The Impotency Poem from Ancient Latin to Restoration English Literature

Hannah Lavery

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472422026
• eBook ISBN: 9781317027669
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The first book length study of the motif of impotency in poetry from early antiquity through to the late Restoration, this book explores the impotency poem as a recognisable form of poetry in the longer tradition of erotic elegy. Hannah Lavery's central claim is that the impotency motif is adopted by poets in recognition of its potential to signify satirically through its use as symbol and allegory. By drawing together analysis of works in the tradition, Lavery shows how the impotency motif is used to engage with anxieties as to what it means to enact 'service' within political and social contexts. She demonstrates that impotency poems can be seen on one level to represent bawdy escapism, but on the other to offer positions of resistance and opposition to social and political concerns contemporary to a particular time. Whilst the link between the 'Imperfect Enjoyment' poems by Ovid and Rochester is well known, Lavery here looks further back to the origins of the concept of male impotency as degradation in the works of earlier Roman poets. This is an important context for considering how the impotency poem then first appears in the French and English vernaculars during the sixteenth century, leading to translations and adaptations throughout the seventeenth century. Lavery's close readings of the poems consider both the nature of the literary form, and the political and social contexts within which the works appear, in order to chart the intertextual development of the impotency poem as a distinct form of writing in the early modern period.

Chapter 1
Impotence in the Works of Catullus and Horace

The Latin love elegy tradition was comparatively short-lived for a literary movement that had such a profound effect on the following centuries of literature. Catullus’s earliest datable poem (46) was written in the spring of 56 BCE; Ovid’s exile in 8 CE, ostensibly occasioned by the publication of Ars Amatoria, effectively marks the end of the love elegy tradition in Roman culture.¹ Ovid’s text has often been received as the first complete impotency poem because of its links to the Earl of Rochester’s ‘Imperfect Enjoyment’ intertext, through which this form of writing became popularly known to English literary history. However, the first impotency poems were produced during 30s BCE Rome, with Horace’s articulation of the debilitating effects of submission to a dominant female sexual partner in Epodes 8 and 12, followed by Tibullus’s psychological articulation of impotence in Elegy 1.5 and Propertius’s introduction of the ‘lost opportunity recovered’ motif with his Elegy 2.15. Tibullus, however, is the immediate influence on Ovid’s Amores 3.7: considered together, these poets’ works give us a picture of life under Octavian’s military rule, Augustus’s later social reform.

Awareness of the usefulness of impotence as a symbolic motif appears from the earliest love elegies. Catullus’s Carmen, for example, establishes an elegiac voice within which he can explore the anxiety of subjugation and the corruption of values within his society. Propertius’s exploration of the ‘warfare of love’ focuses attention on the dangers to body and mind when undertaking service to a cold and demanding power, and Tibullus provides an immediate influence on Ovid with his articulation of the psychological effects of impotency.² Ultimately, Ovid’s distillation of these earlier poets’ themes to produce his Amores 3.7 adapts their significance whilst maintaining the essence of rebellion that this genre implied. The development of ‘the impotency poem’ as a sub-genre within Latin love elegy indicates the way in which this form of verse interrogates the performance of private and public roles, and explores the multiple significances of positions of ‘impotence’.

This multiplicity of meaning within the texts themselves points to a fluidity of meaning which might be overlooked in a too rigid reading of ‘gender’ within Roman society. In this, manhood is considered an achieved state, attained through performance of certain core values: Manwell notes the essential conservatism of these, including disciplina (discipline), pietas (dutiful respect), fides (loyalty) and continentia (self-restraint). A binary construction of gender values suggest that if the man is not ‘hard’, he is open to accusations of softness (mollitia). Similarly, in the sexual encounter, the man must be ‘active’, or is considered cinaedus.³ Through analysis of these terms we can see that concepts underpinning the construction of masculinity are innately tied to concepts of potency; but also, crucially, that the concept of sexual potency sits alongside the broader moral connotations of the term: the man must control himself both physically and mentally in order to demonstrate himself as a fully functioning and worthy member of society.

