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.