Catullus 85

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Catullus 85 is one of the poems that the Roman poet Catullus wrote about his feelings for his mistress. This couplet is one of Catullus's more famous pieces. Its brevity and terseness underscore the forcefulness of Catullus's intimate declaration. It is one of a series of poems in which Catullus attempts to reconcile his conflicting feelings for his mistress, Lesbia.

Line	Latin text	English translation
1	Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?	I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask?
2	Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.	I do not know, but I feel it happening, and I am tormented.

[edit] Meter

The meter for this poem is elegiac couplet.

[edit] Chiastic Nature

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the poem is its neat, compact, chiastic form. Catullus begins with the opposites, "Odi et amo" (I hate and I love) and then at the end of the poem he couples "odi" with "excrucior" (I am tortured [by hate]) and "amo" with "sentio" (I feel [love]). In the middle of the first line, he uses the word, "faciam," (I do) which he couples in the second line with "fieri" (it happens.) In Latin these are both the same word. Fieri, the passive infinitive of facio, literally meant "to be done," but came to mean, "to happen." Catullus inserts a final couplet directly in the middle of the poem: "Requiris. Nescio." (You ask. I do not know.) To tie the entire poem even tighter, Catullus chooses to end the poem with the word, "excrucior." Literally this word means I am tortured, but the word is formed from the latin word crux, crucis, f., the word for cross. It is as if Catullus spends two lines building a cross and then in the last word hangs himself on it.