My Teachers: James Hutton (1902-1980)

The most erudite man that I ever encountered in my own person was James Hutton, a professor of classics when I was an undergraduate at Cornell back there in the 1950s. Professor Hutton bristled with knowledge -- nor is this my opinion only, but one that is well attested by his international reputation and by the list of his writings. Hutton wrote two enormous books (800 pages each!!) that won him his scholarly spurs: The Greek Anthology in Italy (1935) and The Greek Anthology in France and in the Latin Writers of the Netherlands to the Year 1800 (1946). I encountered Professor Hutton in 1958 when, callow and poorly educated, I enrolled in a Latin course called "Terence and Catullus" (of which more later). But first, for those curious readers out there in bloglandia who are on tenterhooks, painfully stretched like new wool and are wondering what the heck is the "Greek Anthology" about which James Hutton composed his pair of magna opera and around which his life centered -- turn we now to the pages of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

In brief, the Anthologia Graeca is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that had a complicated ancient history, but originated perhaps with an anthology complied by Meleager of Gadara in the first century BCE, which brought together works by many ancients including Archilochus, Alcaeus, Anacreon and Simonides (all big names in their time). There were a series of early editions that do not survive but an authoritative version was made by Constantine Cephalas in the 10th century. "Cephalas appended a number of other collections: homoerotic verse collected by Straton of Sardis in the 2nd century AD; a collection of  Christian epigrams found in churches; a collection of satirical and convivial epigrams collected by Diogenianus as well as Christodorus's description of statues in the Byzantine gymnasium of Zeuxippos; and a collection of inscriptions from a temple in Cyzicus." And then in 1300 or thereabouts Maximus Planudes brought together an edition which became standard, which, while adding some poems, also deleted or bowdlerized many of those that offended his puritanical Christian sensibilities. Planudes' anthology was the only one known to Western Europe for many centuries; manuscript transmission was superseded when an edition based on his work was printed in 1494.

There's a lot more but that's enough information for us to understand the area which James Hutton worked. Professor Hutton knew the anthology backwards and forwards and made it his business to trace its considerable influence through the Latin and vernacular poetry of late antiquity and the medieval and renaissance worlds. Quite an endeavor, in my opinion.  

Hutton was a Scotsman, born in Airth, son of a sea captain, though from where I sat (in a small seminar room in Goldwin Smith Hall!!), it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been a child or even a young man. He came to the US early in life and there was not a trace of Scotland in his speech. Hutton entered Cornell as a freshman in 1920, received three degrees there, stayed on to teach, and retired in 1973. According to his Cornell obituary, he was a life-long bachelor. For most of his adulthood, he lived with his mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Hutton, and he shared a house for many years with Professor Lane Cooper, his teacher and another bachelor Cornell classicist. After the death of his mother and of Cooper, he continued to live at 123 Roberts Place with his cousin/housekeeper, Mrs. Margaret Green. Perhaps he was a delightful presence among his friends, but to my eyes he was a pale, tall, gaunt, dry-as-a stick, bony man devoid of humor or juice. Born only two years before my own father, he seemed to be generations older.  

Now a few words about Terence and Catullus, the twin subjects of my 1958 Latin classroom experience. 

Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) was Roman playwright possibly of Berber origin but certainly originally a north African slave. Brought to Rome and freed, he wrote six comedies, adapted from Greek originals, of which we students of Professor Hutton plowed through three: Andria (166 BC); The Self-Tormentor (163 BC) and the Adelphi (160 BC). Terence drowned on a trip to Greece, age 25. His must have been a marvelously romantic life, even though much curtailed. Too bad we know only its barest outline.

Here's the title page to the first "modern" edition of Terence's works (1496)

In Terence's plays, young noblemen dally with prostitutes or mistresses even as their fathers insist that they marry more respectable ladies. Plots, often contrived by the dull hero's wily slave, fail to come to fruition because the conspirators are carelessly overheard. Sometimes apparently unrelated women (one rich, the other poor), turn out to be sisters. Sham marriages and double-dealing are frequent. It is not uncommon that sons discover by accident, in the last scene of the play, the identities of their biological fathers. When there are plans to destroy female infants, the girls are rescued and raised secretly, only to come forward as beauties at a critical juncture of the plot. Young noblemen are prone to breaking into the houses of pimps to carry off the girls they love. Generally, plays end with multiple and suitable marriages, the old folks outwitted and the youngsters carrying the day. Slaves are freed.

