Catullus A Commentary

by C.J. Fordyce

This edition of eighty poems of Catullus is designed for college students. An introduction deals with the life of Catullus, his indebtedness to Alexandrian poetry, and the later history of the poems. The commentary interprets the poems in the light of modern linguistic and literary scholarship. The Latin text comes from the Oxford Classical Text edition edited by Roger Mynors.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1966

Reviews

[Fred Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read some Catullus when I was 19, in Bernie Fenik's course on Roman Lyric Poetry. Then I read all of Catullus a few years later in graduate school with Harry Gotoff. Over the years I have read Catullus, off and on, in a variety of editions. Fordyce is a large selection, but not all of it. He claims to have omitted a few poems not suited to comment in English. Presumably through prudery, although one then wonders at a couple that he did include. Fordyce is so-so on the literary side, but offers extraordinarily detailed notes on the history and meanings of a number of Latin words and phrases (if you are interested in such things; I am).

Catullus is a poet for the young; reading him during the Sturm und Drang years of college and graduate school was a much different experience from reading him on the wrong side of 60. Back then, a lot of people still read the poems as largely autobiographical, and now they don't so much. Now it is easier to stand back and see the Alexandrian influences and the cleverness, the artifice rather than the emotion. Not there isn't some raw emotion there, but it has been sliced and diced in the service of art. The Lesbia poems are the most famous and widely read, but I really find the poems on death of Catullus' brother (especially 101) the most affecting. Not that Catullus isn't very good at describing the conflicting feelings of loving someone who views you as a passing amusement. Maybe I have just reached the stage of life where death is more of a reality.

The collection is in three parts: the polymetric poems, the long poems, and the epigrams (sometimes called the elegiac poems). We don't know exactly what kind of collection Catullus "published" or how many of the poems were in it, in what order. I tend to like the polymetric poems best, which may have constituted the original first publication. It includes many of the more famous poems, like Vivamus atque amemus. They are mostly fairly polished. I never warmed up to the long poems. I like the two wedding poems, but more as cultural artifacts. Poem 64 always strikes me as artificial, and 63 is just plain weird. The epigrams are a mixed bag. Some are good, some are famous, some are both (e.g., Odi et amo). The Latin in others of them is strained at best (veering to ungrammatical or incomprehensible at times). My best guess is that someone gather them all after Catullus died and many are rough drafts. The rather difficult manuscript transmission hasn't helped. As with all surviving Latin, what we have is a matter of chance.

[L S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who can't love Catullus, all clever and witty and dirty?

[Tori]

Catullus (1990)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough commentary.