Translator’s Note

These translations are from my manuscript focused on a single poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus, his two-line poem Catullus 85. I’ve spent several years translating, adapting, and reacting to what is a simple metric couplet in Latin. A simple couplet that contains worlds.

For Catullus, poetry could be a conversation and a game, and many of his poems are addressed to, about, or inspired by other contemporary poets, friends, foes, and rivals. He also claims a strong connection, through his poetry, to the Greek poets Sappho and Callimachus, born roughly 500 and 200 years before him, respectively. Similarly, poets have been engaging with Catullus’ poetry since his death more than 2000 years ago. By engaging with Catullus’ poetry, my project also follows in his footsteps.

The Latin of Catullus 85 can be read as a brief, straightforward sentiment:

Odi et amo. quare id faciam fortasse requiris

nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

Looked at literally, the poem reads:

1 (I hate and I love), 2 (why/how I do it? perhaps you ask)

3 (I don’t know), but 4 (I feel it and I am tortured).

But is that enough? It feels a little simple, a little stiff. Roman literature can carry dusty associations for modern readers and is this simple English enough to overcome that? We often crave a singular “right answer”, but there is no pristine one to one correspondence from each Latin word to an English word, even before considering how the words come together into sentences, into poetry.

Broken down, the Latin couplet consists of four sections with the 4th section introduced with an adversative “but” (sed):

1. conflicting or paired feelings: hate and love, lust and loathing, desire and repulsion, etc. (odi et amo)

2. A question or confrontation about the experience of that conflict (quare id faciam fortasse requiris)

3. Denial of knowledge/understanding (nescio)

Adversative (sed)

1. Assertion of the experience and its impact (e.g. a problem or pain) (fieri sentio et excucior)

My translations often relate to different aspects and ways of interpreting these pieces, as well as exploring different ways to emphasize and relate them to each other.

For example, the version titled “Do you feel it too?” moves the question (section 2) out of the poem entirely and into the title. I focused the body of the poem on a fusion of sections 1 and 4, with the emphasis particularly on the first part of section 4 (fieri sentio), i.e., this is what Catullus is feeling about feeling ‘hate and love’. Meanwhile, section 3, the fact that he doesn’t know (whether anyone else feels like this, as much as why he does) is now implied, and all the more inevitable for that reason.

In contrast, the versions “Odi et amo” and “Excrucior” (part of a series of four poems that each take one of the four sections and mix Latin within the English translation) change the emphasis by making part of the poem feel more or less familiar to the reader depending on their knowledge of Latin. For a 21st century American reader it also can call to mind the use of Spanglish, which often requires a non-Spanish speaking audience member to provide their own translation or fill in the blanks in their understanding from context. Further, the contraction of “Odi et amo” to “odetamo” may remind a Latin speaking reader of the metrical reading but can serve to make the poem feel more foreign to an English speaker unfamiliar with the practice. “Excrucior” emphasizes this foreignness by turning the one untranslated word into the key to understanding what the poet is talking about. 

While all derive from the same Latin original, my translations show how different interpretations and experiences are available to the reader depending on how the poem is approached. In the same way, reading a contemporary poem in English can produce vastly different interpretations depending on how the reader approaches the poem, and the context in which the poem is encountered. The text is important, but so is what we bring to the table when we read it. A single translation can focus on certain perspectives of the original and eliminate the possibility of others. For Catullus (and other Latin and Greek authors), there is the added challenge inherent in our cultural preconceptions of “classical antiquity”. These can make it harder for a reader to relate to Catullus with the immediacy his poetic voice demands in Latin. Therefore, instead of one perfect translation, I’m weaving a web of imperfect translations to catch Catullus’ elegantly crafted and passionate Latin from different directions, pulling as much truth out as I can. In their multiplicity, my translations seek to convey Catullus’ Latin original, while honoring the intervening 2,000+ years of engagement with and interpretation of Catullus’ poetry.