Catullus (ca. 84 B.C.-ca. 54 B.C.)
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
Anachreon (570 B.C-488 B.C.)
I love and yet I do not love,
I am crazy and I am not crazy.
Ezra Pound, date not found (1885-1972)
I hate and love. Why? You may ask but
It beats me. I feel it done to me, and ache.
Peter Whigham, 1966 (1925-1987)
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.
C.H. Sisson, 1966 (1914-2003)
I hate and I love. You may well ask, why I do so.
I do not know, but I feel it and suffer.
Myers and Ormsby, 1970 (dates not found)
I hate and love. You ask, "How can this be?"
God knows! What wretchedness! What loathsome misery!
Frank Bidart, 1983 (1939- )
I hate and love. Ignorant fish, who even
wants the fly while writhing.
Anne Carson, 1992 (1950- )
Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate.
Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate love hate.
Love love love love love love love love love.
Love hate love love love love love love love.
Why why why why why why why why why why.
Why why why why why I why why why why why.
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I why I I I I I I I I I
Frank Bidart, 1997 (1939- )
I hate and—love. The sleepless body hammering a nail nails
itself, hanging crucified.
Fred Speers, 2009 (a coworker; he's alive)
I hate—love. Barely get it myself. Just 'cause this heart I
Feel g l i m m e r s inside, I break it open—and, broken, feel.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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4 comments:
Wait, which is the original? Anacreon lived half a millenium before Catullus.
The 1983 Bidart version is my favorite. You have to love an mal-punctuated question and the strong, almost disgusted pathos it creates.
Catullus is famous for the poem, but I included the Anacreon, which is not unknown in its own right, to show that poets were trying to drive at the same experience for, as you point out, several hundred years.
What the Anacreon lacks, you might say, is the emotional tension and complexity of the Catullus. Which, I will say, is why I think the Bidart renderings are so effective. His work as a whole deals with self-disgust in alarming ways.
It was a good summer for Franks.
If only emotional tension and complexity were absolute values. For example, the 1997 Bidart seems very fraught, but I don't feel it will survive well at all.
"love to hate, I love to hate
assassinate, decapitate"
-Ben Weasel, Screeching Weasel
Suck onnit.
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