Numerous poets through the ages, both male and female, have translated and imitated Sappho’s fragment 31. Catullus’ translation, however, is generally considered to come closest to the original.9 A central theme of both poems is the exploration of a conflict between the experience of the poet as someone who can speak about his or her desire and is, therefore, an integrated self, and the experience of the poet as a lover who, when faced with desire for the beloved, undergoes a nearly total collapse of the self. The power of both the Sapphic and Catullan versions, in large part, depends on the paradox of being able to speak so eloquently about the inability to speak in the presence of the beloved.
The narrative situation in the two poems is quite similar; both Sappho and Catullus describe a scene in which they observe the female beloved with a male rival. Although both poems at the outset describe an erotic triangle, Catullus pictures himself rivaling another male for the attentions of Lesbia, while Sappho appears to compete with a man for the affections of an unnamed woman. While the figure of woman in Sappho’s poem is both subject and object of desire, in Catullus’ version the woman, Lesbia, is only in the object position (cf. Miller 1994: 102). Insofar as Lesbia’s name evokes Sappho, it is quite plausible to think that Catullus’ object of desire is Sappho herself: in addition to describing the effects of desire on him when he sees Lesbia, he is also describing the effects that Sappho’s poetry has on him (i. e., it renders him ‘‘speechless’’). I will return to this conceivable subtext of Catullus 51 when I discuss the representation of Lesbia in poem 11 below. Nonetheless, by making the speaker of the poem male, Catullus recontextualizes Sappho’s poem as heterosexual; he replaces Sappho, the speaking, desiring subject, with himself. This creates a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, it serves to feminize Catullus by identifying him with Sappho in her role as the female lover and pursuer of a beloved and, on the other, it erases the ‘‘feminine signature’’ of the poem by turning a female homoerotic situation into a conventional love triangle where two males compete for one woman. In what follows I will explore this paradox, focusing on the ways Catullus appropriates the Sapphic paradigm of erotic desire to express his own ambivalence about Roman ideals of masculinity and sexuality.
Both Sappho and Catullus present opening scenarios in which they are external observers of their beloved, who is seemingly engaged in intimate, though non-sexual, contact with a male rival. And both refer to this rival as god-like, partly because he can claim the beloved’s attentions, but more importantly because he appears to remain miraculously unmoved in the presence of the desired woman. In both poems, the man is unnamed and rapidly fades out of sight. In Catullus’ translation, however, this figure (ille) dominates the first stanza of the poem, whereas, in Sappho’s original, the man serves primarily to point up the contrast between the impassivity he exhibits and Sappho’s highly charged emotional responses to her female beloved. Indeed, the opening phrase in Sappho’s poem, ‘‘it seems to me’’ (phainetai moi), focuses attention on the speaker herself rather than on her object of desire, thus suggesting that from the beginning Sappho is primarily engaged with her own perceptions and imagination rather than the presence of potential or actual rivals.
By contrast, Catullus begins his poem by repeatedly mentioning ‘‘that man.’’ This suggests that the speaker’s main focus of attention is not the object of desire, the woman, but the presence of another man. Indeed, the second line in Catullus’ poem, ‘‘that man, if it is allowed, seems to surpass the gods,’’ has no equivalent in the Sapphic original. Like Sappho, Catullus compares the unnamed man to a god, but in the second line goes further by saying that the man in fact surpasses the gods. This emphasis on a hierarchical relationship between man and god reinforces an ambiance of rivalry and competition between the man who can gaze at Lesbia without any apparently disruptive effects and the wretched lover (Catullus) who cannot. Moreover, the phrase si fas est in the second line invokes a social and political context almost entirely absent from Sappho’s poem. Although Catullus links himself, through his translation, to the Sapphic tradition of presenting eros as both disabling and disruptive to the lover, he nonetheless situates the voice of the lover in relation to male public culture. ‘‘If it is allowed’’ not only diverts attention from the dramatic situation of erotic encounter, but also evokes the moral hierarchies and responsibilities associated with the socio-political order, an order from which Roman women were largely excluded.
Furthermore, by giving so much prominence to the presence of‘‘that man’’ and to the power the ‘‘other’’ seems to have in contrast with himself, Catullus adds an important dimension to the situation of erotic triangulation envisioned in Sappho’s original. In Sappho’s poem, the man and the exterior world in general are subordinated to the sweet sound and lovely laughter of the desired woman. The poem quickly turns away from the opening scene of heterosexual courtship to Sappho’s intense engagement with her own emotional responses. In Catullus’ poem, however, the masculine world of business and power politics (negotium) serves as a backdrop against which the speaker depicts his private passions. In other words, the primary relationship in the poem is not between Catullus and his beloved, but between the speaker and ‘‘that man’’ - the figure who embodies not only the contingencies of the exterior world for the lover (as in Sappho’s poem) but the pressures of negotium in general. The man who rivals Catullus for Lesbia’s attentions is apparently able to withstand the temptations of love. In the context of Roman culture, the fact that ‘‘the man’’ can gaze at Lesbia without any unsettling effects means that he is free to attend to his duties to the community; thus, his imperviousness to Lesbia’s charms attests to his ‘‘manliness.’’ The contrast between ‘‘that man’’ and the unhappy lover (Catullus), then, represents a way for Catullus to explore not merely different responses to amatory experience but, more importantly, uncertainties and anxieties about pursuing the erotic life in the context of a culture that values duty over private pleasure.
