A.D. Hope, who, were he still alive, would turn one hundred this July 21, had a next-to-lifelong interest. Some of his first published poems were translations of Catullus. In the last decade of his working life, having rendered into English a handful of poems for his friend Isabel Moutinho, Hope turned much of his attention to a translation of Catullus’s shorter poems (‘except for those which have survived only in fragments or which contain problems that render them untranslatable’). Hope, too, was a satirist and betimes writer of erotic verse. Some would say that he and Catullus are an excellent match. These new versions, prepared in the late 1980s for a publication that did not eventuate, but now published by Brandl & Schlesinger, should be of interest to readers of Hope and of Catullus alike. They will be launched during the Hope Centenary Conference at the Australian National University (July 17–20).

While Hope’s diction, erotic or otherwise, can be a touch dated, these translations are no holds barred. Hope was no Latin scholar – these versions have already annoyed more than one Latinist – and he makes no claim to be. His work is a kind of Poundian making new. Indeed – and he probably would not thank anyone for saying it – Hope’s work has perhaps never been so Poundian, even to the extent (and Hope here seems to defy even himself) that, with a handful of exceptions, the basic mode of these translations is free verse.

This edition may annoy Latinists in another respect: Hope has set aside the traditional sequence of the poems, sorting them instead into subject areas (the poems to Lesbia, poems about ‘other loves’, poems about enemies, etc.) and giving us a restrained but very useful and entertaining commentary as he goes. To this reader at least (who initially read the manuscript in one absorbed sitting), Catullus has rarely appeared so appealing or accessible.

5     Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

Let us live, my Lesbia, let us make love too.
As for the grumping of the elderly and prudish
Let us hold them cheaper than a single farthing;
For suns may set and are able to rise again
But for us, when once our brief light is over,
There is only one unending night to be slept through.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then add another thousand, then another hundred
So that when we have made up so many thousands
We shall lose count and so confuse the tally
That no ill-wisher could cast a spell upon it
By knowing the total of such a crowd of kisses.

3     Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque

Mourn all you graces, mourn all you cupids,
And all you gentlemen who stand in their favour:
The sparrow that my lady loved so much has died,
The self-same sparrow that was her darling treasure.
She would have given her eyes only to have saved him,
For he truly was a honey and he knew his mistress
As well as any girl gets to know her own mother;
Nor would he leave her lap but hopping to and fro there
To his mistress alone would he keep up his chirping.
And now he takes his way along the gloomy pathway,
The one from which report says there is no returning.
But woe betide you, you woe-begotten shadows,
You shades of Orcus, who devour all lovely things!
My pretty sparrow, you have snatched him away from me.
Alas, cruel deed! Alas, poor little sparrow!
It is all your fault that the eyes of my darling
Are swollen with tears and reddened with weeping.

6     Flavi, delicias tuas Catullo

Were your sweetheart, Flavius, not a wench and a rustic
Unrefined and ill-bred, you’d be eager to tell me,
Your friend, Catullus, you could not stay silent.
So I am certain you must be in love with
Someone unhealthy, a dissolute baggage,
And ashamed to confess it. But in spite of your silence
You don’t sleep alone, as witness the garlands,
The scent of the Syrian oil the bed reeks of
And the bed itself too, these all loudly proclaim it;
Pillows on both sides tossed hither and thither,
Bedclothes so tumbled, its shaking and creaking,
Nothing, no, nothing can ever conceal it.
So what? And yourself, always looking fucked out too.
Why fool about then? Good or bad you should tell me
For I want to transport you, you and your lovely,
Raise both to the skies by the charm of my verses.

7     Quaeris quot mihi basiationes

How many of your kisses, you ask me, Lesbia,
Are enough for me and even overflowing?
Such a vast number as Lybian sands amount to
Between laser-rich Cyrene and Jove’s torrid oracle
Where they stretch to the tomb of venerable Battus,
Or as many as the stars on a clear, still night,
As they keep watch upon the furtive loves of men.
There! That’s how many times to kiss you
Is enough and more for your crazy Catullus,
So that neither curious eyes are able to keep tally
Nor any evil tongue have power to bewitch them.

47   Porci et Socration, duae sinistrae

Porcius and Socration, you two sinister left hands of
Piso, that symbol of scrofula and world famine.
Has that uncircumcised prick, that Priapus preferred you
To my dear friend Veranius and my dear Fabullus?
Are you upstarts feasting at extravagant banquets
In broad daylight too, while my old mates scour the streets
Merely in hopes they might scrounge an invitation?

50   Hesterno, Licini, die otiosi

Yesterday, Licinius, we had a day off, man,
Having fun among my scribble pads, as we had agreed to,
Each making verses as the fancy took us,
Now in one metre, and now in some other,
Each in answer to the other one as we laughed and drank our wine.
And I went home so excited by your wit and your elegance
That I found I had no appetite when I faced my supper,
Nor were my eyes ever visited by sleep,
I tossed madly on my couch longing for the dawn
So that I could see you and resume our conversation.
Then utterly worn out and half-dead I made this poem
While still in bed, for you, my delightful companion,
So that you could learn how much I have missed you.
But you must beware. Let it not go to your head, friend!
Light of my eyes, lest Nemesis in turn should
Demand from yourself the self-same penalty.
She’s a ticklish goddess to offend, I assure you.

58   Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa

O Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia I mean,
Dear Lesbia, the one and only whom Catullus
Loved more than himself and all he owned beside,
Now at the cross-roads and in little alleys
Sucks off the high-minded descendants of Remus.