Audiobook · read by volunteers
To Lesbia
Gaius Valerius Catullus
Read by Alan Clare, Brad Powers, cricket, Clarica, Cori Samuel, David Starner, Jc Guan, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Lee Ann Howlett, Micki Folmar · 13 chapters · 14 min
About the book
Catullus loved a woman he called Lesbia, and his poems to her are among the most famous love poems of the ancient world. They are by turns passionate, playful, jealous and bitter. In the nineteenth century, Richard Francis Burton, the explorer and linguist, made an English version of these verses, and thirteen LibriVox volunteers each read his translation of To Lesbia in the summer of 2007. The result is a collection of thirteen recordings of the same short poem, each with its own voice and shading. Together they take only a few minutes. A small gallery of readings of one of the world’s oldest love poems. Burton’s version of Catullus appeared in 1894, four years after his death.
Introduction
Gaius Valerius Catullus lived in the first century BC, and is usually dated from about 84 to about 54 BC. He was a Roman poet whose short, intense verses, many of them addressed to a woman he calls Lesbia, have been admired ever since. His themes include love, desire, quarrels, grief and satire, and he writes with a directness that was unusual in Latin poetry.
The English version recorded here is by Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), who is better known as an explorer and as the translator of The Arabian Nights. He published his Catullus in 1894, after his death. The poem is a short piece of verse addressed to Lesbia, and it appears here in translation.
This recording is a multi-version project. The whole poem was recorded thirteen times, and each reading is a separate file. It was the weekly poetry project for the week of August 5th, 2007. By listening to several versions one after another, the audience can hear how readers interpret the same lines, with different tempos and degrees of warmth or irony.
The set lasts about ten minutes. It makes a good introduction to Catullus for those who have not read him, and an enjoyable experiment for anyone who likes to compare how a poem can be performed. Because the reading is so quick, it is easy to listen to all the versions in a row and notice how each volunteer finds a different mood in the same few lines.
Public domain
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text