McMahon, 'When the Lamp is Shattered: Desire and Narrative in Catullus', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9507
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9507-mcmahon-when
@@@@95.7.13, Janan, When the Lamp is Shattered
Micaela W. Janan, When the Lamp is Shattered: Desire and Narrative in
Catullus. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1994. Pp. xviii, 206. Price unknown. ISBN 0-8093-1765-3.
Reviewed by John M. McMahon -- LeMoyne College
mcmahon@maple.lemoyne.edu
When the Lamp is Shattered by Micaela Janan examines
selected poems of Catullus, those which either directly or indirectly
concern the relationship between the poet and Lesbia, "from a point of
view informed by modern and ancient theoretical discourses on desire"
(x). Drawing principally on Plato, Freud, and Lacan, Janan analyzes the
Catullan corpus from two theoretical assumptions: the first, that there
exists a clear link between desire (eros) and artistic endeavor;
the second, that human consciousness is fragmentary and fundamentally
disjointed from itself. Thus, such elements of the Catullan consciousness
as the individual self, the fluidity of the poetic persona, and
the shifting paradigm of gender constructions in the poems are subjected
to a comprehensive and flexible approach that emphasizes the subject as
the transmission point of social, cultural, institutional, and
unconscious forces. This approach enables Janan to argue for a
flexibility of interpretation for the Catullan corpus deriving from a
continuous shifting of meanings in both subject and text; and, moreover,
it relies on the very essence of knowledge, or as Janan puts it, "what we
can know--and even more insistently--what we cannot know" about the text
(x). Of particular importance for Janan here is the text's disclosure of
an oppositional tension between masculine authority, which supports
certainty and closure bolstered by rationality, and feminine insight,
marked by a skeptical attitude toward the definiteness of knowledge.
These elements surface in Catullus' appropriation of the feminine psyche
in certain of the poems and in his questioning of gender, roles as
fictively determined by culture. Consequently, Lesbia too, as symptomatic
of Late Republican social ills, is seen by Janan as less the particular
woman as the "overarching, misogynistic construction of Woman" (xi).
The book comprises five main chapters with preliminary remarks
and a shorter final chapter that functions as a summary; the text itself
of 146 pages is deceptively brief. A preface (ix-xi), summarized above,
outlines Janan's approach. An additional section ("A Note on Citation",
xv-xviii) along with the clarifications of abbreviations used in the
text, establishes Janan's conventions for referring to the Lacanian
corpus, which, because it was primarily transmitted orally during
lectures, has yet to be edited with any semblance of completeness.
In order to effectively implement her ambitious investigative and
interpretive program, Janan devotes the first chapter ("From Plato to
Freud to Lacan: A History of the Subject") to the theoretical
underpinnings of the concept of the "subject" as it bears upon the
Catullan corpus. Essential to this discusssion are the dismissal of the
discredited biographical criticism of the poems of Catullus, the
recognition of the uncertainties associated with the speaker of the
poems, the contradictory evidence of the poems themselves (cf. c. 85),
and the concepts of boundary and transgression as critical to the
Callimachean poetics espoused by the novi poetae. The bulk of the
chapter, however, is Janan's extended presentation of the importance of
the "subject" (as opposed to persona) in the Catullan corpus and
how it operates in the theories of desire developed by Plato, Freud, and
Lacan. In this regard, Janan points out, the concept "of human
consciousness as radically divided from itself" (7) is a common element
to all three, and their shared idea that knowledge is fragmented affords
useful methodological tools for analyzing Catullan verse and the actual
historical reality that underlies it. These tools are brought to the fore
in what follows as Janan ranges over the vast theoretical landscape of
psychoanalysis, discussing Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus,
Freud's siting of desire in the network of Law and culture, Lacan's
explorations of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, the Real, and especially his
reconsideration and elaboration of Freud's Oedipus theory. This latter in
turn leads to the recognition of the tensions inherent between masculine
certitude (jouissance phallique) and an alternative, feminine
knowledge situated "outside meaning/sense" (28), typified by Lacan's
concept of the threatening jouissance feminine. In appropriate
instances, Janan illustrates how such theoretical considerations are
useful for seeing Catullan artistry from a new perspective on "poetic
unity" (33). The discussion is brought to a conclusion by a summation of
the author's approach and a preview of the content and argument of
upcoming chapters.
Chapter Two focusses on the first eleven poems of the collection.
C. 1 posits the Callimachean aesthetic of limitation and emphasizes the
fragmented nature and lacunose nature of narrative by its representation
of Cornelius' compression of human history. A similar fragmentation
occurs in the Lesbia poems as a whole which "both invite and resist
ordering in meaningful temporal sequence" (40) and which prompt the
reader to construct a narrative of events. The chapter covers much
territory, establishing a theoretical groundwork by first analyzing
individual poems (like 107 and 16) and then moving on to the initial
poems of the Lesbia cycle. Along the way Janan introduces a multitude of
topics for consideration, from the sexual significance of the
passer as "a fetishized object charged with Catullus' displaced
desire for Lesbia" (47) to the three-way tension between pain, jesting,
and poetry that is likewise evident elsewhere (e.g. c. 50). The role of
transgression is, morever, an essential part of the early Lesbia poems,
and cc. 3, 5 and 7 all point to the role of poetry itself in passing
beyond the confines of reality and of life itself. In c. 11 the spatial
boundaries initially encompass the whole earth while Catullus
progressively delimits the subject matter in accordance with Callimachean
principles; and eros provides "another axis of orientation besides
that of space" (64) as a foil for the purely geographical framework.
