Attis and Lesbia: Catullus' Attis Poem As Symbolic Reflection of the Lesbia
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71-7460 GENOVESE, Jr., Edgar Nicholas, 1942- ATTIS AND LESBIA; CATULLUS’ ATTIS POEM AS A SYMBOLIC REFLECTION OF THE LESBIA CYCLE. iPortions of Text in Greek and Latin]. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1970 Language and Literature, classical • University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by Edgar Nicholas Genovese, Jr. 1971 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED ATTIS AND LESBIA: CATULLUS' ATTIS POEM AS A SYMBOLIC REFLECTION OF THE LESBIA CYCLE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Hie Ohio State University By Edgar Nicholas Genovese, Jr., A.B. The Ohio State University 1970 Approved by ^ \ Adviser Dc^^rtment of Classics ACKNOWLEDGMENTS John T. Davis, cui maximas gratias ago, mentem meam ducebat et ingenium dum hoc opusculum fingebam; multa autern addiderunt atque cor- rexerunt Clarence A. Forbes et Vincent J. Cleary, quibus ago gratias. poetam uero Veronensem memoro laudoque. denique admiror gratam coniugem meam ac diligo: quae enim, puellula nostra mammam appetente, ter adegit manibus suis omnes litteras in has paginas. ii PARENTIBVS MEIS XXX VITA September 18, 1942 . Born— Baltimore, Maryland 1960-1964 .............. A.B., Classics, Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio 1964-1966 .............. Instructor, Latin, Kenwood Senior High School, Baltimore, Maryland 1966-1968 .............. Teaching Assistant, Teaching Associate, Department of Classics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Summer 1968 ............ Instructor, Elementary Greek, Department of Classics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1968-1970 ........ N.D.E.A. Fellow, Department of Classics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Summer 1969, 1970 . Assistant, Latin Workshop, Department of Classics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major field; Latin and Greek poetry Latin literature. John T. Davis, Charles L. Babcock, Carl C. Schlam Greek literature. W. Robert Jones, Robert J. Lenardon, Bernard C. Barmann, Mark P. 0. Morford Philological studies. John B. Titchener, Kenneth M. Abbott, Donald W. Bradeen, Angeliki Drachmann XV CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMNTS ................................................. ii VITA ................... .......................................... iv INTRODUCTION ..................................................... 1 CHAPTER I: THE EMOTIONAL SEQUENCE IN THE LESBIA CYCLE ........... 6 Introduction Delusion Insight Infidelity Realization and Definition Rejection Summary CHAPTER II; ATTIDIC MYTHOLOGY AND CATULLUS 63 ..................... 82 Preface Part 1: Attidic Mythology in the Time of Catullus Sources and Traditions Reconstruction of Mythology Available to Catullus Discursus: Castration Summary and Conclusions Part 2: Catullus 63, the "Attis" Introduction Compositional Analysis Images and Motifs Summary CHAPTER III: SYMBOLIC RELATION OF THE "ATTIS" TO THE LESBIA C Y C L E .............................. 148 Introduction Thematic Correspondences Symbolic Images and Motifs Summary and Conclusion BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................... 183 V INTRODUCTION Since the appearance of Havelock's criticism a few decades ago, a movement among Catullan scholars has gained some respectability. In an effort to seek a unity in all the poetry of Catullus— varied in mood and genre— they have given some attention to the longer poems that bulge conspicuously at the middle of his slender volume. Their purpose has been to show how the poetic personality of Catullus can be uncovered even in those genres which demand formally the absence of poetic sub jectivity. The most frequently ploughed field is Poem 64, the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis ; the Laodamia passage in Poem 68 has also received scrutiny.1 The fundamental thesis is that the portraits and situations of Ariadne and Laodamia in 64 and 68 resemble those of Catullus in the Lesbia poems, and that because of the traditional woman's role assumed by Catullus in the cycle, there is an unavoidable identity of characters and situations. Havelock saw that this reversal or exchange of sex is not only characteristic of the romantic lover, but necessary. The im portance of this identity, then, is that it works mightily to dispel the notion of two Catullan persons or personalities to match the two Catullan ^Cf. E. A. Havelock, The Lyric Genius of Catullus (Oxford; Basil Blackwell, 1939), pp. 73ff.; Marion L. Daniels, "Personal Revelation in Catullus 64," CJ, 62 (1967), 351-56; and H. D. Rankin, "Water and Lao damia as Catalysts of Emotion in Catullus 68b," Latomus, 26 (1967), 689-94. ^Havelock, p. 118. styles. It was not until 1957 that Gilbert Highet in a passing remark observed for the first time the similarity between Catullus and Attis, Lesbia and Cybele.