(followup to the previous Catullus mention)
When Kurt Vonnegut tried to buy a dictionary, he first looked at the entries for “ain’t” and “like” – so he could get an immediate sense for how the book was written. The idea was to see whether the dictionary was descriptive or prescriptive:
Prescriptive, as nearly as I could tell, was like an honest cop, and descriptive was like a boozed-up war buddy from Mobile, Ala.
Taking a pointer from Vonnegut, I have a quick system to appraise a translation of Catullus. Turn first to poem 16, and see how the translator approximates irrumabo. The closer translators approach the word skullfuck in meaning, the more likely their books will be faithful to Catullus’ original words and sentiments. And that’s the point of translation. Irrumabo, in Catullus 16, is best translated as “I will skullfuck you.” The word isn’t in any published translations, but it is as accurate a rendering as you will find (facefuck takes a close second place). The purpose isn’t to appear shocking or childish, but to read Catullus as the poet intended.
As noted previously, the poem has received its fair share of notoriety over the years. The full line in question is “pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo” (try here for a fairly faithful rendition of the poem in English). Catullus repeats it at the start and end of the poem – reflecting how central the words are to Carmen 16’s interpretation. The offending line was often left untranslated in books until the second half of the 20th C. Even in 1961, C.J. Fordyce left the poem out of his commentary: “A few poems which do not lend themselves to comment in English have been omitted.” Most translations left a blank or just reprinted the Latin in place of the English.
Other translators tried to deal with the line through humor, as in Jack Lindsay’s work: “Aurelius down, you’ll knuckle under!/ Furius up! Admit your blunder!” Or Swanson: “I’ll snag you and gag you.” Others yet have seemed confused by irrumabo’s definition (mentulam in os inserere). Sisson, for example, is tripped up by the whole notion: “All right, I’ll bugger you and suck your pricks.” One thing is clear – Catullus isn’t offering to fellate anyone.
Martin disregards the exact phrasing, but renders the spirit of the words: “I’ll fuck the pair of you as you prefer it,/ oral Aurelius, anal Furius.” But his literalism as a translator is uneven. Later in the book, he makes a bizarre decision in choosing not to translate Mentula, and only gloss the word as “penis” in an appendix. Romans would have read Mentula clearly, so why muddle the meaning for modern readers?
The remainder of the poem lives up to the same tone. Catullus claims that his verses “arouse with their ticklings/ [and] I don’t mean boys, but those hairy old ‘uns/ unable to stir their arthritic loins.” Catullus 16 is not my favorite of the poet’s works (an earlier post here covered those), but it is memorable for its directness and humor. It is easy to skip over the invectives, or diminish their importance in contrast to Catullus’ love lyrics and elegies. But seeing as almost half of his collection consists of libels and attacks, it would be a mistake.
c. 16
Up your ass and in your mouth
Aurelius, you too, Furius, you cocksuckers,
calling me dirt because my poems
have naughty naughty words in them.
Just the poet’s got to be a boy scout
fellas, not his goddmn poems.
Anyway look, they’ve got wit, sass,
and sure they’re lewd and lascivious,
and can get somebody pretty hard-up too,
I mean not just young kids, but you hairy guys
who can barely get your stiff asses going,
so just because you read about a lot of kisses
you want to put something nasty on me as a man?
Fuck you, up your ass and in your mouth.
Selected Poems of Catullus, translated by Carl Sesar, Mason & Lipscomb, New York, 1974.
All rights reserved.
That translation sucks. It’s clever but wholly inaccurate.