As Catullus wrote it:
Multus per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenia has misera, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postromo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.
As respun by the late Robert Fitzgerald:
By strangers' coasts and waters, many days at sea
I came here for the rites of your unworlding,
Bringing for you, the dead, these last gifts of the living.
And my words -- vain sounds for the man of dust.
Alas, my brother,
You have been taken from me. You have been taken from me,
By cold Chance turned a shadow, and my pain.
Here are the foods of the old ceremony, appointed
Long ago for the starvelings under earth:
Take them; your brother's tears have made them wet; and take
into eternity my hail and my farewell.
I lose myself in 'unworlding'. It awestrikes me. Even if you (o lucky soul) have never mourned, how could you not weep for 'by strangers' coasts and waters'? 'And my words -- vain sounds for the man of dust.' I want to have written that and count myself amongst the fortunate for having read it. One of my writing tutors inveighs (repeatedly) against the sin of repetition. Here, in the midst of forward motion juxtaposed with death, we have that pause: 'You have been taken from me. You have been taken from me.' We stand among the mourners who are frozen by their grief. As to 'the starvelings under earth', if those aren't God-touched words, then I know none that are.
As an entity, that translation . . . If Fitzgerald had sone nothing else with his life, he would have been born for good reason.
I promise not to take permanent residency in the biographical, but who would miss such a dual opportunity as this? Fitzgerald and Catullus, taken in either direction, make a tantalizing ride.
There are two of them. This may not be the briefest journey.
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a 1st century (but not centurian) Roman poet who lived from 84 to 54 BCE -- thirty whopping years. (Most of us, in this era, assume we'll be granted more, and will do less.) It is widely believed that the scene of his entry into this world was set in fair Verona. He was born into an equestrian (among the upper classes) family and lived most of his life in Rome.
Robert Fitzgerald was a 20th century American who lived from 1910 to 1985. He grew up in Springfield and (in fellowship with others in this blog) went to Harvard. While he was there, his work saw print in Poetry Magazine. Before WWII, he worked for the late New York Herald Tribune and Time Magazine. During the war, he served in Guam and at Pearl Harbor. After the war, he taught at Sarah Lawrence and Princeton and was the poetry editor of The New Republic.
Neither man spent much time far from a passable center of his current microcosmic universe. Both knew a thing or ten about loss, which links them with every member of the species, regardless of era, shape or land.
Catullus' time was also that of Cicero, who lived from 106 to 43 BC, when somebody else decided that he'd lived long enough. (Cicero watched the assassination of Julius Caesar, made speeches calling for Octavian to overthrow Antony, and thus manoeuvred himself onto a list of people to be killed. Life amongst the mighty isn't always either safe or lengthy, and is even more seldom both. Down time's Roman roadway, Cicero's son Marcus, then a consul, announced Antony's suicide to the senate. There are many ways to imagine that speech.)
One of my ancestors saw a then modern-dress version of Julius Caesar, with Orson Welles playing the lead. The Cicero-Caesar-Antony-Marcus story would transpose neatly to modern dress and stage or screen. The casting might horrify, but the story would shift eras without scratching a flea.
Many of Cicero and Catallus' contemporaries liked the latter's poems; the former questioned their morality. His work can be sexually explicit and he explores homosexuality, which would have been enough to see his books burnt and him beaten in eras later than his own -- but need poems be moral? Do poems have to deal only with beauty? Should they reflect -- or pretend to reflect, or attempt to reflect -- cleanly, without distortion? Of what use is a bound medium? And who's to be the determiner of morality in verse? It stirs the anti-McCarthy globules in my blood, and they are legion.
Catullus' affair with 'Lesbia' (so named in honour of Sappho -- and you have to give some due to a man who cloaks his mistress in the word-robe of a lesbian), a woman a decade older than he, birthed a number of poems. Sex and romance aside, Catullus also wrote hymns, tirades (properly called 'invectives', but he might forgive me for being other than proper) and condolences, and was not above sniping at ex-lovers and the ex-lovers of ex-lovers. He had, at the least, an enviable range.
Fitgerald did, as well, and not in writing alone. He edited, taught, translated and wrote. That's an enviable CV. He didn't haul around that, 'I'm not a waiter. I'm an actor,' luggage. He did his jobs and he did them well. Full dedication on all fronts. That's admirable.
Faith (in a nonreligious sense) is another parallel. Catullus catted about. Fitzgerald was married three times. A literally literary death-side note: Fitzgerald was Flannery O'Connor's literary executor. Fitzgerald's third wife, Sally Fitzgerald, compiled Flannery O'Connor's letters and essays. Note, please, the congruency.
Catullus' work influenced that of Ovid, Homer and Virgil. The admirers of Ovid & Co. have been relatively constant, maintaining their passion throughout the years. Those of Catullus (here's faithlessness again) let him fade away. His was rediscovered in the late Middle Ages. He also influenced Robert Fitzgerald, whose translations of his work are -- for good reason -- highly valued. Here, Catullus has company. Among the ancients in the Fitzgerald canon are Sophocles and Euripides. Moving to the moderns, he edited collections of James Agee's work. If those Fitzgerald edited and translated could sit around a pub table and talk . . . I'd pour the beer if it meant being able to eavesdrop on the conversations.
Even if you bed down with Cicero, morally speaking, Catullus is due some recognition for influence in terms of time span alone: Virgil, Homer, Ovid, writers in the Middle Ages, writers in the 20th century -- That's a good run, even if the house was sometimes not sold out.
