Thursday, September 6, 2007

Catullus' Obsession and Ours

Today's world is completely obsessed with love, sex, and any other "naughty" behaviors. It permeates our culture in music, films, literature, and television, among other things. We seem to have been caught in our own desires for each other that we cannot escape, or want to. This is distinctly similar to Catullus' world; he wrote about and lived a life full of love and sex, and didn't care what others thought of him. Men and women came and went in his life with a regularity that would not seem dissimilar to today's celebrity. They don't seem to mind sleeping with each other, or really with anyone which is continually shown to us via TV. Catullus revealed his life through poetry, the most convenient form of expression available to him ,just as we see the lives of celebrities on TV. Catullus was ahead of his time when he wrote about his continual affairs and sexual escapades, much the same as we do today with the lives of celebrities except through television. Though Catullus' behavior was looked down on in his time, solely because he did not praise the ancient and glorified past of Rome, he saw ahead to the modern day when love and sex were to be common topics which are shown to us everyday.