by Fenella Johnson
"Odio et amo" begins Catullus 85. "I hate and I love."
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| Clodia |
Catullus is writing about the notorious Clodia
here-his great muse-who seems like the most exciting person at every party
you've ever been to; she had several affairs while married, poisoned her
husband and had several more gleefully afterwards before she ended up with
Catullus. Becoming bored with him,she discarded him and took up with one of his
friends-inspiring some of the greatest love poetry, or at least the first great
love poems.
She is referred to in Catullus's poetry as
Lesbia-and her brother Clodius as Lesbius, who if Cicero is to be believed (a
bitter political enemy who eventually has Clodious murdered by a mob) she had a
incestuous relationship with. One of her ancestors was sued for calling Roman
citizen in the streets 'peasants' and demanding they move out of their way. A
storyline Hollywood would discard as unrealistic.
Catullus was infatuated with Clodia,and this
obsession festered in his work-first mutual, and then not-and in a seemingly
simple line, he sums up that peculiar obsessiveness,which has fuelled not only
his work, but others ;'I hate and i love.'Like yin and yang,these words are
interchangeable, and they need each other,to restore balance, to keep peace. I
love and I hate,I hate and I love.
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| Clodia, as imagined in a later era (by Sir John Poynter) |
The definition of muse is a woman,or a force
portrayed as a woman who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist-and
there is something captivating in the literary muse, be they person or place,
and it is more than us simply rooting for the writer to get the girl,to win.
Sometimes we don't even like the writer.
Sometimes it can feel like we are pressing our
noses against the glass, looking in on the writer as they pursue their great
obsession and because so many literary works have been immortalised, the
muses-whoever,whatever they maybe-have been immortalised alongside them.
They can seem dreamlike-we know how their hair
falls but not what they think. They have no voice.
The writer watches them but never knows who they
are; Catullus’s greatest issue with Clodia is that she never tells the truth,
or at least not all of it-"you said you loved me",he complains, “you
would not chose Jupiter above me".Catullus's poems seemingly focus on
his deep contempt, hostility, desire, and dedication toward Cloidia,but they actually
reveal his scepticism, criticism, and pity towards himself. It’s no surprise
then that the next line is: why do I do this?-turns the obsession in on
itself to answer questions about his nature-the muse is a device to explore his
own feelings and his own actions.
When Daphne Du Maurier begins Rebecca with
"last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again,"she also begins a
dreamlike obsession with the house, at turns darkly strange and sinister, other
times overbearing, that is more important than any of the characters. When
Manderly burns down at the end, it signifies something bigger then a house
burning down.
It was the
muse and with the muse gone, life is no longer exciting but instead dull.
They watch the cricket and have afternoon tea, and
the life they may have had with the house-with the muse, the life Catullus may
have had with Clodia, stumbles on out of sight. The muse signifies what has
happened and what might happen if only we are brave enough, wise enough, if
only we love enough-,and are a device to make a point about the writer or
society in general.
We love the muse for how they inspire the writer,
but we hate the muse for what they do to the writer-because the writer is in
charge of the reader's relationship with the muse. Catullus is bitter and angry
towards Clodia-so too then is the reader.When she discards him, she discards
us. Sweet love poems are interesting sometimes,but bitter ones fuelled by
hatred,anger,despair,humour-some of Catullus's poems are funny for how much
they pretend not to care, while illustrating how much he really does-and
they-and the person who caused them-are much more fascinating and
interesting.
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| Catullus |
It is through Clodia too, that we discover more
about Catullus-for ,who it is fair to say is interesting in his own right-he
died aged thirty, having made enemies of all his friends;he threatened one that
he'd write a nasty poem about him if he didn't stop stealing his napkins in one
his poems, and he wrote Catullus 16,which really speaks for itself.
In the end, muses need writers and writers need
muses. The muse does not become immortalised without the writer or the writer
without the muse-Maud Gonne, Yeats’s great love who refused his proposals seven
times understood this.She refused his proposals, she explained because it made
him a better poet.
The muse was initially a divinity, the daughter of
Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. At first, there were three muses,
and then the Greek poet Hesiod expanded their number to nine: Calliope, Clio,
Euterpe, Erato, Terpsichore, Thalia, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Urania. It was the
Romans who assigned a particular function to each muse but the muse’s first
literary introduction was Greek, in Homer’s Odyssey.”Sing to me of the man,
Muse, of twists and turns driven time and again off course,” he wrote and so it
began.
The muse is no longer a divine figure but she-or
he-continues to inspire great literature, and we-the reader-continue to be
fascinated.
really interesting post!
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