DOCSLIB.ORG

THE SECOND BOOK of LETTERS Hans-Christian Günther 1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
THE SECOND BOOK of LETTERS Hans-Christian Günther 1 THE SECOND BOOK OF LETTERS Hans-Christian Günther Abstract: The second book of Epistles speaks of poetological themes in two very long compositions, as does the Ars Poetica. The analysis of both letters (to Florus and Augustus) pays strict attention to the coherence of the train of thought and its relevance to the alleged epistolary situation and tries to show how Horace de nes the role of poetry, of his poetry, in particular, in contemporary society. Keywords: poetry and politics, poetological poetry 1. The Second Book of Letters and Horace’s ‘Sptwerk’ As we know more about the real person of Horace than about any other great poet of classical antiquity we also know much more about his devel- opment as an artist, his artistic self-consciousness and self-awareness. No other poet of antiquity comments so much on his own work, no other poet bequeathed to us such a large corpus of self-interpretation. It seems trivial to insist on these facts again, yet, I feel I must do so, because well-known as it is, this aspect of Horace’s work is far from being appreciated as poignantly as it should. On the contrary, it seems to me that this exceptional trait of Horace’s poetry is not seen in proper perspective, because everything today is interpreted as metapoetry; thus, the reservoir that Horace’s exceptionally explicit, detailed, and penetrating self-interpretation holds for understand- ing his poetry is far from being exploited. The awareness of his own self as a poet that Horace displays in his poetry is indivisible from the supreme self-awareness, evident in the autobiographical dimension of his work as sketched above in the introductory chapter on Horace’s biography.1 This Horatian self-awareness is of crucial importance for the understanding of Horace’s late work; in fact, Horace is the rst poet of European literature whose ‘Spätwerk’ we can isolate on the evidence of what the poet says him- self about his poetic iter.2 1 Above, pp. 2f. 2 For the unity, character, and organic growth of Horace’s ‘Spätwerk,’ see Becker’s (1963) monograph. 468 hans-christian gnther Horace is, as far as we know, the only poet of classical antiquity who explicitly marks a caesura in his development as an artist within his work, and, in view of what has just been said, certainly not by chance. In the introductory letter of the rst book of Epistles, Horace explains why he refuses to go on with writing poetry as he did before.3 In fact, he goes so far as to identify the most eminent type of poetry he composed hitherto, i.e., lyric poetry, with poetry stricto sensu, and announces that from now on he will no longer write poetry stricto sensu at all, but will embark instead on a new kind of semi-poetry, a poetry harking back to his poetic beginnings, a kind of very personal, ‘prosaic’ poetry, i.e., the Satires. By transforming them, with his rst book of Letters, into a new poetic genre, the literary verse epistle,4 Horace could go right back to his Lucilian model.5 The reason Horace gives for being tired of composing lyric poetry and shifting his writing interests is that he feels too old to engage in light poetry on women and wine, which he identi ed as the prevalent topic of his Carmina in the recusatio; it is philosophy, the questions of the right way to live (recte facere),6 that is suited to his advanced age, to the immediate vicinity of death, a central element of Epicurean moral philosophy,7 but now felt more poignantly than ever. Thus, in the Epistles, Horace singles out the topic to which he gave a high pro le in his lyric poetry, as perhaps no one had before him, by creating his philosophical ‘Gedankenlyrik.’8 In form or genre, he returns to the ‘philosophical’ poetry of his beginnings, the Satires, but he frees himself from the self-imposed generic restriction, from philosophical poetry vested as invective. Thus, in a way the Epistles relate to the Satires as the Odes to the Epodes.9 However, the shift in creative interest, marked by the Epistles, is twofold. It entails an ambiguity: it is at the same time a transition to themes more serious than those of Horace’s previous, lyric poetry. Nevertheless, the Epis- 3 Above, pp. 37f., with further references. 4 See Fatham, above, p. 408; also Wilamowitz-Moellendorf 1913: 323; Fiske 1971: 76f., 426f.; Heinze 1960a: 295f.; Fraenkel 1957: 308f.; Becker 1963: 14f.; MacGann 1969: 89f., below, p. 483. 5 See Puelma Piwonka 1949: 138f., 92; also Heinze 1960a: 296, 302f. 6 Above, p. 42. 7 Above, pp. 326f. 8 Above, pp. 240, 324. 9 Above, p. 171. Some Epistles treat more or less identical topics as the Odes. Epist. 1.5, for example, can be compared with the invitational poems and those on ‘carpe diem’ (pp. 266f., 273f., 326f.), Epist. 1.6 with C. 2.16 (pp. 323f.), Epist. 1.11 with C. 1.7 (pp. 266f.); cf. also Fraenkel 1957: 308f.; Becker 1963: 48f. On the diference between sermones and epistulae, cf. also Rudd 1994: 11f.; Puelma Piwonka 1949: 138f.; Knox, below, pp. 542f..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Horace - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series Horace - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Horace(8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC) Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintillian regarded his Odes as almost the only Latin lyrics worth reading, justifying his estimate with the words: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words." Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Sermones and Epistles) and scurrilous iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are playful and yet serious works, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: "as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings". Some of his iambic poetry, however, can seem wantonly repulsive to modern audiences. His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from Republic to Empire. An officer in the republican army that was crushed at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became something of a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was "a master of the graceful sidestep") but for others he was, in < a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/john-henry-dryden/">John Dryden's</a> phrase, "a well-mannered court slave".