On the surface, the descriptions of the loss of voice and identity brought on by the sight of the beloved appear to be quite similar in the two poems. The Sapphic and Catullan narrators are both robbed of their faculties, both seem to experience a sense of dissolution and bodily fragmentation at the sight of their beloveds. Like ‘‘that man,’’ Catullus too gazes at the woman. Thus we can see a direct contrast between the power of the other man to gaze and the weakness that overwhelms Catullus at a mere glance. In Sappho’s poem ‘‘the man’’ loses definition almost immediately, whereas Catullus sustains the image of the man’s distinct identity by referring to him with a much greater degree of specificity. The presence of Catullus’ male rival persists in the contrast implicitly maintained throughout the poem between the man who can resist Lesbia’s charms - and is thus a man in the Roman sense of not indulging in excessive emotion - and Catullus, who cannot help giving into his unruly emotions (thereby becoming feminized). In a number of the poems about Lesbia (see in particular cc. 8 and 76), Catullus admonishes himself for his overindulgence in pleasure and his attendant lack of moral resolve. In those poems, he tells himself to stop behaving like a woman, that is to say, like a person who feels victimized by love and desire. And that is precisely what appears to happen to Catullus in poem 51 - he, like Sappho in poem 31, is robbed of his senses when he sees his mistress.
Sappho describes her breakdown at the sight of her beloved by cataloguing the fragmentation of her own body. While Catullus says that his wretched condition leads to all his senses being stolen from him, Sappho refers only to her separate body parts. She describes herself as a collection of disparate parts that have ‘‘wandered off from herself.’’ Near the end of the poem, Sappho’s declaration that she appears to herself to be little short of dying reinforces the sense of bodily alienation and fragmentation that seems to characterize her experience of self. Indeed, the four complete stanzas of the poem are framed by the verb ‘‘to seem.’’ The opening line, ‘‘he seems to me,’’ refers to the man as the object of the speaker’s gaze, while in stanza 4 the speaker uses the verb ‘‘seem’’ in the first person (phainom'). She now becomes the object of her own gaze; her expression in line 16, ‘‘I am greener than grass,’’ reinforces the sense in which the speaker sees herself as if from outside. This suggests increased emotional control on Sappho's part, which culminates in her ability to address herself in a voice of confident self-assertion when, in line 18, she tells herself that all her symptoms can be endured. The imperative tone of that statement (G. Wills 1967: 190) implies that Sappho has not only achieved some sort of recovery but also reconstituted herself out of the experience of being broken by love.
While Catullus also pictures himself robbed of his faculties, he does so in a way that is markedly different from Sappho. He begins by saying that all his senses have been stolen from him and that nothing remains for him. Although Catullus appears to imitate Sappho’s description of emotional and bodily disintegration, his use of omnis and nihil seems rather to suggest the persistence of an integral identity. In Sappho’s poem, on the other hand, the self is systematically broken down into its component parts. The most striking image of bodily disintegration there is the image of the broken tongue. Catullus, however, describes his physical symptoms, including his
Vocal rupture, in a way that suggests, at most, only partial disintegration. In the first place, he describes his tongue not as broken but as merely sluggish or numb ( torpet). While Sappho says in line 11 that ‘‘at once a thin flame runs under my skin,’’ Catullus describes the fire as flowing down under his limbs. The change from ‘‘runs under’’ (upadedrOmeken) to ‘‘flows down’’ (demanat) and the omission of the adverbial phrase ‘‘at once’’ diminish the sense of urgency in the dislocation of self brought on by the sight of the beloved. Moreover, while Sappho declares that ‘‘there is no sight in my eyes,’’ and that her ‘‘ears hum,’’ Catullus tells us that his ‘‘ears ring / with their own sound’’ and that his ‘‘eyes are covered / with a double night.’’ Employment of hyperbole in both these images, intensifying the Sapphic references to lack of sight and humming ears, not only calls attention to his own self-conscious artistry but also draws us away from the immediacy of erotic encounter. The self-reflexiveness in the image of ears ringing ‘‘with their own sound’’ (sonitu suopte) and the fact that a distinct obstruction to sight has closed over him in the image of the double night reinforce the way in which Catullus is cut off from the world, more absorbed in his own image-making than in the effect of the beloved’s presence on him.
