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Article ARKINS - The Meaning of 'Odi Et Amo' in Catullus 85 - BICS 54 (2011)

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222 views2 pages

Article ARKINS - The Meaning of 'Odi Et Amo' in Catullus 85 - BICS 54 (2011)

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THE MEANING OF ‘ODI ET AMO’ IN CATULLUS 85

BRIAN ARKINS
odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. 1

I loathe her, I lust for her. How so, perhaps you ask?
I do not know, but feel it happen and am racked.

The contention of this note is that the verbs odi and amo in the justly celebrated poem
Catullus 85 do not mean ‘I hate and I love’, but do mean ‘I loathe her, I lust for her’. The
translation ‘I hate and I love’ (or slight variants) has become mandatory, 2 and is used by,
among others, Bardon, Cornish, Green, Hartnett, Lee Michie, Pound, Whigham, Weinreich.3
To see why this is wrong, it is first necessary to analyze the semantic range of the Latin verbs
odi and amo.
For odi, Forcellini gives the meanings to ‘to hate, detest, abhor’; Lewis and Short give
the meanings ‘To hate’ and ‘to dislike’; the Oxford Latin Dictionary gives the meanings ‘To
have an aversion to, hate or dislike’. Clearly, then, odi can indicate detestation or dislike, for
which loathing is another term. For amo, Forcellini notes ‘Saepissime significat inhonesto
amore captum esse, To become enamoured’; the Oxford Latin Dictionary gives these
meanings for amo (3) ‘To indulge in venery, associate with prostitutes, fornicate’ and for amo
(4) ‘To make love to, hug, caress’. Clearly, then, amo can indicate physical passion or lust.
But do the verbs odi and amo have these connotations in Catullus 85? As so often in
Catullus, the answer lies in neighbouring poems, here 72 and 75. In Poem 72, Catullus
experiences a conflict between his intellectual realization that Lesbia is (as he sees it)

1
Text as in R. A. B. Mynors, C. Valerii Catulli Carmina (Oxford 1960).
2
For translations of Catullus 85 see N. Rudd, Lines of enquiry (Cambridge 1976) 183-89. For
translations of Catullus in general see E. Vandiver in A companion to Catullus, ed. M. B. Skinner
(Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2007) 523-41.
3
H. Bardon, Catulli Carmina (Brussels 1970) 200; F. W. Cornish, The poems of Gaius Valerius
Catullus (London/Cambridge, Mass. 1950) 163; P. Green, The poems of Catullus (Berkeley 2005);
Michael Hartnett, Translations, ed. P. Fallon (Oldcastle 2003) 43; G. Lee, The poems of Catullus
(Oxford/New York) 131; J. Michie, The poems of Catullus (London 1969) 199; Ezra Pound,
Translations (London 1984) 408; P. Whigham, The poems of Catullus (Harmondsworth 1971) 197;
O. Weinreich, Catull – Saemtliche Gedichte (Zuerich/Stuttgart 1960) 271.

BICS-54-1 – 2011
29

© 2011 Institute of Classical Studies University of London


30 BICS-54-1 – 2011

unfaithful to him, and his emotional inability to act on that knowledge;4 as Aristotle says
‘intellect alone moves nothing’.5 So Catullus is forced into a paradoxical situation (lines 5-8):

nunc te cognovi: quare etsi impensius uror,


multo mi tamen es vilior et levior.
qui potis est, inquis? quod amantem inuiria talis
cogit amare magis, sed bene velle minus.

Here the verb uror refers to Catullus’ physical passion for Lesbia, while the adjectives vilior
and levior show he no longer has any regard for her. The following couplet explains how all
this can be, what the necessary result of Lesbia’s hurtful infidelity is. Line 8 cannot be
translated as ‘to love more, but wish less well’, which is wholly incoherent: how can more
love lead to less friendship? The matter is resolved by translating the verb amare by ‘to
desire, to lust for her’. This allows for the psychology of sexual jealousy that can,
paradoxically, result both in greater physical desire and in positive dislike. That dislike
suggests the translation for the verb odi of ‘I loathe her’.
In Poem 75, Catullus maintains that the position outlined in Poem 72 would obtain, no
matter what. Even if Lesbia were the last woman in the world (ironic comment), he could not
wish her well (bene velle). Equally well, if she committed every possible crime, he could not
cease to desire her, to lust for her (desistere amare).
The translation ‘I hate and I love’ has had a very long innings; it is past time it was
abandoned.

National University of Ireland, Galway

4
B. Arkins, Sexuality in Catullus (Hildesheim 1982) 89-96.
5
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1139a35.

© 2011 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

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