The Latin Dilettante: Presentation on Gaisser Chapter 6

Interpretive Approach: Reader Response Criticism

Textual citation contributes meaning, according to modern scholars who invoke reader response criticism to maintain that meaning is contributed when and if the reader recognizes the reference. The test of an interpretation’s validity is if it makes sense in the context of the poem and the work.

Gaisser’s Argument

Catullus’ poems are a system, and they are more powerful when taken as a whole. Catullus’ poems are not a closed system – they are filled with references and allusions to and translations of other poetry, both in Latin and Greek, and particularly the poetry of Sappho.

Vocabulary and meter

Poem 70

Uses the same meter, structure and vocabulary as the Callimachus poem

Differs from Callimachus poem by being present and personal and switches the gender of the actors. The differences are striking because of the established similarities.

Poem 101

Uses the same vocabulary as the opening of the Odyssey by Homer and similar vocabulary to a passage from the Aeneid. Aeneas is discoursing with the dead, but Catullus, in his less magical age, can only interact with ashes. Odysseus also had a partially failed journey as he made him home but did not bring his comerades home safely. The reference to Troy in the poem by Homer invokes the reader’s memory of Catullus’ brother’s death at Troy.

Translations

Poems 50 and 51

Poem 50 is a cover letter, reminding his friend of the fun they had with playing with poetry.Poem 51 is a translation from Sappho. The translation mimics Sappho’s meter, strophe, and narrative content. Catullus’ poem differs in the exact structure and is more personal, naming names. Catullus also changes the gender of the observer and adds an additional stanza. If we consider the cover letter and translation the opening moves of a poetry game, and giving Lesbia the name he does evokes both Clodia and Sappho. The final stanza sets the poem firmly in the frame of leisure.

Poem 11

Linked by meter to poem 51 and the two have been taken as the beginning and end of the affair. Both use identidem and both are translations from Sappho and change the gender of the speaker. Both characters in Catullus’ poem are double-gendered: Catullus is the victim twice and Lesbia the destroyer twice.

Poems 65 and 66

Cover letter to a translation to a friend; poem 66 is a translation from Callimachus. The intertexts of poem 65 are similes, invoking characters and stories told in other poems. The first simile refers to a character in the Odyssey, and the second refers to a story from Aetia by Callamachus. In poem 65, the translation of Callimachus poems also evokes the loss of Catullus’ brother. The themes of loss and grief in poem 65 recall the content of Catullus’ other poems.

Timelines

Poem 64

The intertext is the story. The story of the Argos, of Medea after Jason, of Ariadne and Theseus, and the how the Argo is the very first ship, but the poem ends with its maiden voyage. The story starts with dicuntur, which marks it as allusive from the beginning. The wedding night of a passenger on the Argos is covered with a tapestry that tells the story of Theseus and includes his swift ship. Time is jumbled here. The allusions superimpose “the chronologically impossible voyages of Theseus and Jason.”

Specify the scholarly contribution that the study makes

Scholarly Contribution

· Purposes and types of allusions in Catullus

· Insight into the education and poetic style of Catullus

· Model for an effective use of reader response criticism

Brief Critique

This is an excellent article. It is focused, clearly argued, and the structure is linear and foundational. The citations are relevant, support the argument, and the scope of the allusions follow a logical progression.

Questions

1. How does Gaisser back up her claims in this article?

· By showing specific relationships (vocabulary, context, poetic structure) that clearly show that Catullus must have put some conscious effort in reflecting the themes and content of already existing poems and other works.

· By side-to-side analysis of the Catullan poem and the poem he was trying to emulate. Intertextuality, in its purest form.

· By assessing their alleged Greek and Roman models, showing us where a line might correlate to a Homeric of Sapphic line, where it might diverge and why.

· A very detailed textual exegesis of individual words and phrases, such as multa, examining allusions to writers such as Homer, Callimachus and Sappho.

· Explores the importance of meter, poetic structure and Catullus’ creative translations with his own variations of Callimachus.

· Intertextual references (Sappho, Homer, Ennius, Vergil) and presents

· A side-by-side comparison with Catullus to makes her points nearly indisputable.

· By numerous citations of other ancient writers such as Callimachus, Vergil, Homer, Sappho, etc.

· Presents them immediately following one another so the similarities cannot be ignored.

· Includes references to recent scholarship, as shown in her notes at the end of the chapter, but those are significantly fewer.

2. What is the utility to Catullus in changing the gender of the authorial voice?

· To fully compliment an author who writes in one voice.

· Make his poem more personal (less generic) and also more emotional, as men had the tendency to mask theirs.

· Effectively display and or justify his frantic emotional state, and his readers no doubt familiar with this trope would appreciate it.

· Tipping his hat to his callimachian and sapphic models, whom he wants to reflect his appreciation for, and he displays his wit in the process

· Conforms to the elegaic convention of a female domina and her submissive male counterpart.

· An effort by catullus to earn some sympathy from his readers, in that he is the passive one in the relationship and is being pressed upon by the more persistent lesbia.

· Allows him to identify with the female persona, and portray emotions through her thoughts and words.

· Reflects his relationship with lesbia in his role as both victim and active agent. It displays how (much like in 85) he's femininely receiving the brunt of woe from lesbia.

· Plays on his role as the victim of the unfaithfulness of lesbia. This turns the tables on the gender roles of the romans, which were similar to the ones in place in our time.

3. Gaisser mentions multiple ways Catullus alludes to other works in his poems. What are some of the ways?

· The Lesbia poems are a direct reference to Sappho (Lesbia a pseudonym for Clodia as well as a descriptive term for Sappho of Lesbos).

