Catullus 13 and the Petrarchan sonnet
 

I was reading Catullus 13 today and noted it had 14 lines. Not only that, but it is clearly divided into an octet and a sestet with a volte: "Sed..." ("But...") Might this have been the inspiration for the Petrarchan sonnet?

Duncan

Petrarch was a devoted classical scholar and collector of manuscripts, but a quick google confirms that there are Italian sonnets produced by the C13th court of Frederick II in Sicily. I guess there are no known earlier Occitan sonnets. Dante wrote sonnets before Petrarch’s birth.

Cheers,
John

Update: this is Allen’s turf, but I believe Catullus was rediscovered post-sonnet around 1300 - in time for Petrarch though. BTW I descend from Thomas Wyatt, who brought the form to English.

Okay, John, but my question still stands.

Duncan

PS Very nice with the Wyatt ancestry!

Petrarch was born in 1304. He may well, from what I know of his love of Classics, have noted the Catullus and found inspiration there. But the form predates Catullus’s rediscovery, and that matters.

Cheers,
John

Thanks re: Wyatt! I also descend from his son, who was hanged, drawn and quartered by Bloody Mary.

Cheers,
John

Update: google again. Petrarch read and admired Catullus in the Verona Codex post-1347. Petrarch was a famous MS. collector, but he evidently lacked Catullus.

I'm getting confused, John. Was your Choctaw grandparent a descendant of Thomas Wyatt? And was he also Jewish? Or were those all separate branches of the family? I swear, there's a poem there. But I suspect you may have already written it.

Hi Michael,

John Riley has a Choctaw grandparent. I don’t. I’ve called my family half-Jewish because quite literally, of eleven nieces and nephews, five are Jewish. I think that justifies the epithet. I am however also about 18% Norwegian, says the DNA, so expect a Norwegian poem in short order. I do have one short Thomas Wyatt poem, which is not terrible IMO.

Cheers,
John

Sorry, John. I was thinking of this post of yours:

I'm afraid my family tree only goes back to Ellis Island and the Lower East Side. Whenever anybody asked where we were from, my grandmother's answer was "Grand by Orchard."

Hi Michael,

Yes, Pocahontas and John Rolfe are also in my family tree, though I now wear just the one Zuni ring. She and Thomas Wyatt are undoubtedly the big names on the tree until you get back to royalty. Also, my grandpa ran the Pentagon in WW II, and my dad invented the Isbell Theorem. Sorry. My Norwegian great-grandma did arrive via Ellis Island, though, or so I’m told.
Anyhow. Yes, I am in DNA terms an American mutt, or a percent, as I was once told in Minneapolis. For my part, I usually say I’m from Seattle but we moved around a lot.

Cheers,
John

Update: well, Pocahontas was royalty. That’s why she met Elizabeth and John Rolfe didn’t.

Thought better of it.

Then I guess this is the John Isbell with a son named Claiborne.

http://at.yorku.ca/t/o/p/c/06.htm

Yup, that's my dad, John Rolfe Isbell. Interesting reading that interview, I've not seen it in a long time. Lots of old names and faces.

Cheers,
John

Back on the main road, Valerius Catullus 13!

Hey, that’s a great observation about the volta at “sed”. Truly good. ~ 50 BC, give or take. The basic mental structure is very similar to that of a sonnet. Great observation indeed. My bold lady Latin teacher gave us this to translate, and I’ve loved it ever since, and toyed with doing a version. Now maybe I will. I always thought it was about Roman hashish, as with certain poems by Horace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_13

Thanks for spotting this! Maybe the “unguent” helped Catullus be as nutty as he was. Don’t overdo the hash, Valerius

[perhaps your Erdős number is 13].

Cheers, Allen!

I hadn't previously thought of/heard of the idea that hashish is the perfume in question. But it certainly makes a good deal of sense.

Nor had I been aware that Horace possibly had references to hashish. I'd certainly be interested to learn where in his poems he might have done so. Almost thirty years ago I was fascinated by a book about Horace and Surrealism (that I haven't been able to trace since), especially with regard to Cerberus' triple tongue in Odes II, 19. (It was the poem I had to analyze in my final oral exam for my Latin degree here in Denmark.) Perhaps this was one of his hashish-inspired speculations.

Duncan

A poem of mine that riffed on that one was included in an early issue of Rory Waterman's New Walk. I must confess I had a different perfume in mind.

