75

The past few poems we've been working with are all about the same thing: Lesbia's infidelity and the affect it has on Catullus. He still cannot respect her nor can he stop his love for her. He's destroying himself, torturing himself, he can't get out of this. It seems to me he's stuck and confused. He knows what Lesbia did is wrong, obviously, since he's not able to respect her any longer but he can't find the strength to end it with her. I think the theme here is his passion, but now in a different sense than it was in the poems where he was saying give me a thousand kisses, nobody can be loved more than he loves Lesbia, and so on. Now, this new and to me more intense passion deals with him not being able "desistere amare". His love is no longer the mushy, touchy feely, super romantic stuff. It's serious now, she's hurt him and it's like even though the respect and the liking isn't there, it's stronger since he knows it can't be stopped, not even by himself.
I love how he uses "si optima fias" and "omnia si facias" to support what he's saying. They are opposites, being the best and doing all the worst, but they both make sense together for what he's trying to get out. Also they both have 'si' and words dealing with making/becoming. It plays with the idea of balance, Catullus seems to balance his poems out all the time. It's interesting how he puts the infinitives "bene velle" and "desistere amare" almost right on top of eachother, again balancing themselves. The verbs/nouns in a lot of his poems usually are balanced in this way or another, their position opposite eachother like in 51 or with two opposite words as in 72.