Sappho's images of disintegration, on the other hand, have an immediacy and vitality that constantly remind us of the unsettling effect the beloved's presence has on her. While Catullus begins his description of his physical symptoms by saying that all senses are taken from him and that nothing remains in him, Sappho tells us only that ‘‘something’'’ has excited or stirred the heart in her breast. Moreover, her emphasis on the general nature of her desire, reflected in her statement about how she feels ‘‘whenever’’ (os...ido) she sees her beloved, evokes the repetition and regeneration of desire. While desire has shattered Sappho and brought her to a place near death, it has also engendered the awareness of continuity, of the potential for the renewal of erotic experience through recollection of the beloved. From the outset, Sappho presents herself as being in a heightened state of sensual arousal in the presence of the loved one, whereas Catullus in the same situation describes himself as devoid of his faculties: ‘‘nothing/remains for me.’’ Further, the specificity in naming his beloved and in describing his gaze in the historic perfect tense, nam simul te... aspexi (‘‘for as soon/as I have seen you’’), implies a temporality that distances the speaker from the immediacy of erotic encounter, and suggests that desire in Catullus' poem is for him not completely debilitating, nor does it offer potential for erotic renewal in the face of abandonment or separation.
Sappho’s description of her ‘‘breakdown’’ involves a breathless piling up of symptoms that goes on for nearly three stanzas. Despite the fact that she is describing how desire has robbed her of her powers, of her very control over her bodily functions, she exhibits intense erotic control in affirming the degree to which her senses are aroused by the sight of the beloved. Sappho’s images of speechlessness, sweat, trembling, fire under the skin, and in general an overwhelming of the senses leading to near death suggest the completion and climax of the sexual act. By contrast, Catullus condenses the description of his symptoms into one stanza, beginning with the image of his sluggish tongue and ending with the image of eyes covered with a double night. Nothing in Catullus’ description of his responses to Lesbia’s presence evokes the vitality of erotic encounter. Rather, the images in his description have a gloomy self-referentiality that emphasizes the way in which desire turns the speaker in on himself and separates him from the world of negotium evoked in the opening stanza.
In the last stanza of his poem,10 Catullus turns abruptly away from his interior world of poetic images and back toward male public culture.11 After describing the devastating effect of Lesbia’s presence upon him, and in particular how it seems to separate him from the outside world, he then awakens suddenly as if from a bad dream and warns himself about the dangers of otium (‘‘leisure, idleness’’). Otium was considered to be directly opposed to negotium; it constituted an antithesis to the public life and meant living a life free from the burdens of official duties and responsibilities. More than that, otium is associated with the ‘‘frivolous,’’ un-Roman pursuits of love and poetry.12 The implication in Catullus’ apparent rejection of a life devoted to such matters is that otium has caused him harm because it has led him to abandon not only his duties to the community but also his rationality. Catullus’ words to himself in line 14, ‘‘you revel in leisure and you desire excessively,’’ recall Cicero’s description (and implicit condemnation) of a man conquered by emotion.13 Succumbing to private passions was considered not only ‘‘unmanly’’ but morally weak as well. As Catharine Edwards points out, ‘‘those who could not govern themselves, whose desires were uncontrollable, were thought to be unfit to rule the state’’ (1993: 26). Capacity for self-regulation was thought to be crucial if one were to maintain dignitas or social standing - without which a Roman male could not function adequately in the world of Roman politics and power relations.
Indulgence in otium, therefore, is an indulgence in the pleasures oflove and poetry, pleasures associated with the world of beauty and imagination evoked in the poems of Catullus’ literary model, Sappho. Catullus implies in the last two lines of the poem that otium destroys the speaking subject in the same way that it has caused the downfall of kings and ‘‘blessed cities.’’ But otium does not destroy the lover; rather, it creates the conditions that make love and love poetry possible. By linking erotic desire with the destructive force attributed to otium, Catullus reveals the extent to which the experience of erotic desire provokes conflict in him. He is clearly attracted to the Sapphic ideal - a life devoted to love, beauty, and the poetic imagination - yet this ideal opposes traditional Roman values associated with the publicly committed military or political life of a Roman male citizen (Ancona 2002: 173). The last stanza of Catullus’ poem does not, in my view, resolve these oppositions between Sapphic and Roman ideals. At most, he may implicitly be expressing the hope at the end that an adherence to traditional Roman ideals will enable him to get over not only his indulgence in love but also his identification with the more private, feminine world epitomized by Sappho. His poem, however, does raise the issue of whether otium, and by extension the poet-lover, has any place in the world of empire. Indeed, Catullus’ concern about the potential dangers of otium may be regarded as an inquiry into the possibilities of living a life of passion and imagination in a culture that values negotium more than otium and, at the same time, considers virtue synonymous with masculinity. The unresolved disjunction between masculine and feminine, public and private, business (negotium) and leisure (otium) reminds us, at the end, not of the comparison between the nameless, powerful ‘‘other man’’ and the anguished lover, but of Catullus’ own conflict in resolving the contradictions between desire and the normative conceptions of Roman masculinity (i. e., duty, rationality, honor). That conflict gets played out even more dramatically in Catullus 11, the only other poem written in the Sapphic meter.
World History
