As with so much else in life, the blog that was so lovingly and attentively updated in the first few days of its existence seems to have been neglected of late. The initial enthusiasm has given way to a taciturn disillusionment. Familiarity breeds contempt, and the blog that promised so much provokes in its creator nothing more now than a vague feeling of jaded disgust and ennui; it has been cast off, like an old shoe or a ginger stepchild.
Not really. I’ve been quite busy of late, but I’m now enjoying a brief respite, so here it is: the long-awaited fourth entry.
Be yourself: the mantra of the modern age. It seems so basic, so irrefutably true that it is difficult to decry it without seeming like a reactionary moron, or worse, one of those ‘Enemies of Freedom’ that GWB is so fond of telling us about.
This mantra owes its popularization to the self-help culture so dominant in America: turn on any daytime talk-show, and you’ll find that the advice given to one and all, from the obese manic-depressive to the pill-popping Hollywood has-been is, invariably: ‘Just Be Yourself’. In popular culture, it has become something akin to Mosaic Law: in any American sitcom you care to mention, you will find some variation on the following plot: X wants to get the girl / get a job / be successful; X decides that the best way to do this is to pretend to be someone he’s not; X fails, and experiences an epiphany when someone tells him to ‘BE YOURSELF’. The alternative ending is the one in which X initially seems to fail, but, having realized the importance of his duty to himself, he nevertheless gets the job / girl / football scholarship, and all is well. It is fairly obvious that this scheme, far from championing individual liberty and self-determination, is in fact profoundly conservative.
The other privileged realm of beyouselfism is, of course the hyperreal space of Reality TV. Ask any one of these exhibitionists why they are exposing themselves to public ridicule on, say Big Brother, and you will invariably get the response: “so that people can see what I’m really like; I’m just going to be myself.” On these shows sincerity is seen as the greatest good, dissimulation the ultimate evil. It matters not whether the ‘self’ that the person in question is ‘being’ is a screeching harridan or a self-obsessed idiot: as long as they’re genuine, they’re alright by us. Cue commercials.
How does the profanum vulgus reconcile an easy-going beyourselfism with the conflicting truth of the commercial, which is tirelessly telling us to be someone else? Easily.
Because the freedom to ‘be yourself’ is nothing other than the freedom to act without thinking, to base your choices on what comes easily. And what comes most easily is a lifestyle based on what we know, a lifestyle modelled on the talk-shows and the movies and the commercials.
When we reflexivize this most unassuming of verbs, we make it into an action: ‘being yourself’ is not to do with ‘being’; it is to do with ‘doing’, with ‘acting out’. This is the essential paradox. ‘Be yourself’, they say, pointing towards some vague ideal of authenticity and spiritual oneness, but what lurks behind it is something more akin to ‘conform to what is expected of you’; the anti-conformist slogan has become something profoundly conformist. Not that our new ideal is something imposed from outside, by anything as easy to comprehend and decry as ‘society’ or ‘The Man’, or even ‘consumer culture’. No, these monolithic bogeymen have long outlived their usefulness. Instead, the command to conform has been internalized, and by some clever legerdemain we refuse conformity in order to conform to our idea of what we should be. But this is about as far from the Existentialist concept of authenticity as it is possible to be. Don’t think: act. Be yourself. Be docile, don’t question what motivates you, consume.
‘Be yourself’ bears a cosmetic resemblance to the famous Socratic dictum ‘Know yourself’; but they are faux amis.
Know thyself. Nosce te ipsum. Connais toy-mesmes (as Montaigne might have written). Γνωθηι σεαυτον (as Socrates might have read on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi).
As is the case with so much else, the authority on this matter is Montaigne:
That warning-lesson given to all men, to know themselves, must necessarily be of important effect, since that God of wisedome, knowledge, and light, caused the same to be fixed on the frontispiece of his temple, as containing whatsoever he was to counsell us. Plato saith also that wisedome is nothing but the execution of that ordinance; And Socrates doth distinctly verifle the same in Zenophon.
Difficulties and obscurity are not perceived in every science, but by such as have entrance into them: For some degree of intelligence is required to be able to marke that one is ignorant, and wee must knocke at a gate to know whether it bee shutte. Whence ensueth this Platonicall subtilty, that neyther those which know have no further to enquire, forsomuch as they know already; nor they that know not, because to enquire it is necessary they know what they enquire after. Even so in this for a man to know himselfe, that every man is seene so resolute and satisfied and thinks himselfe sufficiently instructed or skilfull doth plainely signifie that no man understands any thing, as Socrates teacheth Euthydemus. My selfe, who professe nothing else, finde therein so bottomlesse a depth and infinite variety, that my apprentisage hath no other fruit than to make me perceive how much more there remaineth for me to learne. To mine owne weaknesse so often acknowledged I owe this inclination which I beare unto modesty, to the obedience of beliefes prescribed unto me, to a constant coldnesse and moderation of opinions, and hatred of this importunate and quarrellous arrogancy, wholly beleeving, and trusting it selfe, a capitall enemy to discipline and verity (from 'De l'experience', Florio's translation)
Even while acknowledging his own shortcomings – his own conservative bent and reliance on prescribed beliefs – Montaigne denounces the notion of a self that trusts itself (se croyant et fiant toute à soy). The distinction he draws is a subtle one. Is he saying that authority imposed from outside is a better guide for living a good life that our own authority? That it is more dangerous to trust oneself than to trust others? Partly. Tradition, customs and received wisdom can be useful guides to the Sceptic or to the Stoic. They don’t tie us down: any thinking person can entrust themselves to such beliefs when appropriate and cast them aside when necessary. But the notion of trust in ourselves is much harder to let go: we cling onto it blindly, never really asking ourselves what it is that motivates us. The notion of an essential, autonomous self is an enduring fiction. Being yourself is easy when you don’t know yourself.