Chapter Three effects a transition from the initial verses of the
Lesbia cycle to perhaps the most famous of all Catullan poems, c. 51. The
emphasis of this relatively brief (66-76) chapter is on the role of
repetition and the portrayal of Woman's knowledge as a non-rational
system related to the divine. Lesbia's dual nature is evident from the
comparison of c. 11 with c. 51: the appearance of identidem,
describing at once the voraciously destructive behavior of the adulteress
and the alluring and inspirational idealization of womanhood, links the
two poems in their polarity. The chapter concludes by carefully comparing
Sappho's original with that of Catullus and in doing so stresses the role
of both Woman and the Divine in ultimately determining the boundaries of
Man's identity (74-76). The divide between Woman and Man, moreover, is
clearly identifiable in the contrast between strophes three and four,
where the former exemplifies the jouissance feminine in its
description of the mystical nature of infatuation and the latter
indicates the logically reflective expression of masculine certitude.
Chapter Four continues the emphasis on Catullus' attempts to know
Lesbia in the collection's epigrams. Based as these efforts are on
masculine knowledge in an attempt to comprehend Woman in logical terms,
they are futile. Exemplified by the simple polarity of odo et amo
(c. 85) and the tensions experienced in cc. 11 and 51, the epigrams
recount the narrative of the affair as a repeating series of moments
marked by the same emotions and words which portray Lesbia as both Whore
and Goddess. Important to the understanding of the epigrams in general is
the concept of rereading, best evidenced in c. 72 where the first line
generates ambiguity, thereby prompting the reader to make an interpretive
decision about meaning based on grammatical construction. Here too,
poetic language makes certainty impossible (88-92). Catullus also uses
the vocabulary of political alliance as an antithesis to amatory
language, as in c. 109 for example, with a resultant destabilization;
more destabilization occurs with the fragmentation of the narrative (as
in cc 75 and 85). In c. 76, moreover, while Platonic ideals initially
come to the fore as Catullus defines himself in terms of a social order
and as independent of Lesbia, the poem reasserts the erotic fragmentation
from cc. 85 and 51 (96-100).
Chapter Five is devoted to an examination of the carmina
maiora as they reflect Catullus' involvement with Lesbia. The
prominence of the divine and the mythological in these poems (as compared
with their signifcant absence in the carmina minora) allows the
poet a wider latitude for exploring the "conceptual borderlines
articulated in the contrast and rapprochement between the divine and
human planes of being" (103-104). Accordingly, Janan first compares c. 63
with both c. 51 and c. 11, seeing the questions of gender identity as
foremost in all three. She concludes, furthermore, that c. 63 is both an
account of Attis' self-disintegration and a representation of Lesbia's
dual nature of cc. 11 and 51 conflated as Cybele, at once goddess and
monster. Catullus as lover is also identified with Peleus in c. 64 where,
in contrast to the emphasis on spatial divisions of c. 63, temporal
dislocation plays a major role. It remains, however, for the lengthy
discussion of c. 68 (112-142) to weave the disparate elements already
discussed in the book into a unified whole. Janan (like others) considers
the poem problematic but also sees its solution in referencing it to the
whole cycle of the Lesbia poems. Questions of personal identity, of
narrative sequence, of semantic elusiveness, and even of the manuscript
tradition itself all surface in this enigmatic poem, and each comes under
scrutiny in this extended examination. The roles of mythology,
repetition, limitation, and gender reversals are traced as well; and
Janan emphasizes the importance of Hercules as a "focal figure" (132) in
the transitional state between mortality and divinity, dominance and
subservience and, as a result of his transvestism, Man and Woman. The
chapter concludes by reaffirming the position of desire in the creative
process and the importance of memory in sustaining that process
(140-142). The brief (143-146) final chapter offers the author's
estimation of her success and of the usefulness of modern theory in
looking at ancient texts, and she contends "that the very categories
'ancient' and 'modern' often used to sequester the one from the other are
specious" (144).
The book has a number of things to recommend it. In focussing
clearly on the Lesbia cycle, it provides some new perspectives on these
most frequently read of Catullus' works. Well organized according to
content, the work affords summaries of theoretical material and of
previously made points to assist comprehension throughout the work, and
the author is careful to provide appropriate referencing to Chapter One's
exposition of Plato, Freud and Lacan, something quite helpful for the
non-specialist wishing to fathom the intricacies of modern literary
theory as applied to an ancient text. Passages in Latin and Greek are
translated into English (although some individual words in the text are
not). The footnotes are quite extensive (149-181), further elucidating
many controversial aspects of the Catullan corpus or current theoretical
issues.The index is comprehensive.
The book is not all that easy to read, however, and some aspects
of both content and style make the work difficult for the general reader.
One problem is that the accumulation of specialized vocabulary (e.
g.objet a) and Janan's complexity of expression at some points
become very daunting. As a result, despite the author's attempts in
Chapter One to explain fully the foundations upon which she builds her
argument and presentation, in many instances rereading passages becomes
necessary to ascertain meaning. In this case a glossary of terms for easy
reference would have been helpful.
In sum, while When the Lamp is Shattered provides the
reader with much thought-provoking material about ways to view Catullan
verse, it is a complex and demanding work as well. Thus, it reflects,
perhaps unwittingly, what its author has suggested the Catullan corpus
requires of us:"continual rereading" (145).