Volume 39, Number 20 · December 3, 1992
A Dangerously Modern Poet
By Bernard Knox
Catullus
by Charles Martin
Yale University Press, 197 pp., $11.00 (paper)
The Poems of Catullus
translated by Charles Martin
Johns Hopkins University Press, 181 pp., $12.95 (paper)
Yeats's poem about Catullus, The Scholars, published in 1919, speaks of 'lines/That young men, tossing on their beds,/Rhymed out in love's despair/To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.' Charles Martin, in his book on Catullus in the Yale Press's Hermes series, is fully aware of the poet's 'unimpeded spontaneity and uninhibited self-expression,' but he is interested also in presenting him to modern readers as 'a masterful ironist practicing a highly sophisticated art.' Martin, like Yeats, is a poet; the difference in emphasis is in part due to the gap between their generations.
Review, 4920 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |