Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catullus (c84-c54 BC) who wrote some of the most sublime poetry in the late Roman Republic, and some of the most obscene. He found a new way to write about love, in poems to the mysterious Lesbia, married and elusive, and he influenced Virgil and Ovid and others, yet his explicit poems were to blight his reputation for a thousand years. Once the one surviving manuscript was discovered in the Middle Ages, though, anecdotally as a plug in a wine butt, he inspired Petrarch and the Elizabethan poets, as he continues to inspire many today.
The image above is of Lesbia and her Sparrow, 1860, artist unknown
With
Gail Trimble Brown Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Trinity College at the University of Oxford
Simon Smith Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, poet and translator of Catullus
and
Maria Wyke Professor of Latin at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Transcript
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| 0:14.9 | I hope you enjoyed the programs. |
| 0:16.9 | Hello, Catullus 84 to 54 BC wrote some of the most sublime poetry in the late Roman Republic, |
| 0:23.2 | and some of the most obscene. |
| 0:25.5 | He found a new way to write about love in poems to the mysterious Lesbians, married and elusive, |
| 0:30.7 | and he influenced Virgil and Ovid and others, yet his scatological poems would obliter his |
| 0:35.2 | reputation for a thousand years. |
| 0:38.0 | Once the single surviving manuscript could discovered, in the Renaissance, though anecdotally as a plug |
| 0:43.4 | in a wine-butt, he inspired Petraak and the Elizabethan poets as he continued to inspire |
| 0:48.3 | many today. |
| 0:49.3 | We'd me to discuss Catullus R. Gale Trimble, Brown Fellow and tutor in Classics at Trinity |
| 0:54.2 | College at the University of Oxford. |
| 0:56.2 | Sam and Smith read an inquiry writing at the University of Kent, Poet and Translator |
| 1:00.6 | of Catullus, and Maria Wyke, Professor of Latin at University College London. |
| 1:05.9 | Maria Wyke, what do we know about Catullus? |
| 1:08.7 | Well, we have to be careful about what we think we know about Catullus. |
| 1:12.7 | He writes many poems in the first person very passionately about his circumstances, but |
| 1:19.0 | this is poetry designed to be consumed by the public as poetry, and what you say in |
| 1:24.4 | poetry is not necessarily who you are. |
... |
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