Larvatus Prodeo

I’ve given up on reading Kevin Donnelly so I’m not sure what the current party line on the virtues of all things canonical in education is. Often the virtues of reading dead white males are equated with moral values, which I suppose makes sense in a culture war. This of course is odd. It’s often a way of expurgating texts to all intents and purposes, effacing values and mores which are quite foreign to any that we’d recognise (accepting of course, that the narrative of “Judeo-Christian civilisation” and “the ancients” is full of contradictions and that it doesn’t run in a straight line). Anyway, the point of my musing is to suggest two things. The first is that the most enjoyable reads among ancient writers are often the sexiest and most amoral. Like Catullus. The second is that I get quite excited when there are good new translations of canonical texts.

On the second point first, compare Mark Musa’s Dante with Henry W. Longfellow’s:

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in some dark woods,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straight forward pathway had been lost.

Often people of my age grew up with old Penguin classics, and some of the translations were terrible - faux King James biblical or rendering poetry into blank verse. I’m thinking here of Dorothy L. Sayers’ execrable Dante. It’s a pity really that one traditional aspect of education that seems to have entirely escaped the screams of doom emanating from educational traditionalists is the now much neglected study of ancient and modern European languages, as too many of us perforce have a tin ear for translations because of our ignorance of the languages in which the originals were written.

But back to Catullus’ doggerel and bile. There’s a new translation, hence the hook for the post.

How’s this for a classic text that should be more widely read?

Prick does his best to mount the heights
of Pipla:
Muses with dainty forklets toss him off.

Go read the rest of Joy Connolly’s excellent Pox Populi for some more Catullan gems, much erudition on translation, and a good sense of just how political as well as how down and dirty classical authors could get. And then remember it next time The Oz revives its whitebread Canon campaign.

Ps: You can read more Catullus on the web in Latin and English.