Obscenity and Closure

Poems 56 and 58 are good examples of the power of obscenity to produce closure; the extremity of obscene diction is emphasized in both cases by contrast to dignified mythological names (Remi , 58.5; Dionae , mother of Aphrodite, 56.6). The shock of the contrast effectively closes poems that have promised us something big from the start. Poem 97 starts with obscenity and works its way to a hair-raising climax:

Non (ita me di ament) quicquam referre putavi,
     utrum os an culum olfacerem Aemilio.
nilo mundius hoc, niloque immundius illud,
     verum etiam culus mundior et melior:
nam sine dentibus est. hoc dentis sesquipedalis,
     gingivas vero ploxeni habet veteris,
praeterea rictum qualem diffissus in aestu
     meientis mulae cunnus habere solet.
hic futuit multas et se facit esse venustum,
     et non pistrino traditur atque asino?
quem siqua attingit, non illam posse putemus
     aegroti culum lingere carnificis?

So help me God, I thought it made no difference
     whether I smell the mouth or asshole of Aemilius.
The one is no cleaner, the other no dirtier,
     in fact the asshole's cleaner and better,

for it has no teeth. The mouth has feet half a yard long,
     and gums like an old wagon-box.
What's more it gapes like the cunt of a pissing
     mule split open in the heat.
This guy fucks lots of women and thinks he's charming,
     and he's not consigned to the mill and the ass?
If any woman touches him, wouldn't you think she could
     lick the asshole of a sickly executioner?

This is one of three consecutive poems dealing with one of the most common themes of obscene Roman literature, the impure mouth.^[66] Commentators cite Greek epigrams in which addressees are told that their anuses and mouths are interchangeable, but the citations only serve to contrast Catullus' opening with these "parallels."^[67] The confusion between the two orifices is here emphasized by the insouciant indifference with which Catullus contemplates the prospect of smelling them, and this has no parallel in the Greek poems. But if Aemilius' two ends are indistinguishable, those of the poem are not: the opening's entertaining of alternatives contrasts with the accumulation of disgust in the final line, where each of the four words conveys some revolting aspect of the depths to which Aemilius' hypothetical girlfriend would sink. The formal difference between the beginning of a poem, where anything is possible, and the end, where there is nowhere else to go, is thematized by the relation of the speaker to Aemilius' body: casually indifferent at first, horrified at the end. But it is a third person who finally takes over the job of approaching Aemilius' body: the woman who can bring herself to touch Aemilius brings mouth and anus—confusingly equivalent smells to begin with—into intimate and polluting contact with each other. This is a particularly compelling version of ring composition and poetic closure; as we pronounce the final line, filling our mouths with obscenity, we duplicate the behavior of the hypothetical girlfriend of Aemilius. In the figure of the girlfriend, the poet transfers the stain of obscenity onto the mouth of another, who is contrasted with the insouciant persona of the poet at the beginning of the poem; this figure in turn stands for the reader, whose tongue lingers over the end of the poem, its anus in fact.

Poetic closure coincides again with an obscene act in poem 88, where Catullus addresses one of his favorite victims, the incestuous Gellius:

Quid facit is, Gelli, qui cum matre atque sorore
     prurit et abiectis pervigilat tunicis?

quid facit is, patruum qui non sinit esse maritum?
     ecquid scis quantum suscipiat sceleris?
suscipit, O Gelli, quantum non ultima Tethys
     nec genitor nympharum abluit Oceanus:
nam nihil est quicqum sceleris, quo prodeat ultra,
     non si demisso se ipse voret capite.

Gellius, what is the man who gets the itch with his mother
     and sister, and stays up with them all night naked?
What is the man who doesn't allow his uncle to be married?
     Do you know what enormity he undertakes?
He undertakes, Gellius, a crime such as remotest Tethys
     does not purify, nor Oceanus, father of the nymphs:
for there is nowhere beyond this for crime to go,
     not if he were to suck himself with his head bent.

As in poem 97, this poem ends with a breathtaking obscenity that provides an extremely powerful sense of closure. But the formal tightness of the ending depends on a paradox, namely, that Gellius' crime cannot go any further even if he were to fellate himself. The extreme limit of crime is this reflexive act that produces a sexually self-contained body, and, as the poem closes with the ultimate enormity, it produces an image of its own self-containment. Gellius' crime of incest is such that the ocean itself will not wash it away;^[68] but Oceanus and Tethys, the parents of the nymphs, were themselves brother and sister: extremity, again, is replication. As the speaker gropes for something different, something extreme by which to measure the enormity of Gellius' crime, the poem turns in on itself; even the question in line 4 repeats obsessively the same sounds while preparing us for something other. Poetry being a highly self-reflexive mode of discourse, the obscenity that closes this poem could be read as a figure for poetic discourse itself. But the fact that poetic textuality is figured by an obscenity produces a bifurcated sensation in its readers: as readers of poetry, we are committed to this body that excites itself, and we desire the closure that sends us back to the beginning again; but, as witnesses of Catullus' denunciation of Gellius, we are expected to turn away in disgust from this limit of monstrosity.