Brother

Catullus’ memories of his brother's death appear and disappear with seemingly limited detailed descriptions, until one realises that the extended simile of Laudamia and Protesilaus (ll. 73–130) provides a major elaboration – a major fantasy – centring on the place of death with its metaphorical potency (cf. Feeney Reference Feeney, Woodman and Powell1992, especially 40–4). Thus, there are two approaches to memory in relation to the brother: memory communicated in what may be classified as a relatively unadorned style (albeit with imagery and description; ll. 13–14, 15–24) when compared to a more complicated memory evocation through extensive fantasy embedded in the Laudamia and Protesilaus simile, expressly at ll. 91–100.

With limited elaboration, ll. 13–14, which constitute Catullus’ explanation to Allius concerning his inability to fulfil a request, allude to the trauma of the recent event. This couplet, expressly l. 13, which is referenced in the opening line of poem 101,Footnote ⁸ suggests that the appeal for a gift is a memory trigger:

Such a memory flash, which Hamann (Reference Hamann2001) categorises as ‘explicit memory’ (discussed below), relates memory to emotional arousal:

The lines that follow (ll. 15–24) provide, in clear and unadorned style, two memories, one distant and one recent, which function as elaborations on the memory flash (ll. 13–14). Ll. 15–24 recall two memories: Catullus’ happy youth (ll. 15–18) and the death of his brother (ll. 19–24):

Here there is another textual ‘flash’ to poem 101, which elides the poet's memory with his text, as if both are coextensive. Indeed, this unpredictable resurfacing of different phrases from the poems seems to match the unpredictable resurfacing of memories from the poet's past.

The two recollections of ll. 15–24 are followed by an equally unadorned, albeit emotional, statement:

The story of Laudamia and Protesilaus communicates the same memory but through the use of fantasy. Through this extended simile, the memory of the death of the brother returns, triggered by the story of the Trojan War, or specifically Troy itself (cf. Gale Reference Gale, Du Quesnay and Woodman2012), which lies at the heart of the poet's focus on the newlyweds’ story. As Seider (Reference Seider2016: 297) comments: ‘In poem 68b his sibling's unexpected appearance in the midst of a simile portends his deeper hold on Catullus’ memory and also re-engages with the same mythological context seen in poem 65.’ This second approach to the evocation of the memories of the death of Catullus’ brother in the poem, namely, memory evocation through indirect connection to fantasy-infused imagery, results in a more stylised representation of memory and, as a result, a more complicated one. Having introduced the simile of the story of Laudamia and Protesilaus at l. 73 in reference to the comparison of Lesbia with Laudamia, the passage on Troy embraces the memory of the death of Catullus’ brother:

Initially the memory described at ll. 91–100 is passionate but, again, unadorned. It is the story on either side of ll. 91–100, the extended simile of Laudamia and Protesilaus, which provides the fantasy and expression of the complexity and depth of emotions. This extended simile begins earlier at l. 73 and takes the reader to the end of the story at l. 90 with Laudamia learning of her husband's death at Troy. At l. 101, when the tale proper is resumed, the cause of Protesilaus’ death, the Trojan War, is evoked, which leads to a series of extended similes on the grief of Laudamia (a heroine who refuses to forget her husband),Footnote ¹⁰ which finally end at l. 130. The following structural divisionFootnote ¹¹ of the simile maps the progression of the narrative elements, and highlights the significance of the inlay of the memory of the brother's death:

• 73–86  Mythical exemplum I: Laudamia (compared to Lesbia as a bride who comes to the domus of her uir)

• 87–90  Mythical exemplum II: Trojan War / Helen (cause of Laudamia's bereavement)

• 91–100  Catullus’ misfortune: death of brother (who dies at Troy)

  Constitutes memory flashback

• 101–4  Mythical exemplum III: Trojan War / Paris (cause of Laudamia's bereavement)

• 105–8  Mythical exemplum IV: Laudamia (her bereavement)

• 109–16   Mythical exemplum V: Hercules (the abyss he must drain – compared to Laudamia's bereavement and passionate amor)

• 117–18  Mythical exemplum VI: Laudamia (her sexual amor)

• 119–24  Real life exemplum: Roman family (compared to Laudamia's familial amor)

• 125–8    Nature exemplum: dove (compared to Laudamia's familial amor)

• 129–30   Mythical exemplum VII: Laudamia (her furores)

Therefore, what initially seems to be an intense but unembellished memory of his brother's death at ll. 91–100 is revealed as both a complex and fantastical recollection, and the sense of interruption in the poem's structure (as illustrated above) powerfully evokes the unpredictable nature of memory triggers and flashbacks. And, importantly for this analysis, Catullus never undoes the fantasy evoked in ll. 91–100 by allowing realism to intervene in the memory of his brother's death at Troy. Not a regular cog in the wheels of the Roman empire, but a Homeric Greek, Catullus’ brother remains the hero of the poet's own fantastical memory. In this way, the poetic and emotional power of the presentation of memory monumentalises the event through the elevation of it to a personalised legend.Footnote ¹²

