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I Hate and I Love

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Dazzling modern lyrical poems from Catullus - by turns smutty, abusive, romantic and deeply moving.

Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

Catullus (c.84-54 BCE).

Catullus's The Poems is available in Penguin Classics.

54 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

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About the author

Catullus

331 books284 followers
Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC) was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus invented the "angry love poem."

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5 stars
322 (17%)
4 stars
510 (27%)
3 stars
665 (36%)
2 stars
252 (13%)
1 star
91 (4%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 282 reviews
Profile Image for Emma.
1,010 reviews1,217 followers
August 14, 2015
Catullus is the kind of man the new laws against revenge porn were made for.

He's obsessive and bitter.

When 'in love', he's sending verbal dick pics...

'I'll come at once
for lolling on the sofa here
with jutting cock
and stuffed with food
I'm ripe for stuffing
you,
my sweet Ipsithia'


How could she refuse such a tempting invitation?

When love is gone, it's all anger and vitrol...

'live with your three hundred lovers,
open your legs to them all (simultaneously)
lovelessly dragging the guts out of each of them
each time you do it,
blind to the love that I had for you
once, and that you, tart, wantonly crushed
as the passing plough-blade slashes the flower
at the field's edge'



Now, I know nothing about the circumstances of his 'betrayal', but Lesbia seems to have made the right decision. I think my modern sensibilities override any appreciation I could have for Catullus.

Still, he'd be popular on tumblr.
Profile Image for Sean Barrs .
1,120 reviews48k followers
March 9, 2016
This is some very love sick poetry. Catullus is completely infatuated with his woman; he longs for her and truly, if somewhat naively, believes he can make her happy. The poems tell the story of how they came to eventually hold each other in the same reverence, but the majority of the collection is him pinning for her. The result is a despairing set of verses by a man who is completely enthralled, and driven, by his love for a woman.

No woman loved, in truth, Lesbia
As you by me;
No love-faith found so true
As mine in you.


description

The poems have varying styles, but all go back to the thing said in the title. Catullus loves her and he also hates the fact that he does; he hates the fact that he has become overcome by emotion. Overall, I did enjoy reading these, however, many of them felt very similar. I noticed that the publishers had taken many of the poems out in the full sequence, and this does not affect the overall understandably of it. I think this speaks volumes for the repetitive nature of these poems.

Indeed, having read this I have no intention of reading the full work. This is not because I didn’t like these poems, but because I feel like this edition provides enough of the full picture that one needs. I really don’t think I could read through anymore poems that, on the basic level, say the same thing again and again. This edition gave me enough Catullus that I’ll ever need.

Penguin Little Black Classic- 69

description

The Little Black Classic Collection by penguin looks like it contains lots of hidden gems. I couldn’t help it; they looked so good that I went and bought them all. I shall post a short review after reading each one. No doubt it will take me several months to get through all of them! Hopefully I will find some classic authors, from across the ages, that I may not have come across had I not bought this collection.
Profile Image for Jibran.
226 reviews771 followers
January 13, 2022
I send Lesbia this valediction,
succinctly discourteous:
live with your three hundred lovers
open your legs to them all (simultaneously)
lovelessly dragging the guts out of each of them
each time you do it,
blind to the love I had for you
once, and that you, tart, wantonly crushed
as the passing plough-blade slashes the flower
at the field's edge.


I enjoyed this LBC so much that I immediately sought Catullus' complete poems, read Peter Green's and Peter Whigham's translations simultaneously, and reviewed them together HERE.

This edition is a representative selection of love epigrams but not a single long poem is included in full. I understand LBC editions can't spare too many pages due to their size but readers should have had a taste of Catullus' epic and tragedy with at least one full sample of each, so as not to miss out on a vital part of the poet's art.

Four stars nonetheless. Despite my reservations with Peter Whigham's translation, love epigrams included in this collection are crisply translated and worth a read.
Profile Image for meeks.
71 reviews
April 16, 2022
horny men should not be allowed to write anything.
Profile Image for Carolyn Marie.
420 reviews9,713 followers
December 29, 2020
2.5*

I really appreciated each poem, but I personally don't love when romantic poetry is blunt and "in your face." I typically prefer them to be delicate and subtle. This isn't really a literary critique on the poems themselves, but more of a personal preference!
Profile Image for Eunice (nerdytalksbookblog).
438 reviews131 followers
July 2, 2015
Oh wow! I enjoyed this one a lot! Oh Lesbia aren't you one hell of a woman, that this guy was so infatuated with you. And oh boy, Catullus holds nothing back! Loved this one! And the contemporary/modern feel to it made me gave it an extra star!
Profile Image for Marjolein (UrlPhantomhive).
2,497 reviews57 followers
September 13, 2020
We didn't read this in school, so it was the first of Catullus that I read. It's another poetry collection. The title sums up quite well the problems that Catullus faces with the woman he loves, since it is clear that love and hate are not so different after all.

While the poems feel rather modern, I didn't like them and totally get why we would have skipped this in school.

