Catullus 2
Encyclopedia
Catullus 2 is a poem by Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BC) that describes the affectionate relationship between Catullus' lover, Lesbia
Lesbia
Lesbia was the literary pseudonym of the great love of Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus .She was a poet in her own right, included with Catullus in a list of famous poets whose lovers "often" helped them write their verses....

, and her pet sparrow
Sparrow
The sparrows are a family of small passerine birds, Passeridae. They are also known as true sparrows, or Old World sparrows, names also used for a genus of the family, Passer...

. As scholar and poet John Swinnerton Phillimore has noted, "The charm of this poem, blurred as it is by a corrupt manuscript tradition, has made it one of the most famous in Catullus' book." The meter
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...

 of this poem is hendecasyllabic, a common form in Catullus' poetry.

This poem, together with Catullus' other poems, survived from antiquity in a single manuscript discovered c. 1300 AD in Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...

, from which three copies survive. Fourteen centuries of copying from copies — the "corrupt manuscript tradition" mentioned above — left scholars in doubt as to the poem's original wording in a few places, although centuries of scholarship have led to a consensus critical version. Research on Catullus was the first application of the genealogical method of textual criticism
Textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

.

Lines 1-10 represent the preserved core of the poem. Lines 11-13 are denoted as "Catullus 2b" and differ significantly in tone and subject from the first 10 lines. Hence, these latter three lines may belong to a different poem, although most scholars do not believe so. Rather, the prevailing hypothesis is that the two sets of lines (1-10 and 11-13) are fragments of a whole, and that lines bridging the transition between them have been lost. In the original manuscripts, this poem was combined with Catullus 3, which describes the death of Lesbia's sparrow, but the two poems were separated by scholars in the 16th century.

Latin text and translation

The following Latin text is taken from the 2003 critical edition of D. F. S. Thomson.
Poem 2
LineGreek myth
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

 of Atalanta
Atalanta
Atalanta is a character in Greek mythology.-Legend:Atalanta was the daughter of Iasus , a Boeotian or an Arcadian princess . She is often described as a goddess. Apollodorus is the only one who gives an account of Atalanta’s birth and upbringing...

, a young princess who was remarkably swift of foot. To avoid marriage, she stipulated that she would marry only a man who could beat her in a footrace; suitors who failed to defeat her would be put to death. The hero Melanion (also known as Hippomenes
Hippomenes
In Greek mythology, Hippomenes , also known as Melanion, was the husband of Atalanta.- Overview :When men who were struck by Atalanta's beauty watched her run through the forest, she became angry and told them "I will race anyone who wants to marry me! Whoever is so swift that he can outrun me will...

) wooed Atalanta, who fell in love with him. During the race, Melanion threw a golden apple to distract her; stooping to pick it up, Atalanta lost the race, possibly deliberately so that she could marry him. The final line refers to undressing on the wedding night.
Poem 2b
Linemeter
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...

 in which each line has eleven syllables and four poetic feet
Foot (prosody)
The foot is the basic metrical unit that generates a line of verse in most Western traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited, with a few...

. Consistent with other ancient Greek and Latin works, the feet are not defined by stressed and unstressed syllables as they are in English poetry. Rather, they are marked by long (L) and short (s) forms of the vowels
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...

. Thus, a typical hendecasyllabic line has the meter
L L | L s s | L s | L s | L s
spondee
Spondee
In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in modern meters...

 | dactyl
Dactyl
Dactyl may refer to:* Dactyl , a creature in Greek mythology* Dactyl , a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable and two short* Dactyl , the small natural satellite orbiting the asteroid Ida...

 | trochee
Trochee
A trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one...

 | trochee | trochee


However, there is some flexibility in this pattern, particularly in the first and last feet. An example of English hendecasyllabic verse has been provided by Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....



O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus...



Other artful devices are woven into the text of Catullus 2. Lines 2-4 represent a tricolon crescendo, in which the three relative clauses become gradually longer in length: quem ludere, quem in sinu tenere, and cui primum digitum dare appetenti et acris solet incitare morsus. The repeated "eee" sounds (corresponding to the letter "i" in Latin) evoke the songbird's peeping (pipiabat in Catullus 3), e.g., (quicum ... in sinu ... cui primum ... appetenti ... acris ... nitenti ... iocari).
The "a" sounds may also convey images: the poet's sighs of longing; an "ouch!" at being bitten sharply (appetenti, "pecking" and acris, "sharp"); and a comforting sound (solaciolum, "small comfort", and acquiescat, "calms").