Fitzgerald died in Connecticut at the age of 74. Catullus' ending is not known. Some of his poems refer to events that took place in 55 BCE, so he was around then. No poems of his can be found from later than 54 BCE, so it is presumed that he died that year. If he lived and died thus now, he might be buried in a paupers' field. He who writes and fades away . . .
So much for these menfolk. For my part, I am a 21st century woman, uncharted, often lost, usually attempting to use words as a compass (and knowing that to be as useful as storing a magnet in her hard drive).
For the moment, at least, I'm still ticking. The two other vessels lie, emptied of their poetry. Or, as my friend Walter says, 'They've joined the majority.' So, in our courses, must we all. It would be nice to leave a body of work, instead of only a body, behind.
As an entity, that translation . . . If Fitzgerald had sone nothing else with his life, he would have been born for good reason.
I promise not to take permanent residency in the biographical, but who would miss such a dual opportunity as this? Fitzgerald and Catullus, taken in either direction, make a tantalizing ride.
There are two of them. This may not be the briefest journey.
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a 1st century (but not centurian) Roman poet who lived from 84 to 54 BCE -- thirty whopping years. (Most of us, in this era, assume we'll be granted more, and will do less.) It is widely believed that the scene of his entry into this world was set in fair Verona. He was born into an equestrian (among the upper classes) family and lived most of his life in Rome.
Robert Fitzgerald was a 20th century American who lived from 1910 to 1985. He grew up in Springfield and (in fellowship with others in this blog) went to Harvard. While he was there, his work saw print in Poetry Magazine. Before WWII, he worked for the late New York Herald Tribune and Time Magazine. During the war, he served in Guam and at Pearl Harbor. After the war, he taught at Sarah Lawrence and Princeton and was the poetry editor of The New Republic.
Neither man spent much time far from a passable center of his current microcosmic universe. Both knew a thing or ten about loss, which links them with every member of the species, regardless of era, shape or land.
Catullus' time was also that of Cicero, who lived from 106 to 43 BC, when somebody else decided that he'd lived long enough. (Cicero watched the assassination of Julius Caesar, made speeches calling for Octavian to overthrow Antony, and thus manoeuvred himself onto a list of people to be killed. Life amongst the mighty isn't always either safe or lengthy, and is even more seldom both. Down time's Roman roadway, Cicero's son Marcus, then a consul, announced Antony's suicide to the senate. There are many ways to imagine that speech.)
One of my ancestors saw a then modern-dress version of Julius Caesar, with Orson Welles playing the lead. The Cicero-Caesar-Antony-Marcus story would transpose neatly to modern dress and stage or screen. The casting might horrify, but the story would shift eras without scratching a flea.
Many of Cicero and Catallus' contemporaries liked the latter's poems; the former questioned their morality. His work can be sexually explicit and he explores homosexuality, which would have been enough to see his books burnt and him beaten in eras later than his own -- but need poems be moral? Do poems have to deal only with beauty? Should they reflect -- or pretend to reflect, or attempt to reflect -- cleanly, without distortion? Of what use is a bound medium? And who's to be the determiner of morality in verse? It stirs the anti-McCarthy globules in my blood, and they are legion.
Catullus' affair with 'Lesbia' (so named in honour of Sappho -- and you have to give some due to a man who cloaks his mistress in the word-robe of a lesbian), a woman a decade older than he, birthed a number of poems. Sex and romance aside, Catullus also wrote hymns, tirades (properly called 'invectives', but he might forgive me for being other than proper) and condolences, and was not above sniping at ex-lovers and the ex-lovers of ex-lovers. He had, at the least, an enviable range.
Fitgerald did, as well, and not in writing alone. He edited, taught, translated and wrote. That's an enviable CV. He didn't haul around that, 'I'm not a waiter. I'm an actor,' luggage. He did his jobs and he did them well. Full dedication on all fronts. That's admirable.
Faith (in a nonreligious sense) is another parallel. Catullus catted about. Fitzgerald was married three times. A literally literary death-side note: Fitzgerald was Flannery O'Connor's literary executor. Fitzgerald's third wife, Sally Fitzgerald, compiled Flannery O'Connor's letters and essays. Note, please, the congruency.
Catullus' work influenced that of Ovid, Homer and Virgil. The admirers of Ovid & Co. have been relatively constant, maintaining their passion throughout the years. Those of Catullus (here's faithlessness again) let him fade away. His was rediscovered in the late Middle Ages. He also influenced Robert Fitzgerald, whose translations of his work are -- for good reason -- highly valued. Here, Catullus has company. Among the ancients in the Fitzgerald canon are Sophocles and Euripides. Moving to the moderns, he edited collections of James Agee's work. If those Fitzgerald edited and translated could sit around a pub table and talk . . . I'd pour the beer if it meant being able to eavesdrop on the conversations.
Even if you bed down with Cicero, morally speaking, Catullus is due some recognition for influence in terms of time span alone: Virgil, Homer, Ovid, writers in the Middle Ages, writers in the 20th century -- That's a good run, even if the house was sometimes not sold out.
Fitzgerald died in Connecticut at the age of 74. Catullus' ending is not known. Some of his poems refer to events that took place in 55 BCE, so he was around then. No poems of his can be found from later than 54 BCE, so it is presumed that he died that year. If he lived and died thus now, he might be buried in a paupers' field. He who writes and fades away . . .
So much for these menfolk. For my part, I am a 21st century woman, uncharted, often lost, usually attempting to use words as a compass (and knowing that to be as useful as storing a magnet in her hard drive).
For the moment, at least, I'm still ticking. The two other vessels lie, emptied of their poetry. Or, as my friend Walter says, 'They've joined the majority.' So, in our courses, must we all. It would be nice to leave a body of work, instead of only a body, behind.
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