BMCR 2009.01.12, John Warden, Taking Back the Text: Poetic Technique

John Warden, Taking Back the Text: Poetic Technique in Catullus,
Propertius and Tibullus.  Toronto:  Edgar Kent, 2008.  Pp. 111.  ISBN
9780888666567.  $72.50 (Canadian).

Reviewed by Robert Maltby, University of Leeds ([email protected])
Word count:  1185 words
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The book consists of a series of essays on poems by Catullus (5, 7, 8,
11, 16, 48, 51, 58, 68a and b, 73, 76, 85), Propertius (1.3; 2.14;
2.15; 2.29b; 4.7) and Tibullus (1.1; 1.3; 1.5; 1.10). We are told in
the acknowledgements that it arose out of a collection of essays
intended to introduce students to Latin poetry. The introduction argues
for a need to salvage the personality of the individual text, which the
author sees as being in danger of losing some of its immediacy as a
result of recent trends in literary theory. The aim of the book is to
analyze in detail individual poems in terms of their lexis, meter,
sound and structure. The poems chosen are intended to trace a
development in love poetry from the short poems of Catullus, through
his longer elegiacs to the more extended elegies of Propertius and
Tibullus.  The book is divided into two parts to reflect this
development, Part I Breve discusses Catullus' shorter poems and Part II
Longum discusses Catullus 68 and the poems by Propertius and Tibullus.

Chapter 1 discusses Catullus poems 5, 7, 48 and 16 (in that order) in
hendecasyllables on kissing.  In each case the Latin text is
accompanied by an English verse translation. There is considerable
emphasis throughout on the rhythm of the poems and of the relation of
sound to sense. The discussion is a useful reminder that these poems
were intended to be read aloud and that effects of sound and meter have
an important contribution to make to their interpretation. The danger
is a drift into subjectivity. Along the way some important and original
points are made, particularly on the greater sensuality of the Juventus
poem 48, with its reference to the physical characteristics of the
beloved, in comparison with the Lesbia poems which combine a greater
urgency with a lack of overt sensuality (p. 15). The chapter ends with
a perceptive discussion of the way in which the serious poetic
manifesto of poem 16 that the poet is distinct from the poem is
enfolded within an abusive beginning and ending.

Chapter 2 on loving and hating discusses this theme in Catullus poems
8, 76, 73, 85, 11, 51 and 58. The question of the ordering of these
poems in our manuscript tradition and its relation to the author's
intentions is left unanswered (p. 8). There is a good comparison of the
treatment of this similar theme in the polymetric poem 8, showing a
more detached, lyrical self-mockery,  with the more intense,
self-absorbed, almost prosaic development in the elegiac poem 76. The
remarks about the theatricality of these two poems and their connection
with the stage miser amator (p. 25) is perceptive, but as with a number
of passing literary references (e.g. the Callimachean background to
poem 7) could usefully have been developed at greater length. In some
cases, as for example in the discussion of poem 11, essential
information about the poem's genre and literary background is omitted
entirely from the discussion.

Chapter 3 on Catullus 68a and b begins the second part of the book,
Longum on the longer elegiac poems. The author makes a good case for
seeing the translation of Callimachus' narrative elegy Lock of Berenice
(poem 66) as leading the way to the creation of a new form of verse in
68 a and b, a subjective elegy on Catullus' grief at his brother's
death and love for Lesbia. The discussion of the use of mythology and
extended similes in these poems is not new, but the detailed analysis
of the poem, its structure, sound effects and literary affiliations
makes a coherent case for seeing 68 as the culmination of Catullus'
exploration of his own personal experience through the elegiac medium
and as the starting point for later Latin elegy.

With chapter 4 we move on to elegy proper with an analysis of
Propertius 1.3 and its relation to the later poem 2.29b on a similar
theme of the poet's visit to his sleeping mistress.  Again there is
much emphasis on the effects of meter and sound in these poems, but
there are also some perceptive remarks on the way Propertian elegy
differs from Catullus 68. In comparison with Catullus 68, myth and
narrative are shown to be much more integrated in Propertius 1.3 and
the relationship between the two worlds of myth and reality made more
apparent. The nature of Warden's collection, concerned as it is with
the discussion of individual poems, by necessity has to miss out any
speculation as to the influence of figures such as Gallus in these key
developments. The study of myth in Propertius continues in chapter 5
with its discussion of the pair 2.14 and 2.15 and their treatment of
the theme of a night of love-making. Myth in poem 2.14 is said to
operate in a different way from 1.3. There it had served to
universalize and glamorize an everyday situation, whereas in 2.14 the
opening accumulation of mythological parallels is said to depersonalize
and distance the description. By contrast, the absence of myth in 2.15
contributes to a directness of expression more akin to that achieved in
Catullus' shorter poems. Again essential literary background is
missing, in the case of 2.14 the influence of the boastful slave's
mythological comparisons in comedy.

Chapter 6 moves on to Tibullus with a detailed analysis of 1.1. There
is a good discussion of the differences between Tibullus and
Propertius, with emphasis on the seamless and understated way in which
Tibullus can weave together a number of themes. Love is not as central
to Tibullus' world but simply contributes to a wider ideal which
embraces the simple rustic life and the worship of traditional rural
gods. A useful discussion of poem 1.5 (which again lacks any discussion
of literary precedents, particularly in Greek epigram) adds some rather
less obvious points about the capacity of Tibullus for self-ridicule in
his stance as a lover. A more balanced picture of Tibullus would
perhaps have been gained by adding to the discussion a poem from the
second book.

The final chapter on Love and Death compares Propertius 4.7
(Propertius' vision of Cynthia's ghost) with Tibullus 1.3 (where the
poet imagines his death in Corfu (Phaeacia) on military campaign). The
Homeric allusions of both are brought to the fore (dead Patroclus
appearing to Achilles for Prop. 4.7 and the Odyssean associations of
Phaeacia for Tib. 1.3). Obvious similarities between the Propertian and
Tibullan poems are usefully catalogued and a good case is made at the
end for seeing Propertius 4.7 as a darker, more sardonic re-working of
Tibullus 1.3.

Overall the book fulfills its purpose of providing a students'
introduction to these sophisticated and often difficult poems. The
emphasis on the meter, sound and lexicon of the poems is to be
welcomed. However, the book's merits are limited to this introductory
function and any more serious analysis of the poems concerned would
require a greater engagement with modern scholarship (the majority of
works cited in the short bibliography come from the period 1960-1980)
on their generic and wider literary affinities.