Living with a Dead Language by Ann Patty

Author:Ann Patty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-26T10:18:58+00:00

We began with Catullus IV, a poem about a boat, fuisse navium celerrimus (once the fastest of ships) that nunc recondita senet quiete (now ages in its retired repose). It reminded me of myself, my fast career, and its end. If only I could age in retired repose. But I couldn’t. That’s why I was here.

In several poems, Catullus criticizes his friend’s lovers, always in terms of their looks. He was a man of his time, entirely sexist. In poem XLI he writes:

Ameana puella defututa

tota milia me decem poposcit

ista turpiculo puella naso.

That totally fucked out girl Ameana

demanded ten thousand of me

that girl of yours with the ugly nose.

He’s even more outraged in XLIII, when others call that same woman lovely and compare her with Lesbia:

Tecum Lesbia nostra comparatur?

o saeclum insipiens et infacetum!

My Lesbia is compared to you?

oh how tasteless and stupid our age!

His assessment of Varus’ girlfriend is more obliging: non sane illepidum neque invenustum (not, indeed, unattractive or without charm). This, we learn is a litotes (Greek for understatement) or damning with faint praise, a favorite device of Catullus. The neoterics strived to make liberal use of such Greek poetic devices.

Rob refers us to XLIII, where Catullus really goes to town with litotes:

Salve, nec minimo puella naso

nec bello pede nec nigris ocellis

nec longis digitis nec ore sicco

nec sane nimis elegante lingua.

Hello, girl with the not little nose

with the not beautiful foot, nor black eyes

nor long fingers nor dry mouth

and speech not very elegant.

Catullus also liked hyperbaton (Greek for “stepping over”):

Totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.

So they might make you, Fabullus, all nose.

Here totum nasum (all nose) surrounds the rest of the sentence like two nostrils.

Thus we began to acquire yet another language, which comprised poetic terms, most of them Greek: litotes, hyperbaton, anaphora (rhetorical repetition for emphasis, as in Otium . . . Otio . . . Otium in poem LI above). Many more poetic devises uniquely suitable to Latin would be arriving with Horace, who made copious and artful use of them; and then next semester, Ovid would blast them into rock ’n’ roll.

Catullus often uses diminutive versions of nouns: versiculus (little verse) rather than versus; turpiculus (a bit ugly) rather than turpis; libellus (little book) rather than liber; and ocellus (little eye) rather than oculus. I loved that one could simply add elo or ulo or ellus or culus to make a word diminutive, much as Patrick O’Higgins had done with his “pillules.” He must have known Latin.

English does the same with “ette.” I often referred to myself as George’s wifette, because I’ll never formally marry again: I’m too old to be a girlfriend, lover is too intimate a display, and partner too businesslike. Perhaps I should adopt Catullus’ expression deliciae meae (my sweetheart), though the fact that it’s always plural, and always feminine, is troublesome.

Several diminutive forms have been handed down to English, the most alarming: mus, muris (mouse), which becomes musculus (little mouse) in its diminutive form, and from there travels to English to become “muscle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.