Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:09:07.096Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Catullus’ Fantastical Memories – Poem 68 and Writing Trauma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2022

Marguerite Johnson Open the ORCID record for Marguerite Johnson [Opens in a new window]
Marguerite Johnson*
Affiliation:
The University of Newcastle Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the many evocations of memory in the Catullan corpus, fantasy plays a significant, albeit discrete role. Fantasy embellishes memories in Catullus’ poems, not necessarily making them bearable but enabling them to be understood, in part. I argue that in poem 68 there are two different approaches to fantastical memories: the intense and vivid memories of his brother's death, and the memories of Lesbia that move both towards, and away from, overt fantasy. In this sense, and in the context of poem 68, fantasy communicates the memory of trauma in a way that includes vivid, hyperbolic, symbolic and metaphoric modes of expression. In the case of the fantasy embedded in the memory of Lesbia, it also entails wish fulfilment.

Keywords

Catullus 68memorybrotherLesbiaCatullus 65fantasytrauma
Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 55 , 2021 , pp. 136 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, M. H. and Harpham, G. G. (2012), A Glossary of Literary Terms. 10th ed. Boston.Google Scholar
Baehrens, E. (ed.) (1885), Catulli Veronesis Liber. 2 vols. Leipzig.Google Scholar
Biondi, G. G. (1976), ‘Il carme 101 di Catullo’, L&S 11, 409–25.Google Scholar
Birt, T. (1904), ‘Zu Catulls carmina maiora’, RhM 59, 407–50.Google Scholar
Bright, D. F. (1976), ‘Confectum Carmine Munus: Catullus 68’, ICS 1, 86–112.Google Scholar
Bright, D. F. (1982), ‘Allius and Allia’, RhM 125, 138–40.Google Scholar
Clarke, J. (2008), ‘Mourning and Memory in Catullus 65’, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History XIV 315, 131‒43.Google Scholar
Clay, D. (2013), ‘Some Verse Epistles of Catullus for Georg Luck’, GIF 65, 209–20.Google Scholar
Conte, G. B. (2007 [1971]), ‘Poetic Memory and the Art of Allusion’, in Gaisser, J. H. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Catullus. Oxford, 167–76.Google Scholar
Coppel, B. (1973), Das Alliusgedicht: Zur Redaktion des Catullcorpus. Heidelberg.Google Scholar
Crangle, S. (2004), ‘“Regularly Irregular … Dashing Waters”: Navigating the Stream of Consciousness in Wordsworth's “The Grasmere Journals,”’, Journal of Narrative Theory 34, 146–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, J. (1987 [1980]), The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Trans. Bass, A.. Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, J. (1994 [1993]), Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Trans. Kamuf, P.. London.Google Scholar
De Villiers, A. (2020), ‘The Liminality of Loss: Catullus on His Brother's Death’, AClass 63.1, 111–24.Google Scholar
Diels, H. (1918), ‘Lukrezstudien I’, SPAW 41, 912–39.Google Scholar
Feeney, D. C. (1992), ‘‘Shall I Compare Thee..?’ Catullus 68 and the Limits of Analogy’, in Woodman, A. J. and Powell, J. (eds.), Author and Audience in Latin Literature. Cambridge, 33–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldherr, A. (2000), ‘Non inter nota sepulcra: Catullus 101 and Roman Funerary Ritual’, ClAnt 19.2, 209–31.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, W. (1995), Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fordyce, C. J. (ed.) (1961), Catullus. Oxford.Google Scholar
Fraenkel, E. (1962), Review of C. J. Fordyce (ed.) Catullus: A Commentary (Oxford, 1961), Gnomon 34.3, 253–63.Google Scholar
Freud, S. (1957 [1917]), ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, in Strachey, J. (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14. Trans. Strachey, J.. London., 243–58.Google Scholar
Fröhlich, J. V. G. (1849), ‘Q. Valerii Catulli Veron. liber. (Ex rec. C. Lachmanni. Berol. Typis et impensis Ge. Reimeri. A. 1829)’, Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Classe der Königlich Bayerischen 5.3, 233–73.Google Scholar
Gale, M. (2012). ‘Putting on the Yoke of Necessity: Myth, Intertextuality, and Moral Agency in Catullus 68’, in Du Quesnay, I. and Woodman, T. (eds.), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers. Cambridge, 184–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galinsky, K. (ed.) (2016), Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity. Oxford.Google Scholar
Gelzer, T. (1992), ‘Bemerkungen zu Catull c. 101’, MH 49, 26–32.Google Scholar
Godwin, J. (ed.) (1995), Catullus: Poems 61–68. Warminster.Google Scholar
Gowers, E. (2002), ‘Blind Eyes and Cut Throats: Amnesia and Silence in Horace’ Satires 1.7’, CPh 97, 145–61.Google Scholar
Hamann, S. (2001), ‘Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Emotional Memory’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5, 394–400.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hope, V. M. and Huskinson, J. (eds.) (2011), Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death. Oxford.Google Scholar
Huyssen, A. (1995), Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. London.Google Scholar
Jachmann, G. (1925), Review of W. Kroll (ed.) C. Valerius Catullus (Stuttgart, 1922), Gnomon 1.4, 200–14.Google Scholar
