For the first Catullus poem, about how the man with the girl he loves is like a God because he gets to be be with her, it makes love seem like a disease almost. Your tongue being broken, your skin has thin flames under it, you hear bells ringing, you see nothing, and all those other symptoms of being hit with cupid's arrow. At the end he even mentions "At some times death isn't far from me." I haven't experienced any of these symptoms for love, but by the way it sounds, love can be a pretty painful and odd experience.
Again in the second poem, the connection between love and pain is made, when Catullus wishes for the sparrow to be with him and take his mind off the "gloomy cares of my heart." The woman with the sparrow provokes it to bite her hard, and being bitten by a bird isn't as painless as it might seem to some.
So far these poems also make it so Catullus longs for love and has a particular person he wants to be with, but isn't with. Love is most likely a huge topic for him, as well as the problems that come with the longing for it.
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Good job, Dominika. I like your observation that Catullus almost makes love seem like a disease. I wonder why he pursues something that he knows is going to hurt? And does his desire to pursue it get him more or less sympathy from the reader?
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