A review by spacestationtrustfund
The Poems of Catullus by Catullus

1.0

Unfortunately not a bilingual edition, Peter Whigham's 1980 translation focuses less on literal adherence to the text and more on capturing (his opinion of) the spirit and energy of the original. This approach to translation can be executed well or terribly, rarely anything in between. I wasn't optimistic when I first started reading this translation, primarily thanks to a particularly head-scratching line in the introduction where Whigham claims, "On many occasions, in moments of intense emotion, Catullus expresses his feelings in the guise of a woman," which is... certainly an opinion (he's referring to the fact that Catullus writes about fucking men).

A translator's versatility with Catullus can usually (I've found) be discerned by their chosen translation of poem XVI, in particular lines 1-4. Here's Whigham's rendition (of the entire poem, because he moves lines and phrases around at his own discretion, which makes it difficult to cite only one or two lines):

Pedicabo et irrumabo
Furius & Aurelius
twin sodomites,
you have dared deduce me from my poems
which are lascivious
which lack pudicity...
The devoted poet remains in his own fashion chaste
his poems not necessarily so:
they may well be
lascivious
lacking in pudicity
stimulants (indeed) to prurience
and not solely in boys
but those whose hirsute genitalia are not easily moved.
You read of those thousand kisses.
You deduced an effeminacy there.
You were wrong. Sodomites. Furius & Aurelius.
Pedicabo et irrumabo vos.

He doesn't even try. The decision not only not to translate "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" but also to truncate it into "pedicabo et irrumabo vos" is bewildering. He did call them "twin sodomites" though, which is coincidentally the name of my next grunge band.

Then there's poem LXXX, which is—fair warning—quite nasty:

How is it, Gellius,
when you leave home in the morning
& again at 2 in the afternoon
with the rest of the day before you
after your soft siesta
that your lips
previously pink
are unaccountably whiter than winter snow?
One is not sure,
unless rumour speak true:
that you swallow the taut tumescence of a man's stomach.
One thing is certain
that Virro's strained thighs
& your lips flecked with semen
cry out in unison to onlookers.

First of all I have no idea why Whigham translated "Victoris" as "Virro," because that completely ruins the pun, which could have been easily preserved in the English by translating the name as "Victor." This is a very mean and cruel poem, as evidenced by things such as Catullus's use of the diminutive labellum instead of labrum in the first line etc.:

Quid dicam, Gelli, quare rosea ista labella
　　hiberna fiant candidiora nive,
mane domo cum exis et cum te octava quiete
　　e molli longo suscitat hora die?
nescio quid certe est: an vere fama susurrat
　　grandia te medii tenta vorare viri?
sic certe est: clamant Victoris rupta miselli
　　ilia, et emulso labra notata sero.

I don't proclaim to be necessarily a better translator than Whigham, but a more literal translation would be something like,

What can I say, Gellius, by what means those rosy little lips
become whiter than winter snow,
in the morning when you leave the house and with the eighth hour from a quiet nap
are roused when the day is long?
I don't know what's certain: is the whispered rumour true
you fellate a man's large erection?
this much is certain: Victor's poor depleted groin
shouts it out, and your exhausted lips marked with seed.

The (dubious) joke is that 1) the man Gellius is fellating is named "Victor," and 2) the Romans considered oral sex, specifically the giving of, to be demeaning, especially if you were a man performing oral on another man.

Whigham's translation is... not great.