Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexBell
I'm working on Smoke by Ivan Turgenev for the MobileRead library, and have come across some Latin by Catullus:
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasce requiris. Nescio: sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.
Can anyone translate it please?
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This is one of the most famous of all Latin love poems, and was (as you say) written by Catullus, and addressed to his mistress, Lesbia:
I hate and I love.
Why do I do this, perhaps you ask.
I don't know; but I feel it happening, and I am tortured.
("Excrucior" literally means "I am crucified" - ie nailed to a cross - but "tortured" probably gives a better sense of the meaning as used figuratively here.)