For the poetry of Catullus: How does Catullus’ Poem 43 compare to Roman statuary portraiture? What do his poems share with the poetry of Sappho? If the poems are addressed to other people, what do they reveal about Catullus himself? In other words, are they in some sense confessional?
What will be an ideal response?
Poem 43 reflects the Roman taste for the kind of verism we see in the ancestral masks and sculptures that dominate Roman portraiture. The poem was written to a woman many believe to be Clodia, sister of a Roman patrician and senator, and wife of another, with whom he had a passionate, if short-lived, affair. In the poem, he addresses her as Lesbia, a clear reference to the poems of Sappho, whose poetry also hinted at erotic relations. Like the work of Sappho, Catullus’ poems were probably semi-autobiographical, and his words to Lesbia move from the passion of his early infatuation to a growing sense of despair that their love will not last.
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______ Is a movement, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th Century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas
Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).
Portrait Head of an Old Man is an example of
Greek sculpture. Roman sculpture. Etruscan sculpture. Egyptian sculpture.