John Schafer sets out to accomplish an arduous task in this monograph: to argue for an ordering of the Catullan corpus that is both new and compelling, predicated on — but not constrained by — the proposals of past scholars. From the introduction, he is clear about which parts of his contribution are new, and his intricate argument is easy to follow due to careful signposting and helpful reiteration and direction for the reader.
S. maintains that the current order of the poems in the Catullan corpus is authorially dictated — arranged by Catullus himself — and that it breaks down into three main groups: A (Poems 1–51), B (61–64), and C (65–116). He further subdivides C into two halves, C1 (65–68b) and C2 (69–116). The poems missing from these three books, 52–60, form the group Ax. This is S.'s new contribution: ‘Poems 52–60 (Ax) are artistically incongruous with the poems preceding and following them; they either fall entirely outside the multi-work design of the remaining corpus, or else function as a self-segregating minor unit appended to A’ (42). Ax, S. posits, may have been the remains of an additional corpus of short lyric poems (58), but he does not claim to have a definitive answer here. Yet when we remove Ax from consideration, we reveal a pattern of intricate correspondence between books A, B and C that suggests their arrangement was prescribed by Catullus himself.
S.'s secondary argument, upon which he builds his case for excising Ax, involves ‘dramas of composition’, imagined scenarios that ‘feature the Catullan speaker representing and commenting on the artistic intention, conception, creation, textualization, and dedication of the Catullan poems themselves’ (7). By fleshing out these dramas of composition, S. creates a metapoetic narrative plot in which author and protagonist are one and the same. Elaborating, for example, on David Wray's position that Poem 50 serves as a sort of ‘cover letter’ for Poem 51, S. reads the pair as a ‘closural dyad’ for A that details a multi-day story of poetic composition (112). Some of these dramas can be quite hypothetical, like the notion that Ax might be composed of poems jointly written by Catullus and Calvus (131), but S. acknowledges the uncertainty of each individual case. Thus, though readers could object to any one, or even a handful, of correspondences, the abundance of evidence allows for these objections to exist without undermining the thesis.
The monograph is logically structured, with an introduction and first chapter (‘Prolegomenon to the Catullus Problem’) that lay out thoroughly the state of scholarship and major guiding questions and methods. Next, S. presents the case for Ax (Poems 52–60) as a grouping unto itself. The remaining chapters address the groups in order — ch. 2: A (Poems 1–51), ch. 3: B (Poems 61–64) and C1 (65–68b), and ch. 4: C2 (Poems 69–116). He concludes with two ‘interpretive applications’ of his new model. S. studies authorial arrangement by looking for correspondences or disjoints within groups of consecutive poems. Two main types of correspondence arise: ‘local’ correspondences link adjacent poems to others nearby, while ‘global’ correspondences search for patterns throughout the entire corpus (27). For example, he identifies specularity or mirroring between A and C2, a global correspondence, while noting that the theme of self-deceit regarding Lesbia creates a local correspondence between the closings of Poems 5 and 7 and those of 70 and 72 (63). On the other hand, S. also identifies disjoints, formal or thematic breaks that signify beginnings, midpoints, or endings of poetic groupings. A strong example occurs, he argues, at 68a–b, which functions as the ‘causal vortex’ of the Lesbia drama (185).
Throughout his investigations, S. raises some important questions and potential objections that could have been more deeply explored. He recuses himself from a discussion of the possibility of a ‘disturbed corpus with generally non-authorial ordering’ due to a ‘paucity of scholarship’ on the matter, remarking instead: ‘I do not fear any previous arguments for chaos. There are simply no grounds for denying Catullan arrangement such that a critic could ever agree that parts of it look like authorial books, but still reject the possibility that Catullus could have produced such things’ (37). Similarly, he dismisses the potential for any authorial design to have been disturbed by transmission (41). Though he does point to comprehensive overviews of these debates by others, the rigour he applies to his search for correspondences suggests he could have provided valuable insight on even these most intractable of Catullan questions.
Ultimately, S. — like most Catullan scholars before him — comes away from the corpus unsatisfied by its ending. The death of his brother coupled with Lesbia's potential marriage turned a sexually optimistic Catullus into a ‘traumatized man reasoning badly’ (215), as S. argues: ‘It is fine to see the sputtering, cage-rattling political rage of so much of poems 93–116 as dramatically caused and explained by their creator's unhappy mental state and the “madness” occasioned by his unhappy love: discontinuous, momentary shards of epigrammatic wit and perceptiveness, but within an overarching consciousness incapable of achieving any sustained or coherent (self-)perspective’ (216). In his conclusion, however, S. argues that, although the corpus might end with Poem 116, the overarching ‘drama of composition’ ends with ‘the most pitiable happy ending ever’ (238): Catullus and Lesbia never marry one another, but instead ‘will love each other forever, and their love will pile disaster upon disaster’ (238).