The last word must go to Montaigne, from his essay on solitude:
Shake we off these violent holdfasts which else-where engage us, and estrange us from our selves. These so strong bonds must be untied, and a man must eft-soones love this or that, but wed nothing but himselfe; That is to say, let the rest be our owne: yet not so combined and glued together that it may not be sundred without fleaing us, and therewithall pull away some peece of our owne. The greatest thing of the world is for a man to know how to be his owne.
La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de sçavoir estre à soi.
April 29, 2004
April 19, 2004
Nos legem sequimur catullianam
WARNING
This Post includes references to the digestive and reproductive systems that may give offence.
For my third entry I’ve decided to bring together elements from the two previous ones, and to write something on pornographic literature in the post-classical and early-modern period, including a brief digression on the language games writers of obscenity often indulged in.
In the discussion of Catullus 16 below, fearful_syzygy brought to my attention the definition of the verb ‘irrumare’ in two Latin dictionaries, both of which give an explicitly accurate definition of the term – crucially – in Latin, where those old stalwarts of Latin philology Lewis & Short demurred.
Often translators of Latin poetry (and in the case of many Latin texts, no modern translation is available: the standard translation remains a 19th- or early 20th-century version, or a ‘modern’ Loeb translation that might as well be 19th century) opt for obsolete or incomprehensible terminology when faced with obscenity. Who today knows what ‘pathic’ means, or what a ‘catamite’ is, for crying out loud?
It is safe to assume, I suppose, that those of us who are well-educated enough to know Latin are unlikely to be corrupted by obscenity. Victorian values, perhaps, but this is also the case in early-modern literature. Importantly, writing in Latin meant two things: you were guaranteed a relatively sophisticated audience; and you were more or less guaranteed there would be no women among them.
In the early-modern period, the constraints imposed on a poet choosing to write in Latin (not least of which is the sheer difficulty of writing in a second language) seem to be balanced with a certain freedom of expression: Latin works are more likely to get past the censors. This freedom is what Du Bellay was alluding to when he called the French language his ‘wife’ and the Latin language his ‘mistress’. The implication is that his mistress is a bit more adventurous in the sack, and will let him get away with things that he would even dream of doing with his wife. The most refined of Neo-Latin poets were by no means averse to the odd bit of ‘explicit content’: Johannes Secundus, who pretty much invented the genre of the ‘kiss’ poem (after Catullus, of course) had no compunction about describing his hard-on bursting through his pants (cf. Cat. 32), all the while singing the praises of his mistress with Neo-Platonic fervour. The Lusus of Politian, the most erudite classical scholar of his generation, are full of vulgar descriptions of the sexual act.
Of course, the classics are full of filth, from Catullus to the epigrams of Martial to Petronius. This wasn’t always easy to stomach for Christian-era authors, even in the age of the humanists. Even the most open-minded and syncretistic of humanists like Erasmus had difficulty reconciling the more pagan side of classical poets (for pagan read ‘immoral’) with the culture and refinement that formed the basis of the classical education. You still get censorious fellows like Lefèvre d’Estaples dictating what Christian men should and should not be reading. And the more lascivious parts of Ovid, for example, were expurgated from schoolroom texts (and still are, broadly speaking).
A good example of the sort of thing Latin poets were writing in the post-classical age is the Cento nuptialis, a marriage song composed by the 4th-century CE poet Ausonius, which he wrote at the behest of the emperor Valentinius. The poem is a sort of collage of hemistiches taken from Virgil, with no ‘original material’ added by the editor. Ausonius is obviously a bit earlier than the Neo-Latin authors I’m talking about, but let’s not get too bogged down in superfluous notions like ‘historical accuracy’, ‘relevance’ or ‘coherency’.
The final section of the poem is a sexually explicit description of the married couple’s consummation of vows. Ausonius even includes a warning just before it along the lines of ‘If you are easily shockable, look away now'. It’s not quite as shocking as the end section of Gaspar Noé’s Seul contre tous, but the strategy is the same: it makes you want to read it.