Influence on later poetry

This poem and the following Catullus 3 (a lament for Lesbia's sparrow) inspired a genre of poems about lovers' pets. One classical example include Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

's elegy on the death of his mistress Corinna's parrot (Amores 2.6.). Another is Martial
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...

's epigram (Book I number CIX) on a lap dog, which refers to Catullus 2 specifically ("Issa est passere nequior Catulli", "Issa [the dog] is naughtier than Catullus's sparrow").

Following the printing of Catullus's works in 1472, Poems 2 and 3 gained new influence, From the earliest days after the re-discovery of Catullus' poems, some scholars have suggested that the bird was a phallic symbol, particularly if sinu in line 2 is translated as "lap" rather than "bosom". However, most scholars have rejected this suggestion over the centuries, noting that Catullus is not coy about discussing sex, as shown by his many obscene poems such as Catullus 16
Catullus 16
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo is the first line, sometimes used as a title, of Carmen 16 in the collected poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus . The poem, written in a hendecasyllabic meter, was considered so explicit that a full English translation was not openly published until the late twentieth...

.

Birds were common love-gifts in the Classical world, and several scholars have speculated that the narrator gave it to the woman; this might explain the poet's identification with the sparrow and his fond lament for the bird in Catullus 3. The biting it does in line 4 ties in with Catullus 8, line 18 (cui labella mordebis).

Manuscript tradition

A key question concerns the unity of this poem. In the copies derived from the original V manuscript, poems 2 (lines 1-10 below), 2b (lines 11-13 below), and Catullus 3 appear as one poem under the title "Fletus passeris Lesbie" (Lament for Lesbia's Sparrow). Shortly before 1500, Catullus 3 (the lament) was separated from Catullus 2/2b by Marcantonio Sabellico, which has been supported by scholars ever since.

Scholars have argued over whether the last three lines (2b) belong to a different poem, and whether words are missing between poems 2 and 2b. Scholars have suggested that missing words (a lacuna), or a variant reading/rearrangement of the received text, would smooth the presently abrupt transition between lines 10 and 11. As noted above, there is some manuscript evidence for missing words after line 10. However, scholar S.J. Harrison, who believes the 13 lines are unified, has argued that "there seems to be no vital gap in content which short lacuna would supply" and if the missing words are many, then it is impossible to guess what they were and the poem must be accepted as simply broken into fragments.

Catullus 2 and 2b differ significantly in their tone and subject. Catullus 2 is addressed directly to the bird ("with you") and describes its loving, playful relationship with the poet's girlfriend. By contrast, Catullus 2b mentions neither bird nor girlfriend, introducing a simile
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...

 to the story of Atalanta
Atalanta
Atalanta is a character in Greek mythology.-Legend:Atalanta was the daughter of Iasus , a Boeotian or an Arcadian princess . She is often described as a goddess. Apollodorus is the only one who gives an account of Atalanta’s birth and upbringing...

, and seems to be written in the third person ("it is as welcome to me"), although some scholars have suggested that the text was corrupted from the second person ("you are as welcome to me"). The disjunction between Catullus 2 and 2b was first noted by Aquiles Estaço (Achilles Statius
Achilles Statius
Achilles Statius was a Portuguese humanist and writer, since 1555 living in Rome, where he was a secretary of the pope. Achilles Statius is now mostly known from his extensive Latin commentary to Catullus, published in 1566....

) in 1566; however, the first printed edition to show a lacuna between poems 2 and 2b (by the editor Karl Lachmann) appeared quite late, in 1829. Lachmann's separation of 2 and 2b has been followed by many subsequent editors.

Although it is possible that Catullus 2 and 2b belong to separate poems, the prevailing hypothesis is that they represent the beginning and end, respectively, of a larger poem, and that some intervening lines smoothing the transition have gone lost. In support of this hypothesis, Alessandro Guardino wrote in 1521 that he had found in an old book that words were missing just after line 10. The O manuscript — which presents 2, 2b and 3 as one whole poem — has a critical sign (not datable) after line 10, indicating a reader noted the break between poems 2 and 2b; a similar sign separates 2b from the next poem, Catullus 3. Yet a similar sign occurs after line 7 in Catullus 2, a spot that is a "distinctly improbable point of poem-division."

Unity advocates have also suggested word changes in the first part of the poem that would make the shift in tone less abrupt. For example, it has been suggested to change possem ("Would that I were able") to posse ("to be able") in line 9, resulting in the variant translation "To be able to play with you as she does and to relieve the sad cares of my mind is as pleasant to me as ...". Heyworth calls that construction convoluted and undermining the theme that the speaker wishes he were in the position of the woman in lessening his own longings by playing with the bird.

Harrison suggests adopting a reading found in the second printed edition of Catullus (by Francesco Puteolano, Parma, 1473) in which the third-person phrase Tam gratum est mihi ("It is as welcome to me") is replaced by Tam gratum es mihi ("You are as welcome to me"). The change alleviates the abrupt transition from second person ("with you", addressing the bird) to third person ("It is"). Although "es" refers to a masculine subject (passer, the bird) and therefore should read Tam gratus es, Harrison asserts that gratum can be "perfectly acceptable" Latin grammar.

Closure and thematic unity

Advocates for the two-poem theory have noted that the first 10 lines, opening with the woman playing with the bird and closing with the narrator's wish to do so, form a thematic whole that is "both formally and psychologically satisfying." Similar "closing wishes" can be found in poems 1
Catullus 1
Catullus 1 is traditionally arranged first among the poems of the Roman poet Catullus, though it was not necessarily the first poem that he wrote...

, 28, and 38. The poem's climax would be the poet's unfulfilled wish to relieve his own cares by playing with the sparrow as his love does (lines 9-10).

However, Harrison believes Catullus 2b also provides a suitable closure for the poem for the following reasons. First, Catullus 2b alludes to the myth of Atalanta, and classical poems sometimes end in mythic references, e.g., Catullus 51
Catullus 51
Catullus 51 is a poem by the Roman famous love poet Gaius Valerius Catullus . It is an adaptation of one of Sappho's fragmentary lyric poems, Sappho 31. Catullus replaces Sappho's beloved with his own beloved Lesbia. Unlike the majority of Catullus' poems, the meter of this poem is the sapphic...

, lines 13-15 and Horace Odes 2.5.21-4. Second, Catullus' poems often end in extended comparisons, e.g., Catullus 11, 17, and 25, and Catullus 65 ends with a simile using an apple. Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

 also closes poems in that way, e.g., Odes 3.5.53-6 and 3.20.15-16. Third, the image of undoing Atalanta's girdle is connected to marriage, an event that Massimo Fusillo has called a "strong closure force", and is used in Moschus' Europa, in Greek novels and in New Comedy. Nonmarital sexual consummation also closes some of Catullus' other poems, e.g., Catullus 56, lines 5-7, and Catullus 59, line 5.

As a love gift, the bird would provide a thematic link to 2b, where the apple is a love gift. Catullus makes it one apple, providing a stronger link to the single bird, although there were multiple apples in other versions of the Atalanta story (Ovid makes it three in Metamorphosis 10.649-80). In this interpretation, the poet may be suggesting that the bird connects the lovers (the poet and his girlfriend) in the same way that the apple connected Hippomenes and Atalanta. This interpretation has a slight transgendered aspect, since the male poet compares his solace from the sparrow's antics with the female Atalanta's pleasure in the apple. Harrison believes there is still a strong enough correspondence in these images to show a thematic unity and notes that Catullus adopts a transgendered perspective in other poems. Other scholars have noted that the gender roles of ancient Rome, especially as seen through Catullus' poetry, do not correspond exactly with our modern Western conceptions; the activity or passivity of the lover determined their role more than their biological sex.

Translations

  • Catullus 2 & 2b from the VRoma Project.
  • Catullus 2 from the Catullus Translations Website.
  • Catullus 2b from the Catullus Translations Website.
  • Catullus 2 (lines 1-8) from the Cipher Journal website (bizarre ending)
  • Catullus 2 & 2b Rick Snyder's translation in jubilat
    Jubilat
    jubilat is a widely-distributed American poetry journal published by the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst...

    (2003)

Other


  • Interview with Jeffrey Eugenides
    Jeffrey Eugenides
    Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his first two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex . His novel The Marriage Plot was published in October, 2011.-Life and career:Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan,...

    on his book of bittersweet love-stories, My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead
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