'Comites' Before 'Clodia'

Catullus' poem 11 continues his post-Lesbian life. If poem 8 is Catullus enduring the psychological travails of the breakup, poem 11 is his drunkenly exaggerated thanks to his friends, followed by a relapse into bitter anger.

Furius and Aurelius seem to have assured Catullus that they have his back, in a "bros before hoes" manner, and suggested a road trip. Although the actual suggestion is more likely to have been a trip to Baiae rather than Bithynia, Catullus exaggerates this offer to cover the entire world. It is unclear whether this is happily drunken fraternity or a test born from Catullus' lingering insecurity. The epic language and scale of the proposed world tour (11.2-12) could suggest either possibility. A world tour, however, is not what Catullus wants his friends to do; what he really wants is the delivery of an abusive message (11.15-24) to his former lover.

This message begins somewhat elegantly (11.15-11.17), as though it were a neoteric poem within another neoteric poem. The last word of 11.17, "moechis", marks the descent into abusive language. First, Catullus refuses to believe that Lesbia's sexual liaisons could have any element of true love (11.18-20), and then witholds the love he alone possesses (11.21). The last image of the poem, a flower in a field which has been fatally damaged by a plow (11.22-24), indicates not only sexual congress and the generation of a precious and beautiful thing, but also an affection that is dying, rather than dead, in Catullus' heart.

Shining Suns

Catullus, in the eighth poem of his collection, has encapsulated the complicated feelings of a messy breakup. The poem opens with a wonderful expression (8.2), which may or may not be a proverb:

quod vides perisse perditum ducas
"what you know has died you should consider lost"

This is excellent advice, but cold comfort to one who had lost something precious.
Such sentiments, rather than sufficing - it is only the second line, after all -, spurs Catullus to dwell on what is lost. The perfect tense of "fulsere" establishes the connection of the past and present, while the following imperfects provide a sense of both pastness and frequency; it is notable that Catullus is the passive partner in these activities.

In line 8.9, Lesbia has rejected Catullus; Catullus retains his feeling of impotence, and even his attempts to get her back (8.10-13) are impotent and his self-pity pathetic. He must announce his renunciation of her to make it stick. The embarrassing antics of jilted lovers trying to revive the sparks ("soles") of a dead relationship is mixed with wavering self-confidence.

In lines 8.14-18, Catullus turns from strengthening his own resolve to degrading that of his former lover. Although the descent into rhetorical abuse is a stylistic demand of this poetic genre, it is also a realistic psychological depiction, the dark side of the irritating presumption of a unique relationship that lovers often display. It is testimony to the passion of the relationship that Catullus ends the poem not with a final sting to Lesbia, but one last reminder to himself (8.19).

Ad rem Aegyptiae intelligendam

One of the forms of the Egyptian verb, and one which we recently studied, is called the "pseudo-verbal" form. This consists of a limited number of prepositions followed by the Egyptian "infinitive". The citation forms for the most common pseudo-verbals are transliterated conventionally as "Hr sDm", "m sDm", and "r sDm". Although it is difficult to describe concisely an English structural parallel, students of the Romulan tongue might find a better comparison between the Egyptian pseudo-verbal form and the Latin gerundive.

In this case, the Egyptian forms "Hr sDm", "m sDm", and "r sDm" correspond (with due allowance for prepositional semantics) to the Latin forms "de aliquo audiendo", "in aliquo audiendo", and "ad aliquid audiendum". The Latin trio, however, is crippled in its syntactical ability compared to that of the Egyptian, which can support a complex noun phrase.

Since the meanings of the constructions differ, I am presenting this as a mnemonic rather than a detailed grammatical analysis.

Strangers Passer-ing In The Night

Ash Wednesday, and instead of penitence my thoughts turn to the passer poems (2 and 3) of Catullus. Since I was assigned poem 16 for St Valentine's day, I must wonder if the class is not meant as some sort of cosmic counterpoint. Maybe it's just part of the Chairman's plan (Philip K. Dick is always a good source of metaphors for the action of the Powers that be).

What can we make of poems 2 and 3? The first is a mock hymn, the second mock dirge, both of which follow upon the heels of poem 1. If poem 1 is a dedicatory epigram which provides the name of the dedicatee, the genre, and a devout desire for the work to last, then poem 2 is an invocation to the mortal goddess of the work. If poem 2 announces Catullus' infatuation with Lesbia, poem 3 describes its irrevocable end. These poems are as programmatic as poem 1 by providing the plot, such as it is, of a work characterized by variatio.

The passer, whose msgical companions pull the chariot of Aphrodite, appears only in these two poems because he has encompassed the entire book by being the book itself. The passer also represents the amores in the sense of physical poetry. That which Lesbia holds in her lap, to which she offers a finger, that which is a beloved comfort to her is the material on which Catullus' poetry is written. If we subscribe to this interpretation, the non-passerine lines 11-13 are not an aberration of overzealous annexation, but rather an appropriate comparison between the passer of Lesbia and the golden apple of Atalanta, both of which were instruments of unbinding girdles. The passer in poem 3 encompasses both the death of the poet as passer and the death of the poetry itself as evidence of a still-living affair. The terms with which the poet eulogizes the passer are actions characteristic of the lover (although the comment about being closer than family acquires ambivalence if Lesbia and Clodia are the same). The imprecation against Hades can be both metapohorical and literal: both the death of a pet bird and a love affair are things which cannot be undone.

Best of the Bath-Thieves

I am greatly enjoying re-reading Catullus, although his subject matter often restrains me from public translation (at least aloud) into English. The two poems of which I speak here are poems 15 and 33, which share the hendecasyllabic meter and themes of breach of trust and travelling (forced or otherwise).

Poem 15 is about breach of trust. Catullus has entrusted his lover (I apologize for the euphemisms, but I know a few minors have found my blog before) to Aurelius while Catullus goes travelling. If I were inclined to attribute absolute historicity to individual poems of the Catullan corpus, I would say that Catullus displays extremely poor judgement in his choice of close friends - but then who knows how many of these violations Catullus himself committed? Lines 6-8 display an chummy elitism that suddenly descends into obscenity
in lines 8-9. This eloquent vulgarity continues to the end of the poem, where the ubiquitous labial plosives and nasals (p, b, m, ph) accumulate in the final insult of the poem (lines 17-18):
"quem attractis pedibus patente porta,
percurrent raphanique mugilesque"

In poem 33, Catullus wishes the titular bath-thieves, whose pricipal predilection to cutpursery is an inherent breach of trust, and whose other predilections are not fit for American minors to discuss, would leave Rome. The alliteration here is focused on p and q/c - the p's in particular are used to good effect(along with n) in the final lines (7-8):
"notae sunt populo, et natis pilosas,
fili, non potes asse uenditare?"