Ausonius justifies the inclusion of this section by alluding to the ancient tradition of ‘Fescinnine’ song, bawdy verses sung at weddings in Ancient Rome, which didn’t bother much about sparing the blushes of the bride. The idea was to ward off the Evil Eye (fascinum) by fooling it into thinking that the happy couple were figures of ridicule, and had nothing worth stealing. (the word ‘fascinum’, as is clear from fearful_syzygy’s dictionary definition of ‘Irrumare’ below, also means ‘penis’; I’m sure there’s a connection here, but I can’t for the life of me imagine what it might be). Anyway, I suppose this tradition survives in etiolated form today: in his post-wedding speech (in this country at least), it is de rigueur for the best man to speculate on the goings on in the wedding-chamber, as well as to emphasise the sexual inadequacy of the groom and the promiscuity of the bride.
Since I couldn’t find an English translation of the poem anywhere on the Internet, I’ve loosely translated the last section below:
10. IMMINVTIO
Postquam congressi | sola sub nocte per umbram
et mentem Venus ipsa dedit, | nova proelia temptant.
Tollit se arrectum: | conantem plurima frustra
occupat os faciemque, | pedem pede fervidus urget,
perfidus alta petens: | ramum, qui veste latebat,
sanguineis ebuli bacis minioque rubentem
nudato capite | et pedibus per mutua nexis,
monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum
eripit a femine et trepidanti fervidus instat.
Est in secessu, | tenuis quo semita ducit,
ignea rima micans: | exhalat opaca mephitim.
Nulli fas casto sceleratum insistere limen.
Hic specus horrendum: | talis sese halitus atris
faucibus effundens | nares contingit odore.
Huc iuvenis nota fertur regione viarum
et super incumbens | nodis et cortice crudo
intorquet summis adnixus viribus hastam.
Haesit virgineumque alte bibit acta cruorem.
Insonuere cavae gemitumque dedere cavernae.
Illa manu moriens telum trahit, ossa sed inter
altius ad vivum persedit | vulnere mucro.
Ter sese attollens cubitoque innixa levavit,
ter revoluta toro est. | Manet imperterritus ille;
nec mora nec requies: | clavumque affixus et haerens
nusquam amittebat oculosque sub astra tenebat.
Itque reditque viam totiens | uteroque recusso
transadigit costas | et pectine pulsat eburno.
Iamque fere spatio extremo fessique sub ipsam
finem adventabant: | tum creber anhelitus artus
aridaque ora quatit, sudor fluit undique rivis,
labitur exsanguis, | destillat ab inguine virus.
"Release"
Coming together, alone in the shadows of the night, with Venus granting their desires, they join battle anew. He stands erect: he forces himself on her mouth and face, while she resists in vain, and hotly presses her foot with his. He wants more, the scoundrel! He gets it out, bare-headed and scarlet like the blood-red elderberries or cinnabar. They’re playing footsie; his ‘monster’ is terrible to behold, deformed, huge, sightless. He stands raging over his quaking victim.
In a secluded area, where a narrow path leads, there is a hot, dark, glistening fissure: it exhales a strange odour No chaste man ought to penetrate this wicked threshold! It’s a terrifying cave; vapour pours forth from its black mouth and piques the nostrils with its scent. The young man approches it via a well-known route, and leaning over her, he plunges his knotty and hard-skinned javelin inside with all the force he can muster. It hits its mark and drinks in the virginal blood. The cavern resounds and gives out a groan. Dying, she tries to pull it out, but it’s penetrated her wound through bone right to the quick. Thrice she lifted herself up on her elbow, thrice she fell back on the bed. He’s undaunted: no delay or rest for him! He hammers it home determinedly, looking up at the heavens. In and out he goes, hitting against her belly and piecing through ribs, plucking with his ivory quill. Finally they both come to the final straight, and, exhausted, they reach the end. Then their breath excites their limbs and their dry mouths, and sweat pours down them in streams. He falls back, lifeless. The poison drips from his loins.
If nothing else, this proves the truth of Ovid’s maxim ‘militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupido’.
The fact that it’s Virgil being travestied here is telling: the poet might have chosen lines from any number of Classical authors who wrote about sex. Virgil never wrote dirty lyrics, (although there are one or two ‘adult references’ in the Eclogues), and in the Aeneid, from which most of these lines are taken, he chastely averts his gaze when Aeneas and Dido get it on together in the cave. Almost none of the lines used here by Ausonius is in a sexual context in Virgil.
This seems a bit like a schoolboy game; but it was certainly one of the best-known of Ausonius’s works in the Renaissance, when the cento form was much admired and imitated. The cento is perhaps the most slavish form of imitation, but it also has the power to create new meaning, even to subvert.
Whether or not this sort of poetry is actually subversive is a vexed question. Granted, there is often a political dimension to an author’s use of obscene language, whether it be directed at a specific target (e.g. Catullus calling Julius Caesar a sodomite, it seems with impunity) or a simple gesture of defiance. Latin, for centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire remained the language of the authoritative discourses: of Law, of theology, of education in general. BUT it was also the language of obscenity – not the language of the streets and brothels, but a more refined language ratified and approved by men of culture. The obscene as ‘a gesture of defiance’ is perhaps a problematical concept in this context, since obscenity was by no means forbidden to the learned poet: one might even say that it was expected of him. Even the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books wasn’t too concerned with obscenity: as far as I know, the Latin works of poets like Politian, Secundus and Du Bellay were never listed on it.
