Silence in Catullus

3. Poets, Poems, and Poetry: Cc. 22 and 36 (plus 50)

82 Poets, Poems, and Poetry Cc. 22 and 36 (plus 50) I have made this poem for you, my sweet. 50.16: hoc, iucunde, tibi poema feci T he sexualized silence discussed in chapter 2 served to illustrate how natural and sociocultural silences may be made to interact in a poem. Oral sexuality in particular, as exemplified in Catullus by kissing and irrumatio, results in silence naturally through preclusion or occlusion of the mouth and tongue. That silence is evaluated and interpreted in turn by members of societies professing certain cultural traditions or norms as well as seeking innovation or experiencing change. In terms of a poetics of silence, Catullus thus seems to value each sexualized silence for how its unspoken backstory, whether real or fictional, may be spoken aloud by the innovative poet in outrageous violations of traditional linguistic taboos. As we have seen now in both chapters 1 and 2, thus does Catullus define, at least in part, charming or witty poetry. Sexualized silence is, however, only one aspect of Catullus’s poetics of silence. Other types of silence also give the poet the chance to seem to be overheard, and of course Catullus responds to silence in ways that go beyond charm or wit. Likewise, not every poem thematizes silence explicitly. Our next step toward comprehending Catullus’s poetics of silence more fully is therefore to consider poems whose silences are not—or not mainly—sexual, poems in which Catullus seems to aim for more than charm or wit, as well as poems that relate to silence without necessarily thematizing it explicitly. 3 Poets, Poems, and Poetry 83 In this chapter my main examples are poems whose silences and moments of speech are less specifically sexual and more generally interpersonal and social: c. 22 (“That Suffenus, Varus, whom you know well”; Suffenus iste, Vare, quem probe nosti) and c. 36 (“Annals of Volusius, shitty sheets”; Annales Volusi, cacata carta), alongside another listen to c. 50 (“Yesterday, Licinius, a day of leisure”; Hesterno, Licini, die otiosi). Since these poems are expressly metapoetic, focusing on poets and their work, they allow us to develop more clearly Catullus’s image of the interaction of poems, poets, and poetry as they relate to silence and, through it, relate to each other. To anticipate this chapter’s argument, we may say that in light of Catullus’s poetics of silence, poems are treated less for their language—in a way they are silenced—than as material, as objects that serve in part to figure social interaction. Poets themselves are likewise considered less for any details of their linguistic artistry than as living symbols of exemplary language use and so, perforce and perhaps despite themselves, as relating to silence in especially freighted ways. Finally, poetry considered as a whole or in the abstract tends, quite paradoxically for reasons concerning its insistence on utterance, toward what would seem to be its natural opposite, absolute silence including the natural silence of death. At the furthest extreme, such metapoetic contemplation of poetry calls into question the value of language as well as our value as beings-in-language. The ultimate question is whether language, even outstanding poetic language, suffices against the silences that precede, surround, and threaten to follow it. As we will see in later chapters (4 through 6), Catullus indeed raises this question in certain poems, considering in particular what we might call the negative consequences of poetry’s power to preserve memory indiscriminately of topic. In the meantime, cc. 22 and 36, and with them c. 50, will let us see more clearly how Catullus figures silence as among the rhetorical or “performative” elements of late Roman Republican culture.1 In c. 22 this takes the form of a cultural paradox: an elegant man takes great pleasure in composing what Catullus, at least, regards as extremely inelegant poetry; but if that man comes in for criticism as a poet, so do we all for flaws that are hidden from us. Although Catullus’s metaphor at that concluding moment is visual—“we cannot see” (v. 21: non uidemus ) our own flaws—the underlying observation nonetheless resonates with a poetics of silence as Catullus once more constructs a poem out of speaking aloud such tacit truth. In c. 36 there is a similar ambiguity about whose poems, precisely, are described as low-quality (“shitty”; 84 Poets, Poems, and Poetry vv. 1 and 20...