SUSTAINING DESIRE: CATULLUS 50, GALLUS AND PROPERTIUS 1.10

摘要

In Propertius 1.10, one of many in the monobiblos that address or name a ‘Gallus’, thenpoet-figure remembers a recent night during which he observed Gallus in an eroticndalliance with a girl; he thanks his friend for the pleasure and reciprocates with anpoetic offer of erotic aid which is also an offer of aid-through-poetry. The elegynfigures poetry as an appropriate recompense for erotic pleasure, an aid in eroticnpursuit and a medicina for the wounds of love. The relation between poetry and desirenin the poem is further complicated by the suggestion that Propertius’ seeminglynvoyeuristic pleasures are actually textual and not sexual, or are both textual andnsexual, cloaking a description of reading the erotic elegy of Cornelius Gallus.1nPropertius’ rather creepy night spent2 watching, listening to and revelling in Gallusnand his girl’s all-night exertions becomes instead a night spent passionately readingnGallus’ Amores: the lusus from which Propertius cannot pull himself away (1.10.9)nbecomes the play of light verse; the alternae uoces of Gallus and his girl in the heat ofnpassion (1.10.10) become the alternae uoces of elegiac couplets, or possibly ofnamoebean verse.3 Perhaps we are particularly to imagine Propertius reading Gallus’nfirst book, his primus amor (1.10.1); here, in a poem nearly at the centre of his ownnfirst book, Propertius reflects on the sources of his (poetic) passion.4nThis critical reconfiguration of Propertius 1.10 as concerned with the erotics ofnpoetic reception also has brought it into close dialogue with Catullus 50’s impassionednplea to Licinius Calvus. Both Propertius and Catullus have passed sleepless nights (cf.nCat. 50.10: nec somnus tegeret quiete ocellos; and Prop. 1.10.7, quamuis labentisnpremeret mihi somnus ocellos) fuelled by the pleasure of a lusus that is both poetic andnerotic.5 A number of recent studies have explored the homoerotic dynamics of the two