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Erroneous Gazes: Lucretian Poetics in Catullus 64*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Ábel Tamás
Ábel Tamás*
Affiliation:
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues for a ‘reciprocal intertextuality’ between Catullus 64 and Lucretius anticipating the poetic interplays of Augustan poets with the De Rerum Natura. Catullus’ wedding guests (proto-readers), Ariadne (proto-Narcissus), and Aegeus (proto-Dido) are interpreted here as errantes in the Lucretian sense: through their erroneous gazes presented in Poem 64, they all exemplify how not to gaze at the structure of the universe. In the Lucretio-Catullan intertextual space — generated, as it seems, by the Catullan text — a reciprocal way of reading emerges: while, on the one hand, ‘Catullus’ uses ‘Lucretius’ to show that the aesthetic experience he offers is dependent upon an erroneous, unLucretian gaze/reading which deprives us of the external spectator position, ‘Lucretius’, on the other hand, uses ‘Catullan’ characters as deterrent examples in order to teach us how not to submerge in ‘Catullus’ poetics of illusion’.

Keywords

CatullusLucretiusintertextualityLucretian receptionsillusionepic gazeVergilOvid
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 106 , November 2016 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2016. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

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Footnotes

*

For their many helpful comments and suggestions I am very grateful to Professor Philip Hardie and to my three anonymous referees at JRS, as well as to the attentive audience of a lecture which I gave last year at the Hungarian Classical Association in Budapest. All of them have incited me — in the end, successfully — to rethink my original idea about reciprocal intertextuality between Lucretius and Catullus 64; this is something for which I am enormously grateful. Furthermore, for their readiness in polishing my English, my special thanks are due to Andrea Timár and Ádám Rung. Unless otherwise noted, the following critical editions and translations will be used: Catullus: Fordyce 1961 (Mynors’ text) and Green 2005; Lucretius: Bailey 1947 and Smith 2001; Vergil: Mynors 1972 and Fairclough 1999. In the case of Ovid, I shall use the translations included in Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Hardie 2002).

References

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