Catullus for the Everyperson

Translation and commentary

Jul 01, 2024

Catullus has always been one of my favorite Latin poets to translate. He can be bawdy and irreverent yet also capable of solemn lyrical lamentations. But he’s known mostly for his comic invectives. In a way, he’s a poet for our current times because we could really use his satire and comic playfulness. A great imaginative “biography” of him and his times (“imaginative” because we know so little about him) is Aubrey Burl’s Catullus: A Poet in the Rome of Julius Caesar. The best collection of and commentaries on his poetry is Peter Green’s The Poems of Catullus, which also has an excellent introduction.

I have always been fond of Catullus’s poem “Weep, You Loves and Cupids.” I originally wrote a verse translation of it until I realized that if Catullus were alive now, he most certainly would have been a prose poet. Allow me to explain:

If you are so inclined, you can find many contemporary and past prose poems that are deftly written nature studies or deeply philosophical musings. But a quick glance at the major figures of prose poetry suggests that the genre has always attracted the bad boys and girls of the poetry world. These are the poets who want to push thematic and linguistics boundaries, the smart-asses and punks who have influenced so many of us. I gladly embrace the profile of the wise-guy poet, and when I’m old and infirm, I hope to spend my last days revisiting my Latin roots (I was fortunate to have studied that wonderful language for nine years) , while, hopefully, laughing my ass off.

So why not start with the below: “Weep, You Loves and Cupids”

[From Truths, Falsehood, and a Wee Bit of Honesty: A Short Primer on The Prose Poem with Selected Letters from Russell Edson Truths, Falsehoods, and a Wee Bit of Honesty ]

Catullus (84-54 B.C.)

Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,
et quantum est hominum venustiorum:
passer Marcusuus est meae puellae,
passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quem plus illa oculis suis amabat.
nam mellitus erat suamque norat
ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,
nec sese a gremio illius movebat,
sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
ad solam dominam usque pipiabat.
qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
at vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:
tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis
o factum male! o miselle passer!
tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

Weep, you Loves and Cupids, and all who live for loveliness. My girl’s sparrow is dead. My darling girl’s sparrow that she loved more than her eyes, for it was honey sweet and knew her better than any girl knew her mother. That bird wouldn’t leave her lap, but popping up, here and there, peeped only for its mistress. Now it travels a gloomy journey from where no one returns. But a curse on you, evil shades of Orcus, You who devour all pretty things. You’ve made off with my pretty sparrow. Oh, evil deed! Oh, wretched sparrow! Because of you, my girl’s eyes are reddened and heavy with tears.

Commentary

It’s surprising so much has been written on Catullus considering how little we know about his life. He is attractive to the classicist interested in how he imitates and subverts Greek models, yet also cherished by the lovelorn and alienated who, sometimes mistakenly, look to the Lesbia poems and invectives during anxious and angry moments. But primarily Catullus is a comic poet and one very well suited to our postmodernist times, especially in his merging of high and low subjects and discourses. In the above poem, commentators have pointed out how the elevated language of the opening is followed by a slang expression, and how diminutives toward the end simulate an odd kind of baby talk. There is also a somber reference to Orcus (Death), yet it is surrounded by playful language, the line “sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc” imitating the bird’s movements.

This kind of mischievous juxtaposition and word play drives the poem, making it impossible to see it, as some do, as a lamentation on all-consuming Death, just as it is difficult to believe Catullus was unaware of the sexual connotations of Lesbia’s sparrow. He is using an ancient form, the threnody or funeral dirge, and undercutting it by substituting a sparrow for a hero or nobleman, then further undercutting it through exaggeration in order to simultaneously sympathize with and tease Lesbia. What makes Catullus very much our contemporary is how his “I” becomes ironic through exaggeration, whether he is comparing the number of his kisses to the sands in the Libyan desert (VII) or asking Ipsithilla to prepare for nine consecutive copulations (XXXII). This kind of conceit, a staple of all great love poetry, renders the speaker attractive and suspect at the same time. On one hand, the hyperbole idealizes the lover and beloved; on the other hand, the inflated posturing suggests an overblown sense of self-importance, which, I’m sure, Catullus’ inner circle of readers appreciated.

Admittedly, the speaker of the Lesbia poems often seems genuinely tortured and jealous; likewise in the invectives, he appears to be honestly infuriated, as when he threatens to sodomize Aurelius or Furius for criticizing his erotic verse (XVI). But, still, in most of Catullus’ love poems and invectives there is often a hint of self-mockery, as if any event in Catullus’ life exists mostly so he can verbally perform for his beloved, his friends, and himself. Consequently, if we refuse to look at Catullus’s “I” ironically, all we are left with are the romantic overstatements and rants of a petulant schoolboy, and we ignore the complexities of his wit and style—the very reasons we still read him today.

Old Man Still Howling at the Moon

Discussion about this post