Worst Professor Ever

Dr. $hiraz has been suggesting that we campaign for Catullus Fridays instead of casual Fridays. (Of course, she has also been suggesting that Russell Brand should be smeared with Nutella. Don’t ask.)

If you take Latin, Vergil is the standard fourth-semester author, the idea being that since this is likely your last semester of Latin, you can’t leave without experiencing the wonder that is The Aeneid.  I assume so, anyway, because Vergil is certainly not the easiest way to dive into Latin poetry.

But if I had to pick a Latin author that everyone should read, it would be CATULLUS.

As with Sappho, most of Catullus’ stuff is short. But when you’re ready to go long, Catullus 64 is a baby epic (call it an “epillion” if you absolutely must, but don’t expect me to.) Much better than jumping straight into Vergil.

There’s even a very nice site on Catullus, courtesy of VRoma and H.J. Walker, with good facing translations and social context, if you’d like to check it out.

Catullus’ poems are about shirking duty, falling in and out of love, and swearing at your friends — easily accessible topics for a modern audience.  One of my favorite teaching moments was when a student announced that because of a breakup she was really “feeling” Catullus 85.  (“I hate and I love. You ask why? I don’t know, but I know it’s true and I’m torturing myself.” That’s the whole poem, right there.)

Catullus died young, and his poems of youthful rebellion are completely appropriate for adolescent students. Honestly, I’ve never understood why you’d torture them with anything else. I think it’s the mentality that you should “earn” the fun stuff by slogging through Cicero’s mind-numbingly boring treatises first. Yeah, that’s some pretty poor marketing right there.

I think we should highlight the fact that you can use “skullfuck” (irrumabo in poem 16) to translate Catullus’ poetry. But no, R-rated Catullus has given generations of stuffy translators problems. As has the fact that Catullus writes powerful good love poetry when he wants to. In writing about his love affair with Lesbia,  Catullus translated Sappho’s famous poem, for example, and talks about all sorts of pretty stuff — giving enough kisses to lose count (5), more kisses than grains of sand(7), etc. etc. Very useful for seduction, at least if you’re a certain age.

I think we moderns have difficulty reconciling the “dirty” poetry with the PG-13 poetry. Even classicists often want it to be an either/or situation. You can’t choose; even when Catullus is swearing he’s doing it in difficult meter. You can put it down to his persona being less stable than Sappho’s or, as is more reasonable, you can take is as an indication that real people don’t often have perfectly reconciled personas.

Christotechne posted on the usefulness of poetic chunks; as I remarked to her, Catullus’ chunks are great to  play around with. Above you can see what happened when Dr. $hiraz charged me with defacing her new furniture so it looked like “a proper picnic table.” I used a Catullan term, thinking it was appropriate for the task.

Maybe that’s why I like Catullus so much, because he encourages a creative approach to knowledge. As you can tell from the photos, one of my ongoing projects is finding ways to visually represent classical authors. That instantaneous recognition, without having to explain, is more effective than even the best translation. That’s why reciting something verbatim isn’t enough; it’s more interesting to see if you can reproduce or reinterpret it. And you can only riff on something effectively if you know it really well. That’s why rote memorization can never be be the end-all, be-all of learning, even if it’s a necessary step.

Anyway, the above graffiti was just a test-run, and perhaps we’ll inaugurate Catullus Fridays by pulling out the jackknife and giving it our best shot. Obviously, we’ll need to read some Catullus for inspiration.

Tags: AP, Aurelius, Catullus, Clodia, Furius, graffiti, high school, Lesbia, photography, riff, visual art, writing