Well, the impossible to translate probable pun: Cenabis - kannabis (from Greek), coupled with other things that include Catullus’ cry of faux poverty, makes the possibility of a gift of very expensive imported hashish from Lesbia seem possible at least. There’s even the lurid thought of gross erectile function in an imaginable Freudian transfer to nasal entirety. Horace mentions the drug sellers in Rome in an early hilarious polysyllabic zinger. One of Horace’s curiosities is the ode where he promises not to reveal the secrets of Mercury’s leaves. I wonder if Horace had a hookah.

Hey John--

I too have a Wyatt poem, rendered in rhyme royal no less. I used to think it was pretty good, but then I learned that many here are as fluent in Elizabethan as they are in Latin.

I love reading the biographies of mathematicians, your father's, Clay, being no exception. It also explains your interest in Apollinaire’s alexandrines.

At the risk of stomping on a passel of toes, I’ve observed a high tide of displays on recent Eratosphere threads, all exactly true in every point, on various people’s ancestry. I claim an amoeba. And there I shall stop, but in 1695 my…. Anyway, nobody, exactly nobody, can help who their forebears were, none of us, dammit, so let’s just turn that page. (The past is another country: they usually do things differently there.) Still, this ancestry wave has inspired me to post the following link to a recent radio demolition derby compression of an opera where a family tree gets gnarly. Like it or not, this is a site for the kind of wallpaper music I listen to. No one has to like it, especially Grand Ole Opry fans.

https://www.wqxr.org/story/3-minute-...rdi-don-carlos

Isn’t it generally known that the Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini invented the sonnet form in the 13th century? (I might be related to him, my father from Agrigento.)

Ralph, that's the name I've heard. Sicily has its place in history.
Tim, glad you enjoyed the bio. My Wyatt poem is four lines long, though it does rhyme, FWIW. It's about Whoso list to hunt, the 'Anne Boleyn' poem.
Allen, you and Michael asked me, so I told you. I believe in answering questions asked.

Cheers,
John

"My Wyatt poem is four lines long, though it does rhyme, FWIW. It's about Whoso list to hunt, the 'Anne Boleyn' poem."

Let's see it.

I believe I'm allowed to post it here?

Wyatt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind.
We hunt. The world around the deer is hushed.
Can she be caught in toils? Can she be flushed?
Can she be coursed and hobbled and made blind?

Cheers,
John
 

Nice, John, very nice. At first I wished it had been longer, but then I reconsidered. As an homage to Wyatt, it is exactly the right length. I now yield the floor to the Catullans.

Thank you, Tim!

Cheers,
John

Couple of trivialities. There was a Roman senatorial family that went by the name of Catalus, and a contemporaneous equestrian merchant family (eventually very wealthy) that used the name Catullus. Our poet belonged to group two.

I have complete older sibling who in his balmier moments sometimes has claimed descent from the goddess Venus, as did Julius Caesar when he had had way too much Gaul. I never felt the need to do that, since the evidence was very much absent. I suppose his braggadocio about Venus aces Anne Boleyn, and it did annoy my parents. Enough already on the subject; my ancient amoeba was named Cadwallader, which later became the name of the king of Gwynedd (633-682). Let's Move On.

How's your Gaelic, Allen? In the 16th Century, a certain Miler McGrath (Maolmhuire Mag Raith) was a Catholic priest and bishop who later became an Anglican and was appointed Archbishop of Cashel in Tipperary (Thiobraid Árann), now a ruined fortress and cathedral, which inspired Yeats to write one of his greatest poems, "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes." I have no known connection, either by clan or by county, with this Miler McGrath, but some things are inherently interesting and may be worth mentioning, with or without your permission.

Ar an gculaith.

I’ve been plowing through Irish on Duolingo. ��

Cheers,
John

Update: Mathair mhath. Also Scots Gaelic.

Tim, that’s fine. It’s not my thread. I was only going on about known ancestors because I also have at least two and a half trunks full (marriage and plenteous church records and huge family trees developed by my mother), and lots of people don’t know the names or places of their own amazing forbears. Not their fault !!! It’s fine for those who do to make a poem and publish it about interesting people from long ago and what they did. But on an Eratosphere thread I agree with Michael. I was born in Washington, D.C., with dialect-speaking cousins lurking here and everywhere. And there are nieces and nephews probably connected to an eighteenth century Greek author published in Venice. That’s more than anyone needs to know here.

I enjoyed reading your post. Really. Thank you for posting it. It was interesting.

PS. Ralph, I didn't mean overlook you. Agrigento has great cuisine, and great colossi in search of a photographer.

John, mora duit

Allen, χαιρετιστήριος

Maidin mhaith, Tim!

Cheers,
John

Tim, my Gaelic is nonexistent, but my rusty Mandarin is not. So, 你好 !