In the case of the Ausonius poem it is certainly significant that the obscene content is couched in refined Virgilian langauge. The author is allowed to write a poem of such dubious taste only because he’s writing in the language of the ancients. This is the case also for later poets: their verses might well be eye-poppingly vulgar, but they have a patina of culture and refinement to them. It’s OK to write this stuff, because Catullus did it, Ovid did it, Martial did it, and these poets were the very soul of wit and refinement. Furthermore, women and uneducated men were unlikely to have access to these texts. The obscenity we encounter in the vernacular works of writers such as Boccaccio and Rabelais was less well received by the litterati: Juan Luis Vives in his On the Education of a Christian Woman roundly condemned the Decameron but had nothing to say about Latin-language pornography. The reason for this is obvious: your average literate middle-class woman was likely to have access to vernacular texts, but less likely to know Latin.
This Post includes references to the digestive and reproductive systems that may give offence.
For my third entry I’ve decided to bring together elements from the two previous ones, and to write something on pornographic literature in the post-classical and early-modern period, including a brief digression on the language games writers of obscenity often indulged in.
In the discussion of Catullus 16 below, fearful_syzygy brought to my attention the definition of the verb ‘irrumare’ in two Latin dictionaries, both of which give an explicitly accurate definition of the term – crucially – in Latin, where those old stalwarts of Latin philology Lewis & Short demurred.
Often translators of Latin poetry (and in the case of many Latin texts, no modern translation is available: the standard translation remains a 19th- or early 20th-century version, or a ‘modern’ Loeb translation that might as well be 19th century) opt for obsolete or incomprehensible terminology when faced with obscenity. Who today knows what ‘pathic’ means, or what a ‘catamite’ is, for crying out loud?
It is safe to assume, I suppose, that those of us who are well-educated enough to know Latin are unlikely to be corrupted by obscenity. Victorian values, perhaps, but this is also the case in early-modern literature. Importantly, writing in Latin meant two things: you were guaranteed a relatively sophisticated audience; and you were more or less guaranteed there would be no women among them.
In the early-modern period, the constraints imposed on a poet choosing to write in Latin (not least of which is the sheer difficulty of writing in a second language) seem to be balanced with a certain freedom of expression: Latin works are more likely to get past the censors. This freedom is what Du Bellay was alluding to when he called the French language his ‘wife’ and the Latin language his ‘mistress’. The implication is that his mistress is a bit more adventurous in the sack, and will let him get away with things that he would even dream of doing with his wife. The most refined of Neo-Latin poets were by no means averse to the odd bit of ‘explicit content’: Johannes Secundus, who pretty much invented the genre of the ‘kiss’ poem (after Catullus, of course) had no compunction about describing his hard-on bursting through his pants (cf. Cat. 32), all the while singing the praises of his mistress with Neo-Platonic fervour. The Lusus of Politian, the most erudite classical scholar of his generation, are full of vulgar descriptions of the sexual act.
Of course, the classics are full of filth, from Catullus to the epigrams of Martial to Petronius. This wasn’t always easy to stomach for Christian-era authors, even in the age of the humanists. Even the most open-minded and syncretistic of humanists like Erasmus had difficulty reconciling the more pagan side of classical poets (for pagan read ‘immoral’) with the culture and refinement that formed the basis of the classical education. You still get censorious fellows like Lefèvre d’Estaples dictating what Christian men should and should not be reading. And the more lascivious parts of Ovid, for example, were expurgated from schoolroom texts (and still are, broadly speaking).
A good example of the sort of thing Latin poets were writing in the post-classical age is the Cento nuptialis, a marriage song composed by the 4th-century CE poet Ausonius, which he wrote at the behest of the emperor Valentinius. The poem is a sort of collage of hemistiches taken from Virgil, with no ‘original material’ added by the editor. Ausonius is obviously a bit earlier than the Neo-Latin authors I’m talking about, but let’s not get too bogged down in superfluous notions like ‘historical accuracy’, ‘relevance’ or ‘coherency’.
The final section of the poem is a sexually explicit description of the married couple’s consummation of vows. Ausonius even includes a warning just before it along the lines of ‘If you are easily shockable, look away now'. It’s not quite as shocking as the end section of Gaspar Noé’s Seul contre tous, but the strategy is the same: it makes you want to read it.
Ausonius justifies the inclusion of this section by alluding to the ancient tradition of ‘Fescinnine’ song, bawdy verses sung at weddings in Ancient Rome, which didn’t bother much about sparing the blushes of the bride. The idea was to ward off the Evil Eye (fascinum) by fooling it into thinking that the happy couple were figures of ridicule, and had nothing worth stealing. (the word ‘fascinum’, as is clear from fearful_syzygy’s dictionary definition of ‘Irrumare’ below, also means ‘penis’; I’m sure there’s a connection here, but I can’t for the life of me imagine what it might be). Anyway, I suppose this tradition survives in etiolated form today: in his post-wedding speech (in this country at least), it is de rigueur for the best man to speculate on the goings on in the wedding-chamber, as well as to emphasise the sexual inadequacy of the groom and the promiscuity of the bride.