~Little Black Classics #69~

Find this and other reviews on my blog https://www.urlphantomhive.com
Profile Image for Athina Kyriakopoulos.
39 reviews
Read
March 4, 2024
Od'et amo.
Quār'id faciam fortasse requīris.
Nesciŏ, sed fierī senti' et excrucior.

"Ik haat en ik heb lief. Waarom ik dit doe vraag je je misschien af. Ik weet het niet, maar ik voel het gebeuren en ik ga eraan kapot."

dit zal altijd het allermooiste gedicht ooit zijn <333
Profile Image for Meagan✨.
384 reviews1,188 followers
November 17, 2025
Catullus really said ”i love you, I hate you, I’m obsessed, I’m devastated, I’m horny, I’m unwell” in like… 50 pages.

Catullus was a bitter, horny, resentful, unhinged man, and somehow that made the poetry both frustrating and iconic.

These poems are basically the ancient Roman version of
“I love you but I also hope you trip,” followed by “please ruin my life again.”

It’s chaotic, obsessive, dramatic

What’s wild is how well the emotions hold up- love as longing, love as ruin, love as spite. The whiplash between worship and hatred is so intense it’s almost funny, but the writing itself is sharp, lyrical, and surprisingly modern-feeling.

So yes… messy.
Yes… irrational.
Yes… I enjoyed it anyway.
So you know what a solid 3 stars for poetry that proves humans have always been dramatic, down bad, and chronically unserious about love.
Profile Image for Abubakar Mehdi.
159 reviews244 followers
August 21, 2015
His poetry is surprisingly modern and very charming.
Reading his short, witty, erotic and sometimes sarcastic poems was such a shocking experience for me as I never expected such a modern lyrical touch from a Greek poets verse.
One of my favorites …

Lets us live, let us love
And all the words of moral
May they be worth less than nothing to us
Suns may set, and suns may rise again
But when our brief light has set
Night is one long ever lasting sleep

Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred more
Another thousand and another hundred
And when we’ve counted up the many thousands
Lets us shake the abacus, so no one knows
And be jealous, when they see
Of the kisses we have shared
Profile Image for Darwin8u.
1,843 reviews9,055 followers
December 30, 2020
"I hate and I love. And if you ask me how,
I do not know: I only feel it, and I'm torn in two."

- Catullus, "85"

description

Vol N° 69 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. This volume contains about 44 of Catullus's poems assembled from Penguin's book Catullus, The Poems. It does not contain the first Catullus poem I was ever introduced to, Catullus' 16, which starts:

Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō -- I will sodomize you and face-f#ck you

I know this because my wife was grading a short story, a group project, from a group of 10th grade boys who used this poem in their story. It was an awkward introduction to one VERY specific form of Catullus poem. Generally, Catullus writes polymetra and epigrams about:
1. His friends
2. Erotic poems (some homosexual, but mostly about women)
3. Invectives (Catullus 16 fits into this type)
4. Condolences

This selection of his poems contains a bit of each. A lot of his poems are directed at Lesbia, probably Clodia Metelli, who acted as a muse for many of his most passionate poems. Anyway, 16 is not included, but certainly read it if you want to be a bit shocked. The poems included in this selection are rather tame in comparison and actually many are quite lovely. One of my favorite lines, from 70, ends with:

"but what woman tells her lover in desire
should be written out on air & running water."


And from 76:

"For what by man can well in act or word
be done to others has by me been done
sunk in the credit of an unregarded heart."
Profile Image for [ J o ].
1,823 reviews553 followers
February 4, 2017
Let's try this one again, GoodReads mobile app, shall we?

Roman poetry, not Greek as I hastily said in my update (though, one stole much from the other so...) with an evocative erotic flavour about a man in love with one woman, but often in hate with her, too. The structure of each poem was a breath of fresh air as they were often short-lined which added a quick pace to it, to me provoking the kind of short-lived pleasure that he speaks of. Like any poetry, short and sweet but often pointless.


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Profile Image for Kyo.
520 reviews8 followers
December 13, 2015
Let me start off by saying that I love Catullus.
I love his poems, because even though they're 2000 years old, they still feel so real and true.
It's about love, but mostly about how painful love can be. How it can twist into something incredibly ugly and make something ugly of yourself as well.

The Latin poems would get a 5/5 stars for me.

But I didn't really like the order the poems were placed in and the translations weren't that great either.

So I encourage everyone to read Catullus, but maybe find another translation (or read it in Latin if that's your thing of course :D!)
Profile Image for leynes.
1,328 reviews3,722 followers
October 3, 2017
Woops. Here we go again. Another 1-star-poetry-review. Yep. I'm pulling no punches today. I love reading poetry, even poetry collections I end up rating only 1 to 2 stars. I love seeing how people through the centuries and countries tried to portray emotions through verses, some of them successfully and others failing miserably.
Parasites of our generation. Poets I blush for.
Catullus' verses definitely fell flat for me. I didn't connect to what he was saying, heck, most of the time I didn't even know what his mission was – these poems were all over the place, and I also had major problems with his objectification of women and how possessive he felt of his lover, like hell nah, buddy.

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote in the neoteric style of poetry, which is about personal life rather than classical heroes. This aspect of his work really fascinated me because oftentimes his poems read more like diary entries because he was addressing people from his circle of acquaintances directly, and talked about the things he did during the day.

