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In Defence of Catullus' Dirty Sparrow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Richard W. Hooper
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Extract

Poliziano's theory that the sparrow of Lesbia in Catullus 2 and 3 is none other than the phallus of the poet has not fared well in recent years. H. D. Jocelyn has mounted a spirited attack against it, taking most effective aim against the arguments of E. N. Genovese and G. Giangrande, whose articles, as he points out, ‘seem to have no nineteenth or twentieth-century predecessors’. This attack has been facilitated by the tendency of both Genovese and Giangrande to dilute their arguments with extravagant claims. Thus Genovese would have the passer stand not only for the poet's phallus, but for an actual pet of Lesbia, a fascinum charm around her neck (with bells on it!), and a human rival, possibly named Passer, as well. Similarly, Giangrande spends too much of his time attempting to attach poem 2b to 2 by means of a tortuous interpretation of the Atalanta myth, just as he develops a convoluted argument about the tension between topoi of Totenklage um Tiere and impotence at the end of 3. Even Jocelyn gets too far away from the poems themselves with detailed examinations of masturbation and fellatio among the ancients (pp. 429–33) and a careful footnote on the missionary position (pp. 433 n. 65). There are only two ways to establish the probability of an obscene allegorical interpretation of Catullus 2 and 3: to examine the usage of passer in the poems themselves, and to see whether Catullus' imitators in antiquity – especially Martial – were aware of and exploited Catullus' double entendre. In defending Poliziano's theory, this paper will argue these two points in more detail than they have been treated in the past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , October 1985 , pp. 162 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

NOTES

1. See Gaisser, Julia Haig, TAPA 112 (1982), 102–3Google Scholar, where the relevant sixth chapter of Poliziano's Miscellanea(1489) is quoted and discussed.

2. Jocelyn, , AJP 101 (1980), 421–41Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Jocelyn; Genovese, , Maia 26 (1974), 121–5Google Scholar, hereafter Genovese; Giangrande, , Museum Philologum Londiniense 1 (1976), 137–46Google Scholar, hereafter Giangrande. Jocelyn provides a useful summary of scholarly interpretations of Catullus' bird on pp. 422–6, to which should be added the generally sympathetic remarks of Howell, Peter, A Commentary on Book One of the Epigrams of Martial (London, 1980), to which Professor Giangrande has contributed two pages of commentary (pp. 122–3Google Scholar), considerably less extravagant in their claims than his above cited article. Quinn, Kenneth, Catullus an Interpretation (London, 1972), p. 85Google Scholar has called the obscene interpretation of these poems ‘a persistent minority opinion’, but goes on to say: ‘One cannot rule that component of meaning out entirely; Catullus, perhaps, was not displeased if it added a hint of mockery to two complex poems. But I doubt if it is an important component: Poems 2 and 3 were hardly written to perpetrate a double entendre.’ Such a statement differs only in degree from the position of this paper. As an indication of the popularity of Poliziano's theory throughout the Renaissance I can also point out George Gascoigne's lyric ‘Philip My Sparrow’ set to music in 1606 by the Elizabethan lutenist John Bartlet. See Greenberg, Noah, An Elizabethan Song Book (New York, 1955), p. 10Google Scholar.

3. Genovese, pp. 123–5.

4. Giangrande, pp. 145–6 and 140–4. Jocelyn disposes of Giangrande's interpretation of the Atalanta myth quite effectively, pp. 430–3.

5. A comparison with Martial 11.6 is the only evidence offered by Poliziano. See Gaisser (n. 1).

6. These were collected in the seventh book of the Anthology (189–216). The standard study is Herrlinger, G., Totenklage um Tiere (Stuttgart, 1930), especially pp. 39–51Google Scholar.

