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For the eighth and final (!) Queer and the Classical seminar, we have 'After Callimachus: Reading and Conversation' with Stephanie Burt ( @accommodatingly) and Mark Payne.
We are of course reading and discussing Burt's contemporary translations and adaptations of the work of the ancient Greek poet Callimachus. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180199/after-callimachus
Payne, who wrote the book's introduction, opens by praising the 'Frank O'Hara-ness' and chattiness of Burt's translation, its inventiveness and its playfulness. For Payne, this translation embodies a new way of 'being historical'.
Burt has an 'empathetic approach' to Callimachus: the ways in which she handles the longer poems especially (e.g. Hymn 5) showcases both the mythological and the personal, and by the personal, this also includes how the translator finds her own way into the poem.
Burt was long drawn to the childish enthusiasm and queerness of Callimachus' poetry, and for her, this project in many ways is a collaboration with not just Callimachus, but also Mark Payne, Rosanna Warren and several others.
'If you stay attached to the unfixedness [of childhood], and the kinds of permission or forgiveness... it looks like resistance to [cisnormativity & mononormativity].'
How Callimachus treats erotic rivalry & attachment & failure & disappointment is very different, from, say, how Catullus does, whose work suggests that jealousy burns us up forever. There's a lot of Catullus in English translation and not so much Callimachus: not a coincidence?
Why the prevalence of Catullus (also Ovid, Vergil)? Burt suggests that the 'Oxford Hellenism of the 19th century of what we now call queerness, of MLM' did not make Callimachus a likely candidate for study or affective projection and attachment.
Burt's translations are full of in-jokes (Laura Jane in Epigram 34, Star Trek in Epigram 43): 'there is an overlap between creating fanworks and creating these poems'
Payne notes how increasingly students connect Hellenistic poetry with fanfiction. Burt: 'being a fan involves being fascinated and frustrated with canon' (see Ursula Le Guin's carrier bag theory of fiction) https://www.deveron-projects.com/site_media/uploads/leguin.pdf
'In changing context to text, you change everything': Burt on queerness in her reworking of the story of Acontius and Cydippe
There's a way of reading Callimachus 'as the most absolute snob,' but that's not how Burt sees him: she points out this is parallel in some ways to debates today on how to read the poet James Merrill
On Artemis in 'After Callimachus': she is the goddess who centers experiences of non-men, or of 'anyone who lives (or deserves the chance to live) outside the system of patriarchal requirements'
'I would like to think we can make Artemis a patron for non-hierarchal or patriarchal communities': there are rules on how to treat Artemis, but she is not someone who is in charge of other gods: she is about independence & bows rather than med school & fame (Apollo)
When Burt started the project, she had fallen in love with Callimachus' epigrams and fragments but did not know the hymns; what she found in the hymns was 'independent confirmation for hypotheses as to why she liked this poet so much'
Question from @lbarsk about Burt's use of X-Men in-jokes: 'I'm sure there are more Marvel mutants than there are characters in the Iliad.' The world of comics = a world where innovative criticism is for the most part not happening within the academy https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/reading-callimachus-through-comics
Burt on archery: 'its gender associations are extremely complicated, and it can be used to represent many things, which Callimachus does and I do'. Burt's poem Archery is 'either an homage to learning the art of archery or 35 lines of sex jokes' https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/148983/archery
The constant contestation of characters in the Marvel universe, for Burt (esp. legacy characters, and any characters that are actively mediating their relationship to past characters) operates a lot like classical reception (she compares Callimachus here to Kate Bishop)
We end on a question from @elecollii about the queer simile and translation, building off of Burt's speculative essay 'Like' https://aprweb.org/poems/like-a-speculative-essay-about-poetry-simile-artificial-intelligence-mourning-sex-rock-and-roll-grammar-romantic-love
That's a wrap on a fantastic seminar series: massive thanks to Eleonora Colli ( @elecollii) and Marcus Bell, as well as to everyone who has participated!
