The Poems of Catullus

This review is for Stephanie McCarter's translation.

A new English translation of Catullus's poetry, with the original Latin text included.

Catullus did write some beautiful and moving poems, but he's more memorable when he was being catty and sex obsessed. This collection is full of bawdy and vulgar lines and is 100% worth reading.

McCarter's translation is clear and easy to follow, although I'm not sure about a few of her neologisms. Her introduction is informative, and the robust notes at the end provide context and also assure the reader that yes, Catullus was saying exactly what you think he was saying there.

Received via NetGalley.

Dirty, smutty and funny. The Penguin translation is great, it captures the excitement and rhythm of the original brilliantly. Always a good read is old Catullus and still very relevant. Not afraid to use phrases like 'stiff prick', which is very shocking for our more prudish time!

Probably not for everybody (but what poetry is?), Catullus writes brilliantly of the everyday, the minor quibbles, the less profound proverbs, and sometimes even ancient (for his time even!) myth. His hit rate is extremely high, which leaves one wanting more, and in the hands of translator Frank O. Copley his poetry gets reset and re-punctuated into 20th century standards and norms. This is a great help because Catullus was immediate, of his time, and highly dialect-oriented in approach. All of this demands that he be right next to you as the reading or reciting goes.

Stand-outs in the collection include what often goes first "One" which perhaps states a poet's wish better than any other poem, and "Sixty Four" which tells the story of show more Theseus and Ariadne along with the prophecy of Achilles, son of Peleus. The voice and concerns of Catullus actually echo the voice of the main character in Satyricon at times and the propensities for humor that both exhibit do not escape this particular reviewer. Both books may not be the height of what literature has to offer (especially Greek) but they are indeed a lot of fun and perhaps damning portraits of a corrupt and/or corruptible society. show less

Leisure, Catullus, is dangerous to you: leisure
urges you into extravagant behavior:
leisure in time gone by has ruined kings and
prosperous cities.

Green's translation is admirable and very readable, but I found myself not particularly taken with Catullus's work. There are many fine poems, most especially the longer epyllions in the middle (64!), but I found myself mostly indifferent to some of the shorter works. Green's notes were often more interesting than the poems themselves ― the drama of the context was often rich. Overall, I enjoyed the collection but will probably not reread anytime soon.

Some of the most entertaining poems in the history of Rome. For the most part the translations get across the spirit of the original, although there were one or two occasions on which they were softened a little. The parallel texts are easy to follow.

Catullus is my GBF. Even in a mediocre translation (as here), he's immediate, gossipy, irreverently alive. Anne Carson's versions in _Men in the Off Hours_ are brilliant, but this is good for getting to the language of the original. Naughty boys are fun to relax with.

Incidentally, the introduction by Guy Lee, that I have in ‘my’ edition, is exactly why I don’t pay money for stuff like this anymore. Don’t feed the beast. Use the library. Poetry is the art of forming the letters correctly~ demonstrates forming the letters while speaking French; goes on to refer to a poem about poems, while ignoring the content of the poem, which is that scholars refer to poetry usually without the slightest regard for the content of poetry, but only their material form as letters written in the clouds above, right, and have nothing to do with sex or working age adults, right: so not only does he refer to poetry without regard to the content: he references a poem ~~about that very pattern~~ while show more uncompromisingly bathing nude in it, so to speak, right: a veritable unconscious, unintentional self-parody, right.

Do not give these people your money; it hasn’t gotten any better….

The man is bitter over the spelling of words, right. You could put him in Heaven or Hell, the Sahara or Siberia: the thing that would be of note to him, is whether people colored inside the lines, so to speak (so probably Hell—big scary demons to growl at you, if you don’t do it right, no?)

…. On the one hand, there certainly is a special relationship between the erotic and the intellectual: there is a thing beneath heaven called the art of the knowledge of the erotic—and those who deny it tend towards being rather petty.

Of course, it is obvious that in the past, in Britain and places like that—dare I say, ‘times’ like that? Sorry, Black and punk rock Londons! I know it isn’t you!…. 😹…. Yeah: it’s like, one of the privileges of a certain class-education was being able to talk about sex without it being rude, you know. ~(an aristocrat, at a loss about how to explain his privilege) It’s just, Different: that’s all!…. ~People don’t conquer the earth to go without perks: and having your name on a plaque isn’t, perhaps, the main one! 😹

And yes: it is also is very nice poetry. Very light and bright and bouncy. Fun.