7. Havelock, , The Lyric Genius of Catullus (New York, 1929), p. 147Google Scholar; Fordyce, , Catullus, a Commentary (Oxford, 1973), p. 88Google Scholar. Fordyce prefers to think of the passer in the poem as the blue rock-thrush, Montisola solitarius, which he said is still commonly called passero in Italy. Jocelyn lets that remark pass without comment, though Giangrande's remark (p. 137) that passero and pipere have obscene connotations in modern Italian brings the stinging remark (p. 426) that ‘Native English speakers could cite similar and similarly irrelevant items from the coarser registers of their language’.

8. Frequently cited is Apuleius Met. 8.15 which describes the moving of a household: gerebamus infantulos et mulieres, gerebamus pullos, passeres, aedos, catellos… Given its late, post-Catullan date, however, such a passage should be thought of as life imitating art. In a similar fashion countless Americans were willing to invest thousands of dollars in a sulphur crested cockatoo after the success of Robert Blake's ‘Baretta’ series on television. The animals in the Anthology, unlike sparrows (and like cockatoos, by the way), do make delightful pets. That is even true of caged crickets which, one is reminded, were kept by the Okinawans in Patrick's, John play The Teahouse of the August Moon (New York, 1952), pp. 45–6Google Scholar.

9. Budge, E. A. Wallis, Ancient Egyptian Language, Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics (1910; rpt. Chicago: Ares, 1975), p. 34Google Scholar number 24 and p. 67 number 80.

10. The Festus quote was noted as early as Voss's commentary (Utrecht, 1691), p. 6, and is also cited by Genovese, pp. 121–2. Jocelyn (p. 426 n. 33) passes it over without any real consideration, merely remarking (p. 427) that ‘there is no Latin evidence at all of the alleged usage’.

11. Rudd, , TAPA 90 (1959), 238–42Google Scholar; Richardson, , CP 58 (1963), 101Google Scholar, concerning which point Rosivach, Vincent J., TAPA 108 (1978), 214Google Scholar n. 57, remarked: ‘Richardson does not prove his case, but to my mind he does present enough evidence that the possibility must be left open.’ For the article by Maxwell-Stuart, , Hermes 100 (1972), 222Google Scholar, see the remarks in Buffière, Félix, Eros adolescent: la pèdèrastie dans la Gréce antique (Paris, 1980), pp. 316–17Google Scholar n. 95. Buffière sounds much like Jocelyn in rejecting Maxwell-Stuart's theory – ‘Libre à chacun de donner des poètes un exégèse ”allègorique”‘ – but with more justification, for book rolls lack the literary tradition of ‘slaciousness’ long associated with sparrows.

12. Jocelyn, pp. 427–8. In making this citation I fulfill Jocelyn's fear that he may be ‘supplying ammunition for untrustworthy hands’.

13. The first two are by Merrill, , Catullus, p. xxviiGoogle Scholar, and Duff, J. Wight, A Literary History of Rome (New York, 1960), p. 236Google Scholar; the next by Voss (above, n. 10), p. 6.

14. The always perceptive Dorothy Parker offers an interesting corroboration of Voss's viewpoint in the following lines written, as far as I know, without knowledge of Poliziano's theory:

That thing he wrote, the time the sparrow died –

(Oh, most unpleasant – gloomy, tedious words!)

I called it sweet, and made believe I cried;

That stupid fool! I've always hated birds…

‘From a Letter From Lesbia, ', The Viking Portable Library Dorothy Parker (New York, 1944), p. 452Google Scholar.

15. Most keep silent about the possibility, which is the least embarrassing solution. Of those that deal with the problem, we have already seen Voss's reaction to the traditional, literalist interpretation that would have Catullus consoling himself over Lesbia's heartlessness by playing with a pet sparrow. M. Lenchantin de Gubernatis in his commentary (Torino, 1928) at least takes the bull by the horns when he says, ‘Non mette conto di ricordare che il Poliziano ed altri umanisti nel passer volevano trovare un'allusione che il v. 9 sg. esclude’. Giangrande (pp. 144–5) counters by saying that, on the contrary, it is these very lines which make his interpretation work.

