Catullus and Cinematography

A Work in Progress
12

So, Glenn Hughes taught a class on Catullus

describing his epyllion as cinematography

imagery telescoping to moments in time

when Peleus locked eyes with bare breasted Thetis,

when a Palace was prepared so all could attend

a wedding sacrifice to the marriage bed

but first a coverlet must be undraped

depicting the actions of mythic heroes

Ariadne abandoned standing on the beach

Theseus victorious, sailing back to Athens

his father, Aegeus, hurling himself to death

the Parcae, forever spinning, foretelling fate

How Catullus staged all this to arrive at 

his final lines, after writing four hundred

When Catullus takes us through the coverlet into another world, we’ve left the Jason and the Argonauts story of the Golden Fleece to enter the world of Athenian myth where Theseus has just abandoned Ariadne.  We are no longer guests at a wedding.  Ariadne has just woken from sleep on the beach of Naxos, a Greek Island, to find herself abandoned, soon to be discovered and saved by Bachus.  What does Catullus want us to see when we stand on the beach with Ariadne?  We are voyeurs of her scantily clad distress, of the scene in which Theseus slays the Minotaur, of her desperate appeal to the gods that they punish Theseus.  

Let’s step back a moment.  Let's consider Catullus is Richard Aldington, and Lesbia is H.D., and Bacchus is Ezra Pound. Let's have a screenplay that can travel through time as Catullus did.  

We can probably assume that the elite families in Rome knew each other well because of frequent intermarriage.  If Catullus was part of, or on the fringe of this elite society he presumably had to take sides.  I think we can assume that he did.  His closing summation of the poem leaves no doubt that he believes the gods no longer attend marriages.  We are left with the questions: is it the marriage he objects to, or the Triumvirate, or the general immorality of Rome?  And then there's the mystery: how did Catullus die?  And when?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

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