Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

LESBIA, SIRMIO, CALVUS
Lesbia. But Lesbia no more wanted explaining than did Cynthia or Delia or
the others; and she had already been introduced, in hendecasyllables, to the
reader of the libellus, 5.1 Viuamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus 'Let us live, my
Lesbia, and love.' A less romantic aspect is ignored. This is indeed a first poem,
the first Latin poem written in Sapphic stanzas: a bold and not altogether
successful literary experiment. The Hellenistic poets, although they were
given to renovating old forms, did not attempt this one; perhaps they knew
better. Catullus' poem may plausibly claim to be the first Sapphic after
Sappho.
It is by no means an inert translation: Catullus was concerned to modernize
Sappho, to bring her poem up to date. To a close rendering of her first line he
adds a second entirely his own, importing a note of Roman solemnity. 1 Lines 5
and 6 exhibit him enveloped in his own misery, misero. . .mihi; his general
condition preceding a diagnosis of individual symptoms. Sappho's symptoms
have been so re-ordered by Catullus that sight falls last: it was, in the first
instance, the vision of Lesbia that all but unnerved him. Here in his third stanza,
Catullus the New Poet has most carefully shaped and refined Sappho. There is a
detail of Hellenistic technique — the postposition of sed— at the beginning; a
verbal sophistication — gemina. . . nocte — at the end. In each line the caesura
occurs at the same point, coinciding with the end of a clause; and each clause is
discrete. "With this stanza Catullus' direct emulation of Sappho ends (he disregards
her fourdi stanza); but his poem does not.
For many readers, however, it will always seem to end — as Landor maintained
it did — with the beautiful cadence lumina nocte; a sort of premature
success that Catullus cannot have intended. Sappho's ' congress of emotions'
(so termed by ' Longinus': TTC