The Dynamics of Catullan Obscenity: cc. 37, 58 and 11

M.B. Skinner: Catullan Obscenity The Dynamics of Catullan Obscenity: cc. 37, 58 and 11 Marilyn B. Skinner Ovid's a rake, as halfhis verses show him, Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample, Catullus scarcely has a decent poem . . . (Don Juan I.xlii) So Byron, enough of a seasoned campaigner himself to recognize smut when he came across it. Any moral objection to literature proffered by an arch-libertine should be taken, of course, with a grain of salt. Yet in that very parody of prudish cant we may hear the ghostly echo of sentiments voiced by some genuine prig— Annabella, Lady Byron, for example. In any case, Byron's observation about the exceptional amount of obscenity in the Catullan corpus still holds good and has recently been seconded by other, more sober, critics. B. Arkins calculates that two out of three poems of Catullus deal with some form of sexual behavior, and A. Richlin concurs: "Out of all the polymetrics and epigrams, sixty-two—well over half—include invective or sexual material, some of the coarsest in Latin verse."1 No one who has read this poet through once will challenge D. Lateiner's contention that obscenity "has made a significant contribution to the work of Catullus," or dispute W.R. Johnson's belief in its being "somehow central to Catullus's art."2 For most readers of Catullan texts, the mere presence of such obscene matter no longer poses a moral problem. Yet its literary purpose is still hotly debated. Why does this "foul-mouthed young man," as Johnson calls him, persist in battering our ears with toilet-stall expressions? Different lines of critical response to that question can be traced. Johnson himself argues for an iconoclastic intent: Catullus' shocking language allegedly encapsulates a rejection of old-fashioned Roman cultural values that regarded art as a vehicle of patriotic inspiration or dismissed it as a frivolous 1 B. Arkins, Sexuality in Catullus (Hildesheim 1982) 1; A. Richlin, The Garden ofPriapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (New Haven 1983) 144. 2 D. Lateiner, "Obscenity in CatuHus," Ramus 6 (1977) 27; W.R. Johnson, The Idea ofLyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient andModernPoetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1982) 108. 2 Syllecta CIassica 3 (1991) diversion.3 As Wiseman has cogently demonstrated, however, Catullus is not in fact a moral or aesthetic revolutionary; his social values reflect his straight-laced provincial upbringing, and his conservative attitude toward art mirrors his ethical convictions.4 Other readers look for a psychological motive. To H. Bardon Catullus' coarseness is a symptom ofhis unruly vitality; for Lateiner, conversely, it is largely therapeutic, a mechanism fordischarging hostility.5 But the validity of these explanations depends on the hidden assumption that verse served its ancient maker exactly as it serves the modern "confessional" poet, that is, as an outlet for venting explosive feelings. That is a notion that numerous critics (P. Veyne, for one) have recently been at some pains to refute.6 To find a more plausible semantic function for Catullan obscenity, we must approach it as a phenomenon embedded in a given cultural context. JiC. Newman rightly points to genre as one major factor to be considered. Within iambic, obscenity was perfectly at home: Catullus, he believes, extended the scope ofthe iambikê idea to cover a wide range of other literary situations.7 Assuming the poet took the expressive freedom licensed by the iambic mode as his point of departure, then, we should ask ourselves why—and, for a possible answer, turn to Richlin's anthropological analysis of the function of sexually aggressive humor in Roman public discourse.8 For Richlin, the widespread tendency to use such humor as a weapon is epitomized in the minatory figure of Priapus, the ithyphallic garden god who threatens intruders with rape. The real-life correlate for Priapus' scurrility is found in the legislative and forensic arenas, where orators, feigning outrage, smear rivals with witty accusations ofdissolute behavior and effeminacy. Those tactics are then transferred to the comic diatribes of Roman satire, which target other conventional scapegoats, such as foreigners, old women and closet pathics. Meanwhile, audiences for both political and literary polemic enjoy identifying with the...