school things: catullus 76

I reread Catullus 76 today. It’s so sad. I remembered doing it in class in junior year, and it was so strange, because somehow the emotions come through despite the two thousand years or so between Catullus and me.

Then I translated it, because I love Catullus.

If there is any pleasure to a man in recalling prior

good deeds, when he thinks himself pious,

never to have violated the sacred faith, nor to have abused

the will of the gods for the deception of men,

then many things lie stored up for you in time to come, Catullus,

joys from this unpleasant love affair of yours.

For whatever it was possible for men to say well,

or do well–they were said and done by you,

all perished, though, entrusted to an ungrateful mind.

Wherefore do you now crucify yourself yet more?

Why do you not firm up your mind and bring yourself back from there,

and cease to be wretched, though the gods be unwilling?

It is difficult suddenly to put aside a long love affair;

that task is difficult, that which you ought to do any way you please.

This is your one deliverance, your complete victory;

you will do it, whether it be possible or not.

O gods, if you be merciful, or if you have ever brought

a final aid to anyone at the moment of death,

glance at me with kindness, and if I lived my life purely,

snatch this plague and pestilence from me,

which creeping like a torpor in the lowest part of my limbs

expels all pleasure from my breast.

I do not now seek that she should love me,

or, because that be impossible, that she should desire chastity:

I ask for myself to be well and for this foul sorrow to be set down from me.

O gods, grant me this for my devotion.