The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus

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Catullus, by Caius Valerius Catullus
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Title: The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus
Author: Caius Valerius Catullus
Translator: Richard Burton
Leonard Smithers
Release Date: March 3, 2007 [EBook #20732]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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VALERIUS CATULLUS ***
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The
Carmina
of
Caius Valerius Catullus
Now first completely Englished into Verse
and Prose, the Metrical

Part by Capt.
Sir Richard F. Burton, R.C.M.G.,
F.R.G.S., etc., etc.,
etc., and the
Prose Portion, Introduction,
and Notes Explanatory

and Illustrative by
Leonard C.
Smithers
[Illustration]
_LONDON: MDCCCXCIIII: PRINTED FOR THE
TRANSLATORS:
IN ONE VOLUME: FOR PRIVATE
SUBSCRIBERS ONLY_
[Illustration]

DEAR MR. SMITHERS,
By every right I ought to choose you to edit and bring out Sir Richard
Burton's translation of Catullus, because you collaborated with him on
this work by a correspondence of many months before he died. If I
have hesitated so long as to its production, it was because his notes,
which are mostly like pencilled cobwebs, strewn all over his Latin
edition, were headed, "NEVER SHEW HALF-FINISHED WORK TO
WOMEN OR FOOLS." The reason of this remark was, that in all his
writings, his first copy, his first thought, was always the best and the
most powerful. Like many a painter who will go on improving and
touching up his picture till he has destroyed the likeness, and the
startling realistic nature of his subject, so would Sir Richard go on
weakening his first copy by improvements, and then appeal to me to
say which was the best. I was almost invariably obliged, in conscience,
to induce him to stick to the first thought, which had grasped the whole
meaning like a flash. These notes were made in a most curious way. He
used to bring his Latin Catullus down to _table d'hôte_ with him, and
he used to come and sit by me, but the moment he got a person on the
other side, who did not interest him, he used to whisper to me, "Talk,
that I may do my Catullus," and between the courses he wrote what I
now give you. The public school-boy is taught that the Atys was unique
in subject and metre, that it was the greatest and most remarkable poem
in Latin literature, famous for the fiery vehemence of the Greek

dithyramb, that it was the only specimen in Latin of the Galliambic
measure, so called, because sung by the Gallæ--and I suspect that the
school-boy now learns that there are half a dozen others, which you can
doubtless name. To _my_ mind the gems of the whole translation are
the Epithalamium or Epos of the marriage of Vinia and Manlius, and
the Parcae in that of Peleus and Thetis. Sir Richard laid great stress on
the following in his notes, headed "Compare with Catullus, the sweet
and tender little Villanelle, by Mr. Edmund Gosse," for the Viol and
Flute--the XIX cent. with the I^{st.}
"Little mistress mine, good-bye!
I have been your sparrow true;
Dig
my grave, for I must die.
Waste no tear, and heave no sigh;
Life should still be blithe for you,

Little mistress mine, good-bye!
In your garden let me lie
Underneath the pointed yew,
Dig my
grave, for I must die.
We have loved the quiet sky
With its tender arch of blue;
Little
mistress mine, good-bye!
That I still may feel you nigh,
In your virgin bosom, too,
Dig my
grave, for I must die.
Let our garden friends that fly
Be the mourners, fit and few.
Little
mistress mine, good-bye!
Dig my grave, for I must die."
Sir Richard seriously began his Catullus on Feb. 18th, 1890, at
Hamman R'irha, in North Africa. He had finished the first rough copy
on March 31st, 1890, at Trieste. He made a second copy beginning
May 23rd, 1890, at Trieste, which was finished July 21st, 1890, at
Zurich. He then writes a margin. "Work incomplete, but as soon as I
receive Mr. Smithers' prose, I will fill in the words I now leave in stars,
in order that we may not use the same expressions, and I will then
make a third, fair, and complete copy." But, alas! then he was surprised
by Death.

I am afraid that Sir Richard's readers may be disappointed to find that,
unlike Mr. Grant Allen, there is no excursus on the origin of
Tree-worship, and therefore that, perhaps, through ignorance, I have
omitted something. Sir Richard did write in the sixties