Since I couldn’t find an English translation of the poem anywhere on the Internet, I’ve loosely translated the last section below:
10. IMMINVTIO
Postquam congressi | sola sub nocte per umbram
et mentem Venus ipsa dedit, | nova proelia temptant.
Tollit se arrectum: | conantem plurima frustra
occupat os faciemque, | pedem pede fervidus urget,
perfidus alta petens: | ramum, qui veste latebat,
sanguineis ebuli bacis minioque rubentem
nudato capite | et pedibus per mutua nexis,
monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum
eripit a femine et trepidanti fervidus instat.
Est in secessu, | tenuis quo semita ducit,
ignea rima micans: | exhalat opaca mephitim.
Nulli fas casto sceleratum insistere limen.
Hic specus horrendum: | talis sese halitus atris
faucibus effundens | nares contingit odore.
Huc iuvenis nota fertur regione viarum
et super incumbens | nodis et cortice crudo
intorquet summis adnixus viribus hastam.
Haesit virgineumque alte bibit acta cruorem.
Insonuere cavae gemitumque dedere cavernae.
Illa manu moriens telum trahit, ossa sed inter
altius ad vivum persedit | vulnere mucro.
Ter sese attollens cubitoque innixa levavit,
ter revoluta toro est. | Manet imperterritus ille;
nec mora nec requies: | clavumque affixus et haerens
nusquam amittebat oculosque sub astra tenebat.
Itque reditque viam totiens | uteroque recusso
transadigit costas | et pectine pulsat eburno.
Iamque fere spatio extremo fessique sub ipsam
finem adventabant: | tum creber anhelitus artus
aridaque ora quatit, sudor fluit undique rivis,
labitur exsanguis, | destillat ab inguine virus.
"Release"
Coming together, alone in the shadows of the night, with Venus granting their desires, they join battle anew. He stands erect: he forces himself on her mouth and face, while she resists in vain, and hotly presses her foot with his. He wants more, the scoundrel! He gets it out, bare-headed and scarlet like the blood-red elderberries or cinnabar. They’re playing footsie; his ‘monster’ is terrible to behold, deformed, huge, sightless. He stands raging over his quaking victim.
In a secluded area, where a narrow path leads, there is a hot, dark, glistening fissure: it exhales a strange odour No chaste man ought to penetrate this wicked threshold! It’s a terrifying cave; vapour pours forth from its black mouth and piques the nostrils with its scent. The young man approches it via a well-known route, and leaning over her, he plunges his knotty and hard-skinned javelin inside with all the force he can muster. It hits its mark and drinks in the virginal blood. The cavern resounds and gives out a groan. Dying, she tries to pull it out, but it’s penetrated her wound through bone right to the quick. Thrice she lifted herself up on her elbow, thrice she fell back on the bed. He’s undaunted: no delay or rest for him! He hammers it home determinedly, looking up at the heavens. In and out he goes, hitting against her belly and piecing through ribs, plucking with his ivory quill. Finally they both come to the final straight, and, exhausted, they reach the end. Then their breath excites their limbs and their dry mouths, and sweat pours down them in streams. He falls back, lifeless. The poison drips from his loins.
If nothing else, this proves the truth of Ovid’s maxim ‘militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupido’.
The fact that it’s Virgil being travestied here is telling: the poet might have chosen lines from any number of Classical authors who wrote about sex. Virgil never wrote dirty lyrics, (although there are one or two ‘adult references’ in the Eclogues), and in the Aeneid, from which most of these lines are taken, he chastely averts his gaze when Aeneas and Dido get it on together in the cave. Almost none of the lines used here by Ausonius is in a sexual context in Virgil.
This seems a bit like a schoolboy game; but it was certainly one of the best-known of Ausonius’s works in the Renaissance, when the cento form was much admired and imitated. The cento is perhaps the most slavish form of imitation, but it also has the power to create new meaning, even to subvert.
Whether or not this sort of poetry is actually subversive is a vexed question. Granted, there is often a political dimension to an author’s use of obscene language, whether it be directed at a specific target (e.g. Catullus calling Julius Caesar a sodomite, it seems with impunity) or a simple gesture of defiance. Latin, for centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire remained the language of the authoritative discourses: of Law, of theology, of education in general. BUT it was also the language of obscenity – not the language of the streets and brothels, but a more refined language ratified and approved by men of culture. The obscene as ‘a gesture of defiance’ is perhaps a problematical concept in this context, since obscenity was by no means forbidden to the learned poet: one might even say that it was expected of him. Even the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books wasn’t too concerned with obscenity: as far as I know, the Latin works of poets like Politian, Secundus and Du Bellay were never listed on it.