16. See Jocelyn, p. 422 n. 5, who attributes this solution to Alessandro Guarini (Venice, 1520). It has been followed most recently by D. F. S. Thomson in his critical edition (Chapel Hill, 1978) and was also taken up by Kroll (Berlin, 1923), Mynors (Oxford, 1958), and Fordyce (Oxford, 1973). Merrill (Cambridge, 1893) and Ellis (Oxford, 1904) indicate a lacuna after 2.10. Baehrens (Leipzig, 1876) followed the manuscripts in printing 2 as a unit.

17. Voss (above, n. 10), p. 7; Quinn, , Catullus, The Poems (New York, 1970), p. 95Google Scholar.

18. This is certainly preferable to the tortuous double negative developed by Giangrande (pp. 145–6): ‘I wish I could, but I cannot (possem) indulge in masturbation: I cannot, because such a practice is just as agreeable to me (tam gratumst) as was the apple to Atalanta, which caused her to lose the race, wherefore she had to abandon her beloved unnatural practices and endure the fututiones which she hated.’ This interpretation has been most effectively dismantled by Jocelyn, pp. 430–3.

19. Voss, p. 7 and Jocelyn, p. 426 n. 34 and p. 427. The emendation bracchica mala at Priap. 72.4 offered up as evidence for the obscene sense of malum is clearly weak: it is not included in the Bücheler-Heraeus, edition of the Priapea (Berlin, 1912Google Scholar), and is rejected by Richard Clairmont in his recent critical edition (Diss. Loyola University of Chicago, 1983) for the manuscripts' bracchia macra, which is clearly meant to balance grandia mala.

20. Thus Giangrande, p. 140, with which cf. Jocelyn, p. 434 n. 71. Voss, p. 8 was the first openly to state this sexual interpretation of Catullus 3: Nihilominus flagitiosum est hoc carmen quam praecedens. Non me fugit viros eruditos longe aliter sentire, et credere nihil hie esse quod non castissimae matronae mitti possit, sed vero si existimemus Catullum confectum et exhaustum lucta venerea et funerata, ut cum Petronio loquar, ea parte quae virum facit, Lesbiae suae hoc epigramma scripsisse, tanto utique plus leporis hoc versiculos habituros existimo, quanto fuerint nequiores. Et sane quid passed cum gremio puellae, si nihil dictu turpe hic subintelligi debeat? For parallels with the lament over a dead pet, see Herrlinger, above, n. 6. Both Jocelyn and Giangrande give several parallels for lamented impotence, from which lists Ovid, Am. 3.7 and Priap. 83 should especially be stressedGoogle Scholar.

21. Havelock (above, n. 7), p. 20. Giangrande's interpretation of hominum venustiorum as ‘men luckier in love than Catullus’ (see, pp. 141–5) is strange and forced, and has been well disposed of by Jocelyn, pp. 434–9.

22. Style and Tradition in Catullus (Cambridge, 1969), p. 106Google Scholar. MrRoss, discusses ‘Urbanitas and the vocabulary of the Polymetrics’ at length, pp. 104–12Google Scholar.

23. Ibid. p. 105.

24. Die Sprachkunst der Properz und die Tradition der lateinischen Dichtersprache (Wiesbaden, 1960), pp. 28–9Google Scholar.

25. Phoenix 23 (1969), 186–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. The manuscripts read bonum factum male bonus ille passer, which was corrected to o factum male o miselle passer under the influence of Cicero, , Att. 15.1.1Google Scholar: o factum male de Alexione… Among the commentators, Kroll, Fordyce, Mynors, and Thomson (see above, n. 16) print o factum male! o miselle passer! although Thomson does mention Goold's emendation in his appendix. Baehrens and Merrill adopt Lachmann's emendation o factum male! io miselle passer, while Ellis goes out on a limb with vae factum male! vae miselle passer! The double o is almost universally admired, and indeed Skutsch, O. in his review of Goold's edition of Catullus in CP 69 (1974), 126–7Google Scholar says the proposed reading ‘…seems to me to deflate the pathos of the passage’. In support of the favourite reading I can cite Priap. 83.19, in a context virtually identical to the one we are suggesting for Catullus 3: at o sceleste penis, o meum malum. I can also point out a similar passage in Tymnes' lament for his dead songbird (A.P. 7.199. 1–2):