Lesbia

In contrast to the passages on the death of his brother, Catullus’ memories of Lesbia are emotionally negotiated by movements both towards, and away from, overt fantasy. Except for the mundane memory at ll. 27–30, in which Catullus rather flatly quotes Allius’ lines about her infidelity, memories of Lesbia are, for the most part, directly fantastical. However, whereas Catullus leaves his brother as a legendary figure, his evocations of memories of Lesbia – more immediately fantastical compared to the memories of his brother – are brought back to earth with a thud.

The first direct memory of Lesbia at l. 67 begins with a clearly articulated explanation of his gratitude to Allius:

Then Catullus recalls the blessed day when the lovers met in private:

Lesbia makes a delayed return at ll. 131–7. The continuity between these lines and ll. 70–5 are sustained by the imagery of her as a goddess in a fantastical memory embellished as a ‘divine epiphany’ (Leigh Reference Leigh, Huntley and Oakley2016: 209). And when she reappears some fifty lines later (ll. 131–7), Catullus’ memory returns to the very same spot at which he left her at l. 75 (and, incidentally, at poem 8.3: fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles). At ll. 131–4 especially, once more she is a divinity, once more she is resplendent (lux mea), she shone brightly (fulgebat … candidus), she is one to whom he may be able to yield – if only ever-so slightly – she is a goddess accompanied by Cupid:

In such moments, the Freudian meaning of fantasy that references theories of desire and wish fulfilment come into play. But reality intrudes upon such rarefied fantasies, and doubt destroys them as we read at lines ll. 135–7 when there are discernible traces of hesitation between the real and the unreal in the first of what I call ‘abandoned fantasies’:

Nevertheless, fantasy fights its way back in as Catullus’ thoughts turn to the trials and tribulations of another great love-match, Juno and Jove, albeit one that is tainted with recollections of Jove's infidelities (ll. 138–40). Memories cast as fantasies of the divine, the bridal, the wifely Lesbia finally end. The fantasy Lesbia crumbles and the real one takes her place. But fantasy plays a role in the journey to acceptance of painful memories, moving the poet along to the bittersweet realisation in a problematic vignette, marred by a lacuna:

In these fantastical recollections of Lesbia, we detect what Huyssen (Reference Huyssen1995: 6) refers to as ‘memory … associated with some utopian space and time’. While these fantastical lines clearly reflect emotional pain, perhaps they suggest a sense of hope as well. For example, the poet jolts himself out of such reveries. Additionally, the very process of recording the fallacious and fantasy-based memories serves as an attempt to write himself out of ‘utopian longing’.Footnote ¹³ This takes us back to the earlier discussion of Oliensis’ unconsciousness and Janan's self-consciousness in relation to poem 68, and my preference for Oliensis’ reading of the poem. It does so in relation to the expression of memory as the ‘dialectics of in/articulacy’ (Rowland Reference Rowland2014), in which ‘[t]he process of memory consists of a constant sifting of images which inform, and are affected by, changing notions of individual … identities. Private memories are composed of broken narratives that represent (possible) past events’ (Rowland Reference Rowland2001: 196). And while the art of poetry is in fact art as artifice that involves a degree of self-consciousness, the slippery and ephemeral nature of memory, as Rowland implies, naturally involves a degree of dialectical inarticulacy that may be said to come from attempts at expressing the inexpressible. This further reminds us of the earlier suggestion by Quinn (Reference Quinn1970) that poem 68 has elements of stream-of-consciousness in both content and form. Stream-of-consciousness elides with memory, which, as Crangle (Reference Crangle2004: 148), writing on Wordsworth's The Grasmere Journals, suggests ‘is frequently considered integral to the rendering of the stream of consciousness’.

Examples of stream-of-consciousness, which I equate with Oliensis’ unconsciousness, are evident throughout the poem. Indeed, considering stream-of-consciousness as a feature of poem 68 in toto may be a means of explaining the change in direction from ll. 1–40 to ll. 41–160. It achieves this, obviously, by removing the separatist consternation at the sudden change of heart (as paraphrased above: ‘I cannot compose a poem … I have composed a poem’). Indeed, this jagged thought process is evident both before and after the standard 68a and 68b ‘division’ in, for example, the excruciating series of excuses offered at ll. 19–40, which can be interpreted as symptomatic of the random thoughts of a person caught in the emotional turmoil of grief. In the light of the random ideas and contradictions that constitute the lines preceding the powerful recantation of ll. 41–50, content based on stream-of-consciousness suggests unity based on disunity. This style, this movement back-and-forth, these altered states, characterises the structure of the poem in its entirety. It also alleviates the alleged problem of the awkward transition from l. 148 and l. 149, which is usually overlooked by separatists or, as in the work of Kroll (Reference Kroll1968: 218–20) which was developed by Bright (Reference Bright1976), can be solved by accepting poem 68 as a complete work with a tripartite structure.

