Catullus 85 is a poem by the Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 poet Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

 for his mistress Lesbia

Lesbia

Lesbia was the literary pseudonym of the great love of Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus .She was a poet in her own right, included with Catullus in a list of famous poets whose lovers "often" helped them write their verses....

. Its declaration of conflicting feelings "I hate and I love" (in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, Odi et amo) is renowned for its force and brevity.

The meter of the poem is the elegiac couplet

Elegiac couplet

The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later...

.

Text

Line	Latin	English (literal translation)	English (verse)
1	odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?	I hate and I love. How can I do this, perhaps you ask?	I love her, though I hate her so. You say: "how can this be"?
2	nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.	I do not know, but I feel it happening, and I am tortured.	I know not, even though I feel the searing agony!

Chiastic structure

The contrast in feelings that love provokes is one of the most common subjects of today's world literature. The motif, however, is not original. Anacreon

Anacreon

Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.- Life :...

 had already said:

I love and yet I do not love,
I am crazy and I am not crazy.

(fr. 46 Gentili)

But with Catullus there seems to be something more; it is of course the experience of trouble, like with Anacreon. But the drama is exacerbated by the sad realization that this trouble arises independently of the human will. It is beyond logic and only in the realm of feeling. The poet has perhaps no choice but to take note of the situation and suffer terribly (the verb excrucior literally means "to be put on the cross").

Settings

The poem Odi et Amo was set to music by Carl Orff

Carl Orff

Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...

 as part of his Catulli Carmina

Catulli Carmina

Catulli Carmina is a cantata by Carl Orff dating from 1940-1943. The work sets the texts of Catullus to music. Orff himself provided the text, in Latin, of the opening. Catulli Carmina is part of Trionfi, the musical triptych that also includes the Carmina Burana and Trionfo di Afrodite...

 (1943). It was also set by Jóhann Jóhannsson

Jóhann Jóhannsson

Jóhann Jóhannsson is an Icelandic musician, composer and producer. He is a co-founder of Kitchen Motors in Reykjavík, the art organization/think tank/record label which specializes in initiating collaborations, promoting concerts and exhibitions, performances, chamber operas, producing films,...

 on his first album Englabörn (2002). The Dutch band Omnia

Omnia (band)

Omnia is a self-described "neoceltic pagan folk" band based in The Netherlands and whose members over the years have had Irish, Dutch, Cornish, Belgian and Persian backgrounds...

has also set the poem to music (Sine Missione - 2000 & 2002, World of Omnia - 2009).