Catullus's poems have been preserved in an anthology of 116 carmina (the actual number of poems may slightly vary in various editions), which can be divided into three parts according to their form: sixty short poems in varying meters, called polymetra, eight longer poems, and forty-eight epigrams.

The polymetra can be divided into poems about his friends and erotic poems (ugh! don't get me started on those), most of which are him lusting after the woman Lesbia, but two poems are actually of homoerotic nature.

My lovely friend and reading buddy in crime, Miriam, actually made me aware that Catullus was an admirer of Sappho (the one and only queen of Greek poetry, like for real, stop reading this review and read something by her!). And it could actually be the case that the woman he lusts after, Lesbia, is a tribute to the Greek female poet, who was actually from the island of Lesbos. It's definitely interesting to keep that in mind, but in my humble opinion, Catullus's weak ass has zero chances with the one and only queen, so he shouldn't even be trying. ;)

So, yeah, Catullus has this unhealthy obsession with Lesbia which turns him into a stalker and pervert. He just can't let Lesbia go, and is slandering all her other lovers, calling her names etc. It's not cute, and I am not here for it. The dude seriously needs to calm his tits.

His poems describe the lifestyle of Catullus and his friends, who, despite Catullus's temporary political post in Bithynia, lived their lives withdrawn from politics. They were interested mainly in poetry and love. Above all other qualities, Catullus seems to have valued venustas, or charm, in his acquaintances, a theme which he explores in a number of his poems.

On top of my problems with the content of his poetry, I also wasn't a fan of Catullus's style. I'll give him that, he wrote in many different meters including hendecasyllabic verse and elegiac couplets, but that's about it. Most poems lacked quotable moments and left me quite confused by their jumbled structure, especially all the insertions killed me; it felt like the men never finished one train of thought.

I can see that part of the problem might be the horrible translation, you just have to look at the titular poem for which the translator Peter Whigham chose the verb 'torn in two' instead of 'tortured', but nonetheless, I won't give Catullus another shot. Besh bye!
Profile Image for Hanaa.
210 reviews213 followers
February 28, 2016
I enjoyed this one but now I just want to find his complete works so I can read what other hilarious and filthy things he wrote. The guy had a huge inferiority complex.
Profile Image for su ୨୧.
463 reviews110 followers
August 11, 2024
“Angst, ennui & angst
consume my days & weeks,
and you have not written
or done anything to soothe my illness.
I am piqued.
               So much for our friendship.
Ah! Cornificius, a word from you would cure everything,
though more full of tears
               than a line from Simonides.”
Profile Image for Aylin.
78 reviews14 followers
February 10, 2019
Catullus is one big ass salty fuckboi my God. He does have good pieces then and there but he is mostly hating on the woman he "loves", whose name ironically is Lesbia.
Profile Image for Bente Benedict.
57 reviews16 followers
December 14, 2021
“I hate and I love. And if you ask me how,
I do not know. I only feel it; and I’m torn in two.”

will forever be iconic
Profile Image for Peter.
777 reviews137 followers
November 2, 2016
This this little book of poorly translated poetry left me numb, it's use of modern terms was terrible.

Oh boy can this guy whine. Now for a new poem for the classic I hate and I Hate Even More:

Oh! She as left me and I whine,

She the lovely Lesbia is screwing; screwing,

Every man but I has used like a pin-cushion,

You whore, you offer it to anyone who wants,

While I masturbate screeching like a chimp,

Oh wo! Oh wo! Why not join me in a wo,

She as done it with others but not with me,

Lets have a whine, maybe a bottle or two,

We shall bang the whores of Babylon,

Until I am sore thru.
Profile Image for Michael Arnold.
Author 2 books25 followers
March 20, 2018
If you read this casually, having just picked up one of these little books, I think you would get the entirely wrong opinion of Catullus, not just in terms of subject but also of style too. These are translated with apparently little care, and into free verse - which it's debatable can even reflect the feeling of reading Catullus without sympathy. The modern turns of phrases made some of the poems very immediate, and reading this has made me go back to some of the original texts and the Guy Lee translation that while boring is entirely functional and acceptable to use. Much better than this translation, this translation is terrible.
Profile Image for eva ⚘.
387 reviews2 followers
January 24, 2022
(2.5 - 3 ⭐ bc i genuinely liked only 3-4 of them lmao)

let me tell u that catullus acted like a heartbroken yet salty teenager! 11!1 his poems were full of angst, superiority complex (!) and unrequited love. some of them were so funny, they got me wheezing with how “modern” they sounded. nevertheless, i feel this specific translation did not do him much justice :/ many of them fell flat...
Profile Image for Myfanwy Bosley.
14 reviews
June 24, 2024
ew. ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew. disgusting. i need a shower: i need SO MANY showers.

he talks like a manosphere podcast, incel subreddit frequenter. god, i hope lesbia left him again.

sucks ur brother died tho i guess.
Profile Image for Tanaya.
6 reviews
March 16, 2023
He seemed like one horny mf, but yolo ig
Displaying 1 - 30 of 282 reviews

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