That this is the ‘ideal’ rather than the norm is, however, demonstrated through the sheer volume of references made to mollitia as political attack. Accusations of softness or unmanly behaviour commonly appear in political speeches as a means for undermining a rival. Tatum notes that ‘A Roman politician attacked his rivals as perverts not because they actually were depraved but because he hoped to persuade someone that they were actually depraved and consequently unworthy of credence or loyalty or honour’ (37). This notes, however, the important intersection of political and sexual modes of discourse, and demonstrates the potential the erotic elegy has for making broader political comments both in terms of individuals and, macrocosmically, in terms of the structures underpinning Roman society and politics. Manwell suggests the construction of gender in these terms ‘means that a man is potentially always renegotiating his gender status. Moreover, those who seek to challenge the definition of what is normative, to separate a performance of masculinity from the male himself, can find numerous cracks in which to insert the lever.’ (2007). The development of the impotency poem is just such a ‘lever’: this allows the love elegists to interrogate certain connotations of the ‘manly’ role within society, as it relates to the public performance of such, through their public voice as poet, and through physical action as lover and solider.

Through analysis of the earliest development of the impotency poem within love elegy it is therefore possible to establish the key characteristics of the genre as it relates to social and political issues. This is one of the key concerns of the Latin love elegists, as they seek to establish a public voice which resonates in broader social and political spheres. Indeed, what is missed in a reading of an impotency poem that focuses primarily on the sexual is the important political meaning of literary voice. So, whilst on one level the impotency poem reflects gender values current to the time of writing, it also explores the allegorical potential of this motif for interpreting values of service, fidelity and reciprocation by which wider political and social relations function. Indeed, once we acknowledge that manliness in this society is something that is confirmed through performance, and therefore can also be lost or relinquished, the way in which the elegists play with gender roles and positions within their work opens up the possibilities for interpretation beyond the merely sexual.⁴ As Catharine Edwards notes, the cinaedus, through his transgression of core values, is a disturbingly counter-cultural figure; but this then lends him a radical power for operating outside of expected boundaries and cultural norms (96–7). In this sense, the impotency poem even from its earliest incarnation demonstrates the development of oppositional voice, manipulating the transgressive potential of erotic and satiric discourse.

It has been suggested that the Latin love elegists produced their works in a self-conscious opposition to epic, as a form equated with successful, male, political engagement. Indeed, Ovid provokingly opens his Amores with the same word as the Aeneid (‘Armas’), before moving on to claim that his muse is guilty of ‘stealing a foot’ from his poetic line, thus forcing him to write elegy over epic (1.1.3–4).⁵ But in order to understand the significance of this we must recognise it as a choice to adopt a public position through writing elegy. With his development of the servitium amoris and militia amoris principles, for instance, Propertius purposefully rejects active, public male service for his own ‘warfare of love’: ‘I wasn’t born to praise or fighting:/ the Fates forced me to my own kind of military’ (‘non ego sum laudi, non matus idoneus armis:/ hanc me militiam Fata subire uolunt.’ 1.6.25–6).⁶ But we should not mistake this therefore as a position of weakness. While Catullus notes in Carmen 58 the accusation that his verses, and therefore his person, are ‘rather sissy, not quite decent’, he self-consciously uses this as a force by which to make his attack on key male figures in public life:

I’ll bugger you and stuff your gobs,

Aurelius Kink and Poofter Furius

For thinking me, because my verses

Are rather sissy, not quite decent.⁷

The humour is then heavily ironic, and Catullus’s inclusion of obscenity within elegy is a key factor in the development of the later English impotency poem tradition.

Poets such as Ovid and Tibullus then purport not to fail to live up to a traditional concept of masculinity in relation to public life, but to choose to reject that through entry to the elegiac tradition. Peter Davis notes that ‘for the neoteric poets of the late Republic, to write personal verse was to abandon ways of writing they considered outmoded and archaic, but for Augustan poets to renounce epic was also to renounce Augustan themes’ (436). The elegiac mode enabled poets to go beyond a simple rejection of epic as equated with political bodies and values. Symbolically, by rejecting epic for elegy, these poets signal their rejection of much more than warfare, and present politically dangerous positions of resistance to basic concepts of what it means to serve their society. This does not, however, set up elegy as an uncritically positive alternative discourse, as the elegists use the form in order to explore private, social relationships which are shown also to suffer from corruption and abuse of power. This allows the elegists to explore the thrilling yet marginalised position of their protagonist in subjugation to a harsh, emotionless ruler; and within a system based on the binary oppositions of negotium/otium, public/private and gender roles which are expected to conform to those boundaries.⁸ Positions of impotence (literal and figural) within the elegies are then both evidence of and comment upon the corruptions within these relationships. That this gestures towards a sense of misuse of power on a wider social even political scale is a key part of the early development of the impotency poem.

