That's the Roman in him, even though no other Roman appreciated Sappho like Catullus did-all his love poems are to "Lesbia," after Sappho's homeland, which had at the time more sensual and artistic than solely homoerotic connotations.)Īnyway, this is a long, nerdy, Goodreadsy introduction, but there's a reason: a poem nearly 2,600 years old, not even in its original language, not even in its entirety, and originally written as a song but with the music lost aeons ago (one wonders whether this is what will happen to Bob Dylan one far-away day)-what I am saying to you is: all these qualifiers, all this in between us and the original impact, and me bored in high school, and it still knocked me flat on my ass.Īnd now you realize there is only one other poem in better shape (from a book of her work as late as the 8th century, which KILLS me that she survived in good shape over 1,000 years but couldn't last more), and every single other one in existence is in pieces-some still getting you most of a through-line, others just one or two or three words. (Nobody seems to be sure whether this stray last line was a mistaken addition in a later copy or whether the jerk of a grammarian we got it from decided to break off one line into another stanza-and Catullus' copy doesn't help either, because after some very gorgeous poetry, he breaks off somewhere ENTIRELY differently right at this point - starts grumbling about how all this desire is probably just a sign he's got too lazy a schedule. Really, it's the run into the third stanza, which came through just as overwhelming in my own half-proficient high school translation out of Latin when I was 17, that gives me shivers:įor when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking And having your voice stopped up, just as the poem goes on to say. The awe there of a particular type of love from afar. It's every high school crush rolled into one, double-strength for adults.
It's perfectly preserved as far as it goes, because it's in someone else's book and quoted in full in Greek, except that it very likely cuts off suddenly.Īs Carson translates the original, it begins "He seems to me equal to gods," (I now paraphrase) that lucky man who is standing in front of you and getting to hear your sweet voice. The first poem they ever had us translate in our AP Catullus/Horace class was Catullus' half-translation ("inspired by?") of the second-most-complete Sappho lyric I think we have: Sappho 31.
I took high-school Latin, as perhaps a couple of my recent reviews have mentioned.
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