In the case of the Ausonius poem it is certainly significant that the obscene content is couched in refined Virgilian langauge. The author is allowed to write a poem of such dubious taste only because he’s writing in the language of the ancients. This is the case also for later poets: their verses might well be eye-poppingly vulgar, but they have a patina of culture and refinement to them. It’s OK to write this stuff, because Catullus did it, Ovid did it, Martial did it, and these poets were the very soul of wit and refinement. Furthermore, women and uneducated men were unlikely to have access to these texts. The obscenity we encounter in the vernacular works of writers such as Boccaccio and Rabelais was less well received by the litterati: Juan Luis Vives in his On the Education of a Christian Woman roundly condemned the Decameron but had nothing to say about Latin-language pornography. The reason for this is obvious: your average literate middle-class woman was likely to have access to vernacular texts, but less likely to know Latin.
April 16, 2004
Romans get confused about 'big air' and judgemental cat (12)
Or alternatively: 'Sheep and one horse foolishly disrobe (cutting off extremities) for dying poet' (12)
Snowboarding Romans and zoophiliac bards aside, the subject of this entry is that great British tradition: the cryptic crossword. I apologize for my amateurish attempts at devising clues; if nothing else, they prove that setting a well-turned crossword clue is a difficult art to master.
I don't know why I assume that the cryptic crossword is a British thing; I'm sure they exist in some form or another in most languages, and I might well be wrong in assuming that American newspapers generally do not offer a daily cryptic. The fact that every UK broadsheet prints its cryptic prominently on the back page every day, however, suggests to me that this country is the spiritual home of the crossword.
As any crossword enthusiast knows, the different papers have different 'house-styles': the Telegraph is relatively 'clean' but a little too dry for my taste; the Guardian is more aesthethically pleasing, but often tends towards obscurity; the Independent walks a tightrope between formulaic precision and messiness; and the Times is a little too esoteric, revelling in its own idiosyncracies. Of course, there is more to it than this. Each setter brings his own personality to the crossword; in the case of the Guardian, it's not at all difficult to distinguish between a Bunthorne, a Paul and an Araucaria (Araucaria being the James Joyce of crossword setters, and the man who first realized that 'Presbyterians' is an anagram of Britney Spears).
Despite these variations, all crosswords adhere more or less to a common set of rules and conventions. At the most basic level, these take the form of certain key words that suggest to the solver a particular word-fragment or operation. The words 'about' or 'confused' (for example) often signify that an anagram is there to be solved; conventionally, the word 'sailor' often points towards the letters TAR or AB; 'study' is CON or GEN; 'loud' is F, 'very loud' is FF, 'quiet' is P. However, this is not always the case: the words of a crossword clue are floating signifiers; they can mean more or less anything, depending on context. It is even possible for an individual word to attach itself simultaneously to two or even three meanings/operations, flickering sylleptically between them and never resolving itself into a single meaning. These are the best kinds of clues.
Today's Independent offers an example of this: 'City I encountered with journey round capital of Libya' (7). Now this is a relatively easy clue to solve, purely because it gives you a 'straight' definition of the solution which is easy to pick out: 'capital of Libya' = Tripoli. However, on closer inspection, you can see that this part of the clue is NOT in fact the 'definer'. You've got to the right solution by going the wrong way. (the definer is 'City': journey=TRIP; round=O; capital of Libya=L; encountering 'I') Perhaps crossword purists reject this kind of clue because it is more a matter of 'reverse-engineering' than deductive reasoning. But I find it fascinating: it is one of those clues where the relationship between the whole and the parts is unstable and asymmetrical, yet strangely harmonious.
It is likely, I suppose, that some crossword expert has written a comprehensive typology of crossword clues, categorizing the different types by defining the nature of the relationship between the 'definer' and the 'code'. However, there will always be those clues that transcend the boundaries of such a categorization, simply because they do not resolve themselves even when they've been solved. My favourite crossword clue has a surface simplicity and an obvious (even 'non-cryptic') solution, but it is so elegantly constructed that it sticks in the mind long after the solution has been found. I give you:
'Back in business' (7)
Snowboarding Romans and zoophiliac bards aside, the subject of this entry is that great British tradition: the cryptic crossword. I apologize for my amateurish attempts at devising clues; if nothing else, they prove that setting a well-turned crossword clue is a difficult art to master.
I don't know why I assume that the cryptic crossword is a British thing; I'm sure they exist in some form or another in most languages, and I might well be wrong in assuming that American newspapers generally do not offer a daily cryptic. The fact that every UK broadsheet prints its cryptic prominently on the back page every day, however, suggests to me that this country is the spiritual home of the crossword.
As any crossword enthusiast knows, the different papers have different 'house-styles': the Telegraph is relatively 'clean' but a little too dry for my taste; the Guardian is more aesthethically pleasing, but often tends towards obscurity; the Independent walks a tightrope between formulaic precision and messiness; and the Times is a little too esoteric, revelling in its own idiosyncracies. Of course, there is more to it than this. Each setter brings his own personality to the crossword; in the case of the Guardian, it's not at all difficult to distinguish between a Bunthorne, a Paul and an Araucaria (Araucaria being the James Joyce of crossword setters, and the man who first realized that 'Presbyterians' is an anagram of Britney Spears).
