Catullus 75 (#poem)

My beat up undergraduate text

Catullus 75

Huc est mens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpa

  Atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo

Ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias,

  Nec desistere amare, omnia si facias.

 

-Catullus

 

Yikes, Latin! Fortunately my translation of the poem appeared in a web-based magazine here just last week. 

Catullus 75

Lesbia, I've been brought so low by your wayward ways--

  I'm also by my own nice-guy-ness cursed--

that I cannot like you when you try to be your best,

  or stop loving you, when you do your worst.

 

-Catullus (tr. Reese Warner--hey, that's me!)

 

The original is written in elegiacs--alternating lines of dactylic hexameter and dactylic pentameter. I've been translating these into a syllable-counting measure with rhymes (a style Marianne Moore often used, though not for elegiacs). 

A couple of other translations I happened to have lying around:

 

Catullus 75

 

My mind has been brought so low by your conduct, Lesbia,

  and so undone itself through its own goodwill

that now if you were perfect it couldn't like you,

  nor cease to love you now, whatever you did.

 

-Catullus (tr. Peter Green)

 

Catullus 75

 

Lesbia, you are the author of my destruction.

My heart is weary and defeated at the thought of life.

I will wish terrible things for you if you become great,

But I will always love you just the same.

 

-Catullus (tr. Ewan Whyte)

 

 

Peter Green was a British professor of Classics who mostly taught in the U.S. He died last year at the good age of 99. (!) His complete translation of Catullus came out in 2005. Ewan Whyte is a Toronto-based poet and essayist. His volume of Catullus translations came out in 2004.