Catullus 5
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.
- Metric scheme: X X | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪ | — X
Text
Poetic effects
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- Line 5–6
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 |
Translations and songs
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:[2][3]
The Sunne may set and rise
But we contrariwise
Sleepe after our short light
One everlasting night.
A 16th-century French translation by Jean-Antoine de Baïf was used by Reynaldo Hahn in the song "Vivons, mignarde, vivons".[4] Also set in French, a translation by Georges Lafaye was composed by Darius Milhaud as song "Ma chérie, aimons‑nous".[5]
Henry Purcell used an anonymous translation in his song "Let us, kind Lesbia, give away" (1684).[6]
Dominick Argento used his English translation in his song "Let us live, my Clodia, and let us love".[7]
References
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Bibliography
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