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html Love poems

These two lovely little "Sparrow Poems" combine a vignette of a lady playing with her pet bird, combined with the poet's envy of the pet and his covert desire to be there in her lap instead. Sir Paul Harvey maintained that "it was probably not the sparrow but the blue thrush often seen at the present day in Italian bird cages". In any case it is a singing bird (pipiabat), and a delicate little poem to suit, much admired and imitated for the last five centuries. 2

Now the canary has died! Alas and alack......and Catullus plays it to the hilt: Her distraught pain, how lovely the birdie was, and some funereal lines (qui nunc... tenebricosum)."Who now goes through the valley of the shadow of death" as well as "That undiscovered country from which no traveller returns...". Then blame it on birdie, and the poet's ultimate sorrow: Her eyes are so red from crying! Woe! 3

One of the loveliest love poems ever, but with complex inner works: the Sun evokes thoughts of darkness with that long night of the dead, but then with a wild jerk it is back to kisses and kissing and it all turns into play with the numbers, the digits in series, the Fibonacci extrapolations of kisses on kisses. But you watch out: There is always ENVY 5 Now again we play with Numerobasiology, it is the sum tally he is thinking of, remembering Archimedes treatise on the number of grains of sands it would take to fill the Universe (this document survives). Or the stars in that silent Night watching our little secrets of lovemaking. Crazy Catullus! But then remember the Roman fear of magic, the evil eye, the secret watcher in

Love-hate poems

THE LOVE-HATE POEMS

85 This distich is so short and so famous that one need say little. (But if you want a detailed discussion of its inner intricacies, look at the Catullus link under the Chrestomathy section on the main page. There is much more here than meets the eye!)
Note that in this poem the strength of his love protested, is all generated from his side, virtually a statement of faith, "love for you....on my side". Seeds of discontent are already germinating! 87 The last line of this quatrain has almost become a Trite Quote from overuse by macho males, who like to imagine women as light and flighty, their words writ in water. Far worse are the words of many a blustering male whose words are writ in nothing but pure air! 70

This is a strange scene of a threesome at dinner or a party, as she lambasts Catullus in front of her railing husband, who thoroughly enjoys the scene. Only a fool would miss the fact that hate and love have much of the same fabric, that as long as she barks and yaps, she is NOT cured...she is still in love! 83 Again the Love-Hate relationship! But this time he runs it by a little more quietly, noting that he can tell what this means: She loves him still when screaming hate at him, he understands because he does exactly the same thing. Anthropologists have noticed that the phenomena of Smiling, Love and Hate are not cultural variables but seem to originate from the basic human sub-structure. 92

One of the lovliest of Catullus' poems, this one, surprisingly, is a virtual Sonnet. The two sections, one for the Roman named boy and the other for his Greek girlfriend, are punctuated by a Gesundheit in the branches above, and lead to a concluding section which brings everything together with delicate, almost conjugal harmony. Even the final couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet is there in the last two verses. To comment would be to gild the lily. ----- Certainly this very poem, widely read since the early Renaissance, was the model for the modern sonnet from the 14 c. on, but the final chapter was written by W E Henley, who in his sonnets "In Hospital" intentionally and emphatically deemphasizes the final couplet. Hospital life does not end situations with a bang, life simply drags on unnoticed. 45

Everyone knows that this is a translation of an extant poem by Sappho, and we also know that the Lady of Lesbos did it far better, since it is one of her few poems which we have. Maybe it is partly a problem of the constraints of translations in general, which should warn us about the unlikeliness of Catullus doing much fine translation from Alexandrian sources. But partly it is the shadow of Sappho in whose shade nobody should ever try to stand. (The last stanza is inconsequential and unconnected.) 51 And now we do come to the end of the road, the point of no return. Catullus asks two friends to take a message for him. These are trustworthy friends, who would go the to the ends of the world with him, here actually laid out in geographical detail. (But who are these friends? Look back to Poem 16... are we sure about this friendship?) Friends, take this message: The tone changes from geniality to become suddenly gross and savage, then exquisitely sad with the plow-crushed flower of his precious love at the edge of the field. There are things which cannot be repaired, and indeed this is the end.11 We know fairly securely that Lesbia "the literary Lady" was one of the several Clodias, probably Clodia Metelli, and that her brother was Publius Clodius Pulc(h)er, as bad an egg as you could find in any apple barrel. So here Catullus reverses the processes, producing a Lesbius (you know who!) now styled as "Pretty Boy", whom Clodia prefers to the poet and his whole family. Incest has been suggested, which might make the three witnesses (noti) shrink from his legalistic, Italian kiss on the cheek at the notary's office..79 But he is caught in the love-trap, he knows who is to blame, who did things wrong. But he can't cut it off, even if she suddenly became somehow fine and wholesome...... or if she went totally bad. Emotional states often have no means of exit.75

Here as before Catullus is thinking of a deeper relationship like those of family life, the steady love for children and spouse. He knows his love is different, hot and inflammatory by nature, urging itself on with combustible fury. But at the same time he knows that he loves her more and more, even as he likes her less and less.72 Note that in this poem the strength of his love protested, is all generated from his side, virtually a statement of faith, "love for you....on my side". Seeds of discontent are already germinating!87 And now we come to a perfect masterpiece of condensed sadness, compacted together with tight, terse wording, which will evoke a jerk on the heartstrings of any sensitive reader. When you say to yourself "Look, stop kidding yourself..." the moment of truth is starting to emerge. Of course, you remember all those happy days, sunlight and picnics and fun with jokes and words......... which have suddenly stopped! ----- Hold on to yourself, button up! ----- You rotten bitch, look what you did. What remains for you now, new lovers......... ? -----No! Hold on to yourself, button up! 8

104You think I am going to curse her, the one dearer than my eyes? I woudn't if I could, its you who blow things up with that stagey dramatic sense of yours. (Tappo it seems represents a common stage personality, stock the trouble- maker.)104 Here as before Catullus is thinking of a deeper relationship like those of family life, the steady love for children and spouse. He knows his love is different, hot and inflammatory by nature, urging itself on with combustible fury. But at the same time he knows that he loves her more and more, even as he likes her less and less. 109 This poem sings out with joy, not only the words and their sounds; but somehow there is a warning in this happy and wholesome ring of the lines, a pathetic overjoy which is too strong to last in the rush and flush of early lovingness. 107

This is a strange scene of a threesome at dinner or a party, as she lambasts Catullus in front of her railing husband, who thoroughly enjoys the scene. Only a fool would miss the fact that hate and love have much of the same fabric, that as long as she barks and yaps, she is NOT cured...she is still in love! 83

Here is the Roman formula for beauty: "Tall, white and pretty", not unlike our formula for the perfect man as "Tall, dark and handsome" a la Clark Gable. But this is nothing important in such formulae, then or now, when compared with real beauty, grace, charm and that ineffable something which makes all the heads in the room turn.... toward Mme. Clodia.86