Despite these variations, all crosswords adhere more or less to a common set of rules and conventions. At the most basic level, these take the form of certain key words that suggest to the solver a particular word-fragment or operation. The words 'about' or 'confused' (for example) often signify that an anagram is there to be solved; conventionally, the word 'sailor' often points towards the letters TAR or AB; 'study' is CON or GEN; 'loud' is F, 'very loud' is FF, 'quiet' is P. However, this is not always the case: the words of a crossword clue are floating signifiers; they can mean more or less anything, depending on context. It is even possible for an individual word to attach itself simultaneously to two or even three meanings/operations, flickering sylleptically between them and never resolving itself into a single meaning. These are the best kinds of clues.
Today's Independent offers an example of this: 'City I encountered with journey round capital of Libya' (7). Now this is a relatively easy clue to solve, purely because it gives you a 'straight' definition of the solution which is easy to pick out: 'capital of Libya' = Tripoli. However, on closer inspection, you can see that this part of the clue is NOT in fact the 'definer'. You've got to the right solution by going the wrong way. (the definer is 'City': journey=TRIP; round=O; capital of Libya=L; encountering 'I') Perhaps crossword purists reject this kind of clue because it is more a matter of 'reverse-engineering' than deductive reasoning. But I find it fascinating: it is one of those clues where the relationship between the whole and the parts is unstable and asymmetrical, yet strangely harmonious.
It is likely, I suppose, that some crossword expert has written a comprehensive typology of crossword clues, categorizing the different types by defining the nature of the relationship between the 'definer' and the 'code'. However, there will always be those clues that transcend the boundaries of such a categorization, simply because they do not resolve themselves even when they've been solved. My favourite crossword clue has a surface simplicity and an obvious (even 'non-cryptic') solution, but it is so elegantly constructed that it sticks in the mind long after the solution has been found. I give you:
'Back in business' (7)
April 15, 2004
It begins...
So, for a while now I've been seeking an outlet to vent my rampaging egomania, register my disgust and rage at all those things that don't really matter to anyone, exercise my critical faculties, and fulfil a long-standing ambition to be a boorish old fool with too much time on his hands. This seems like the perfect solution; and at the end of a hard day's work I can sit back with a satisfied smirk on my face, safe in the knowledge that no-one is likely to read anything I've written. And all this in complete anonymity!
For my first entry, I've decided to write a barely-informed rant on a subject that is very close to my heart: boredom. What prompts this is a comment I read in the journal of the eminent fearful_syzygy by the esteemed blog_meridian. According to b_m, Patricia Mayer Spacks has written a book in which she claims "that boredom is a distinctly modern phenomenon, at least in the West". Without having read or even seen the book in question (it's on the list), I'd like to take issue with the author's overall thesis, her choice of examples and her conclusions (and if there's time, I'll also undertake to write a detailed critique the author's writing style, as well as the book's pagination, page-breaks and typefaces).
Having set up this straw man, I shall now attempt to burn it to the ground like some quixotic Lord Summerisle (and if Edward Woodward happens to be inside it quoting Bible verses, so much the better). I suppose she’s talking about the c19 Romantic ‘ennui’ rather than the general concept of boredom, which certainly exists in Classical literature--either in terms of ‘otium’ (having nothing to do) or in terms of ‘taedium’ or ‘fastidium’ (being fed up and disgusted with life, usually because of overindulgence). In fact, one of the most famous short poems by any Roman author turns on the theme of boredom. Catullus 51:
So what's the point? Well, in all the interpretations I've read of this hyper-famous poem, I've never come across one that highlights the literariness of what the poet is doing here. Perhaps this is because Catullus is the poet of [scare quotes]personal expression[/scare quotes] par excellence. When Catullus writes of pain, of joy, of love and loss, we know that it is because he really felt it, and we feel it too. So it was and so it ever will be. But isn't it significant that C's description of the symptoms of love must have been as much of a cliché in the 1st century BC as it is now? After all, the poet is conscious enough of the Anxiety of Influence that he translates/imitates a Greek canonical text rather than being "original" (the threatening presence of the Father, however, takes on a distinctly female form here). Of course, the question of originality didn't bother the Romans much, and it was even less of a concern to the glut of Neo-Catullan imitators, servorum pecus, that flourished in the Renaissance. Nevertheless, ('nevertheless' being the giveaway word that flags the weaknesses in any argument; see also: 'albeit') I'm sure that the enigmatic final stanza relates to this question of cliché: 'I'm bored as hell with love, and I'm even more bored with poetry'. What do we have here? --Divinity of the beloved? --Check. --Speechless? --Uh-huh. --Fire burning in my heart? --You got it. --Blindness? --Who said that? --Ringing in the ears? --Sorry, didn't quite catch that; and so on, and so on.
So C 51 is a mind-numbingly conventional treatment of the only subject that really matters to poetry? There's nothing else to write about love, and a fortiori, there is no more poetry to be written? Did literature really run out of things to say before it even got started? I doubt it. And I'm not willing to go so far as to say that from this point onwards, all literature was really about other literature. Cervantes rears his (far from ugly) head. But there's something else to be understood here, and it's nothing so facile as 'self-referentiality' or 'transgression of conventions'. I believe that this poem pre-figures the emergence of the 'subjective love elegy' in the generation after Catullus: Propertius, Tibullus, and of course Ovid. But Ovid's a subject for another blog entry, and one that I might be able to write once I've finished my thesis.
