Catullus 5 is a passionate ode to Lesbia and one of the most famous poems by Catullus. The poem encourages lovers to scorn the snide comments of others, and to live only for each other, since life is brief and death brings a night of perpetual sleep. This poem has been translated and imitated many times.
This poem is written in the Phalaecian hendecasyllabic meter (Latin: hendecasyllabus phalaecius) [1] which has verses of 11 syllables, a common form in Catullus' poetry.
1 Vivāmus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
2 rumoresque senum severiorum
3 omnes unius aestimemus assis!
4 soles occidere et redire possunt;
5 nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
6 nox est perpetua una dormienda.
7 da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
8 dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
9 deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum;
10 dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
11 conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
12 aut ne quis malus invidere possit,
13 cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.
Let us live, my Lesbia, and love,
and the rumors of rather stern old men
let us value all at just one penny!
Suns may set and rise again;
for us, when once the brief light has set,
an eternal night must be slept.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand, then a hundred;
then, when we have performed many thousands,
we shall shake them into confusion, [2] in order that we might not know,
and in order not to let any evil person envy us,
when he knows that there are so many of our kisses.
 |
The position of lux (light) and nox (night) right next to each other serve to emphasise his two comparisons. Symbolically, the "perpetual night" represents death and the "brief light" represents life. Furthermore, there is also a second chiasmus in these lines:
| brevis | lux | nox | perpetua |
| A | B | B | A |
In 1601, the English composer, poet and physician Thomas Campion wrote this rhyming free translation of the first half (to which he added two verses of his own, and music, to create a lute song):
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love;
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive,
But soon as once is set our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
Ben Jonson drew on the poem in poems 5, "Song. To Celia," and 6, "Song. To the Same" in his collection The Forrest.
Soon thereafter, Sir Walter Raleigh included the following verse, apparently based on Campion's translation, in his The Historie of the World, which he wrote while imprisoned in the Tower of London [3] [4]
The Sunne may set and rise
But we contrariwise
Sleepe after our short light
One everlasting night.
In 16th century French translation by Jean-Antoine de Baïf was used by Reynaldo Hahn in song "Vivons, mignarde, vivons". [5] Also set in French, a translation by Georges Lafaye was composed by Darius Milhaud as song "Ma chérie, aimons‑nous". [6]
Henry Purcell used anonymous translation in his song "Let us, kind Lesbia, give away" (1684). [7]
Dominick Argento used his English translation in his song "Let us live, my Clodia, and let us love". [8]
Gaius Valerius Catullus, often referred to simply as Catullus, was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His surviving works are still read widely and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.
Catulli Carmina is a cantata by Carl Orff dating from 1940–1943. He described it as ludi scaenici. The work mostly sets poems of the Latin poet Catullus to music, with some text by the composer. Catulli Carmina is part of Trionfi, the musical trilogy that also includes the Carmina Burana and Trionfo di Afrodite. It is scored for a full mixed choir, soprano and tenor soloists, and an entirely percussive orchestra – possibly inspired by Stravinsky's Les noces – consisting of four pianos, timpani, bass drum, 3 tambourines, triangle, castanets, maracas, suspended and crash cymbals, antique cymbal, tam-tam, lithophone, metallophone, 2 glockenspiels, wood block, xylophone, and tenor xylophone.
Clodia, nicknamed Quadrantaria, Nola, Medea Palatina by Cicero, and occasionally referred to in scholarship as Clodia Metelli, was one of three known daughters of the ancient Roman patrician Appius Claudius Pulcher.
Pervigilium Veneris is a Latin poem of uncertain date, variously assigned to the 2nd, 4th or 5th centuries.
Lesbia was the literary pseudonym used by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus to refer to his lover. Lesbia is traditionally identified with Clodia, the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer and sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher; her conduct and motives are maligned in Cicero's extant speech Pro Caelio, delivered in 56 BC.
