{"id":3347,"date":"2011-02-01T06:30:15","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T17:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=3347"},"modified":"2011-01-27T17:42:17","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T04:42:17","slug":"tuesday-poem-51-by-catullus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/02\/01\/tuesday-poem-51-by-catullus\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: 51  by Catullus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>51<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To me he seems godlike, in my eyes even<\/p>\n<p>More than divine (if that\u2019s not sacrilegious),<\/p>\n<p>The man who sits beside you all day gazing,<\/p>\n<p>Hearing all day<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Your musical laughter. Dazed by love, he loses<\/p>\n<p>The use of all his senses. Oh, the moment<\/p>\n<p>I see you, Lesbia, my voice, throat-strangled<\/p>\n<p>Withers away,<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>My tongue lies paralysed, subtle sensations<\/p>\n<p>Of fire snake through my limbs, my ears are deafened<\/p>\n<p>By their own noise, and, as for eyes, dense darkness<\/p>\n<p>Blindfolds them both.<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Sloth is your enemy, your disease, Catullus,<\/p>\n<p>You revel in it, crave it, and adore it.<\/p>\n<p>By what else were great kings and flourishing cities<\/p>\n<p>Ruined but sloth?<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Catullus, (ca. 84 \u2013 54 BC)<\/p>\n<p>Translated by James Michie,<em>The Poems of Catullus, <\/em>Granada Publishing, 1972<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>About Catullus:<\/p>\n<p>Catullus was born in Verona,\u00a0which was part of the Roman republic,\u00a0and as a young man in Rome became a member of a circle of \u201cnew wave\u201d poets. 116 of his poems survive and he is regarded as one of the great classical influences on western poetry, as well as being readily readable today.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>About the poem:<\/p>\n<p>Last year I featured a poem by Sappho, <em>You know the place: then<\/em> and poem 51 of Catullus is closely modelled on another poem by Sappho, fragment 31. The first three stanzas are held to be a close following of the Sappho poem, in which the poet describes her\/his reaction to the sight of her\/his beloved in the company of her new husband. The fourth stanza is specific to Catullus and significantly different in tone. One view is that it could have been the beginning of a new poem, based on or responding to the Sappho, which has subsequently been lost. (see Fordyce, C.J., <em>Catullus: A Commentary,<\/em>Oxford University Press, 1961.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>To enjoy more Tuesday Poems go to the <strong>Tuesday Poem Blog<\/strong> hub <a href=\"http:\/\/tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com\/\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a> or click on the Quill icon in the sidebar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>51 To me he seems godlike, in my eyes even More than divine (if that\u2019s not sacrilegious), The man who sits beside you all day gazing, Hearing all day . Your musical laughter. Dazed by love, he loses The use of all his senses. Oh, the moment I see you, Lesbia, my voice, throat-strangled Withers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3347"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3377,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions\/3377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}