It is in the context of the concept of stream-of-consciousness, which I regard as permeating the poem as a result of grief and the emotional scramble to both cling to, and yet to let go of memory, that one final interpretation of the lacuna at ll. 142–3 may be proffered. Obviously, the lacuna may be excised, thus uniting l. 141 to l. 142 but scholars have traditionally rejected such proposals, and have accordingly offered various solutions.Footnote ¹⁴ There have also been attempts to emend l. 141 and l. 142 to make the erasure of the lacuna more palatable by matching the warning about the gods with the image of the anxious parent.Footnote ¹⁵ If one were to remove the lacuna, thus producing the couplet as – ‘And yet, it is not proper that men be compared to gods, / lift up the thankless burden of an anxious parent.’ – one may argue for an equation of style with emotion. The combination may, initially, seem jarring, the ideas uncomfortably jammed side-by-side, but it is not out-of-kilter with the so-called problematic jumps at, for example, ll. 40–41 and ll. 149–60. However, if one takes tollere (l.142) to literally mean ‘to lift up’, one may suggest that the erased lacuna produces two steadfast resolutions on the part of Catullus: ‘I should not compare Lesbia to a goddess’ and ‘I should accept or lift up the burden of loving her’.

Interpreting poem 68 as the closest one comes to truly ‘knowing’ the poet (cf. De Villiers Reference De Villiers2020: 112), I find Quinn's stream-of-consciousness useful. This is largely because I regard Catullus as expressing his state of emotional and mental exhaustion in an authentic way, which results in the expression of complex and changing states-of-mind in one poem. Additionally, I suggest that the poem achieves what Shelley (Reference Shelley2012 [1840]: 9) defines as the role of poetry: ‘It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.’ Indeed, Catullus, like Shelley, evoked ‘a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought’ well before the expression ‘stream-of-consciousness’ became part of modern psychological, philosophical, and literary phraseology. James coined the phrase in his 1890 work, Principles of Psychology, to describe ‘the unbroken flow of thought and awareness in the waking mind’ (Abrams and Harpham Reference Abrams and Harpham2012: 380).Footnote ¹⁶ Since then the term has been refined and used as a tool of literary criticism to convey:

This definition clearly reflects the use of stream-of-consciousness post-1920, and while its reference to ‘sense perceptions’ is more applicable to the narrative styles of Woolf and Joyce, other components of its definitional boundaries can be applied to facets of poem 68.

Memory and Poem 65

The importance of examining how memory is presented in the Catullan corpus – in the case of this article, emotional episodic memory – is to acknowledge the usefulness of memory as a means of determining a hierarchy of experiential significance. Of course, this is only if one were to take the Carmina as a direct transcription of the poet's experiences, which should be attended by the analytical caveat that the extant verse of Catullus encompasses all the most important events ‘in the life of the poet’. With what remains, and reading the poems as an expression of self,Footnote ¹⁷ it is noteworthy that the two poems that include detailed and explicit use of fantasy as part of memory evocation – poems 65 and 68 – are based on the death of Catullus’ brother,Footnote ¹⁸ with poem 68 also including the end of Catullus’ relationship with Lesbia. This would suggest that these two events, particularly the death of the brother, are the most important experiences in the life of the poet. Poem 65, which is a cover letter to Hortalus – as poem 68 is a letter to Allius – also takes form and shape through memory evocation, stream-of-consciousness, and an experimental structure. Therefore, as a final word on Catullus’ fantastical memories in poem 68 and the writing of trauma, a brief discussion of poem 65 seems both appropriate and useful.Footnote ¹⁹

Poem 65 bears many similarities to poem 68. Not only is there the theme of fraternal death – and fraternal mourning – but a letter to a friend, a poetic gift, and a reflection on memory. In fact, memory is both present and absent in poem 65: the memory of the death of his brother is on Catullus’ mind, causing intense emotional and creative turmoil and, in contrast, memory is also failing the poet who cannot attend to short-term requests. Like poem 68, poem 65 signals the state of Catullus’ grief through the equation of form with content. For example, poem 65 is comprised of one single sentence of twenty-four lines, including an abrupt parenthesis beginning at l. 5, which ends at l. 14. Oliensis (Reference Oliensis2009: 27) notes the ‘textual unconscious of poem 65’, which she suggests – in somewhat contradictory terms – ‘is produced in the interstices of its orderly syntax’,Footnote ²⁰ and Godwin (Reference Godwin1995: 176) draws attention to ‘its main verb being in lines 15–16’ and the fact that ‘the poem reads like a spontaneous outpouring of grief for his brother filtered through the poetic artistry of the medium.’ And, like poem 68, the structure – though arguably another example of stream-of-consciousness with a decidedly detectable sense of randomness – can sustain a structural analysis, as presented by Godwin (Reference Godwin1995: 176):