Catullus 64 is an epyllion or "little epic" poem written by Latin poet Catullus. Catullus' longest poem, it retains his famed linguistic witticisms while employing an appropriately epic tone.
Catullus 1 is traditionally arranged first among the poems of the Roman poet Catullus, though it was not necessarily the first poem that he wrote. It is dedicated to Cornelius Nepos, a historian and minor poet, though some consider Catullus's praise of Cornelius's history of the Italians to have been sarcastic.
Catullus 3 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus that laments the death of a pet sparrow (passer) for which an unnamed girl (puella), possibly Catullus' lover Lesbia, had an affection. Written in hendecasyllabic meter, it is considered to be one of the most famous of Latin poems.
Catullus 2 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BCE) that describes the affectionate relationship between an unnamed puella ('girl', possibly Catullus' lover, Lesbia), and her pet sparrow. As scholar and poet John Swinnerton Phillimore has noted, "The charm of this poem, blurred as it is by a corrupt manuscript tradition, has made it one of the most famous in Catullus' book." The meter of this poem is hendecasyllabic, a common form in Catullus' poetry.
Catullus 101 is an elegiac poem written by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus. It is addressed to Catullus' dead brother or, strictly speaking, to the "mute ashes" which are the only remaining evidence of his brother's body.
Catullus 7 is a poem by Catullus addressed to his mistress Lesbia. Similar to Catullus 5, this poem revels in counting kisses, with a touch of stellar voyeurism.
Catullus 8 is a Latin poem of nineteen lines in choliambic metre by the Roman poet Catullus, known by its incipit, Miser Catulle.
Catullus 12 is a poem by the Roman poet Catullus. In it, he chides Asinius Marrucinus for stealing one of his napkins, calling it uncouth and noting the disapproval of his brother, Pollio. Note the reversal of the praenomen and nomen in the first line. While "Asini Marrucine" could be translated simply as "Asinius Marrucinus", the inverted word order introduces the alternative meaning "Marrucinus [son] of a jackass". Napkins in Ancient Rome were handmade and therefore far more valuable than they are today; also, Catullus has a sentimental attachment to the napkins, as they were a gift from two close friends, Fabullus and Veranius. In comparison to Catullus's other invective poetry, this is relatively light: the main point of the poem could be to praise Pollio rather than to chide Marrucinus.
Latin obscenity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. Words deemed obscene were described as obsc(a)ena, or improba. Documented obscenities occurred rarely in classical Latin literature, limited to certain types of writing such as epigrams, but they are commonly used in the graffiti written on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Among the documents of interest in this area is a letter written by Cicero in 45 BC to a friend called Paetus, in which he alludes to a number of obscene words without actually naming them.
The poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus was written towards the end of the Roman Republic. It describes the lifestyle of the poet and his friends, as well as, most famously, his love for the woman he calls Lesbia.
Catullus 16 or Carmen 16 is a poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus. The poem, written in a hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) meter, was considered to be so sexually explicit following its rediscovery in the following centuries that a full English translation was not published until the 20th century. The first line, Pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō, sometimes used as a title, has been called "one of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin—or in any other language".
Poem 68 is a complex elegy written by Catullus who lived in the 1st century BCE during the time of the Roman Republic. This poem addresses common themes of Catullus' poetry such as friendship, poetic activity, love and betrayal, and grief for his brother. The poem is addressed to his friend, Manius or Allius, and engages with scenes from the myth of Troy.
The LiederNet Archive is a donation-supported web archive of art song and choral texts founded in 1995 by Emily Ezust, an American/Canadian computer programmer and amateur violinist. The website was hosted by the REC Music Foundation from 1996 to 2015.
Lesbia is a one-act play written by Richard Davey. The story is a comedy about the relationship between the Roman poet Catullus and his lover Lesbia. The actor-manager Richard Mansfield staged the play at the Lyceum Theatre in London, where it debuted on 17 September 1888 with Beatrice Cameron as Lesbia. Mansfield later took the play to the United States as part of the repertory of his company.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
