THE POEMS OF CATULLUS edited and...

THE POEMS OF CATULLUS edited and translated by Guy Lee (Oxford: $5.95). As advanced Latin students quickly learn, the combination of recondite meters, arcane vocabulary and radical shifts in tone--from sensual love poetry to heart-rending melancholy to scurrilous invective--make the poetry of Catullus singularly difficult to translate. Presented in a bilingual edition, Lee’s new translation is scholarly and serviceable, but bland. In the famous poem in which Catullus jealously describes the attention his paramour lavishes on her pet sparrow, Lee renders the suggestive phrase in sinu tenere (“nestles in her bosom”) as “cuddles.” When the poet bitterly recounts the unhappy ending of a love affair, Lee’s conclusion that Catullus will refuse to take her back and “stand fast” lacks the sorrowful weight of his resolve to harden his heart against any pleas for reconciliation (destinatus obdura). A useful book for students, but a really satisfactory translation that captures the poet’s unique blending of eroticism, insults and regret has yet to be written.