"Until the tinkling bottom had been covered with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered with thorn pricks, our palms as sticky as Bluebeard's"
-Seamus Heaney, "Blackberry-Picking"

More than any other Catullus poem thus far in my reading, I connected with Catullus 8. I do not think we gain anything from taking the classics too seriously--they hardly took themselves seriously--but I do sometimes laugh off Catullus's impact. Some of his poems are silly and borderline childish, but 8 is not one of these. While maudlin, it struck a chord with me.

This poem's economy of expression is amazing. He conveys so much with a few words arranged in a lovely rhythm. English is considerably clunkier. I have been researching other translations, and in the process, I came across a translation by the poet Louis Zukofsky. He played with the Latin and added in literal English to fill in the cadence of the words. At first, I was insulted by how he ran roughshod over the Latin. Classicists often have this pitfall where grammar is held about everything, perhaps because grammar is what we have the most information about in regards to Latin texts. Latin is not a modern language. It is a series of ancient, fixed points that we study to align. 

Zukofsky's Latin knowledge is rudimentary, but he knows so much about poetry, and in reading his translation the second time through, I was charmed. He takes "Miser Catulle," literally "Wretched Catullus," and turns it into "Miss her, Catullus?" This fits the theme of the poem perfectly, insulting as it is to the proper structure and as much as it seems he is a clueless English speaker mangling the language. It made me think about my translation a lot. In the end, I have decided that I will still stay truer to the Latin than he did.

The line in particular that gave me the most trouble was the beautiful "quod vides perisse perditum ducas." It is impossible to convey it in English with the same slick structure. I spent nearly twenty minutes on Friday shaping and reshaping my translation. The best I have come up with so far is "that which you see to have been lost, consider to be lost" (Catullus refers to yet another woman who has left him, telling himself to recognize that she is truly gone).

I have been so caught up in reading and rereading and translating that I have not met my goal of writing my own Latin poem based off of this yet. Therefore, I will let this goal carry over into next week from where I have progressed from this week. My other poem next week will be about my parents, inspired by Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." My aim with this poem will be to make it a little longer and more drawn-out--I want to expand my style to be able to write a poem that is more than twenty lines long.