Gaius Valerius Catullus

CATULLUS' HOMOEROTIC POETRY: TEXTS AND SOME TRANSLATOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This article shows a selection of Catullus' homoerotic texts and their translations. Thus, we analyze and introduce part of the Catullus' sexual source culture, which differs from the current homosexual target culture in order to make these texts and the knowledge therein contained available to the Latin American audience. Our aim is to produce these translations analyzing varied, complex and vague lexical sources, the differences between the source and target cultures, and other factors that challenge the translator in the realization of his work.

Resumen: este artículo presenta una selección de textos homoeróticos de Catulo y su traducción. De este modo, analizamos e introducimos parte de la cultura sexual fuente de Catulo, que difiere de la cultura meta homosexual actual con el fin de hacer llegar estos textos y el conocimiento expresado en ellos a un público latinoamericano. Nuestro objetivo es producir estas traducciones mediante el análisis de fuentes léxicas que son variadas, complejas y difusas; de las diferencias entre las culturas fuente y meta y; de otros factores que desafían al traductor en la realización de su trabajo.
Palabras clave: Catulo, poesía homoerótica antigua, traducción de Catulo, traductología.

This article deals with some issues concerning Catullus 7: the relationship with poem 5; its structure and style; the articulation and meaning of the double simile to be found in lines 3-10, and the unlikely belonging of the poem to the genre "arithmetikón".

This article focuses on several passages of Seneca's works in which the philosopher quotes or alludes to famous poems by Catullus: in Apoc. 11, 6 he undoubtedly quotes Catull. 12, 3, while in the Epistles to Lucilius 93, 11 and 123, 10-11 it is more difficult to decide whether he alludes to Catullus' poems or he uses a language only near to the neoteric style or vocabulary. It is also interesting to observe that the poems quoted or alluded to are the short poems and not the epyllion for the marriage of Peleus and Thetis: also in the tragedies, where the main influence of c. 64 has been sometimes hypothesized, the most important allusion is in my opinion from c. 11.

Keywords: Catullus' influence, Seneca's philosophical works, Seneca's tragedies

Through the analysis of the pseudo-Senecan epigram AL 409 R2 (= 12 Zurli), where the addressee is the city of Cordova personified as a woman (v. 1 Corduba, solve comas), the present paper’s aim is to propose the study of a peculiar type of hymn, i.e. that specific hymnic composition addressed by an author to his own hometown. The poem, which is shaped on the topoi of the epicedia and reflects the pattern of maternal mourning (Cordova is portrayed as ‘mother’), is carefully structured on a series of allusions not only to the Seneca’s consolationes, but also to Ovid’s lament for Tibullus’ death (am. 3,9 ) and to other elegiac texts (particularly Consolatio ad Liviam). One of the most characteristic features of the epigram’s hymnic allocution to the homeland is the presence of elements echoing Catullus 31 (addressed to a personified Sirmio); parallel can also be traced with Lucanus, who depicts Roma as a maestissima mulier in the first Bk of Pharsalia, and Rutilius Namatianus’ De reditu, with its passionate, elegiac farewell to Rome

L’assetto diegetico del c. 64 di Catullo è caratterizzato da una profonda incidenza del fenomeno dell’anisocronia, che mira a una cristallizzazione amplificante di alcuni frammenti temporali in grado di stimolare la vocazione retrospettiva e nostalgica più volte palesata dal poeta veronese nel suo canzoniere.
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The diegetic structure of Catullus’ c. 64 is characterized by a pervasive incidence of the phenomenon of anisochrony, which produces an amplifying crystallization of some temporal fragments able to stimulate the retrospective and nostalgic vocation often revealed by the Veronese poet in his liber.

This half-page followup acknowledges that the conventional line numbering of Catullus 64 hides an extra verse, meaning that the numerical correspondence with the Culex is not exact. However, there could have been an extra line there too, fixing the problem.