Culex – The Gnat: The process of analyzing and translating a poem from the Appendix Vergiliana
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34019/2318-3446.2021.v9.35797Keywords:
Culex, Appendix Vergiliana, epyllium, VergilAbstract
The Culex, a poem from the Appendix Vergiliana, is an epyllion that the literary tradition has been attributing since Antiquity to the youth of Publius Vergilius Maro. Despite all the doubts related to this attribution, the work composed of 414 dactylic hexameters is a rich example of the poetry produced during the 1st century AD, and portrays the main aspects of neoteric aesthetics, with influences from Lucretius and Catullus. Considered by most scholars a spurious work, it is analyzed by some as a parody, by others as a complement to Virgil's biography, or as a resource to compose the fictional biography of the Homerus Romanus. Thus, the exegesis of this poem has been proved inexhaustible. Its translation into Portuguese dodecasyllablic verses, proposed here by the first time, is followed by a minimum critical apparatus, which allows the understanding and intends to achieve some reverberation of the original Latin text, Vergilian or not, in contemporaneity, despite all the challenges regarding the translator's task.
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References
Edições do Culex
CLAUSEN, W.; GOODYEAR, F., KENNEY, E.; RICHMOND, J. Appendix Vergiliana. Oxford: Oxford University, 1967.
ELLIS, Robinson. Appendix Vergiliana sive carmina minora Vergilio adtributa. London: Oxford, 1907.
FAIRCOUGH, H. Aeneid 7-12; Appendix Vergiliana. London: Harvard University, 1918.
HEYNE, Christian. P. Virgilii Maronis opera uarietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustratus. Tomus Quartus. Lipsiae: Sumtibus Caspari Fritsch, 1775.
VIRGILIO MARÓN. Bucólicas, Geórgicas, Apéndice Virgiliano. Traducciones Tomás de la Ascensión Recio García y Arturo Soler Ruiz. Madrid: Gredos, 2008.
RAT, Maurice. Poèmes atribué à Virgile. Paris: Gariner, 1935.
ST. LOUIS, Lisa. Prolegomenon to an Editio of the Pseudo-Virgilian Culex. Ottawa: Univesity of Ottawa, 2001.
Textos antigos citados
ARISTÓTELES. Poética. Tradução Eudoro de Sousa. 4 edição. Lisboa, Casa da Moeda, 1994.
DONATUS; PHILARGYRIUS; FOCA; SERVIUS; PROBUS. Vitae Vergilianae. Ed. Iacobus Brummer. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912.
MARTIAL. Epigrams, Books 6-10. Edited and Translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Cambrige: Harvard University, 1993.
QUINTILIAN. The Orator’s Education, vol. IV. Edited and Translated by Donald Russel. Cambrige: Harvard University, 2002.
STATIUS. Silvae. Thebaid (Books 1-4). Edited and Translated by J. H. Mozley. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1928.
TÁCITO. Diálogo dos oradores. Tradução Antônio Martinez Rezende e Júlia Batista Castilho Avelar. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2014.
ZENOBIUS. Corpus Paroemeiographi Graeci. Ed. E.L. Leutsch, F. Schneidewin. Gottinga: Vandehoeck et Ruprecht, 1839.
Textos de apoio
BARRETT, Antony. The Autorship of the Culex: an evaluation of the evidence. Latomus, Bruxelles, v. 29, n.2, p. 348-362, 1970.
BARRETT, Antony. The Catalogue of Trees in the “Culex”. The Classical World, Baltimore, v.63, n.7, p. 230-232, 1970a.
CAMPOS, Haroldo. Metalinguagem & outras metas. 4ª edição. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1992.
CAMPOS, Haroldo. Da transcriação – poética e semiótica da operação tradutora. Belo Horizonte: FALE/UFMG, 2011.
CITRONI, M.; CONSOLINNO, F.; LABATE, M.; NARDUCCI, E. Literatura de Roma Antiga. Tradução de Margarida Miranda. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2006.
COURTNEY, E. The Textual Transmission of the Appendix Vergiliana. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, London, v. 15, p. 133-141, 1968.
CRUMP, M. The Epyllion from Theocritus to Ovid. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1931.
DEL BAÑO, F. Virgilio y la Appendix Vergiliana. Simposio Virgiliano: conmemorativo del bimilenario de la muerte de Virgilio. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1984.
ELLIS, Robinson. The Theory of the Culex. The Classical Review, Cambridge, v. 10, n. 4, p. 177-183, 1896.
FRAENKEL, Eduard. The Culex. The Journal of Roman Studies, London, v. 42, p. 1-9, 1952.
FAIRCLOUGH, H. The Poems of the Appendix Vergiliana. Transations and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Baltimore, v. 53, p. 5-34, 1922.
FRANK, Tenney. Vergil – a biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1922.
HEYNE, Christian. P. Virgilii Maronis opera uarietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustratus. Volumen Primum. Londini: Sumtibus Librariae Hahnianae, 1830.
HOUSMANN, A. Remarks on the Culex. The Classical Review, Cambridge, v. 16, n. 7, p. 339-346, 1902.
JACKSON, Carl. The Latin Epyllion. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Cambridge, v. 24, p. 37-50, 1913.
JACKSON, Elizabeth. The Autorship of the Culex. The Classical Quarterly, Cambridge, v. 5, p. 163-174, 1911.
LA BARBERA, Sandro. Textual notes on Culex 137-129. Myrtia, Murcia, v. 34, p. 217-223, 2019.
LOWE, Dunstan. A stichometric allusion to Catullus 64 in the Culex. The Classical Quarterly, Cambridge, v. 64, n.2, p. 862-865, 2014.
MALEUVRE, Jean-Yves. Le Moucheron d’Octave. Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire. Bruxelles, v. 76, n. 1, p. 75-86, 1998.
MCGILL, Scott. The Appendix Vergiliana. The Cambridge Companion to Virgil. 2nd ed. Fiachra Mac Góráin and Charles Martindale (org.). Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2019.
PAJARES, Alberto. Fragmentos de Épica Griega Arcaica. Madrid: Gredos, 1999.
PLÉSENT, Charles. Culex – Étude sur l’Alexandrinisme Latin. Paris: Klincksieck, 1910.
RAND, Edward. Young Virgil’s Poetry. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Harvard, v. 30, p. 103-185, 1919.
REEVE, M. The textual tradition of Aetna, Ciris and Catalepton. Maia, Genova, v. 28, p. 233-254, 1975.
ROCHA PEREIRA, M. H. Estudos de História da Cultura Clássica: volume 2 – Cultura Romana. Lisboa: Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002.
ROSS JR., David. The Culex and Moretum as post-augustan literary parody. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, v. 79, p. 235-263, 1975.
SHIPLEY, Frederick. Ovidian Vocabulary and the Culex Question. Transations and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Baltimore, v. 57, p. 261-274, 1926.
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