Catullus 51
Catullus 51 is a poem by Roman love poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BC). It is an adaptation of one of Sappho's fragmentary lyric poems, Sappho 31. Catullus replaces Sappho's beloved with his own beloved Lesbia. Unlike the majority of Catullus' poems, the meter of this poem is the sapphic meter. This meter is more musical, seeing as Sappho mainly sang her poetry.
Catullus is not the only poet who translated Sappho’s poem to use for himself: Pierre de Ronsard and Salvatore Quasimodo are also known to have translated a version of it.
The poem
[edit]The following Latin text of Catullus 51 is taken from D.F.S. Thomson;[1] the translation is literal, not literary.
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Ille mi par esse deo videtur, |
He seems to me to be equal to a god, |
- Catullus here builds upon a common interpretation of the lost original verse from Sappho. For a reconstruction of the original Greek first verse, see Sappho 31.[2]
- Line 8 is missing from the original manuscript. Oxford Classical Texts (ed. R.A.B. Mynors) provides no substitution. It is possible in fact that it was deliberately left unfinished.[3]
Modern musical setting
[edit]This poem was set to music by Carl Orff as part of his Catulli Carmina (1943).
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Thomson DFS (1997). Catullus: Edited with a Textual and Interpretative Commentary. University of Toronto Press.
- ^ Gianotti, Gian Franco (1997). Il Canto dei Greci. Turin: Loesher. p. 183. ISBN 978-88-201-1409-1.
- ^ Tamás, Á. (2021). "Catullus’ Sapphic Lacuna. Unspoken Rome: Absence in Latin Literature and Its Reception", p. 19.
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