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Hidden Kisses in Catullus: Poems 5,6,7 and 8
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Extract
Poems 5, 6, 7 and 8 of Catullus form an interconnected series. Catullus draws them together by referring to notions of display and concealment in a love affair. In particular, Catullus explores a paradox inherent in the competing needs to keep a relationship a secret and to announce it to the wider public. In the tongue-wagging world of Rome, hiding the existence of an affair, as Flavius attempts to do in poem 6, can never be successful and will attract the suspicious minds and cruel tongues of observers; hence Catullus advocates that Flavius confess, in order to control the gossip, in the case of poem 6, from Catullus himself. On the other hand, ostentatious display of felicity in love has the power to evoke the inuidia of the observer which can manifest itself in a hex upon the affair: to counter this, in poems 5 and 7, Catullus recommends that the affair, or at least its precise details, be hidden from those who would watch in an envious spirit (5.11-13, 7.11-12). There is something fundamentally perplexing about 5 and 7, since Catullus proclaims what he would conceal, leaving himself, his girl and his affair exposed to the inuidia he wishes to avoid.
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References
1 On the interconnectedness of Catullus' poems in general, cf. M.B. Skinner, Catullus' Passer; The Arrangement of the Book of Polymetric Poems (New York 1981)Google Scholar; Claes, P., Concatenatici Catulliana: A New Reading of the Carmina (Amsterdam 2002)Google Scholar; on links between the poems under scrutiny in this paper, cf. Segal, C.P., “The Order of Catullus: Poems 2-11’, Latomus 27 (1968) 305–321 Google Scholar; Skinner, , Catullus' Passer (above) 29-33, 40–1Google Scholar; Claes (above) 60-2; Fitzgerald, W., Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position (Berkeley 1995) 53–4Google Scholar; Wray, D., Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (Cambridge 2001) 145–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hubbard, T.K., ‘The Catullan Libellus ’, Philologus 127 (1983) 218–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiseman, T.P., Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal (Cambridge 1985) 139–44Google Scholar; Forsyth, P.Y., ‘Catullus 6: Theme and Content’, in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History V (Brussels 1989) 96–7Google Scholar.
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3 As C.J. Fordyce notes, vive is a colloquialism for imperative es, but in conjunction with miser it may be felt to negate uiuamus in 5.1, ‘let us live life to the full;’ cf. Fordyce, , Catullus: A Commentary (Oxford 1978) ad locGoogle Scholar.
4 facio, in the sense ‘make up a total’, is provocatively transferred from the sphere of accountancy to kisses: cf. Fordyce (n. 3) ad loc.
3 For a thorough and interesting exploration of this pair, cf. Segal, , ‘Catullus 5 and 7: A Study in Complementarities’, AJP 89 (1968) 284–301 Google Scholar.
6 In this conclusion I have been anticipated by Forsyth (n. 1) 94-7; for a similar position, cf. Hubbard (n. 1)228.
7 Cf. Barton 1993 (n. 2) 94, on the link between malicious seeing and evil speech.
8 On inuidere = ‘to cast the evil eye’, cf. Fordyce (n. 3) ad loc.
9 On the sun as observer, see Enn, . Scaen. 234 Google Scholar Jocelyn, with his n. ad loc.; Ov, . Met. 2.32 Google Scholar, Fast. 4.581 Google Scholar; Tac, . Ann. 15.74 Google Scholar.
10 This resembles the speaking door of poem 67. See Deuling's paper in this issue.
11 As Fordyce (n. 3) noted on Catull. 68.72, argutus and its cognates are used of anything that makes a sharp impression on the senses, most often of hearing.
12 Contrast, for example, the noonday sexual rendezvous of Canili. 32 or Ov, . Am. 1.5 Google Scholar — though in the latter case at least the sexual transaction takes place in artificial half light.
13 On fascinare and its associations with the evil eye, see Fordyce (n. 3) ad loc.; on the nexus of baleful associations between the curiosi and the term fascinare, see Barton 1993 (n. 2), 89-90, 95-8.
14 See nn. 21-2.
15 On the extreme nature of the insult nescio quidfebriculosi scorti, see Morgan, M.G., ‘ Nescio quidfebriculosi scorti: a note on Catullus 6’, CQ 27 (1977) 338–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Cf. Ov, . Ars 3.538 Google Scholar: et multi, quae sit nostra Corinna, rogant. On the name ‘Lesbia’ and the implications of using a cover-name, see Wiseman (n. 1) 130-6.
17 See Nappa, C., Aspects of Catullus' Social Fiction (Frankfurt am Main 2001) 53–6Google Scholar. The idea might be extended to poem 37, where Catullus, attacking the lovers of Lesbia who have taken up residence in a salax taberna, threatens to inscribe its frontage with sopiones (line 10), which seem to be phallic graffiti ( Adams, J.N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary [London 1982] 64 Google Scholar). In a sense, then, the poem enacts at a verbal level what the sopiones will do at the visual, that is to say, it will irrumate the offending parties (lines 8-9).
18 On the apotropaic function of the phallus, cf. Herter, H. ‘Phallos’ RE 19 (1938) 1681–1748 Google Scholar; on the connection between inuidia and the evil eye, which Catullus makes in these poems, and the phallus, cf. Barton 1993 (n. 2) 91-5 (eye), 95-8 (phallus), which includes discussion of fascinum as a term for the phallus, an item which has the power to avert the evil eye, and hence to protect against those who would ‘fascinate’ (fascinare): Barton's material strengthens the idea that Catullus alludes to the powers of his poem as phallic; also Tupet, A.-M., La magie dans la poésie latine: des origines à la fin au règne d'Auguste, Société d'édition “Les belles lettres” (Paris 1976) 178–81Google Scholar.
19 For contrasting readings of poem 6, cf. conveniently Rohdich, H., ‘Liebe, Gesellschaft, Dichtung: Catull c. 6’, A&A 46 (2000) 116–23Google Scholar; also Uden, J. ‘ Scortum diligis: A Reading of Catullus 6’, CQ 55 (2005) 638–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Cf. n. 18 above.
21 Notably mala fascinare lingua (line 12), which conflates the ideas of casting the evil eye and harmful talk.
22 The darker tone of this poem is discussed by Segal (n. 5) 298-301; also Wiseman (n. 1) 141; on the way the tone of poem 7 foreshadows the ‘break-up’ of poem 8, cf. Rankin, H.D., “The Progress of Pessimism in Catullus, Poems 2-11’, Latomus 31 (1972) 744–51Google Scholar.
23 Cf. Wray (n. 1) 113-29, on male aggression in the Roman world and in Catullus, particularly verbal aggression as seen in Catullus' poems.
24 No explicit reason is given in the poem for Lesbia's alienation. This possibility, not to my knowledge raised before, deserves an airing. In general, cf. Wiseman (n. 1) 142-4, on poem 8 as an expression of Lesbia's control with respect to the affair.
25 Cf. Ov, . Ars 3.535ff.Google Scholar; Watson, L. on Hor. Epod. 11.11 (A Commentary on Horace's Epodes [Oxford 2003] ad loc.)Google Scholar.
26 Pace Wiseman (n. 1) 131, despite the fact that she can be identified by the juxtaposition of the poems, Catullus deliberately does not name her here so as to efface her identity.
27 Perhaps it would be better to say that I am exploring a particular aspect of love affairs which Catullus has incorporated into this series of poems — 1 would not like to suggest that this is the only viable reading of these poems individually or as a group; rather that it complements and enriches current interpretations of these poems.