Daisy Dunn is lifting the covers on the most erotic Roman of them all. Byron Taylor talks to the Fetcham biographer of the poet Catullus
How often does one meet a classical scholar with the face of Nicole Kidman? One also blessed with the literary flair to make an academic book read like a thriller? Like the Minotaur, Daisy Dunn is a rare beast, but her recently published volume on the life of Latin poet Catullus is already resonating far beyond the impenetrable labyrinth of the academic world.
Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet follows its subject from his privileged childhood in the late Roman Republic, his socially prominent father drinking and fraternising with Julius Caesar – then Promagistrate of the Gallic provinces – to his debauched adult years replete with travel, romantic romps and pining, passionate love. Frequently rude, rancorous and explicit, occasionally tender and solemn, his 117 carmina influenced such verse giants as Virgil and Horace and established him in virtual perpetuity as one of the greatest poets of all time. Indeed, it is only really in his work that the tale of Gaius Valerius Catullus peers out through history’s haze.
“We know so little of his life,” admits Daisy. “There are really only six or so facts that we know for sure. His poems seem scattered, haphazard, unchronological; but the more I read, and reread, I came to realize that you could definitely trace the story of a life in them. And I thought that it wasn’t illegitimate to tell it.”
Brought up in Wimbledon, Daisy studied classics at Oxford and, in 2013, completed a PhD in classics and art history at University College London, where she also taught Latin and Greek. Now a prolific journalist, she recently moved to Fetcham, where much of her debut volume was penned.
“Yes, I wrote most of it under the tree in my garden,” she says. “I love it here. The commute into London may be double that from Wimbledon, but there’s something precious about escaping the hectic, busy streets. Where I live is near Box Hill and Denbies vineyard, which both epitomise the English summer.”
At Oxford Daisy revelled in the intimacy of a small city, where proximity of friends and acquaintances obviated the need for “long email threads”, and where she found time to supplement her gruelling study schedule with editing and writing for the student newspaper, Cherwell. But it was earlier, at Hampton’s Lady Eleanor Holles School, that she discovered the poem from which the title of her book is derived. Officially styled as Catullus 64, the ‘Bedspread’ poem is a complex, multi-layered work about romantic betrayal, set within the context of a paean to a mythical golden age. It is undoubtedly inspired by the poet’s own tortured love for Lesbia: a recurrent character in his poems based on the real-life Clodia Metelli, a faithless older woman whose consul husband came to a mysteriously sticky end.
“The day I came across the Bedspread poem, it just struck me so powerfully,” recalls Daisy. “Of course, I realized that you couldn’t write a whole book about one poem, but it was a starting point.”
From which the majestic narrative takes wing. In Verona, the poet’s home town, the author contemplates a tempestuous scene evocative of a vanished antiquity. “The river, infected by the sky, seemed to suffer from the downpour; the drops, continuous now, like the bars that divided beast from spectator, were an impediment to its spate,” she writes, attracting plaudits from the ubiquitous Boris Johnson. “An amazing mixture of pacey biography and first rate literary analysis,” was his purring response to the book.
“That was very nice of him,” says Daisy. “He’s always been a great patron of Latin.”
And yet, for every stout defender, the publication of Catullus’ Bedspread brought a spluttering critic out of the woodwork. Few within academe were wholly prepared for Daisy’s uncompromising, expletive-peppered translations of this most carnal of poets, and in the Times Literary Supplement a passionate debate ensued.
“I don’t see why one shouldn’t be true to the text and translate it for a modern audience,” is Daisy’s riposte. “If it takes those sexual themes to make classical literature more accessible, then it’s silly to overlook that dimension.”
Did she expect such a stormy reaction?
“It was nerve-racking, because you just don’t know with a first book. Anything could happen. But I’ve had lovely letters from people in Canada and Australia, including one from a 90-year-old woman who hadn’t studied classics in 50 years, which was so rewarding.”
As for the predictable focus on her identity as an attractive young woman in a field of endeavour more associated with scruffy old men, Daisy is more than happy to have stolen a little fire from the traditional academic gods.
“Well,” she laughs, “academics have tended to be male, and a lot of them are quite old too. Latin poetry seems to have had more of a profile in boys’ private schools in this country, and I think that’s really been the problem. I like the fact that I’ve come as something of a surprise.”
So what now? All she will say is that her next book will probably focus on pretty much the same time and place.
“When tourists walk around Rome or Athens today, they cannot possibly have the full experience of what it was like in the ancient world; they can’t join the dots up from the ruins around them. So I think there’s a big challenge for writers in drawing together all those fragments and transforming them into a living, vivid presence.”
And what advice would she give to other aspiring writers sitting daunted and alone among the fragments of their own authorial dreams?
“Perseverance and self-discipline hold the key. For any writing – academic, fiction, journalism – you will have some terrible days when you read your work back and cringe. I think it’s important not to be too attached to what you write, especially when you’re editing – there’s an essential voice in it you have to stick to, but the process is chaotic. Everything you write starts in chaos. Then you perfect it as you go along.”
Perseverance and self-discipline. As Catullus himself opined: Otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes. Often has leisure ruined great kings and fine cities.
Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet and its companion volume The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation, by Daisy Dunn, are available on Amazon
Check out another one of our great interviews with local celebrities, like our recent chinwag with the brilliantly mad Brian Blessed
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on all our latest articles
