The Poems of Catullus. Daisy Dunn
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four hundred lines, adheres to Callimachus’ advice for reducing an otherwise long tale to a tight and erudite poem. It overflows with subtle allusions to the work of earlier poets, including Apollonius of Rhodes, author of the Argonautica, and Ennius, author of a Latin Medea. At the beginning of Poem 64 Catullus describes the flight of the Argo, which he viewed as the first ship ever to have sailed. It is so novel that he can refer to it only as a ‘flying chariot’. As often, the oars on which it sails are ‘palms of the hand’; these are delights which must be preserved in English.
I came to translate Catullus’ poems in the process of writing Catullus’ Bedspread, a book about the poet’s life and work in which I explore the ‘flying chariot’ and characters of Poem 64. I challenged myself to keep as true to the Latin as I could – a difficult task since Latin is a far more economical language than English – while retaining the life and tone of the original verse. At times this called for interpolation: Catullus addressed several poems to ‘Mentula’ (‘Cock’), a none-too-flattering nom de plume for Caesar’s subordinate in the Gallic War, Mamurra. In Poem 7, where he speaks to Lesbia of the number of kisses he desires of her, Catullus uses the word basiationes. The standard Latin for kisses was oscula, but Catullus appears to have favoured basia because the word’s origins were probably Celtic. His native Verona was part of Gaul for as long as he lived. I have tried to convey the equivalent by using French, gros bisous, for basiationes, which gives the size of these great kisses, almost diminutives in reverse.9
I felt that the bones of some of Catullus’ more striking constructions deserved airing in order that the spirit of the Latin can live on in the English. His poems occasionally read strangely in Latin. In Poem 22, for example, Catullus repeatedly refers to ‘the same man’, ‘that same man’, ‘the same fellow’, which some scholars have sought to explain as a hint that the poem’s subject, Suffenus, was in fact synonymous with Varus, the poem’s addressee.10
Catullus used a variety of poetic metres. Poem 64 was written in hexameters, the metre of epic, which gave it more weight than many of his other poems, such as the elegiacs, which make up the last fifty poems in the book as it is arranged. Poem 63, in which Catullus describes a man named Attis castrating himself in honour of an ancient Eastern goddess (he refers to him from that point on as a ‘she’), was the first Latin poem to be written in galliambics, a feisty metre chosen to reflect the strangeness of the foreign rites: the goddess’ eunuch priests were known as galli.
I have not sought to recreate the Latin metres Catullus used. I wanted the freedom to render his words as I saw fit, and reflect on the difficulties of seeking an English equivalent for the sound of Latin verse. An elegiac couplet in English will not sound like a Latin elegiac couplet when read aloud. Robert Frost discovered the difficulty of replicating Latin metres when he decided to write his poem ‘For Once, Then, Something’, in hendecasyllables – one of Catullus’ favourite Latin metres – formed of eleven-syllable lines. ‘Everybody just thinks it’s my kind of blank verse,’ Frost said, at once delighted and vexed that his poem, ‘calculated to tease the metrists’, had succeeded in blinding his critics.11
Gestures may still be made to reflect the sound of Catullus’ Latin, whilst making it appeal to the modern eye and ear. In the love poems, the languor of the Gallic tongue may still be heard. Catullus’ early Latin readers, though far more familiar with mythology and Greek literature than we are today, might still have had use of a commentary to read Poem 64. Attempts to reflect the sound of Catullus’ Latin have led me to shape stanzas out of the continuous text and shorten the line length in the earlier part of this poem, where the rhythm and sound of the ship, the Argo, moving through the water resounds clearly. It is hoped that this will aid with the reading of this richly complex poem.12
It is the poise of Catullus’ poems that has gripped me amid the passion of his words, and this that I have tried to capture in translating them. I hope they will speak to today’s reader, and confirm that while Catullus is ripe for the bedside, he is not yet ready to be put to bed.
I dedicate the elegant new little book
That I polished off not a moment ago
With dry pumice stone to who,
But you, Cornelius. For you always did think
That my ramblings were something,
Though you were the only man of Italy brave enough
In those days to unravel our whole history in three volumes –
Learned ones, by Jupiter, and exhaustive.
So have this little book, whatever it is
And whatever its worth; only please, virgin muse,
May it survive unceasing for over a hundred years.
Sparrow, apple of my girl’s eye,
Often she plays with you, holds you in her lap,
Gives you a fingertip when you want it
And urges you to take passionate bites
Whenever she wishes, gleaming in desire for me,
To play with something for pleasure.
And I believe it provides a small release from her
Frustration, as then the intolerable burning fades.
I wish that I could play with you as she does
And lighten the ponderous cares of my mind …
I would be as grateful as they say the quick-stepped
Atalanta was for the little golden apple
That loosed the chastity belt that bound her long.
Mourn, Venuses and Cupids
And all who have tasted love.
My girl’s sparrow is dead.
Sparrow, apple of my girl’s eye
Whom she loved more than her own eyes
For he was honey-sweet and knew his owner
As well as a girl knows her own mother.
He never shifted himself from her lap
But hopping around
Cheep here
Cheep there
Would chirp continuously to his mistress only.
But now he travels that shadowy path
From which they allow no return.
Shame on you, cruel darkness of the
Underworld who devours all beautiful things
As you have stolen pretty Sparrow from me.
Criminal deed. Poor little sparrow.
It is your fault the darling eyes of my girl
Are now swollen and red from weeping.