of Catullus’, H.S.C.Ph. lxx (1965), 83–110.Google Scholar See also Copley, F. O., ‘Emotional Conflict and its Significance in the Lesbia-poems of Catullus’, A.J.Ph. lxx (1949), 22–40,Google Scholar and, for a more moderate version, Quinn, K., The Catullan Revolution (Melbourne, 1959), pp. 91–5,Google Scholar and Catullus, The Poems, p. 398: ‘Poem 70 is the first of a series of fragments in which we see Catullus struggling to win more complete awareness of what went wrong between him and Lesbia by repeated, increasingly precise formulation in verse.’ The favoured modern statement of the theory is that of Graves, R., The Crowning Privilege (Cassell, 1955), p. 188,Google Scholar where it is said that a poem written with the appropriate care is one in which ‘the problem troubling him [i.e. the poet] is stated as truly and economically and detachedly as possible’. The problem is regarded as personal: the poet ‘finds himself caught up in some baffling emotional problem’, p. 187. Commager also quotes from Eliot, T. S., The Sacred Wood (Methuen, 1920), p. 58: ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.’ The context, however, is Eliot's ‘Impersonal Theory of Poetry’, which is completely irrelevant to Commager's view, and is much closer to the view I shall nit forwardGoogle Scholar

page 131 note 1 ‘Miser Catulle: an Interpretation of the Eighth Poem of Catullus’, Greece and Rome, xiii (1966), 15–23.Google Scholar

page 133 note 1 For scekstus in the sense of ‘unfortunate’ see Fordyce ad loc.; for uae as an expression of sorrow cf. e.g. Terence, Heaut. 250 uae misero mi, quanta de spe decidi; Plaut. Capt. 650 uae illis uirgis miseris quae hods in tergo morientur meo; Virgil, Ed. 9. 28 Mantua uae miserae nimium uicina Cremonae. Possibly in Catullus 8 quae tibi manet uita. should be printed (without a question mark), as giving the reason for the expression of sympathy.

page 133 note 2 Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), p. 406. Comparison with Tibullus 1. 9 is instructive. Tibullus twice asserts that the youth who has betrayed him will suffer, once as an immediate consequence of the mercenary traits revealed by his taking a rich lover (he will be afflictedby the discomforts of uia longa) 13–16, and once as a consequence of Tibullus eventually finding a replacement, 79–81. These two ‘punishments’ are fixed serially: iam mihi persoluet poems, 13, but turn flebis, cum me uinctum Auer alter habebit … at tua turn me poena iuuet, 79–81. By contrast Catullus' series iam … cum rogaberis nulla … quae tibi manet uita … quis nuns quem nunc looks at her future as all of one piece starting from now. The first six lines of Tibullus' poems are also useful as an illustration of a mingling of resentment and sympathy such as Catullus puts into scelesta uae te.Google Scholar

page 133 note 3 Cf. A. L. Wheeler, Catullus and the Tradition of Ancient Poetry (University of California, 1934), etc.

page 135 note 1 I think R. L. Rowland, op. cit., quite overstates a basically correct point in claiming that reason comes so close to desire at this stage that the reader is prepared for the collapse of reason under the onslaught ofdesire at the end of the poem. In general interpreters have overemphasized the nostalgic elements in 3–8 at the expense of the argumentative function, thus doing less than justice to the taut structure of the whole.

page 137 note 1 Munro, op. cit., p. 208.

page 138 note 1 For the fides-foedus-pietas complex in connection with 76 see Copley, Commager, Schäfer, opp. cit., and McGushin, P., ‘Catullus’ sanctae foedus amicitiae', C.P. lxii (1967), 85–93.Google Scholar A clear statement of the position I regard as indefensible is given by Freis, R., ‘Form and Thought in Catullus 76’, Agon, i (1968), 39–58. ‘Catullus insists that his relationship with Lesbia, although flagrantly and even aggressively unlawful by any conventional definition, has through its fullness and depth inwardly created its own civility.’Google Scholar

For the process of universalizing a particular reaction see Khan, H. A., ‘Catullus 76: The Summing Up’, Athenaeum, xlvi (1968), 54–71, with whose description of Catullan pietas as ‘a logical and rhetorical fiction having no real place in the context of his overall behaviour’, p. 56, I would agree.Google Scholar

page 138 note 2 For imagery drawn from political alliance, see Ross, D. O., Style and Tradition in Catullus (Harvard, 1969), pp. 82 ff. with reference to R. Reitzenstein. However, it seems cramping thus to restrict the imagery, e.g. pudicitia would derive more naturally from marriage. Cicero, Pro Caelio 34 contrasts Clodia's appointments with her ancestor's disruption of the peace with a foreign king, ideone ego pacem Pyrrhi diremi ut to amorum turpissimorum cotidie foedera ferires, where neither marriage nor political alliance in this sense seems an obvious source for foedera. And arnica does not have to be a political metaphor for Cicero's pun, Pro Caelio 32, about avoiding muliebris inimicitias, especially cum ea quam omnes semper amicam omnium potius quam cuiusquam inirnicam putauerunt. The Romans tended to see social relations as more widely fiduciary and contractual than we do, so that Catullus makes his poetry not out of any one particular area, but out of the common ground in marriage, business, amor, political and personal amicitia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 140 note 1 Cf. D. O. Ross, op. cit., pp. 89-go. ‘The most difficult question concerning 76 is … what do the first five lines have to do with the sixth? What in fact does a man's piety, in his relations with others, have to do with Catullus' own love affair?’ He finds the introduction at first sight unsatisfactory butbelieves that if the metaphor of the epigrams is recognized here the lines become ‘not only direct and fitting, but personal as well’. I agree with the analysis, but I think the answer insufficient because everything in 1–5 insists on the generality of the pietas.

page 142 note 1 The quotation from R. Lowell is taken from an interview printed in Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, ed. Scully (Fontana, 1966) p. 251.