In my previous visits to this thread, I have been remiss in not praising the sheer excellence of Susan Mclean's Catullus translations. Congratulations, Susan.

Thanks for the kind words, Tim. I admire your own writing and value your opinion. I will be giving a reading of my Catullus translations (including the racy ones) at the University of Iowa, Schaeffer Hall 302, on Thursday, Mar. 7, at 4:30 p.m. It is open to the public, so if anyone is in the vicinity of Iowa City, he or she is welcome to attend. Although some of my translations of Catullus's cleaner poems have appeared in THE CLASSICAL OUTLOOK, THE FORMALIST, and BLUE UNICORN, so far no editor has wanted to touch any of the dirty ones.

Susan,

I'm rather surprised no one snatched these up... But on second look, perhaps you aren't sending them to the right folks. Classical Outlook is mainly for high school Latin teachers--I can see that a rated PG approach might be called for. Blue Unicorn and the Formalist also strike me as conservative, fine journals though they are.

You might try Arion--an excellent and slickly-produced classical and humanities journal out of Boston University that publishes original poetry and translations along with scholarly articles. You should be able to find them in your university library, but they also have a web site. Their standards are high, they publish names you'd recognize (Rachel Hadas, Charles Martin, inter al.), and do not shy away from racey material (as one very graphic translation of an A.E. Housman article, originally in Latin, about certain sexual acts depicted in Martial and elsewhere, would seem to indicate...)

Also consider more mainstream journals; you might be surprised.

Herewith are some selections from "Leon to Annabella", a poem once attributed to Lord Byron, purporting to tell the
truth about his marriage to Annabella Milbanke. The gist
of the poem is that Byron's offense against marriage was not
incest but sodomy. This thesis, and the attribution are now believed to be false, but the poem still has an interest for Byron fans:

LEON TO ANNABELLA

Oh! Woman, oft the homage you inspire
Is not on you bestowed, but your attire.
For who can say if what delights our eyes
Is nature's self, or nature in disguise?
In airy dreams imagination strays,
Counts every charm, and daring, seems to raise
The jealous robe that hides your snowy limbs
Till, drunk with thought, the brain in pleasure swims.
Vain hopes! which cruel disappointments pay.
That tissue covers only mortal clay.
When marriage comes the gaudy vestments fall,
And all our joys may prove apocryphal.

The bridegroom's happy who, between the sheets,
Without allow the promised banquet meets.
What lot was mine - and on my wedding night
What viands waited on my appetite -
I will not say: but e'en the best repast,
Repeated often, surfeits us at last.
The surfeit came: to this my crime amounts,
I fain would slake my thirst from other founts.
But not like those, who, with adult'rous steps,,
Seek courtesans and hackneyed demireps.
I left thee not beneath a widowed quilt
To take another partner of my guilt.
Thy charms were still my refuge - only this,
I hoped to find variety in bliss.

Oh, lovely woman! By your Maker's hand
For man's delight and solace wisely planned,
Thankless is she who nature's bounty mocks,
Nor gives love entrance wheresoe'er he knocks.
Matrons of Rome! Held ye yourselves disgraced
In yielding to your husband's wayward taste?
Ah, no! By tender complaisance ye reigned,
No wife of wounded modesty complained.
But now no couple can in safety lie:
Between the sheets salacious lawyers pry.
Yet nature varies not: desires we feel
As Romans felt; but woe if we reveal,
For what were errors then, out happy times
With sainted zeal have registered as crimes.

Virtues and vices have no certain dye,
But take the color of society.
The ore which bears the impress of the crown
Is passed as standard money through the town,
But what we fashion into private plate,
We keep at home and never circulate.

Is it just me, or did anyone else find the Auden to be surprisingly cold and antiseptic and dull and lacking in lust, considering its express pornographic narrative? It seems like a letter to Penthouse, only not actually erotic. Extremely "skillful," perhaps, but ultimately a poem that defies its subject matter and seems clinical and passionless.

But thanks for posting it! It's also utterly fascinating.

It IS fascinating, and I'm very glad to have had the chance to read it.

There IS something to what you say, though, Roger. I think the main thing is that it's mostly about the body itself -- not much of the seduction. I think it would be hotter if there were doubts all along "will he, won't he?" and can he be talked into the next step? -- and if his responses to the seduction were more revealing about his psychology and his inner contradictions. (E.g., if he were outwardly very bold and direct, but turned out to be very shy, almost demure about some of the activities the poet suggests.) Even when it comes to "a lay", the soul is a lot of what we're after.

Roger,

As far as I am concerned you've hit the nail on the head. I read the Auden with a sort of morbid fascination, but I was flagging badly at the end.

The overall effect, the sense that I am left with, is of an instruction manual for a soulless fuck.

Skillfully written, but utterly passionless, and not even slightly erotic. In fact, if I were attempt to define "pornography", this could serve as an exemplar. What I mean is, for me "pornographic" is roughly equivalent to "sex divorced from spirit". "Erotic", on the other hand, might exist without reference to sex at all.

(music)

Well, I think there are some interesting details from a very detached point of view (the little "nod" he talks about, for instance) -- it might really have been more interesting if it were more thoroughly detached -- a completely clinical but funny account might have been very worthwhile.

I seem to recall some poems by Martial that were sort of on this order, but I don't remember them well enough to make the comparison. I like it that Auden gave this subject a shot, but wish it had more drama.



[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited February 22, 2002).]

Is bawdiness merely graphic sexuality in a poem, or rather something else--a rollicking attitude toward it, a certain amount of coarse humour? The dictionary definition isn't very helpful here.

What about bawdy poems by women? Are there such things? I feel there must be...

Should there be some Chaucer on the thread?

Here's some Martial translated by "Anonymous":

"On a Slanderer"

Before your mouth was fringed with hair,
All pricks might find a haven there,
Till hangmen loathed a boy so common,
And deadcart men preferred a woman.
When gamahuche no longer paid,
Yur tongue was still your stock in trade,
No more to suck, but to discharge
Its venom on mankind at large;
On characters base slurs to fix,
As once it had polluted pricks.
Oh filthy tongue, you'd better far
Be what you were than what you are.


"To Polycharmus"

When you lie with a woman, at least so girls say,
You shit the same moment you come.
But what do you do, Polycharmus, I pray,
When a lover's stiff prick stops your bum?


"To Papilus"

What! want to be buggered, and cry when it's done!
Here clear contradictions seem blended!
Do you grieve that the sodding was ever begun,
Or lament that the pleasure is ended?