What kind of images of himself does Catullus wish to project in his poems? How does he try to persuade us to accept them?

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James Smith—72984650

What kind of images of himself does Catullus wish to project in his poems? How does he try to persuade us to accept them?

Catullus’ collection contains a huge range of poetic styles and subjects. It is, therefore, hard to make sweeping generalisations about his work, but recurring themes (especially in the ‘cycles’ of poems addressed to one person or about one subject) and ways in which Catullus presents himself can be identified. For example, Catullus often tries to portray himself as learned, honourable and having urbanitas (urbanity, sophistication), whilst mocking those he sees as lacking virtue and showing rusiticitas (rusticity).

        The first poem is important as it is programmatic: it sets out the agenda for the collection to come (or at least the first of the three libelli that Catullus might have originally organised his work into). Catullus may here describe his own poetry as mere “trivia”, being self-effacing, but he also alludes to his work being polished (both literally and metaphorically), “which recalls the language of the neo-Callimachean tradition, one that values refined, careful attention to the minutiae of style”. Moreover, he alludes to the originality of his work, when describing it as a “neat new booklet”. Through these techniques, Catullus manages to subtly show us the virtues of his work. The poem is addressed to the poet Cornelius Nepos, which is apt because his work (like Catullus’) is not only learned, concise and highly worked, but he is also a Transpadane. By dedicating this introductory poem to Nepos, he, therefore, implies that he is proud of his provincial roots, but also acknowledges the wealth of literary talent that the region had produced, in doing so again indirectly complimenting his own work.

        Poem CXVI, whilst on the surface simply being another Gellius invective (cf. XCI, for example), has connections to poem one (and the main issue of Catullus’ portrayals of himself) as some critics have suggested that it can also be seen as being programmatic (though others, such as Wiseman, have suggested that it is merely a “charmless” and “spurious” later addition to the collection). When Catullus says that he had planned “to turn for you songs of Battiades”, he is referring to sending Gellius Latin translations of Callimachus; this is reminiscent of poem LXV, in which Catullus again discusses sending Hortalus “songs of Battiades” (which we have as the following poem), this time telling us that it because he lost the creative spark that he would need to produce original poetry when his brother, Quintus, died (though the very fact that he could write poem LXV shows that this cannot be entirely true). It is significant that these two poems are both the first and last of what some scholars believe could have been Catullus’ third libellus (containing the elegiac poems). This “verbal echo stakes out an aesthetic position common to both texts and thereby marks them off as the closely related ‘framing’ pieces regularly found at the end of an Alexandrian poetry book”: ultimately, Catullus is again attempting to associate himself, in the reader’s mind, with the learnedness, artistry and style of Callimachus and Alexandrian poetry in general.

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        Poem IV is generally taken to be an account of Catullus’ return trip from Bithynia to his hometown of Verona, settling his boat upon nearby lake Garda. The poem can be seen as Catullus simply flaunting his “speediest of ships” (IV.2) and exotic travels, but it is Hellenistic in style and tone, “owing much to the Hellenistic topos exemplified in Callimachus’ epigram on a conch shell”. Catullus portrays himself as being a leisured aristocrat, which links  with ideas of urbanitas, through both the themes of the poem as well as the mythological and geographic allusions; for example, the list of ...

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