Meanwhile, characters coin memorable aphorisms in succinct, elegant Latin. Everyone knows "Homo sum, nihil a me alienum puto"  -- I am a man, nothing human is alien to me.  But also quot homines tot sententiae: suus cuique mos -- So many men, as many opinions; to each his own way. And "fortis fortuna adiuvat" --  fortune favors the brave.  And "nullumst iam dictum quod nos dictum sit prius" --nothing new is said that has not been said before. And "amantium irae amoris integratio est" -- lover's quarrels are the renewal of love.

But with all these comic goings-on and witty sayings, there was not one moment that I can remember when Professor James Hutton laughed or smiled or indicated in the least that the plays were clever or amusing. Instead, we discussed grammatical questions with much emphasis on the differences between second century and first century Latin. Dry as dust, it was. The opportunity to find the common humanity of ancient Romans and 1950s Cornellians was missed, even shirked.

Terence's louche and lively plots must have posed a problem for Professor Hutton; Catullus of Verona, a poet of love and sex and bawdy, could only have caused even more of a difficulty. In the edition in which we read Catullus, a drab gray book which must have dated from the early part of the century, certain of the more scabrous poems were omitted but, in a moment of confused prudery, printed -- in a smaller font --in an appendix. I suspect that they were also bowdlerized. Some of the words that Catullus used in his freer verse were not to be found in our dictionary, which had also been cleansed. And in a translation that I consulted (was it the Loeb?) the offending poems did appear, but only in Italian. Was the idea that if anyone could read Italian he must be sophisticated enough to deal with Catullan pornography. Perhaps my readers think that I'm fantasizing or imagining this half-hearted censorship, but it's as true as true. Swear.

Even after all these years, two of Catullus's poems stay in my mind. The best, the most frequently republished and the most influential is known to classicists as Catullus 5. It's a remarkable poem. Here's the Latin, which is not difficult.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

Rumoresque senum severiorum

omnes unius aestimemus assis.

Soles occidere et redire possunt;

nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux

Nox est perpetua una dormienda

da mi basia mille, deinde centum

dein mille altera, dein secunda centum

deinde com milia multa fecerimus

conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, 

aut ne quis malus invidere possitor

cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

And here's a translation. "Let us live, my Lesbia, and love. The gossipings of stern old men let us value at just one penny.  Suns may set and rise again, but us, when once the brief light has set, night is one perpetual sleep. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred, then when we have counted up many thousands, let us shake [the abacus] lest some evil man be envious when he knows how many kisses there were." That is to say, Let us keep on making love no matter what the old envious guys think. (Lesbia has nothing to do with lesbians; it's just code for the name of the married woman with whom Catullus was sleeping.)  

I have no recollection of any discussion of this peach of a poem in 1958. Perhaps we talked about the ingenious lux/Nox juxtaposition, but I am sure we didn't touch on either the boasted adultery or the joys of sex. We were still in the last gasp of Victoriana. We were pre-Beatles, pre-Kennedy, pre-readily available contraceptives. Some things were not to be discussed. 

The other poem that stands in my memory is Catullus 61, a joyous epithalamion (or marriage song) which celebrates, with great gusto, the wedding of Vinia and Manlius. It is sensual and almost hypnotic. It's frankness about sexual pleasure pleased me in 1958, when such things were rare. Still pleases me.

But what about the omitted poems, the ones too "coarse" for our tender eyes and ears?  How would James Hutton have dealt with them. Not at all, of course. But now, censorship and self-censorship and propriety eased, we can read the poem that begins Paedicabo ego vos et irrumabo. which I can now translate as "I will fuck you in the ass and then fuck you in the face." And goes on from there. Not part of the 1958 curriculum. In Professor Hutton's class, we were more comfortable discussing a synezis of the genitive than any exercise of the genitalia.

But I wonder, now, about, James Hutton, at home after a hard day of declining and conjugating, at dinner with his mother and his bachelor roommate. What did Professor Hutton think about Catullus's "paedicabo ego vos et irrumabo".

This I know: whether repelled or offended or secretly sympathetic, he certainly did not share his feelings with his students. 

Comments

[Jimmie Simmons]

My admiration for Dr. Hutton as a teacher just increased immeasurably after reading your blog! Imagine a professor's dilemma when faced with choices of readings (in a Latin grammar class, yet)for undergraduates. How do you get them to engage with the subject matter, and even do independent research? BRAVO!

[Stephen Lewin]

I happened once again on your "blaugh" after months of my inactivity. What a pleasure to again be exposed to your erudition and whimsy!
steve lewin.

[Don Z. Block]

I agree again with Steve Lewin. Terence, this is not stupid stuff.

[Steve Lewin]

What a wonderous tidbit! Informative, yes. But also full of humor AND wisdom. One of the Good Doctor’s best.
Steve