• 1–4  poet's inability to write

• 5–8  brother's death stated

• 9–12 apostrophe to brother

• 13–14 Procne simile

• 15–16 poet to Hortalus

• 17–18 image of carelessness

• 19–24 simile of girl and apple

Godwin (Reference Godwin1995: 176) also provides a twofold division based on ll. 1–12 and ll. 13–24, which is part of his case for an ‘elegantly symmetrical’ structure.Footnote ²¹ Like poem 68, especially its strange simile of Laudamia and Protesilaus with its surface-level ‘lack of fit’, poem 65 retains an essence of form that can, eventually, be gently teased out. Additionally, as with my discussion of poem 68, memory in poem 65 is also classified as emotional episodic memory that involves fantasy (Procne, and the uirgo). What distinguishes the treatment of memory in both elegies is the self-reflexive awareness of the poet's loss of memory. Catullus evokes metaphors of memory loss as words vainly trusted to the winds (ll. 17–18) and as pouring out of one's mind (l. 18) before the final image of the forgetful girl whose predicament concludes the poem (ll. 19–24). On the simile of the forgetful girl, McCarthy (Reference McCarthy2019: 199) rightly notes the symbol of the poet's self-presentation, which ‘also expands on the claim that the speaker did not want Hortalus to think he had forgotten his promise’.

Memory is fractured and so fractures. It fractures when it is recalled in words both spoken and written. It surfaces amid competing narratives, erupting at relevant and inopportune moments. In this way, it is made manifest, as Oliensis suggests, as an unconscious interruption. And, additionally and importantly, such disruptions of thought emerge in unconsciously ungovernable ways. The memory that involves trauma in the form of the death of a loved one or the death of a relationship marred by betrayal sometimes evades conscious or logical expression. Hence, Oliensis (Reference Oliensis2009: 49) poses the right rhetorical questions in relation to poem 68: ‘Is Catullus mourning an erotic or fraternal loss? Or have the two somehow gotten so tangled up with each other as to be no longer readily distinguishable?’ These are key questions, and I would argue that Catullus is mourning both types of love that have become intermingled. A caveat is, however, that the issue raised by the second question points to the complex intermingling of the two states of mourning. And while this merging of the two events makes for a ‘tangled up’ reading experience, it does ultimately communicate two distinct emotional situations, which in turn reveals the genius of the choice of metre: one of love, and mourning. Moving away from the Freudian model of mourning predicated on the gradual withdrawal of libidinal fixation from what is lost, Oliensis (Reference Oliensis2009: 26) suggests Derrida's ‘mid-mourning’ as more applicable to poem 68 because it speaks to the poet's state of dwelling in ‘the anguished middle, half-remembering, half-forgetting’.Footnote ²² This alternative reading reminds us why Catullus haphazardly disregards or forgets the Muses as the font of all memory knowledge and artistic inspiration in poem 68, which Derrida (Reference Derrida and Kamuf1994 [1993] xviii) might be tempted to see as the embrace of a ‘being-with specters’, which is ‘not only but also, a politics of memory, of inheritance, and of generations’.Footnote ²³

Catullus is mindful of forgetfulness. Several times throughout the corpus, he writes of the crime of being immemor; from the earlier pieces in the long poems, namely poems 64 and 65, Catullus is particularly attuned to this theme, castigating Theseus, the perfidus (64.132), as a result of his forgetfulness and evoking the blush of the forgetful uirgo who absentmindedly lets the apple fall from her lap (65.19–24). Memory is on Catullus’ mind in the long poems. Indeed, his own memory is one of the major themes in poem 68 and it is not well-matched to literary articulation (or any form of linear articulation, for that matter). Therefore, to put forward an extreme reading of one of the key arguments of the separatists, and as a testimony to memory, trauma and dialectical inarticulacy, one could suggest that the issue of the name of the addressee, which has constituted much academic labour, is not an indication of two separate poems, nor a scribal error, but a genuine mistake on the part of a poet engulfed by suffering.Footnote ²⁴ How far astray do expressions of grief, trauma, and memories go when one tries to write about them? When does Janan's argument for self-consciousness yield to Oliensis’ argument for unconsciousness? What does an authentic expression of remembering grief look like? Put another way, Skinner (Reference Skinner2003: 169) identifies as a concern of Catullus in poem 68 the ‘fundamental question – whether art is conceivable in the face of suffering and death’.Footnote ²⁵