COUNTLESS KISSES – RAMPART AGAINST ETERNAL NIGHT: POEM FIVE BY CATULLUS AND <em>AFTER OLD CATULLUS </em>BY SIMA PANDUROVIC

Abstract

In his Poem Five, which is one of the four poems directly or indirectly devoted to counting the kisses, Gaius Valerius Catullus contrasts a passionate and intense life of eternal night with the reality of death. Such a life, filled with countless kisses and a continuous giving and receiving, is a medicine against wicked old men and evil envy.

A Serbian poet Sima Pandurovic, who uses Catullus’ four verses as the motto for his poem After Old Catullus, is a rational and consistent pessimist. For him as well, the only option to survive life is to love and retreat into solitude. There should be a getaway from people and society, but a getaway for two.