^ Shortly after, others took up the idea;^ but, though they all have done much to develop the thesis, no one has at tempted to compare the psychological drama of the "Attis" with the se quence of Catullus’ emotions in the Lesbia cycle. This, then, is the purpose of the following chapters: namely, to show how the "Attis" reflects symbolically the portrait of Catullus and his love affair with Lesbia which have been painted in the poems of the Lesbia cycle. In order to illustrate the symbolic value of the "Attis" relative to the cycle, Lt will be necessary first to examine somewhat thoroughly the content of the cycle; for once a natural coher ence and sequence among the separate poems is revealed, the already well- structured Attis poem can be compared with the cycle. The method will be: first, to consider the poems of the Lesbia cycle individually and as parts of a whole so as to place them into an ^Gilbert Highet, Poets in a_ Landscape (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), pp. 26-27. 2 Cf. Michael C. J. Putnam, "Patterns of Personality and Imagery in the Poetry of Catullus" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Harvard Uni versity, 1959), pp. 226-56; Teivas Oksala, "Catulls Attis-Ballade iiber den Stil der Dichtung und ihr Verhaltnis zur Personlichkeit des Dichters," Arctos, 3 (1962), 199-213, who seems ignorant of Putnam’s dissertation; Robert Bagg, "Some Versions of Lyric Impasse in Shakespeare and Catullus," Arion, 4 (1965), 83-87, who mentions neither Putnam nor Oksala; and Daniels, p. 352, who likewise seems to have come upon an original idea. For a fundamentally different critical approach in this matter, cf. Paul W. Harkins, "Autoallegory in Catullus 63 and 64," TAPA, 90 (1959), 110-11; Prof. Harkins, by interpreting 63 as allegorical of Catullus’ own life- experience, restricts the poem to but one of the many and more subtly involved symbolic levels. 3 order appropriate to the emotional and mental evolution of the character Catullus; to do this will require a drawing together of various themes, motifs, and images that characterize the cycle. This arrangement of poems will not pretend to be a biographical reconstruction of the poet's actual experience, nor will it be an attempt to discover the poems' chronology of composition. Fundamentally it will be a classification of the poems according to their contribution in revealing five peculiar and distinct attitudes of a miser amans; viz., his infatuation with Lesbia; his insight into the futility of the relationship; his refusal to rec ognize the inevitable parting; his disillusionment and concomitant at tempts at defining his mental status; and his efforts to reject Lesbia sexually as well as intellectually. This arrangement, then, although arbitrary, will nonetheless be based on arguable differences and simi larities among the poems. However, because many of these themes are not in the least static, their development cannot help but point the way to a natural evolution of the relationship; e.g., separation obviously must follow infatuation, hatred should logically follow intense desire, etc. Furthermore, within the poems themselves are certain sequential sign posts; e.g.. Poem 72 is replete with explicit indications from verbal tenses and adverbs, as well as from the content, that the affair is being represented as an evolution of changing attitudes and circumstances. Such a natural order implied by the above classification of poems fol lows the following broad scheme: distant admiration; the consummation of the affair; Lesbia's infidelity; and Catullus' self-purgation of de sire for Lesbia. After this sequence of poems has been established, the second step will be to consider the sixty-third poem of Catullus, the "Attis." Before this, however, the then current mythology and cultic aspects of Attis and Cybele will be reconstructed from extant sources to indicate how doctus Catullus used the literature regarding Attis which may have been available to him. Then, after an analysis of the form and content of the "Attis," its themes, motifs, and images will be compared with those from Attidic mythology. Finally, to conclude this study, the analyses of the Lesbia cycle and the "Attis" will be related in orde. to show how the long Galliambic narrative is in effect a symbolic and integral representation of the emotional portrait of Catullus drawn from the fluid epigrammatic cycle of Lesbia poems. Because the poet, in imitation of Greek models, has chosen to personalize his erotic poetry by presenting himself not only as the principal character but in the first person, an obstacle to understanding a basic assumption of this study must be removed at the outset. Although, on the one hand, the purpose of this