(shrugs) Of course, it is very irreverent and ‘irreligious’, so to speak. In the old days, all of the real initiates, of that age of the world, wouldn’t have consented to put in print what they might have said, in a way, about their sacral-erotic loves, (even today, still an age of controversy, there probably still is a difference between what people will say in private or at a workshop, and what can be risked to letting anyone with ten dollars read, right: although, controversy being less deadly than it was at one point, or, just, the times being changed, the difference is enormous less, you know—but I suppose some gap will always exist, even with this new age of technology, right), and, had the Christians of the old days found sacral-erotic love poetry in print, they would not have hesitated before consigning it to the fires of H—sorry; that’s not proper: the more correct term for their empire was ‘Christendom’, right….

Even today, the linguistic-technical elite finds light bright and bouncy, fun, easier to down (even if they cannot at all digest it, at all) than anything too…. I don’t know. Weird. Love is weird. Holiness is weird. Your conformist aunt wouldn’t like it, you know. (And she’s a professor!)

(laughs) There are too many men in the world, right, by half—men and machines, together are a majority, you know….

But yeah: the other factor, militating in other circumstances against reducing certain things to print is—that certain things are hard to do well; it is not easy to unite mirth and reverence…. Though I suppose that battle is already lost for this century, or any century that this century can imagine: the only question is whether we will whine and calumniate, or simply create more good things, and perhaps a LITTLE more silence to package the words with, right…. But people will talk, now: there’s no ending it, though the common thing nowadays is to whine and complain bitterly about people very much like yourself, right…. (And that is harder to silence people not unlike yourself, if you but knew, with literal physical intimidation: that is a very very common complaint!…. Because Internet! 😛)

It is curious how similar once-born romanticism always seems to be, whether ‘Christian’ or ‘Pagan’ or whatever—if those words even signify. Catullus, aside from class and race and everything—aside from his English Latin, you know—isn’t too different from country, or pop, or anything like that, you know.

The love of the bright innocent happy fool under the bright sun, right. Even litsy sorts of pop singers—people from almost every genre—do do SOME material like that, you know. Hell, even Bach’s Christmas Cantata (BVW, 248?…. Yes), isn’t SO different, you know…. [At least when Catty is simply bright and light and poppy. It is of course true you couldn’t even put Catty in a Top40 pop song, at times. It depends upon his mood. But the point is, “today is a good today, peasants/partiers/congregants/grad students”, isn’t really so different—a feeling is simply a feeling, after all—regardless of the register it is partially wrapped up in…. There’s not really a lot of technical abstract content in the Christmas cantata of Bach, for example: it’s sorta…. Slight smiles, and little nods, right…. Not unlike, at a certain remove, from very subtle smiling, of another sort…. Intellectualism is non-intellectualism by other means, basically.]

(shrugs) And that’s fine. The secrets of the earth are holy: and the sex of initiates, you know. But then, the song of the drunkards isn’t always as impure as people imagine. Take Keane, more example. Obscure British English piano rock lyrical songsters? Or…. Alcoholics, making music? Alcoholics can be very clever, you know: people don’t have the right idea about them. The petty, proper, upright, superficial person doesn’t really have the best love…. Though many immensely intelligent alcoholics’ minds are just so many millions of spinning wheels, you know: many calculations, but nothing too mysterious, right….

(shrugs) But it’s fine. I mean, I liked The Beach Boys, and all those other stupid bands from the history of music, right…. Because they had fun fun fun, until they made some surprisingly intellectualizing but surprisingly obvious and familiar comments about life! Weee….. eeee, eee, e…. (Hermes singing like a girl for the masses, showing off his second-best rhymes)

~You know.

…. And like most poets, or singers, or whatever: a lot of time-bound unfairness nonsense, right; though time-bound stuff, it’s funny how it can seem both alien and familiar…. I mean, this one poem: melancholy and lover’s self-reproach is common enough—but listen to this, right: Ah, I had it good. I pressed up against her and she relented. But now she has ceased to consent. (I am a man!) I am upright! (I am still a man!) Be strong, O soul!…. Take comfort in that she is at least half-soiled goods now: things will be better for me, than for her…. Ah, I had it so good…. Ah, but I am so strong; so strong….

~Obviously I always like to paraphrase things freely, but that’s the sense. It’s like, is THIS your love, child of the humans, and of their civilization? 😾🤪….

