Translation as Muse: Poetic Translation in Catullus’s Rome by Elizabeth Marie Young (review)

In this engaging work, Young expands the notion of “translation” in the late Roman Republic, focusing especially on Catullus’ engagement with translations both obvious and subtle. By challenging the received wisdom that translation is passive and derivative, Young shines a light on the vibrant world of translation in the mid first century b.c.e., setting it in a more positive—and more accurate— light. A work with many strengths, Translation as Muse will make valuable contributions to Catullan studies, late Republican studies, and translation studies as a whole.

The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and an epilogue. In the introduction, Young argues that modern views of translation as passive and derivative are hopelessly myopic, and that Roman translation of the late Republic was a powerful act of literary—and social—appropriation. I found persuasive Young’s claim that there is far more translation in Catullus than most readers recognize (indeed, I would expand this beyond Catullus). The survey of earlier and later translations was similarly useful in situating the present work within a larger tradition.

In chapter 1, “The Task of Translation in Catullus 64,” Young argues that poem 64 is centered on the themes of colonization, trade, and those Eastern luxury imports that mimic and mirror its own luxurious poetic creation. In drawing similarities between the purple tapestry at the center of the Peleus and Thetis vignette and the finely wrought character of the poem itself, Young suggests that poems may themselves be viewed as cultural imports.

Chapter 2, “Excavating the Poetic Emporium: Material and Cultural Capital in the Polymetrics,” continues with the theme of imported luxury items and their intersections with late Republican discourse, focusing primarily on poems 12, 25, 5, 7, and 16. Young presents a thoughtful and persuasive conflation of text and material object, arguing that Catullus presents his poems as economic and cultural substance. While a strong chapter, at times it leans too heavily on unconvincing linguistic arguments (the basium argument, 79–80) and the equally unconvincing, if undeniably popular, notion of a “Catullan Revolution” (78).

Chapter 3, “Catullus and the Demographics of Late Republican Alexandrianism,” focuses on two poems, Catullus 4 (Phasellus ille) and Catalepton 10 from the Appendix Vergiliana (Sabinus ille), which takes Catullus 4 as a model. An interesting and thought-provoking chapter, the argument here takes on a life of its own at the risk of drifting a bit from the underlying thread of the work.

Chapter 4, “Intimate Acts of Reading: Imitation and Self-Expression in the Translation Prefaces,” (50 and 65) and chapter 5, “Constructing Callimachus,” may be considered as a pair. The bulk of chapter 4 focuses on poems 50 and 51, reading these poems against Sappho 31 and the “sublime turn” of Catullus 51 (124; a term first coined by Neil Hertz) whereby the poet is transformed from “victimized body to poetic force” (126). The latter part of the chapter is much briefer, and focuses on the “Alexandrian manner” of 65 and the “woman-centered” nature of 66. Vergil’s quotation of this poem (Aen. 6.460; see Catullus 66.39) is noted, but Young could have done more to tease out the polyvalent complexities of multigenerational translation. Chapter 5 continues the discussion of Catullus 66. Arguing that Catullus’ close adherence to his source (Callimachus’ Plokamos) is a “manifest deviation” (140) from traditional translation practice, Young suggests convincingly that translations create entirely new versions of the texts that they purport to reproduce.

In the final chapter, “Surpassing the Gods: Infatuation and Agonism in Catullus’ Sappho” (51), Young returns to the theme of chapter 4. Arguing that poem 51 “articulates the ambivalent emotions prompted by translation” (167), Young makes the attractive suggestion that the Lesbia of the second stanza is in fact Sappho. The addition of his own name in the final stanza, then, serves as a distinctly Catullan “signature” by which he claims...