Did Catullus arrange the collection of poems we read today? S. tackles the perennial question in this artful monograph. His answer is one that builds on a certain scholarly consensus that has appeared in the past half century. Much in his argument will be familiar to Catullan scholars, but some of his interventions are radically new, and his scheme forms the framework for another quite original argument about a sequential narrative centred on poetry.
S. begins by introducing his schema for three authorially designed books: A (poems 1–51); B (61–4); and C (65–116). The further divisions within A and C will become clear, but the eagle-eyed will spot that there are some poems missing. Poems 52–60 form an unruly bunch. They must be ‘bracketed’ (p. 3) to unlock a compositional drama whereby ‘a striking metapoetical feature is repeatedly found at terminal and transitional moments’ (p. 7). Poems 1, 14, 50 and 51, 65, 68a, 68b and 116 ‘all feature the Catullan speaker representing and commenting on the artistic intention, conception, creation, textualization, and dedication of the Catullan poems themselves’ (p. 7).
A following prolegomenon surveys the problem in previous scholarship and discusses methodology, but let us set that aside and return to the more contentious bracketing. Chapter 1 aims to convince us that this ‘Appendix Catulliana’ differs from 1–51 so greatly that we should mentally ‘park’ it. S. does not deny that Catullus wrote 52–60, but considers these poems ‘artistically incongruous with the poems preceding them’ (p. 42), partly through their aggression and more explicit obscenity but also because no clear patterns can be found among them or between these poems and the rest. Amid the thicket of possible explanations offered, the main takeaway is that we must bracket them to perceive a pattern of parallels between the opening and closing points of A, B and C.
S. continues to explain this pattern in Chapter 2, which concerns A, a book divided into a highly patterned first half (subdivided into poems 1–14 and 14b–26) and a second half (27–51) of greater variety. The intricate patterning of 1–14 has been well studied; more original is S.'s argument that 14b–26 invert their themes as a literary joke and Saturnalian gift for Calvus. Poem 14 pre-programmes the jape. More analysis would have been welcome here. The Saturnalian frame could also illuminate themes of rusticity, hunger, satiety and poverty in 14b–26, and even their frequent disconnection of wealth from happiness and goodness.
The theory that the Juventius cycle is not serious prefigures another possibility for Ax, but where 14b–26 are ‘bad for health’ and hostile, these poems are simply bad. S. hypothesises that 52–60 might represent the improvising squibs exchanged by Catullus and Calvus per iocum atque vinum in poem 50. Comparing 14b–26 to this ‘meta-doggerel’ (p. 133), he posits that Catullus’ ‘art includes rougher and lower work, and it is part of the meta-artistry of the poems’ arrangement to frame, contextualize, even apologize for those parts’ (p. 132). I find this idea unlikely, but my main problem with it is that it conveniently explains whatever we find uncomfortable in Catullus’ work as performance art. Moreover, the associations S. makes between obscenity or aggression and artistic clumsiness do not capture the neoteric care Catullus put into his hating. A similar argument emerges in Chapter 4, where poems 93–116 are imagined as just the sort of rough and ready stuff that a poet in psychological crisis (sc. brother's death; erotic dramas) would write.
Chapters 3 and 4 concern parts B and C, the latter broken into C1 (65–68b; subdivided into 65–7 and 68a and 68b) and C2 (69–116; subdivided into 69–92 and 93–116). S. argues that B is not only foreshadowed in A but heavily signposted. Poems 34, 35 and 36 foretell the sequence of 62, 63 and 64, and poem 46 has a programmatic function, anticipating B's movement ‘to Troy’. Meanwhile, A's terminal poem 51 anticipates B's overall wedding theme. This argument partly depends upon some slight linguistic parallels; S. relies here on broader thematic similarities, and he continues to do so as he draws connections between B and C1, some of which are equally superficial. For example, 66 is not the first poem I think of upon reading 63, but apparently ‘poem 63 shares with 66 the conspicuous themes of bodily cutting and separation (Attis’ self-castration as religious devotion and Berenice's votive lock), as well as permanent and regretted spatial separation (Attis from his home and identity, the Lock from her mistress)’ (p. 149). These similarities serve to highlight the careful arrangement of B and C1, but they strike me as parallels found for the pattern rather than correspondences that naturally inspire speculation about authorial arrangement.
A weighty conclusion follows the thread of A, B and C to show how the corpus mirrors a master narrative found in poem 64, whereby ‘a man goes on a journey, meets a princess, and falls in love so immediately and intensely that he and his beloved ignore the consequences of their actions until, eventually, disaster strikes’ (p. 226), and, significantly, this ruin befalls not the lovers but their families. Pursuing the clues from A onwards, S. casts Catullus and Lesbia in the lead roles of a more quotidian boy-meets-girl epic. When Catullus’ brother dies, he is simply fulfilling the song of the Parcae. In C Catullus can only echo Ariadne in his blind attempts to rationalise and to break free. Some allusions to Troy found by S. are strained: I cannot see, for example, how sed identidem omnium | ilia rumpens (Catull. 11.19–20) works as ‘a repeated She-who-destroyed-Troy for them all’ (p. 219). On another level, this master narrative feels right as it accounts for the uneasiness provoked when the Lesbia story comes to a ‘happy ever after’ end in 107 and 109. As S. comments, it is ‘The most pitiable happy ending, ever’ (p. 238). The conclusion abruptly turns to the identity of the passer and, after an eye-opening examination of the possibility that it represents Lesbia's clitoris, S. argues that the passer represents Lesbia's poetry; when it dies, Catullus is politely covering the fact that Lesbia was no Sappho. This revelation leads S. to some elusive reflections on the tragedy of Catullus’ character.
This is a work for scholars and advanced postgraduates who are intimately familiar with Catullus’ work and the scholarship. There are few translations of Latin and Greek quotations, at times hindering a nuanced understanding of the arguments. Untranslated German terms are sprinkled throughout, and S.'s clever prose sets the reader to work. Footnotes are surprisingly sparse: a reader unfamiliar with the vast ocean of Catullan scholarship may be at a loss if s/he wants to dive deeper. The work was carefully produced and has few errors, though footnote 21 on p. 51 refers to poem 58 as an attack on Mamurra and Caesar where 57 is clearly intended; and where C2 is printed on p. 148 (‘the tidiest usual model for the responsion between B and C2’) and p. 150 (‘single dubiously fitting piece in B and C2’), in both cases C1 is surely meant.
It is difficult to provide an interpretation of Catullus’ poetry that takes account of its thematic, stylistic and metrical complexity and aims to answer the question of design. Catullus constructs a pervasive personal mythology that connects quite disparate parts of the collection. Should it prompt us to remove from our consideration a whole stretch of poems that do not engage with it to the same extent? I am not convinced that the correspondences in Catullan idiolect adduced by S. necessarily drive us towards that, but this is a valuable monograph, refreshing for its willingness to consider possibilities. All Catullan scholars will need to give some thought to this rich and adventurous study.