Importantly, one of the defining features of the impotency poem as it evolves as a form over these years is the sense of dialogue produced as writers respond to each other through the taking up of this motif in their work. Whereas the intertextual links between Ovid and Rochester are well known, close analysis of the development of the form reveals the impotency text as a means for poets, often writing from contrasting standpoints, to engage with each other in a coded discussion as to the very essence of what it means to write and perform their role publicly. Through analysis of the development of the form in relation to these pairings we can see how from the start of this tradition the impotency poem allows for satiric comment on the world, as well as discussion of the very concept of vates. All these elements appear first in the works of Catullus and Horace, produced during the years of Octavian’s rise to supremacy.

Catullus (c. 84 BCE–c. 54 BCE)

Whereas Ovid’s Amores 3.7 is often taken to be the first impotency poem proper, it is important to note the earlier incorporation of moments of impotence in erotic elegy, to understand the significance of this for their later symbolic application. For instance, texts such as Catullus’s Carmen develop the railing and obscene versifier’s voice, which is arguably more important for the development of the later English impotency poems by writers such as Nashe and Rochester than the specifics of the impotency episode in Ovid’s Amores. If Ovid is popularly considered to be the father of impotency poetry, Catullus could therefore be considered the grandfather of the tradition, for establishing the terms within which many examples of the impotency poem proper would later appear.⁹

The context for this early construction of a challenging public poetic voice relates to developments in political relations over the formative years of Catullus’s life, and his entry to Roman literary life.¹⁰ The years preceding Catullus’s birth in 84 BCE had seen almost constant conflict for Rome, both internal and external. On the back of the Social War (91–88 BCE), which spoke of troubled relationships with allies, came the external attack by Mithridates IV of Pontus on Bithynia. At the same time, civil war broke out and there was fighting in the streets of Rome. Sulla’s establishment of authority was brutal, using proscription to strip people of legal rights and protection, impounding their property and placing a bounty on their lives (Scullard, 81).

Following over a decade of fighting, strains on the internal governance were clear. MacMullen notes the traditional view of the ‘loyalty aglow among the urban insiders’ of Rome, where the ‘rich and poor alike loved the object that gave them standing in the world.’ This dream of civil unity and obedience, however, comes increasingly under strain over the course of this century, and was ultimately set to fail, as ‘the physical magnificence of imperial civilization rested ultimately on sheer willingness.’ (60–61). So, when Catullus was composing his Carmen in the middle of the century, ideas of honour, obedience and of a ‘Roman destiny’ to unite all citizens seemed a far dream: internal conflicts and uprisings reflect the disintegration of the Republic. Instead, a series of competing factions vying for power destabilised the concept of a single Roman ideal for the Republic: ‘with each decade that passed the Senate became in consequence more narrow, selfish and parochial.’ (R.E. Smith, 104). That the impotency poem is established during this time is not surprising, as poets seek to explore the relationships and values on which their society is being built. Elegiac writing therefore acts as a space in which wider social and political values can then be tested.

Catullus is generally considered to be ‘the first poet in Greek or Latin who decided to write about a particular love affair in depth in a related collection of poems.’ (Lyne, 22). Lyne suggests that Catullus was so different because he challenged and transformed the traditional erotic epigram, seen in the works of antecedents such as Callimachus, through a more clearly subjective functioning, positioning the narrator-persona in the very heart of his words.¹¹ Also then accusations of autobiography began to be levelled at these troubling texts, allowing the subversive nature of the literature to be contained within the experiences of an individual.¹²

The narrator ‘Catullus’ exerts a strong narrative voice through which events in his turbulent love relationship with Lesbia are focalised, and this also encourages a sense of specificity and reality for the events described.¹³ The focus of these elegies is maintained on the thrilling but ultimately destructive subjugation of the narrator, within the terms of a love relationship in which the male is made impotent through excess of feeling for a cold lover:

nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem,

qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati

ultimi flos, praetor eunte postquam

tactus aratrost. (11. 21–4)

(And let her not look to find my love, as before; my love, which by her fault has dropp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Impotence in the Works of Catullus and Horace
• 2 The Impotency Verse of Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid
• 3 The Impotence Motif after Ovid: Petronius (c. 27–66 CE)
• 4 Early French and English Renaissance Impotency Verse: Belleau and Marlowe
• 5 Thomas Nashe’s ‘The Choise of Valentines’ (c. 1592)
• 6 From Civil War to Restoration
• 7 Disappointment and Imperfect Enjoyment in the Restored Court
• 8 The Anonymous Imperfect Enjoyment Poems
• 9 William Wycherley’s Social Satire in Impotency Verse
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index