Love’s contradictions: Catullus on the agony of infatuation | Hacker News Reader

Love’s contradictions: Catullus on the agony of infatuation

psyche.co

91 pointsdiodorus19 comments

Catullus on the front page of Hacker News, huh? Had the pleasure of spending most of Latin class in my senior year of high school reading him. (Or rather, the poems of his that our teacher could let us read without getting pearl-clutching parents on the other end of the phone with her. Not to worry, we knew where to find the rest.) Here are some of my favorites of his that are a bit off the beaten path:

- Catullus 16, which might be the oldest thing that we could properly call a diss track: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16

- Catullus 45, a poem about two lovers that's proof people have always had an appetite for camp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_45

- Catullus 46, an earnest, wistful poem about breaking camp with the arrival of spring and bidding the former strangers, now friends, goodbye as you all pursue the aims that brought you together in the first place: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Catullus_46

> Catullus 16, which might be the oldest thing that we could properly call a diss track

This view is a bit disingenuous. There's been diss tracks as long as mankind has been singing and writing poems. While Catullus 16 is very famous, there's much earlier examples. The greek counterpart to Catullus may be, for example, Hipponax of Ephesus [0], who wrote celebrated "diss tracks" six centuries before him. But still, a lot of ancient greek comedy can be understood as unrestricted verbal abuse to concrete people of the time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipponax

Calling it disingenuous I would say is inaccurate (which would have been a better word than disingenuous). The post said might. I take that to mean that is the earliest instance the poster knew of personally. If that was disingenuous that would mean they were knowingly giving inaccurate information.

Thanks lgessler, interesting further reading.

Thanks for the correction, I used the word "disingenuous" wrongly.

Catullus's poems are brilliant!

I studied them in my high school Latin class. There were just 12 of us in the class. Due to a bad strain of flu that winter, our final test on Catullus was postponed 4 times as various people were home sick. By the time everyone was back in class, we had studied them so thoroughly we knew many of the poems off by heart...

So 34 years later, I can still recite "Odi et amo, fortasse requiris, ..." and "Sirmio, gem of islands and peninsulas, ..." [peninsula = paenae insula = almost an island :)].

Another interesting side to Catullus comes from the music of Carl Orff. He is of course the composer of Carmina Burana, a collection of medieval drinking songs, with the most famous being O Fortuna! [1]. He also set Catullus's poems to music, in his Carmina Catulli [2]. [3] is a version with the musical score in the background.

Here are two other Catullus resources for anyone wanting to learn more:

* Bilingual edition by Peter Green - Latin and English on opposite pages: https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Catullus-Bilingual-Gaius-Valeri...

* Wikipedia has a very good list of all Catullus's poems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poems_by_Catullus

[1] https://youtu.be/GRjyxr1ysKw?t=77 (O Fortuna starts at 1:17)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catulli_Carmina

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UDc2KdnuAo

> " [peninsula = paenae insula = almost an island :)].

In French they have kept the term, and peninsula is "presqu'île", which means literally that :)

I doubt French kept the term the whole time. I would say that it is more likely that later intellectuals knowledgeable in Latin created afresh a calque on the Latin term.

Might be, I'm not sure about the history of the term, but that's what they're called now, anyway

Respectfully, that does not match up with my rudimentary understanding of linguistics. Considering that both languages pull from the Latin family, I would assume that they are more likely to share an origin, than converge to that etymology coincidentally.

I could totally be wrong about this, of course. For example if you would spoke French, I'd look like an asshole.

Presque in French is not a reflex of Latin paene, so presqu'île is not a straightforward continuation of Latin paeninsula.

> I could totally be wrong about this, of course. For example if you would spoke French, I'd look like an asshole.

I do happen to speak French, but that is irrelevant. Merely speaking a language does not make a person an authority on etymology. The general public often holds unsound views on where the words they use come from. I am however involved in historical linguistics in academia, and what I would like to emphasize here is that the Romance languages are well known to have created calques on the basis of learned Latin -- examples abound in Spanish and Romanian too, for example. The layman may believe them to continue Latin forms, but they can be shown to represent late coinages, not retentions.

When one searches on Amazon for `Catullus` and sees the many translations and other books about him, some quite recent (Catullus' Bedspread is especially interesting https://www.amazon.com/Catullus-Bedspread-Life-Romes-Erotic/...), the following, from another great Roman poet, comes to mind:

  exegi monumentum aere perennius
  regalique situ pyramidum altius,
  quod non imber edax, non Aquilo inpotens
  possit diruere…
  (Odes III: XXX, lines 1-4, published 23BC) 

  (I have built a monument more lasting than bronze,
  higher than the Pyramids’ regal structures,
  that no consuming rain, nor wild north wind
  can destroy…)
  https://collation.folger.edu/2016/03/more-lasting-than-bronze/

If you haven't yet read the one about Lesbia and her sparrow you're missing a great poem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_2)!

> If you haven't yet read the one about Lesbia and her sparrow you're missing a great poem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_2)!

great poem and definitely with no double entendres!

More than just infatuation: I'm someone who firmly believes Yuri Zhivago would've been better off (even if his readers might've been worse off) in Paris with Tonia, and have married accordingly, yet even in the double-digits of married life "odi et amo" has its moments definitely still.

Artists dissing each other was popular even in that period of time!

Catullus opened a carme with:

>>> Annales Volusi, cacata charta

...that literally means "paper with shit all over" to his competitor Volusio poem.

Every Latin student's favorite. So many dirty words to learn!

Great article, although they missed (IMO) Catullus at his best on infatuation:

Miser Catulle, dēsinās ineptīre,

et quod vidēs perīsse perditum dūcās.

Fulsēre quondam candidī tibī sōlēs,

cum ventitābās quō puella dūcēbat

amāta nōbīs quantum amābitur nūlla.

Ibi illa multa cum iocōsa fīēbant,

quae tū volēbās nec puella nōlēbat,

fulsēre vērē candidī tibī sōlēs.

Nunc iam illa nōn vult: tū quoque impotēns nōlī,

nec quae fugit sectāre, nec miser vīve,

sed obstinātā mente perfer, obdūrā.

Valē puella. Iam Catullus obdūrat,

nec tē requīret nec rogābit invītam.

At tū dolēbis, cum rogāberis nūllā.

Scelesta, vae tē! quae tibī manet vīta?

Quis nunc tē adībit? Cui vidēberis bella?

Quem nunc amābis? Cuius esse dīcēris?

Quem bāsiābis? Cui labella mordēbis?

At tū, Catulle, dēstinātus obdūrā.

I haven't found a great translation for this one, but the meter belies how perfect it is in terms of balancing the humor and pain of lost love[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-zvIICQvkg

Wikisource's quasi-literal translation, if anyone wants to know at least what the content of the words are: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Catullus_8

On that theme, the best description of love and the feelings it creates that I ever read is "A Lover's Discourse: Fragments" by Roland Barthes. By a long shot.

Agricola filiae arat!

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