(shrugs) Life is a battle, and many are they who choose foolish fights on the field, right…. Perhaps at the end of ages, though, what one has is indeed what one has taken from that field, and no one takes another’s merit: *pace* NT Man, right….

The world is evil, but it is nothing but a mist that obscures Avalon…. So perhaps even this mist, which obscures the truth, is good, being the beautiful mist of morning, right: the beginning of humankind’s journey….

…. Unlike tribesmen I am great, I am Roman; like all Romans, my face is carved in Mount Rushmore; I represent Planet Earth in the intergalactic councils, etc etc…. So tell my once-love, whom now I hate, that she is an always was a tartlet, and she reminds of a toilet, and all her lovers are little bitch-men, etc etc

~Fascinating how being part of one of the larger, more powerful political organizations makes a man wise, correct in his disputes with women: and very important. As a matter of fact, living in the empire which is local to him, in itself, makes a man wise, you know…. Not everyone realizes that, anymore: it’s the (bad people, etc etc).

—lol. Ah, this shit is funny, though. You have to give it that. You ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO attribute humor to it! 😸

…. Listening to him (presumably) out bitch-talk his friends, is certainly amusing, though: I’ll give you that. Heaven and earth, God and his armies, cannot make a man polite or respectful towards the man who is his friend, you know. 🥳 🎂 ⚔️ ☄️

…. Again, ironically it’s not as useful for making Wiccan stuff as say Wordsworth, who is VERY occasionally useful, I think…. But then, William probably needed to be put on an antidepressant: that boy needed something, right.

Wordsworth of his birthday: 😕

Wordsworth on Christmas Day: 🙁

Wordsworth getting married: ☹️

Catullus getting divorced the day after thieves stole every single bit of property he owned on Planet Earth: 🤪👻👾😘☄️🏃‍♂️

~Very different men. Ideally, you’d like to have, a bit of both, right….

…. I guess I can understand Catty wanting to punch people in the face from time to time, but I have more trouble understanding why he would resent another man’s lack of anxiety and good digestion. Whatever it was, it obviously wasn’t a sense that he was lounging about as the idle rich do: Catty is very open about being a materialist who rather resents people NOT having money…. Which is sorta, SORTA, easier to ‘get’, than the other thing, right…. I suspect it’s just…. Masculinity, you know. Some subtypes of masculinity are practically diagnosable, you know: at least, that’s what I think.

…. 34 (XXXIV) is pretty good; you can see it being used outside of a dingy pub, essentially: the way that a Beatles song might see the inside of a wedding, or U2, etc etc. But the rest of Catullus is so bad when it comes to that. Just like when you go to a wedding at church and the whole thing is reluctant polite joy, you know: and then they throw in In My Life, just because they remember it, right; so the mirror image is Catty showing up sober for the first time in two weeks: and then immediately proposing—it’s like, Epithet: this is a lot, ok?

…. I am going to be careful the next time I say something nice to any Irish or Welsh god, or whatever, about any Roman or classical god, you know.

(Hermes) But I’m not like the other Americans: I’m…. I’m Hermes! (does a dumb little dance) (then runs, and three Morrighan and the Dagda run after him, and ravens hoot and cry in the trees)

It was like they were talking about Afghanistan, right: the Russian-looking tribes in Afghanistan….

…. ‘Femella’ is an interesting way of saying ‘girlie’. I rather like the word ‘girlie’…. But yeah, it’s not terrible poetry; not always bad. Perhaps a little ‘young’: it gets a bit boring to be honest. Sane sorts of things again and again. Of course, I’m planning to get more into teen lit: so perhaps the argument doesn’t hold…. Of course, he did make it all the way to thirty, (did his Saturn Return do him in? The prospect of maturity didn’t agree with his subconscious mind?), but it does sound very much like something a teenage boy would write on the internet—both for good and ill; I don’t hold with the common opinion that only the people with ‘access’, essentially, are worth it: and rest of us just clods of dirt on their planet, right…. But obviously that sort of thing does get to be a bit much, at times, right: young men, and all that, (shrugs). But who decides these things, right. Some people are men, I suppose that some of them are Young, much to the at least occasional chagrin of the non-Young Male population, right….

