CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

that one sees into the picture as a whole, but if one subsequently finds a detail that has different implications
from what one first thought, it is not acceptable to say that it is just a detail and that the overall picture that
one has formed must surely be correct. On the contrary, one has to take a closer look at that detail and decide
whether it truly contradicts the overall picture – in which case the latter has to be revised. This applies not
only to textual criticism, but to solving any sort of problem. If somebody is found with a bullet in his heart, a
good judge will convict for the murder not the person who may have been expected to have had the most
reasons to kill the victim, but the person whose fingerprint is found on the weapon from which the fatal shot
was fired. A correct interpretation of a difficult text is not one that at first sight seems right, but one that
makes sense of all its constituent parts, all and without exception. In this case we already know that at first
sight it seems possible to interpret Catullus 68 as a unitary poem, but since it also seems possible to interpret
it as two separate poems following one another, Sarkissian’s approach cannot result in a firm case in favour
of unity.
Lieberg’s position is slightly more complex. He appeals to the concept of “artistic unity”, and suggests that
this might not be ruled out by logical contradictions. But there have been detected no glaring inconsistencies
in any other personal poem of Catullus’, or indeed in any other ancient personal poem; in particular, the
characters in a poem are never said to be in two mutually exclusive states. And quite apart from this lack of
parallels, it is hard to see for what reason a notable number of contradictions could be present in a relatively
short Latin personal poem. If we are to accept the presence of contradictions within one and the same poem,
we have to understand why there are there. Short of this, an appeal to the “artistic unity” of the poem to
render its self-contradictions acceptable becomes tautological and therefore meaningless: there can only be
“artistic unity” between constituent parts that make up one meaningful whole, and if it is called into question
whether those parts make up one whole at all, the very presence of “artistic unity” is in question; so that an
appeal to it is no more than the assertion by an observer that (s)he believes that the poem is in fact unitary.
Nor does it help when Lieberg points out that “[t]he external criteria do not allow for a precise answer
because they can be interpreted in various ways according to the assumptions of the interpreter regarding
methodology and aesthetics”. In fact every instance of interpretation, every instance of the use of language
rests on a variety of assumptions regarding methodology at any rate, though not necessarily regarding
aesthetics; this is just as true of Lieberg’s own approach as of those used by his predecessors.
Coppel makes a slightly different point in arguing that Catullus 68 is a very complicated text that should not
always be understood literally. It is a convention of language that it has to be taken literally, unless there is a
tangible reason not to do so; and in a philological debate it is inevitable to specify that reason. For example,
if I say “Sara has a number of cats and dogs”, this can reasonably be taken to mean that she has several; if I
say on the other hand that “it was raining cats and dogs yesterday”, it would be perverse to assume that cats
and dogs kept falling out of the sky, since I am using a common idiom that simply means “it was raining
heavily”. In this case there is a reason, which can be specified easily, while unless I was using some sort of
elaborate code, no reason could be adduced for which “Sara has a number of cats and dogs” should not be
interpreted literally. A scholar interpreting a difficult text in a language that is reasonably well understood
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