Erroneous Gazes: Lucretian Poetics in Catullus 64

Abstract

This article argues for a ‘reciprocal intertextuality’ between Catullus 64 and Lucretius anticipating the poetic interplays of Augustan poets with the De Rerum Natura. Catullus’ wedding guests (proto-readers), Ariadne (proto-Narcissus), and Aegeus (proto-Dido) are interpreted here as errantes in the Lucretian sense: through their erroneous gazes presented in Poem 64, they all exemplify how not to gaze at the structure of the universe. In the Lucretio-Catullan intertextual space — generated, as it seems, by the Catullan text — a reciprocal way of reading emerges: while, on the one hand, ‘Catullus’ uses ‘Lucretius’ to show that the aesthetic experience he offers is dependent upon an erroneous, unLucretian gaze/reading which deprives us of the external spectator position, ‘Lucretius’, on the other hand, uses ‘Catullan’ characters as deterrent examples in order to teach us how not to submerge in ‘Catullus’ poetics of illusion’.

Seeing the light, Part II: The reception of Aratus’s LEPTĒ acrostic in Greek and Latin literature1

“…58. E.g., in Poem 64, on which, see Skinner 1976;Giesecke 2000: 10-30;Morisi 2002;Gale 2007: 69-70;Tamás 2016. While the exact chronology of Lucretius's and Catullus's works is unclear, Catullus is frequently thought to be the alluding poet, or at least to be aware of Lucretius' work and in a poetic dialogue with him.…”