Latin Poetry Podcast

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Catullus 85

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.

Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

 

C.H. Sisson (1967):

I hate and I love. You may well ask, why I do so.
I do not know, but I feel it and suffer.

 

Horace Gregory (1956):

I HATE and love.
And if you ask me why,
I have no answer, but I discern,
can feel, my senses rooted in eternal torture.

 

Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish (1979):

I hate and I love. Why do that? Good question.
No answer, save ‘I do’. Nailed, through either hand.