Addendum
Since the comments for the original version of this post have been lost, I feel duty-bound to point out that my translation of the first line of Catullus 16 was inaccurate. The verb 'irrumare' does not mean 'fuck', but more specifically 'mouth-fuck', which is to say, 'to force somebody to give you a blow-job'. Further discussion of this can easily be found if you look in the right places. Happy googling!
For my first entry, I've decided to write a barely-informed rant on a subject that is very close to my heart: boredom. What prompts this is a comment I read in the journal of the eminent fearful_syzygy by the esteemed blog_meridian. According to b_m, Patricia Mayer Spacks has written a book in which she claims "that boredom is a distinctly modern phenomenon, at least in the West". Without having read or even seen the book in question (it's on the list), I'd like to take issue with the author's overall thesis, her choice of examples and her conclusions (and if there's time, I'll also undertake to write a detailed critique the author's writing style, as well as the book's pagination, page-breaks and typefaces).
Having set up this straw man, I shall now attempt to burn it to the ground like some quixotic Lord Summerisle (and if Edward Woodward happens to be inside it quoting Bible verses, so much the better). I suppose she’s talking about the c19 Romantic ‘ennui’ rather than the general concept of boredom, which certainly exists in Classical literature--either in terms of ‘otium’ (having nothing to do) or in terms of ‘taedium’ or ‘fastidium’ (being fed up and disgusted with life, usually because of overindulgence). In fact, one of the most famous short poems by any Roman author turns on the theme of boredom. Catullus 51:
Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum estPerhaps I’m being a little disingenuous here in translating ‘otium’ as ‘boredom’ (since it is usually translated as 'leisure', and is a concept that also carries the positive connotations of Epicurean/Stoic ataraxia), but in the context of the poem (and indeed of the point I'm trying to make) it seems to fit. Why on earth did Catullus choose to append this superfluous stanza to his translation of the famous - we assume - Sappho poem Fainetai moi khnos isos qeoisin? Where Yeats (I think it was) speaks of young men quoting Catullus at their girlfriends in order to seduce them, we can be sure that these budding Casanovas had Poem 51 in their repertoire, and that they held off quoting the final stanza. At any rate, they probably weren't quoting poem 16: Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo ('I'll bugger and fuck you'), even in Latin.
Otio exultas nimiumque gestis
Otium et reges prius et beatas
Perdidit urbes
Boredom, Catullus, is a nuisance to you
When bored you jump about and fidget too much
Boredom has ruined kings and great cities
in the past.
So what's the point? Well, in all the interpretations I've read of this hyper-famous poem, I've never come across one that highlights the literariness of what the poet is doing here. Perhaps this is because Catullus is the poet of [scare quotes]personal expression[/scare quotes] par excellence. When Catullus writes of pain, of joy, of love and loss, we know that it is because he really felt it, and we feel it too. So it was and so it ever will be. But isn't it significant that C's description of the symptoms of love must have been as much of a cliché in the 1st century BC as it is now? After all, the poet is conscious enough of the Anxiety of Influence that he translates/imitates a Greek canonical text rather than being "original" (the threatening presence of the Father, however, takes on a distinctly female form here). Of course, the question of originality didn't bother the Romans much, and it was even less of a concern to the glut of Neo-Catullan imitators, servorum pecus, that flourished in the Renaissance. Nevertheless, ('nevertheless' being the giveaway word that flags the weaknesses in any argument; see also: 'albeit') I'm sure that the enigmatic final stanza relates to this question of cliché: 'I'm bored as hell with love, and I'm even more bored with poetry'. What do we have here? --Divinity of the beloved? --Check. --Speechless? --Uh-huh. --Fire burning in my heart? --You got it. --Blindness? --Who said that? --Ringing in the ears? --Sorry, didn't quite catch that; and so on, and so on.
So C 51 is a mind-numbingly conventional treatment of the only subject that really matters to poetry? There's nothing else to write about love, and a fortiori, there is no more poetry to be written? Did literature really run out of things to say before it even got started? I doubt it. And I'm not willing to go so far as to say that from this point onwards, all literature was really about other literature. Cervantes rears his (far from ugly) head. But there's something else to be understood here, and it's nothing so facile as 'self-referentiality' or 'transgression of conventions'. I believe that this poem pre-figures the emergence of the 'subjective love elegy' in the generation after Catullus: Propertius, Tibullus, and of course Ovid. But Ovid's a subject for another blog entry, and one that I might be able to write once I've finished my thesis.
Addendum
Since the comments for the original version of this post have been lost, I feel duty-bound to point out that my translation of the first line of Catullus 16 was inaccurate. The verb 'irrumare' does not mean 'fuck', but more specifically 'mouth-fuck', which is to say, 'to force somebody to give you a blow-job'. Further discussion of this can easily be found if you look in the right places. Happy googling!
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