Catullus 16 Translation

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Introduction

 

It is not too often that you read a classical work that will rival George Carlin in the need for “bleeped” out words, but Carmen 16 definitely fills the bill. In the very first line, Catullus tells Aurelius and Furius that precisely what he wants to do to them in response to their implications that he is not a man. Google Translate interprets the first line as “I’ll inflict anal and oral sex upon you.” Our own interpretation is “sodomize and clintonize”, and other interpreters give even ruder expression to this first line. One suspects that this blunt threat is in response to disparaging remarks that have been made about Catullus by the two gentlemen in question. It is certainly an attention-getter worthy of any streetfighter or perhaps even of a terrorist who is trying to invoke a fight.

Catullus then goes on to say that the men in question have accused him of immodesty. Modesty was an odd concept in classical Roman times. It referenced reputation, public behavior, and a somewhat spartan life-style – at least in public. Public purity was even a political platform, hence Julius Caesar’s statement that the wife of Caesar should be above reproach. The personal behavior of a Roman soldier might not conform to our modern-day interpretation of “modest.” Yet the poem was censured even in Catullus’ own day by subsequent historians. Perhaps this was one reason that his work did not re-surface until the middle ages.

As shocking as such an opening line might be in the twenty-first century, where rap artists use words and concepts banned from classrooms and polite conversation as a means of shocking and drawing attention, in the Middle Ages when Catullus’ work was re-discovered and became popular, it was even more shocking. Some collections of his work left Carmen 16 out completely, some left the first two lines in Latin, while others simply began the poem with the third line.

Although it might still make sense to begin the verse with the line, “You who think me immodest . . .” it destroys the poetic symmetry of the piece. In the full version, the opening line is also the closing one. In 1974, translator Carl Sesar published a book entitled, “From Catullus” in which he gives a playful (and still pointed) version of Carmen 16. Leonard C. Smithers, Ed., gives a similarly tongue in cheek interpretation. In both cases, they indicated that in the original, Catullus both began and ended the work with the threat to his disparagers.

Lengthy papers have been written about this poem, its crude language, its threat and the way that it turns tables on Catullus’ critics. Having effectively gotten his audience’s attention by threatening Aureli and Furi with prurient mayhem, he gentles down a little and lets the rest of us in on why he is so angry with this pair.

“Just because I’m writing about thousands of kisses,” he says, “That doesn’t mean that I am not capable. Nor does it mean that I am not chaste (purity was a big deal with the Romans). Then he pokes fun at the two who disparaged him. “Did you get excited by what I wrote? Hmmm? Look at you! Two big, hairy men, not untried youths who might be forgiven for feeling a little tingle when reading about someone else’s lovemaking. Did it give you a thrill? You know what, guys, I bet if it stiffened you up, you couldn’t do anything about it, you are so old and fossilized.”

Then he winds the poem back around toward the beginning. “You think I’m effeminate? Come on over here, fellas, and I’ll show you how it’s done!” And he then repeats the threatening first line.

This is a classical poetic structure, and well worth studying for the sake of that alone. The lines are written in hendecasyllabic mode, which is a pattern of eleven syllables. Tennyson and Frost both wrote poems using the same structure. In these poems, the sixth and the tenth syllables are stressed, giving an uneven but dynamic rhythm to the work. In effect, Catullus has turned tables on his detractors saying, “Ha! Caught you looking. My little verses turned you on, and you can’t handle it.”

However, this poem does something more than just shaking a metaphorical fist or flying the bird at literary critics. It has a message quite beyond those things. Catullus is making a specific point. “Look,” he says, “What I write about isn’t me. I can write about 30,000 kisses. That doesn’t mean that’s all I do behind closed doors. It doesn’t even mean I do anything behind closed doors. I can write about kisses all day long. It doesn’t mean that I’m running around all over Rome indiscriminately kissing people. A poet is entitled to poetic license.”

Poetic license is the concept of where, when and how a writer can take liberties with observable truth so that he or she can write about Truth with a capital T. Without it, satire, lampoons, or even entertaining fiction would become difficult to write.

In addition, he is pointing out that just writing about something doesn’t make it so in the writer’s life. “Just because my poems are immodest,” he writes, “That does not mean that I am.” He was pointing out that a writer, an artist or a performer can fulfill a role in their art without partaking of that role in private life. It could be equally noted that an actor, writer or artist who portrays innocence and gentleness in their art, might not be such a person in real life.

This concept alone makes this poem a pivotal piece of literature. Adding that it is one of the earliest examples of banned or bowdlerized pieces of literature, is just icing on the cake of “special” that can be awarded to this short poem.

One has to wonder how Catullus might have felt about this particular piece becoming both famous and infamous down through the ages since it was written. Would he feel embarrassed that this short, poetic insult should be so well remembered? Or would he feel that he was now justified in having written it? After all, it has long outlived its subjects. While it is not necessarily on the tip of everyone’s tongue, it is certainly well preserved and has become well-known in literary circles.

Perhaps, in the long run, this is a superb example of the pen being mightier than the sword. While Aurelius and Furius might yet be remembered because they were part of the political scene while Julius Caesar was rising to power and the Roman Republic was becoming the Roman Empire, how well would they be remembered without this furious literary rebuttal to their insinuations? It is difficult to say.

But the poem is well-remembered. One has to wonder how many schoolboys surreptitiously translated this one when they were supposed to be focusing on more serious works, such as Carmen 64. Certainly, once Carlin’s “Words you Can’t Say on Television (or radio)” became accepted, translations of this particular poem surfaced. Some are serious. Some are more silly and playful, but the two individuals skewered by Catullus’ literary lance (in whatever position might be preferred) have certainly achieved a sort of infamous mortality that they might find quite an insult to their modesty and purity.

Carmen 16

 
LineLatin textEnglish translation
1

PEDICABO ego uos et irrumabo, 

I’ll sodomize and clintonize you,

2

Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi, 

oral Aurelius and anal Furius,

3

qui me ex uersiculis meis putastis, 

who have supposed me to be immodest, on account of my verses, 

4

quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum. 

because these are rather voluptuous and not very modest. 

5

nam castum esse decet pium poetam 

For the sacred poet ought to be chaste himself, 

6

ipsum, uersiculos nihil necesse est; 

his verses need not be so;

7

qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem, 

which, in the end, only have wit and charm

8

si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici, 

if they are rather voluptuous and not very modest,

9

et quod pruriat incitare possunt, 

and are able to stimulate desire,

10

non dico pueris, sed his pilosis 

and I don’t mean in boys, but in these hairy men

11

qui duros nequeunt mouere lumbos. 

who cannot move their stiff thighs.

12

uos, quod milia multa basiorum 

Just because you read about many thousands of kisses,

13

legistis, male me marem putatis? 

do you think I am not a real man?

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Resources

 

VRoma Project: http://www.vroma.org/~hwalker/VRomaCatullus/016x.html

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