…. Reading Greeks and Romans, sometimes one does wonder if the queer population is artificially low: due to, terrorism, basically: terror. I can only guess what my spectrum of sexual activities and likes would have been, if I hadn’t figured out very early on, that same-sex sexual feeling wasn’t, loyalty-to-society, right…. That, and just a feeling of disgust for males, you know. It’s one thing to go hunting pixelated demons with males: but deep down, one feels that they themselves are just…. Un-pixelated demons, you know: one wants a little relief from the energy of one’s fellows….

…. (the long poem about marriage)

This poem is both right and wrong.

…. ~long poem about husbandly jealousy, etc

Yeah…. No. Thanks, anyway…. Yes, I would like a receipt. Are returns over there?

~long poem about Cybele & Attis

To me in my times and under my stars, it always seemed like a myth about a male sacrificing ‘life’ itself, to ‘love’, right…. It was always odd to me, that—was it the same civilization—could have jealous husbands whose wives were little better than factory farmed chickens, you know…. I guess this is the answer. They just retold the same story, only it became, what not to do. “This is what happens when the bitch slips her collar, boys! (passes out drunk)”

Anyway.

…. ~the very long poem

I’m not sure quite what the point of all that was, aside from proving that he could write poetry, you know. Catty does seem very alcoholic. The classic pattern of either being in strong, striding ‘sin’ (or perhaps, oddly close: the most weeping sentimentalism), or just the most vain verbiage, the other path to illusion—either way, just the most ungovernable desire (although sometimes alkies try far too hard to ‘govern’ themselves and the universe: it’s not an over-simple hand of cards, like the majoritarian person, right) to be in a different state of mind, a different state of being and unconsciousness: just, somewhere else…. Anywhere else; everywhere else…. Nowhere.

…. Perhaps one day I will cease to be surprised, at how moralistic and morally carping, chauvie and over-the-top transgressive men can be, right: like, they are less merciful than ‘the many’ (if there is such a thing as ‘the many’, right), on top of everything else.

I suppose it’s on me for not assimilating such a widespread, common, and enduring pattern, into my expectations, you know.

…. “I hate and love. Perhaps you’re asking why I do that?
I don’t know, but I feel it happening, and am racked.”

Should have been the quote for the back cover. Instead they had somebody write some BS place-filler about how ‘accessible’ he is, right. (‘I mean, whenever ~Eye~ meet an alcoholic in MY work: people are always raving about how accessible he is! Alcoholics meet with wide social acceptance in every society!’) Of course, the truth is: there’s no way to get yourself branded a weirdo and worse, (‘you could say I’m a lost man in a lost world: you could say all of this and worse’ ~Sting) is to get regularly swept under by waves of emotion at the beach of love: one violent wave after another, right….

People rearrange candlesticks and count grains of white American rice, and pretend it’s never happened to them.

…. Though Catty himself pretends it has never happened to him, right, when he sees another’s lust. And we are not improved: with a soft voice, Society Today calls out that reminding the good people that sex exists by carping at somebody or another about their sex acts, is itself a problem, (ie, ‘gossip is bad’); but with a loud voice, Society Today tears at its hair and cries out in death-anguish, right: the one theorem that they can remember, Sex is bad; therefore, the whole body is one long shadow…. Oh! Oh! (tearing at hair) To be a wise man, a wise man—oh, a ~cold~ man! Or at least, what I can manage: to be a servant-administrator Mother, you know!….

And the lovers themselves agree with Society’s Ideas: except in their own case, you know—it being entire unique, wouldn’t you say?

…. There are obviously many different factors at play here—I won’t even try to count how many—but when I read that edition of Sappho, the linguistic notes at the end, which then as now, I took on, paging back and forth, after reading the main text without looking at the notes—made what would otherwise be merely very partial communications seem very curious, or at least, texts not without worth and uniqueness; I didn’t have the same experience with Catullus and the notes here: they read as immature and superficial, on the text only read-through, and the notes changed things very very little, if at all.

…. Yeah: the historical context of a book, especially an ancient book, isn’t totally unrewarding, especially for someone like me—but one who sets about essentially only to see about the meanings of words strikes one as incredibly foolish and schoolboyish, you know: in the sense that probably doesn’t immediately come to mind first, immature. (Like little schoolboy Harry Potter, only dreaming that he knows things, you know. The immature introvert.) Indeed, the Oxford Guy writes largely about the very ~sound~ of words: although to do so in an uglier, less attractive way would take some forethought, right.

And yeah: I’m not averse to casually saying (writing) ‘bullshit’ and so on, now and again: but Catty had a very filthy mouth, you know. Incredibly filthy…. No sense of pride. show less