![]() In the ironic jargon of Catullus' circle, poems may be nugae and the craft of letters a ludus but, beneath the surface frivolity, the discipline of art inculcates abiding principles of good taste which can be developed into a general code of behavior. His profession therefore takes on a new social importance, rivaling the ancient stature of the vates as spokesman for the now-moribund ancestral value system. The fastidious, cultured poet-critic is pressed into service as an arbiter elegantiae and a censor of conduct. Here the artist's instinct for what is right and fitting becomes a touchstone for true refinement. His concern with standards of propriety ventures beyond the domain of literature to embrace a wide range of social usages. In general, this aspect of the collection has been seen as the Roman contribution to Catullus' basically Alexandrian literary program, expanding the aesthetic values of the Alexandrians-particularly their concern with the careful cultivation of small-scale forms-into the social sphere, and laying claim to a new set of values instantiated by the lifestyle of the neoteric poets. Poem 12 is one of a number of poems in the polymetrics in which the poet sets himself up as an arbiter of elegance, including and excluding people from the circle of the urbani with sovereign confidence. Catullus has deffly turned the tables on the thief In fact, the end of the poem is a clever and devastating theft of the napkin from Asinius himself, in the sense that the napkin has now come to represent the circle from which Asinius is excluded. The urbanity of the poet's performance here lies in the graceful turn with which he avoids ineptia, whose spectre he has himself raised, just as the urbanity of the poem as a whole depends on the elegant exploitation of Asinius' ineptitude. Make such a fuss about a napkin, and Catullus even encourages us to think that it may be a little materialistic (12). To reveal only at the end of the poem that the napkin that Asinius stole has a sentimental value is a sneaky move, but Catullus' timing in this poem has a purpose, and that is to raise and deflect the charge of ineptia (tastelessness) from his own complaint. Catullus has himself performed the trick that Asinius could not pull off, exemplifying the wit that consists in the piquant interruption of a context (see Quintilian above) with his grossly physical word. But if Asinius' brother stands as evidence that it can be done correctly, Catullus himself provides the example, for in describing Pollio as "a boy stuffed full of charms and witticisms" he sets the crude colloquialism "stuffed full" (differtus, 9) in the midst of the language of urbanity and gets away with it. It is Asinius' own brother who provides the evidence that there is a right and a wrong way to play the fool. Catullus neatly creates this misreading by describing the circumstances of Asinius' theft as "in wine and joking" Asinius thinks that it is he who is making the joke, but Catullus has the word ioco refer to the very conviviality that Asinius has violated. ![]() Of course, the clumsiness of Asinius is a matter of context: to filch people's napkins when they are off their guard and at their ease (neglegentiores) is to misread the situation. The poet's opportunism makes a silk purse out of the sow's ear of Asinius' inopportune joke. Asinius' ineptia, the bad timing that makes this exhibition of wit out of place, is the occasion for Catullus' adroit compliment to Asinius' brother and for his neat acknowledgment of the gift from his friends. Like many of Catullus' squibs, this is a performance exhibiting the very qualities that the unfortunate victim is pilloried for lacking. The trick is sordid, tasteless as can be.Īt any price . . . for that's a boy stuffed full ![]() You steal the napkins of your careless friends. You put to no good use, in wine and joking Here is Catullus playing the censor in poem 12: ![]() Cicero gives us a sense of the watchful censoriousness of the connoisseurs of appropriate and sophisticated behavior at Rome when he speaks of the need to be constantly on guard against committing trivial faults of demeanor, unnoticed by the many, but detected by the observant, just as the slightest faults in tone are heard by the truly musical ( De Off. The Catullan collection situates the poet as the arbiter of elegance of his circle, in which capacity he is more often than not exposing those who fail to meet his standards.
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