Catullus (1969) with Celia Zukofsky

Commentary

Corman, Cid. “Poetry as Translation (Zukofsky).” At Their Word: Essays on the Arts of Language, vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1978. 16-30.

Davenport, Guy. “Zukofsky’s English Catullus.” MAPS 5 (1973): 70-75. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 365-370.

Gordon, David. “A Note on LZ’s Catullus LXI: Theme and Variations.” Sagetrieb 2.2 (Fall 1983): 113-121.

___. “Three Notes on Zukofsky’s Catullus I ‘Catullus viii’: 1939-1960.” In Terrell (1979): 371-381.

___. “Zuk on His Toes.” Sagetrieb 1.1 (Spring 1982): 133-141.

Hatlen, Burton. “Catullus Metamorphosed.” Paideuma 7.3 (Winter 1978): 539-545.

___. “Zukofsky as Translator.” In Terrell (1979): 345-364.

Parsons, Marnie. Touch Monkeys: Nonsense Strategies for Reading Twentieth-Century Poetry. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993. 152-154.

Raffel, Burton. “No Tidbit Love You Outdoors Far as a Bier: Zukofsky’s Catullus.” Arion 8 (Autumn 1969): 434-445.

Scroggins, Mark. “’To breathe the “literal” Meaning’: Zukofsky’s Catullus.” Talisman 6 (Spring 1991): 42-44.

Watten, Barrett. “Zukofsky’s Catullus.” This 4 (Spring 1973): 71.

Wray, David. “’cool rare air’: Zukofsky’s Breathing with Catullus and Plautus.” Chicago Review 50.2/3/4 (Winter 2004/05): 52-99.

Yao, Steven. Translation and the Languages of Modernism: Gender, Politics, Language. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 [includes chapter, “’dent those reprobates, Romulus and Remus!’: Lowell, Zukofsky, and the Legacies of Modernist Translation”].

This provocative rendition of Catullus’ complete works by LZ and CZ is probably the best-known example in American literature of a homophonic translation. Too often, however, the Zukofskys’ practice has been understood as merely a replication of the sonic dimension of the original Latin, whereas actually a much more complicated procedure is going on involving the eyeing of the text for cognates and etymological associations (real or imagined). When originally published by Cape Goliard/Grossman in 1969, the original Latin was printed on the facing page, and although for reasons of economy the Latin was dropped from CSP, it is preferable to read the work as an interplay between the two texts.

CZ explained their working procedure in a 12 Sept. 1978 letter to Burton Hatlen: "I did the spade work. I wrote out the Latin line and over it, indicated the quantity of every vowel and every syllable, that is long or short; then indicated the accented syllable. Below the Latin line I wrote the literal meaning or meanings of every word indicating gender, number, case and the order or sentence structure. I used Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary (Oxford UP) and Allen & Greenough Latin Grammar (Ginn & Co.). Louis then used my material to write poetry—good poetry—I could never do that! I never questioned any of his lines, just copied his handwritten manuscript to facilitate the typing" (Hatlen, “Zukofsky as Translator” 347).

For the most part, LZ and CZ seem to have worked straight through Catullus’ poems in the traditional order from 1958 to 1966. The major exception to this sequential approach is the lengthy #64, which they initially skipped and then came back to in 1965. There was hiatus of a year or more between 1958 and 1960, and LZ’s renditions are noticeably more radical after this break. The compositional chronology according to CZ’s “Year by Year Bibliography” is as follows:

1958: Catullus 1-5

1960: Catullus 6-9

1961: Catullus 10-17, 21-50 [the gap here is in the Catullus canon; see Zukofskys’ preface]

1962: Catullus 51-63, 65

1963: Catullus 66-69

1964: Catullus 70-80

1965: Catullus 81-116 and fragmenta, 64 (begun)

1966: Catullus 64 (completed)

The parenthetical subtitle, Gai Valeri Catulli Veronensis Liber, simply means: “The Book of Gai Valeri Catullus of Verona.” The primary Latin text used was the Loeb Classical Library edition edited and translated by F.W. Cornish (1913, rev. 1924); however, a few poems in this edition lack lines that are included in more modern editions and it is evident that the Zukofskys supplemented the Loeb with other standard Latin texts, of which they owned several. As was commonly the case with the older Loeb editions, Cornish’s English renditions are heavily bowdlerized: treating the more obscene passages evasively when possible, or simply using ellipses when beyond the pale.

Catullus (84-54 BC) interested LZ early on: several translations are included in TP and he previously translated #8 in 1939 in typical colloquial modernist style (see CSP 88-89). There are also various Catullus references in “4 Other Countries” related to the Zukofskys’ European tour in the summer of 1957, which included visits to Verona, Catullus’ hometown, and Sirmio where he had a villa (see CSP 195).

On the copyright page of the original publication of Catullus, the Zukofskys dedicated #95 to Ezra Pound. Although EP translated very little of Catullus, he always considered him one of the supreme lyric poets, and scattered references to him and to Sirmio appear throughout the Cantos, especially the Pisan Cantos.