Of all the major Latin poets of the first century BC, Gaius Valerius Catullus (c.84–c.54) is the one who speaks most directly to the modern reader. For Tennyson, writing in Frater Ave atque Vale after visiting Sirmione where Catullus once lived, he is the ‘Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago’. Tenderness is indeed one feature of his work, but, for Harold Nicolson, Catullus was ‘only tender about his brother and Lesbia’ – his mistress. His extraordinary versatility, his success in such a variety of forms from love to elegies and satires, is what makes him so interesting now. He can be delicately emotional and also vigorously sexual in a coarse Roman way, but to some extent his originality stems from his introduction into Latin poetry of the stylistic features of Hellenistic literature: its blend of artifice and realism, of irony and eroticism, of charm and humour.
Catullus was famous in antiquity, but we are lucky to have his work at all, for (not being suitable for schools) his poems were lost for centuries before one copy came to light in Verona in the fourteenth century and then was again lost, fortunately after being copied. Since then, his influence has been detected in the lyrics of such English poets as Thomas Campion, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick and Richard Lovelace. Many attempts have been made to translate Catullus by scholars and poets, but it has proved a daunting task.
In this new version of all Catullus’s surviving work, Christopher Pilling’s approach is not that of a translator aiming at literal accuracy. Rather he attempts to capture a tone and a voice, somewhat in the manner of Robert Lowell's ‘Imitations’, to give modern readers the feel that the poems had for Catullus’s own audience. As Pilling says in his Introduction, some of his versions ‘don’t quite go where his go, or go further’: as the title suggests, these versions arise, indeed, from a careful consideration of what Catullus wrote, but with the added spring of Pilling’s characteristic wit, inventiveness and virtuoso rhyming.
‘Many in Keswick talk of being inspired by teacher Chris Pilling, who told of teaching Latin when not knowing any and, of course, French – which he undoubtedly knows. Chris’ poems made the audience laugh as well as wonder at his use of words.’
Keswick Reminder, 19 March 2010
Springing From Catullus costs £8.50 and was published in October 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-906601-12-6
Chris Pilling, who lives in Keswick, has published nine books and pamphlets of his own poetry, including Foreign Bodies (1992) and Life Classes (2004), but is particularly well known for his translations of French poets, including Tristan Corbière, Max Jacob and Lucien Becker. The latter’s Plein Amour was translated as Love at the Full and published by Flambard in 2004. A selection of his Catullus translations won the first prize in the prestigious John Dryden Translation Competition in 2006.
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