"Up yours both, and sucks to the pair of you,
Queen Aurelius, Furius the faggot,
who dared judge me on the basis of my verses—
they mayn't be manly: does that make me indecent?
Squeaky-clean, that's what every proper poet's
person should be, but not his bloody squiblets,
which, in the last resort, lack salt and flavor
if not 'unmanly' and rather less than decent,
just the ticket to work a furious itch up,
I won't say in boys, but in those whose hirsute
clods incapable of wiggling their hard haunches.
Just because you've read about my countless
thousand kisses, you think I'm less than virile?
Up yours both, and sucks to the pair of you!"
"Carmen 16" is Catullus' most infamously profane poem. Also known as "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" (after the first line), this shockingly profane piece wasn't even translated into English until modern times. In it, the author threatens to "sodomize and facefuck" friends (namely Aurelius and Furius) who apparently criticized his work as "molliculi" ("delicate" or "soft", implying effeminacy).Queen Aurelius, Furius the faggot,
who dared judge me on the basis of my verses—
they mayn't be manly: does that make me indecent?
Squeaky-clean, that's what every proper poet's
person should be, but not his bloody squiblets,
which, in the last resort, lack salt and flavor
if not 'unmanly' and rather less than decent,
just the ticket to work a furious itch up,
I won't say in boys, but in those whose hirsute
clods incapable of wiggling their hard haunches.
Just because you've read about my countless
thousand kisses, you think I'm less than virile?
Up yours both, and sucks to the pair of you!"
— Catullus, Carmen 16 (translation by Peter Green)
Tropes in this poem include:
- Book Ends: Both the first and last lines are "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" (Latin for "I will sodomize and facefuck you").
- Bowdlerise: Older translations tend to clean up the first and last lines in some way. Sometimes, the first and last lines will be untranslated, such as in Peter Whigham's translation. Others, like Sir Richard Francis Burton's shown below, will translate the poem in full but leave out the explicit words entirely:I'll —— you twain and ——
Pathic Aurélius! Fúrius, libertines!
Who durst determine from my versicles
Which seem o'er softy, that I'm scant of shame.
For pious poet it behoves be chaste
Himself; no chastity his verses need;
Nay, gain they finally more salt of wit
When over softy and of scanty shame,
Apt for exciting somewhat prurient,
In boys, I say not, but in bearded men
Who fail of movements in their hardened loins.
Ye who so many thousand kisses sung
Have read, deny male masculant I be?
You twain I'll —— and ——
- Cluster F-Bomb: An especially ancient example, and probably the most (in)famous case of this in Roman literature. It is worth noting that Latin obscenity was quite a bit more precise than English obscenity is (at least regarding sexual acts), and futuō, the closest Latin equivalent of fuck, did not carry the aggressive connotations commonly associated with it in English (in fact, it was more commonly used in a celebratory or erotic sense and almost never used for insults); this is probably one reason Catullus uses pēdīcābō and irrumābō. note
- Foreign Cuss Word: Some 19th and 20th-century translations leave the foulest words in Latin, sometimes with some alterations. For example, Peter Whigham, who provided a 20th-century translation, altered the first and last lines, but did not translate them:"Pedicabo et irrumabo
Furius & Aurelius
twin sodomites,
[...]
You read of those thousand kisses.
You deduced an effeminacy there.
You were wrong. Sodomites. Furius & Aurelius.
Pedicabo et irrumabo vos." - Irony: It's open to interpretation of how seriously Catullus means us to take him here, but a common critical interpretation is that he is making a serious point (like his response to the charges of effeminacy), but doesn't mean his threats in earnest; if anything, the first and last lines could be a very baroque way of saying "fuck you". Mary Beard writes:"You can't tell a man from his verses. And 'pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo' for saying you can. But the joke is (or rather one of the jokes in this complicated little poem)—if you can't infer from his kiss-y verses that [Catullus] is effeminate, then neither can you infer from his poetic threats of violent penetration that he is capable of that either."
- Real Men Wear Pink: The central point of this poem. Catullus wanted to show that he is no less a man because he wrote about kisses, and would be more than happy to prove it to those who say otherwise.
- Serious Business: Not, ironically, Catullus' threats, which are generally interpreted as ironic (not least because Furius and Aurelius seem to have been his friends - for all we know, this poem was an example of how they joked with each other). However, Carmen 16 itself is frequently invoked in defence of the artist's right to free expression. As That Other Wiki writes:"Carmen 16 is significant in literary history as an artistic work censored for its obscenity, but also because the poem raises questions about the proper relation of the poet, or his life, to the work. Later Latin poets referenced the poem not for its invective, but as a justification for subject matter that challenged the prevailing decorum or moral orthodoxy. Ovid, Pliny the Younger, Martial, and Apuleius all invoked the authority of Catullus in asserting that while the poet should be a respectable person, his work should not be constrained or restricted."
- Sophisticated as Hell: Naturally. In fact, this poem itself has become a marker of being Sophisticated as Hell in popular culture, since it's extremely obscene, but Smart People Know Latin.
