I Hate and I Love – Catullus – Ramblings on my bookshelves

A collection of forty three poems by Gāius Valerius Catullus, a Roman poet born in 84 BCE and who died in 54 BCE, but in his short life he wrote a number of poems, 116 of which have survived to the present day. Penguin published a complete volume translated by Peter Whigham which I don’t possess however this selection from that larger volume is part of the Penguin Little Black Classics all of which I purchased when they came out. Catullus’s poetry is normally categorised nowadays into three main subject types, those dealing with his friends, those about a woman he loves but refers to only as Lesbia rather than her real name which was probably Clodia Metelli and the rest are largely described as invective or works attacking other people, which was quite a popular style at the time. This volume is mainly poems in the ‘friends’ or ‘Lesbia’ categories with just seven of the ‘invective’ style represented although over fifty of the surviving works are categorised as ‘invective’. An example of the invective style is poem 43 which attacks the girlfriend of Formianus.

Apologies but photographing the poems without breaking the spine of the book has led to the distortions in the images. The next poem that I want to select to illustrate the tone of Catullus is one which describes his desire to travel now that the warmer weather is here. I have deliberately selected three of the shorter works although few are what we would regard as long, but the descriptions of personal experiences and desires is what marks Catullus as one of the writers known collectively as poetae nov or ‘new poets’ as poetry moved away from the epic heroic style favoured before then. The works of Catullus were almost lost to us completely as a single manuscript was found in the Chapter Library of Verona around seven hundred years ago. This document was copied twice before it was again mislaid and one of the copies was in its turn copied twice before being lost. So the 116 poems have come down the centuries due to these three surviving precious documents.

That one feels very modern with Catullus looking forward to a holiday in Turkey and hoping to meet up with friends there. For my third example it has to be one of the famous Lesbia poems although not the best known, which is poem 5, as that extends over a page in this edition so is difficult to include here. But poem 51 expresses his desire for Lesbia and how he feels when in her company although it is worth pointing out that poem 85 refers to her husband so Catullus was probably one of several men she had affairs with, including Rufus the subject of invective poem number 77 written after Catullus found out about their relationship.

A few others are quite ribald so I don’t feel I can put them on this blog. Although I have certainly enjoyed reading the collection it does nowadays probably need to come with a warning regarding adult themes, The title by the way is from the opening line of the very short poem 85, which is just two lines long: