Catullus

By Gregory Nagy

Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Essay Six

2019.02.22 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This posting for 2019.02.22 is Essay Six of a long-term project that started with Essay One at 2019.01.08. The numbering of my paragraphs here in Essay Six continues from §95 of Essay Five, posted 2019.02.08, continuing from earlier posts. In Essay Six here, I concentrate once again on the poetry of Catullus, which has been my main preoccupation in the course of this overall… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Musings about a scene pictured by the Achilles Painter

2019.02.14 | By Gregory Nagy §0. On the cover of an earlier posting of mine for Classical Inquiries, Nagy 2019.01.31, we see a facsimile of a picture painted on an Attic white-ground lekythos, dated somewhere around 440–430 BCE, by an artist who is known to art historians as the Achilles Painter. In that posting, which was all about Sappho, I never explained why I chose that picture for the cover.… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Essay Five

2019.02.08 | By Gregory Nagy This posting for 2019.02.08 is Essay Five of a long-term project that started with Essay One at 2019.01.08 and continued since then till now. The numbering of my paragraphs here in Essay Five continues from §77 of Essay Four. The primary examples in Essay Five here, as earlier in Essay Four, come from the poetry of Catullus. In my comments on this poetry so far,… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Essay Four

2019.01.31 | By Gregory Nagy This posting for 2019.01.31 is Essay Four of a long-term project that started with Part One at 2019.01.08 and continued with Essay Two at 2019.01.16 and with Essay Three at 2019.01.25. The numbering of my paragraphs here in Essay Four continues from §64 of Essay Three, which had continued from §51 of Essay Two, which had continued from §33 of Essay One. In Essay Four,… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Essay Three

2019.01.25 | By Gregory Nagy This posting for 2019.01.24 is Essay Three of a long-term project that started with Essay One at 2019.01.08 and continued with Essay Two at 2019.01.16. The numbering of my paragraphs here in Essay Three continues from where I left off at the concluding paragraph §52 of Essay Two, which had continued from where I had left off at the concluding paragraph §33 of Essay One.… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Two small comments on Catullus Two: an iconic effect and an expression of delight in what is beautiful

2018.12.13 | By Gregory Nagy §0. As I contemplate the vast buildup of secondary bibliography documenting countless interpretations of “Catullus Two”—as Classicists normally call this poem—I struggle under the weight, looking for ways to break free by simply expressing the delight I experience whenever I re-read Catullus 2. The comments I offer here are merely two examples of such experiences. But I must already now highlight one thing that these… Read more