No one can deny that the collection before us is a wild chaos.
B. Schmidt, ‘‘Die Lebenszeit Catulls und die Herausgabe seiner Gedichte’’
He has arranged his poetry book with the most careful consideration; if someone can’t see that, so much the worse for him.
U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Sappho und Simonides
After a full century and a half, the question of authorial design in the corpus of Catullus’ surviving poems - occasionally designated die Catullfrage, ‘‘the Catullan question,’’ as though it were the only one - continues to prove intractable. Yet, like Freud’s exasperated ‘‘What does a woman want?’’ it may be a question so framed as to discourage consensus. Although it appears to be one of fact - does the present order of the poems in the collection reflect the intentions of their author? - it is in actuality one of import based upon an observer’s subjective response to the liber Catullr. if the corpus is seen as coherent in whole or part, design is present, and such design presumably must be authorial. Perceptions of coherence, however, are largely determined by ideas of aesthetic propriety common to the larger culture, which in turn shape value-judgments. Is this an effective introduction/closure? Are the relationships (quantitative, thematic, verbal) among contiguous items significant enough to exclude chance placement? How much of a ‘‘fudge factor’’ is permissible in the case of elements that do not fit the pre-existing critical paradigm? The answers to such inquiries change over time, as expectations of art change. An account of the Catullan question offers a history in miniature of aesthetic reception in the West from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. Not surprisingly, growing willingness to observe purposeful assignment where none was admitted previously accompanies a growing appreciation of complexity, polyvalence, and dissonance in the literary product.
When scholars speak of ‘‘authorial arrangement,’’ they generally have in mind the internal order of poems within one division of the corpus, though many, particularly
In recent decades, have extended their investigations to the entire collection. The existence of c. 1, the dedication of a lepidus nouus libellus (‘‘charming new book’’) to Cornelius Nepos, indicates that during his life Catullus did assemble at least one volume of poetry. Length, however, discourages us from assuming that that solitary libellus can be identified with our present liber Catulli, which seems instead to have been compiled into codex form from independently circulating smaller units (although those units, some maintain, might have constituted an original tripartite edition). Specific references by the elder Pliny (HN 28.19), and by Servius in his commentary on line 2.95 of Vergil’s Georgics, to works not in the present collection imply that some pieces thought to be by the poet did not make it into the codex. As Butrica demonstrates (above, pp. 20-1), the generic divisions within the liber Catulli conform to the practice of Catullus’ contemporaries: the neoterics grouped their shorter pieces into collections of hendecasyllabics and lyrics or elegiac epigrams but issued their longer poems as solo works. Later testimonia refer to collections gener-ically (poemata, epigrammata) or by title, in the case of individual pieces, but do not cite book number - as one might expect had an author published his complete works all at once. At first glance, then, the external evidence is indecisive; some of it points one way, some the other.
In the chapter that follows I provide a history of this dispute and an assessment of the relevant arguments. While space set firm limits on the number of studies I was able to discuss, I have tried to take sufficient note of the most crucial ones. Although I have made several contributions of my own to the literature on the topic (Skinner 1981, 1988, 2003), I will refrain from advocating a specific position here, since it is essential for students of Catullus to acquaint themselves with the problem and its implications before drawing conclusions.
World History