· Translated a Callimachean poem in Catullus 66 and

· Treats Callimachean themes throughout his elegies. He also

· Uses the same syntax and structure as various poets throughout his work, as in the epic meter in Catullus 64, reflecting Vergil and Homer.

· Alludes in the ekphrais of the coverlet in 64 to the works of Euripides, Apollonius, Ennius

· Alludes to his own poems on numerous occasions.

· Metrically (Sapphic meters of 11 and 51),

· Adjectivally (65 with variants of quanta for Homeric (polla) and Vergil (multa))

· Thematically (Medea figures and Callimachean ideology).

· Constant stressing of repetitious actions(multa/polla), along with the piety to his brother and Trojan locale of his brother's death.

· The Sapphic allusions give physical-through Clodia- and literary, through supposed interest in Sappho- drive to his own poetic inspiration.

· Homer and epic most notably in poem 64, which carries on epic themes.

· He also transmits the poems of Callimachus, 65 and 116, into Latin and changes them to fit in with his work.

· He also alludes to Sappho as Gaisser shows in her side by side comparison of the two.

· By fitting his poems in with the language, meter, and subject matter of previous writers stating that he deserves to be placed in their midst.

· Repetition of certain key words ("multa" being the main).

· Sapphic meter.

· Callimachean theme.

4. What does the intertextuality in Catullus 64 add to a reading of the poem?

The intertextual allusions in Catullus 64 add a depth and richness to the poem that would not exist. By mimicking the style and structure of the epic poems of Homer and Vergil, Catullus gives 64 a weight that his other poems seemingly do not have.

Catullus mocks Callimachus by writing the same kind of poem - a mini epic that isn't epic. It was perhaps laughable, while at the same time read as a very good book. Much like Twilight was a laughable, but serious, homage to Dracula.

Catullus 64 is an especially learned poem. Gaisser’s investigation of the allusions to the Medea story and to Euripides, Apollonius, Ennius add a great deal to our understanding of the literary background and the emotional nuances of the poem.

Catullus alludes to his own poems in reference to poem 64. His description of Ariadne’s madness, for example, seems to be related to his description of the madness of Attis in 63. Please indulge me, the literary treatment of madness is a favorite topic of mine. Ariadne laments the family and culture of Crete she has left behind in Crete, while Attis laments the state, his family, and the cultural institutions he has abandoned. Both poems demonstrate the creative use of words related to madness, including the coining of new words; a prayer to send madness or disaster to other people; and the use of meter (frequent dactyls in one, the galliamabic meter in the other) to convey an aspect of madness.

It really highlights Catullus' mastery of poetry and even his likeness to Callimachus. Catullus, like Callimachus, shows in 64 that he could have written epic but chose not to. As Gaisser points out, he successfully imitates Homer, Vergil, Ennius, and Apollonius -- probably the most major four names in epic. So, in a sense, even though 64 is an epyllion it possesses a concentration of epic themes that is beyond impressive.

64 is a formidable poem and a intense study of the heroine, which is the dominant motif of the epyllion genre. Through an attentive use of different sources, Catullus creates a fantastical rendering of the stories of Peleus and Thetis, the Argonauts, and of Ariadne. The greatest effect seems to be that characters, such as Medea and Ariadne, and chronological impossibilities converge to create a highly charged and multi-dimensional narrative.

As we saw in the Clausen article, Catullus is using clearly epic themes without actually writing an epic. The characters of Theseus and Ariadne bring up mythoological references and epic themes, but his meter and the focus on the heartbreak and love place him in the realm of elegy. Gaisser points this out to show how unique and skillful this poem was.

5. How do Catullus' translations of Sappho interpret, allude to, and mimic the original Greek?

First and foremost, Catullus translates Sappho in her original, Sapphic, meter in Catullus 51. Additionally, Catullus’ translation of Sappho 31 in his 51^st poem very closely mimics the original, save for the fact that the gender roles are reversed for the observer and an additional stanza is added, which is not clearly related to the other three.

I can't contribute any new information (the three or four guys before me beat me to it). But yes, the meter is uniquely the same, and the gender reversal, and also the scene with the godly man and the woman are all similar.

Catullus 51 is a creative translation of a Sapphic poem, using the same meter of Sapphic strophes. There are numerous minor variations, but the last stanza of Catullus 51 has no counterpart in the Sappho original. Part of Gaisser’s effectiveness in comparing Catullus’ and Sappho’s poems lies in her argument that Catullus 51 not only imitates Sappho, but resonates with other poems in the Catullan corpus, e.g., 50.

His use of the Sapphic meter is perhaps the most obvious similarity. As has been said, gender role reversal does occur (appropriate for poets both with homo/bisexual preferences), but both poems are also structurally and thematically linked but Catullus add his own additional stanza.

As both Phil and Gaisser state, the affinities between Sappho 31 and Catullus 51 are very close, both composed in the same meter with similar themes, and their concern with "delirious passion." Catullus interprets this poem through his translation and of using it as a front-piece for his own emotional problems. Gaisser does not work actively enough with the Greek text to make a more learned comparison.

The Sapphic translations of Catullus fit in with the Sapphic meter and form.

If we look at Gaisser's example, we can see the obvious counterparts in Catullus. Although there are minor variations, this again shows the skill of Catullus in mimicking a poet whom few were able to imitate skillfully.

The Latin Dilettante

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Presentation on Gaisser Chapter 6