ðρνεον ω Χάρισιν μεμελήμενον ώ παρόμοιον

άλκύοσιν τòν σòν φθόγγον ίσωσάμενον

For the first half of his article Goold attacks the possibility of a hiatus in Catullus such as the proposed line contains; he then demonstrates most skillfully that the two o's usually proposed at Catullus 3.16 do not present a balance, as can indeed be found in the two parallels I have suggested above, but rather prevent one, for the two halves in the Catullan line are not equal. The corrupt text would translate, ‘O calamity, o sparrow, you have made me weep’, which wrongly separates the sense of sparrow and you. Goold's final citation of Carm. Epig. 1512 Büch., a real inscription and an obvious imitation of Catullus 3, with its line o factum male, Myia, quod peristi is, I think, conclusive, despite O. Skutsch's objection that the proposed vocative after quodis not paralleled.

27. Cf. Tib. 2.2.15–16, Prop. 3.13.5–15, and pseudo-Tib. 3.8.20.

28. Fordyce (above, n. 7), p. 92.

29. See above, n. 1.

30. For the very popular theory that a collection of poems by Catullus called the Passer was in circulation, see Wheeler, Arthur Leslie, Catullus and the Traditions of Ancient Poetry (Berkley, 1964), pp. 19–20Google Scholar, 21, and n. 24 p. 251; Havelock (above, n. 7), pp. 185 n. 3 and 187 n. 28; Quinn (above, n. 2), p. 13; Voss (above, n. 10), pp. 5–6, who traces the theory to Parthenius and suggests its popularity is due to the fact that it offers the only alternative to an obscene interpretation of the lines under discussion! See also Jocelyn, p. 424, who cites Birt, T., Das antike Buchwesen (Berlin, 1882), p. 407Google Scholar.

31. For a convenient discussion of these problems, see Fordyce (above, n. 7), pp. 409–10.

32. Poliziano obviously thought so as well, for in Misc. 6 he misquotes Martial to read ‘Da mihi basia, sed Catulliana’, which of course, intentionally or unintentionally, makes the connection with Catullus 5.7 more obvious. See Gaisser (above, n. 1), p. 102 n. 52.

33. See Quinn (above, n. 2), p. 284 n. 17, and Isaac, H. J., Martial, Eptgrammes (Paris, 1933), vol. 1. p. 255 n. 5Google Scholar.

34. Thus Wheeler (above, n. 30), pp. 19–20.

35. Donatus Vita 9: libidinis in pueros pronioris.

36. Wheeler (above, n. 30), pp. 53–54 and 255 n. 29. See also Peter Howell (above, n. 2), p. 123, who believes that the two terms refer to Catullus' and Stella's poems.

37. Howell, p. 127.

38. Citroni, Mario, M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Liber Primus (Firenze, 1975), p. 339Google Scholar.

39. Citroni, p. 336.

40. Howell, p. 333. I would not suggest anything beyond coincidence between this usage and Cat. 2.9.

41. Hopfher, , Das Sexualleben der Griechen und Römer (Prague, 1938), vol. 1. p. 104. See also pp. 21 and 162Google Scholar.

42. Buchheit, , Studien zum Corpus Priapeorum (München, 1962), pp. 124–7Google Scholar. Buchheit also cites A.P, 12.225 and the riddle poem 14.43. Kytzler, Bernhard, Carmina Priapea: Gedichte an dem Gartengott (Zürich, 1978), p. 219Google Scholar concurs with Buchheit's interpretation.

43. RP, Inv. no. 27853. For an illustration, see Grant, Michael, Eros in Pompeii (New York, 1975), p. 143Google Scholar.