#catullus

the thing you have to remember about catullus – and to his credit as a complex author I think he is aware of this & calls attention to it, although not from a 'feminist' angle obviously – is that however much he might write & play with his own patheticness & powerlessness, ultimately he as the author has the last word as it were in the power dynamic, like he is the one in control of what is being said & so even when he is being cut down like a flower at the edge of a meadow he is the one writing lesbia cutting him down. which is still quite interesting that he would choose to write himself like this, in a sort of traditionally demeaning position, I think there is a lot to explore there, like it's really endlessly chewable. but you have to be aware at the back of your mind that catullus is (self awarely & also self admittedly) doing a sort of tricksy thing here wherein he is in control of what the reader reads (& even feels about it! cf. poem 16), and this has only been exacerbated by the fact that there is very little actual historically reliable information that survives about him or anyone else here. so like as much as he is being caught by lesbia in the poetic material he is catching her as the poet, and the reader too to a certain extent in that he is manipulating their perception. and then interestingly he is sort of putting the admission of that out there for you as the reader to catch him about it in turn. do you see what I mean