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Sleepless Poets: Catullus and Keats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

A. J. Woodman
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Extract

It is well known that many poets, from Callimachus (Anth. Pal. ix. 507) down to those mentioned by Rosamund Harding on pp. 38—9 of her book An Anatomy of Inspiration (Cambridge, 1942), have preferred to compose their works by night. It is perhaps less well known that some poems are or claim to be the result of involuntary insomnia. One example is Catullus 1. Catullus had spent a day composing poetry in the company of his friend, the brilliant young ‘new’ poet Licinius Calvus (lines 1–16):

Hesterno, Licini, die otiosi

multum lusimus in meis tabellis,

ut convenerat esse delicatos:

scribens versiculos uterque nostrum

ludebat numero modo hoc modo illoc,

reddens mutua per iocum atque vinum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , April 1974 , pp. 51 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1974

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References

page 51 note 1 For Latin instances see Janson, T., Latin Prose Prefaces (Stockholm, 1964), 97—8, 147–8, adding Cinna, frag. 11. 1 (Morel).Google Scholar

page 52 note 1 Clarke, C. Cowden, Atlantic Monthly vii (01 1861)Google Scholar, reprinted in Matthews, G. M. (ed.), Keats: the Critical Heritage (London, 1971), 393.Google Scholar

page 52 note 2 Rollins, H. E., The Letters of John Keats (Cambridge, 1958), 1. 138 (10 May 1817).Google Scholar

page 52 note 3 The intervening lines deal with the works of art in Hunt's library, which also acted as a stimulant to Keats: see Jack, I., Keats and the Mirror of Art (Oxford, 1967), 130 ff.Google Scholar

page 52 note 4 Pucci, P., Maia xiii (1961), 249.Google Scholar

page 52 note 5 Segal, C., G & R xvii (1970), 28.Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 Ward, A., John Keats: the Making of a Poet (London, 1963), 91; cf. esp. 166–7.Google Scholar

page 53 note 2 Besides, there will have been translations of Catullus's poem, e.g. that given in Duckett, E. S., Catullus in English Poetry (Smith College Classical Studies, Northampton, Mass., 1925), 103Google Scholar, which was published in 1707.

page 53 note 3 See Rollins, H. E., The Keats Circle (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 2. 91 n. 72.Google Scholar