James, W. (1905 [1890]), Principles of Psychology. Vol. 2. New York.Google Scholar
Janan, M. (1994), “When the Lamp is Shattered”: Desire and Narrative in Catullus. Carbondale.Google Scholar
Johnson, M. (2006), ‘Off with the Pixies: The Fey Folk of the Long Poems and Catullan Disclosure’, Classics Ireland 13, 23–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaster, R. (2005), Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, J. K. (1988), ‘Catullus’ Callimachean Carmina, cc. 65–116’, CW 81, 383–92.Google Scholar
Kinsey, T. E. (1967), ‘Some Problems in c. 68’, Latomus 26, 36–53.Google Scholar
Kroll, W. (ed.) (1968), Catull. 5th ed. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Latham, J. A. (2016), Performance, Memory, and Processions in Ancient Rome: The Pompa circensis from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leigh, M. (2016), ‘Illa domus, illa mihi sedes: On the Interpretation of Catullus 68’, in Huntley, R. and Oakley, S. P. (eds.), Latin Literature and Its Transmission: Papers in Honour of Michael Reeve. Cambridge. 194–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, P. (1976), ‘Catullus 68: A New Perspective’, CSCA 9, 61–88.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. (2019), ‘The Production of Space, Time, and Space-Time in Catullus’ Poem 68’, Paideia 74, 1375–1403.Google Scholar
Lieberg, G. (1962), Puella Divina: Die Gestalt der göttlichen Geliebten bei Catull im Zusammenhang der antiken Dichtung. Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Lowrie, M. (2006), ‘Hic and Absence in Catullus 68’, CPh 101, 115–32.Google Scholar
McCarthy, K. (2019), I, the Poet. First-Person Form in Horace, Catullus, and Propertius. Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
McClure, R. (1974), ‘The Structure of Catullus 68’, CSCA 7, 215–29.Google Scholar
Miller, P. A. (1994), Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness: The Birth of a Genre from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome. London.Google Scholar
Most, G. W. (1981), ‘On the Arrangement of Catullus’ Carmina Maiora’, Philologus 125, 109–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mynors, R. A. B. (ed.) (1958), C. Valerii Catulli: Carmina. Oxford.Google Scholar
Oliensis, E. (2009), Freud's Rome: Psychoanalysis and Latin Poetry. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennisi, G. (1959), ‘Il carme 68 di Catullo’, Emerita 27, 89–109 and 213–38.Google Scholar
Pi, D. G. (2019), ‘“Too Young to Die”: Grief and Mourning in Ancient Rome’, Thersites 9, 71–88.Google Scholar
Postgate, J. P. (1888), ‘Catulliana’, JPh 17, 226–67.Google Scholar
Prescott, H. W. (1940), ‘The Unity of Catullus LXVIII’, TAPhA 71, 473–500.Google Scholar
Quinn, K. (ed.) (1970), Catullus: The Poems. London.Google Scholar
Ross, D. O. (1969), Style and Tradition in Catullus. Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowland, A. (2001), Tony Harrison and the Holocaust. Liverpool.Google Scholar
Rowland, A. (2014), Poetry as Testimony: Witnessing and Memory in Twentieth-Century Poems. London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salvatore, A. (1965), Studi Catulliani. Naples.Google Scholar
Sarkissian, J. (1983), Catullus 68: An Interpretation. Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwabe, L. (1862), Quaestiones Catullianae. Giessen.Google Scholar
Seider, A. M. (2016), ‘Catullan Myths: Gender, Mourning, and the Death of a Brother’, ClAnt 35, 279–314.Google Scholar
Shelley, P. B. (2012 [1840]), A Defence of Poetry, London.Google Scholar
Shipton, K. M. W. (1978), ‘Catullus 68’, LCM 3, 305–21.Google Scholar
Skinner, M. B. (1972), ‘The Unity of Catullus 68: The Structure of 68a’, TAPhA 103, 495–512.Google Scholar
Skinner, M. B. (2003), Catullus in Verona: A Reading of the Elegiac Libellus, Poems 65–116. Columbus.Google Scholar
Skutsch, F. (1892), ‘Zum 68. Gedicht Catulls’, RhM 47, 138–51.Google Scholar
Solmsen, F. (1975), ‘Catullus’ Artistry in c. 68: A Pre-Augustan ‘Subjective’ Love-Elegy’, in Lefevre, E. (ed.), Monumentum Chiloniense: Studien zur augusteischen Zeit. Festschrift E Burck. Amsterdam, 260–76.Google Scholar
Sorci, A. (1980–81), ‘Il carme 68 di Catullo’, ALGP 17–18, 153–80.Google Scholar
Stevens, B. E. (2013), Silence in Catullus. Madison.Google Scholar
Theodorakopoulos, E. (2007), ‘Poem 68: Love and Death, and the Gifts of Venus and the Muses’, in Skinner, M. B. (ed.), A Companion to Catullus. Oxford, 314–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, D. F. S. (ed.) (1997), Catullus. Toronto.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuplin, C. J. (1981), ‘Catullus 68’, CQ 31, 113–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vahlen, J. (1902), ‘Über Catulls Elegie an M'Allius’, SPAW 44, 1024–43.Google Scholar
Vollmer, F. (1919), ‘Lesungen und Deutungen, X: Catull 68’, SBAW 5, 4–8.Google Scholar
Vretska, K. (1966), ‘Das Problem der Einheit von Catull c. 68’, WS 79, 313–30.Google Scholar
Wheeler, A. L. (1974 [1934]), Catullus and the Traditions of Ancient Poetry. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Williams, G. (1968), Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry. Oxford.Google Scholar
Wiseman, T. P. (1974), Cinna the Poet and Other Roman Essays. Leicester.Google Scholar
Witke, Ch. (1968), Enarratio Catulliana. Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar