Perhaps the least controversial and the least interesting programmatic poems are those that refer only to the book the reader is reading. The first poem does more than that as it lays out a general aesthetic, but other poems, like poem 27 above, seem to introduce only a change in the contents of Catullus’ book. Another example would be the fragment5 attached to the end of poem 14:
If there will happen to be any readers
Of my foolishness, and if you will not be horrified
To touch us with your hands...
Like poem 27, this poem can be read as introducing a new group of poems, the Furius, Aurelius, Juventius cycle (15, 16, 21,6 23, 24, 26), which indulge overtly sexual themes (Wiseman 1969: 7-10), or it may be read as marking the entire sequence from 15 to 26 as a series of ineptiae, ‘‘instances of foolishness,’’ ironically meant, of course (Forsyth 1989: 81-5).
A more complex and elusive example would be poem 65. In this poem Catullus promises his friend a poem, a translation of Callimachus. In other words, it is a poem that introduces poetry and talks about poetry. The poem also comes at the point in the libellus where Catullus begins a sequence of long poems in elegiac couplets (65-8) followed by a sequence of epigrams, also in elegiac couplets (69-116). In other words, poem 65 seems to be the first poem in a sequence or book of elegiacs. Clues like this suggest that it can or should be read both in terms of the contents of the poems to follow and in terms of Catullus’ general aesthetic. What can we discover if we do that?
Catullus mentions ‘‘Callimachean songs’’ in only two places in his corpus: poem 65 and poem 116. Since ‘‘ring-composition’’ is common in Catullus’ poetry, this can be taken as further evidence that these poems mark the beginning and the ending of a sequence (Macleod 1973; Forsyth 1977b: 352-3). Furthermore, poems 1, 65, and 116 all use poetic gift-giving as a way of negotiating the social space in Rome, a task especially important if one is a noble at home in the provinces, as Catullus was, but a newcomer with few connections in Rome (Clausen 1976: 37; W. J. Tatum 1997). One critic notes that poem 65 marks a transition back to more personal poetry after the epyllion, poem 64 (King 1988). Others call attention to the claim: ‘‘I will always sing songs saddened by your death.’’ Quinn comments: ‘‘Was the statement... retained by Catullus, as seeming to him the right light in which to view the whole body of his elegiac poetry? Not all of the elegiac pieces are sad in any simple sense of the word. It is true none the less that the gaiety of 1-60 is conspicuously absent and that a new sardonic note preponderates’’ (1972b: 265). Putting all this together, it becomes possible to read poem 65 as the first of a sequence of poems, one that announces a change in meter, subject matter, and tone, while declaring again the poet’s Callimachean affiliations and emphasizing the social function of poetry.
All this seems plausible and interesting, but it depends upon major assumptions about the Catullan corpus. What if Catullus did not arrange his own poetry in the order in which we have it? Or, what if poem 65 begins a new book, instead of a new sequence, or if the sequence 65 introduces ends with the complex Callimachean elegy, 68b, on Laodamia and his brother’s death? And, what if a reader refuses to accept the possibility that a poem like c. 85 is saddened by the death of Catullus’ brother?
I hate and I love. Why do I do it, perhaps you ask I don’t know. It happens, I feel it, I’m tortured.
Or that a poem like c. 93 is in any meaningful way ‘‘sad’’?
I have no particular desire, Caesar, to want to please you nor to know if your skin is light or dark.
We will come back to these issues, but it seems useful to make one observation. At some point, ‘‘programmatic readings’’ depend upon assumptions that they can only support by circularity: e. g., poem 65 introduces an elegiac sequence because it is programmatic and, since it is programmatic, poem 93 must be read elegiacally. This is in the nature of a programmatic statement: it makes a general claim which requires (or compels) a complementary reading of other poems. Of course, if other poems contradict the claim, then either the programmatic reading is incorrect or it must be reread as ironic. This means that a ‘‘programmatic poem’’ does not tell you what you will find in the corpus or how to read it, but is the beginning of a relational activity: the ‘‘programmatic’’ language is adjusted to the reader’s understanding of the corpus and vice versa.
World History
