85

Catullus' 85 is one of the most famous poems in the western tradition. Long before extensive literary treatments and poetic tracts emerged about the contradictory, yet all-too-recognizable notion of both loving and hating the absent beloved, Catullus expressed this sentiment in truly masterful Latin:

odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? 

nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

Philadelphia's Athenaeum, a haven for the arts.
This is where I talked to a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet,
a man very much a present-day Catullus.

How to translate this couplet? In the original Latin, all the letters would've been capitalized. There would have been no punctuation. The reader would've been presented with an unambiguous assertion of essentially contradictory affect. How to render this in English?

Well, I'm on draft twelve. As of today, here's my translation:

I hate and I love. Perhaps you
     might ask
                    why
                           I'd do it. 

Unknowing, I feel,
so it happens

and I burn. 


An assignment: think about how you would put this sort of longing into words. One of us should, anyhow and I ought go back to scorching my way through these final papers!

amo amo amo,
L