    [Show full text]
  • V.S. Lectures, No. 89 HORACE's VIRGIL Summary of a Lecture
    - 13 - V.S. Lectures, No. 89 HORACE’S VIRGIL Summary of a lecture delivered to the Virgil Society 23rd November 1968 by Prof. L.A. Moritz, M.A., D.Phil. It can be established on various grounds that the Vergilius to whom Hor.Od.iv.12 (lam veris comites) is addressed must, after all, be the poet Virgil. But the question then arises how Horace could have published this poem, with its mixture of elegiac description of spring and jocular invitation to his friend and fellow-poet, six years after the latter's death. This question in turn raises the wider problem of how Augustan poets addressed each other in their published work when they had the opportunity. Elsewhere in the Odes (i.3 and i.24) Virgil, though established as a poet in the Satires, is neither the poet nor the fellow-member of Maecenas's circle, but simply the friend. When Varius Rufus (i.6 ), Iullus Antonius (iv.2), and Asinius Pollio (ii.l) are addressed as poets, or when Pollio (ibid.) and Maecenas (ii.12) are addressed as historians, Horace is concerned with the public nature of their work rather than with any private relationship, and Tibullus in i-33 is primarily the unhappy lover rather than the elegist. But while in the Carmina (as opposed to the Sermones) there is no explicit reference to Virgil's poetry, both the Carmen Saeculare and the fourth book of Odes are so full of echoes of the Aeneid, both in "public" and in less public poems, that they may rank as Horace's monuments to Virgil, even though nothing is said of Virgil the poet.
    [Show full text]
  • Paper 10: Module No 04: E Text
    Paper 10: Module No 04: E Text MHRD-UGC ePG Pathshala - English Principal Investigator & Affiliation: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Paper No & Title: Literary Criticism and Theory (Paper 10) Paper Coordinator & Affiliation: Dr. Anita Bhela, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, University of Delhi Module Number & Title: Criticism in the Classical Antiquity: Longinus, Horace (04) Content Writer's Name & Affiliation: Mr. Lalit Kumar, University of Delhi Name & Affiliation of Content Reviewer Dr. Anita Bhela, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, University of Delhi Name & Affiliation of Content Editor: Dr. Anita Bhela, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, University of Delhi Criticism in Greco-Roman Culture: an Introduction The word criticism springs from the Greek word krisis, which had various meanings in the classical antiquity including ‘separation’, ‘selection’ and ‘judgement’. All these meanings were central to the decisions taken in courts and poetic contests, which were popular forms of literary practices prevalent across various city states of Greece. (Day 10) Since the inception of literature and literary criticism then [though Greeks did not have a word for literature] readers needed to separate, judge and select from a plethora of plays and poetry available to them. The ‘bad Poetry’ that could have potentially amoral impact on the readers was to be separated from the ‘good poetry’. Plato did the job of putting an end to the crisis of readers by separating the chaff from the grain and argued that in the ideal ‘republic’ children should hear only good fables, not the bad ones. He offered a trenchant critique of the anthropomorphism of Gods, championed and institutionalized by Homer and Hesiod.
    [Show full text]
  • «Prometheus» 45, 2019, 175-181 CAESAR's VENI VIDI VICI AND
    «Prometheus» 45, 2019, 175-181 CAESAR’S VENI VIDI VICI AND PLUTARCH In two papers, published in 2010 and 2012 respectively, and sub- sequently taken up, with minor changes, in his 2014 book Plutarch and his Roman Readers1, Philip A. Stadter contends that both the quotation from Horace2 and the mention and appraisal of Cicero’s Lucullus3 contained in Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus proceed from a direct reading of the two Roman writers rather than from second-hand knowledge. Though this position differs from the opinion more commonly held, it must be admitted that Stadter pleads his case with plausible arguments, though of course insufficient to attain certainty, as he himself is ready to admit4. The purpose of this paper, however, is not to discuss this matter. At the end of the second of these essays Stadter adds an appendix entitled Plutarch’s Aesthetic Appreciation of Latin, treating the same problems discussed in a paper of mine published some years earlier5. Contrary to my contention, and to the opinion of most scholars, Stadter maintains that Plutarch’s renouncing to compare Demosthenes and Cicero as orators for being avowedly unqualified to assess the stylistic merits achieved by Cicero in Latin, preceded by the remark about his having started to 1 P.A. Stadter, Plutarch’s Latin Reading: the Case of Cicero’s Lucullus, in: L. Van der Stockt, F. Titchener, H.G. Ingenkamp, A. Pérez Jiménez (eds.), Gods, Daimones, Rituals, Myths and History of Religions in Plutarch’s Works. Studies Devoted to Professor Frederik E. Brenk by the International Plutarch Society, Logan Utah 2010, 407-418; P.A.
    [Show full text]
  • I Horace and the Greek Lyric Tradition a Thesis Submitted to the Miami University Honors Program in Partial Fulfillment Of
    Horace and the Greek Lyric Tradition A thesis submitted to the Miami University Honors Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors with Distinction by Anne Rekers Reidmiller May 2005 Oxford, Ohio i ABSTRACT HORACE AND THE GREEK LYRIC TRADITION by Anne Rekers Reidmiller Although the Roman poet Horace (65 – 8 BCE) is well known for his celebration of distinctively Roman and specifically Augustan themes, he was also heavily influenced by the traditions of Greek lyric poetry, particularly in the creation of his four books of Odes. This thesis uses close readings of selected poems from Horace, Sappho, Alcaeus, and Archilochus to examine the complex relationship between Horace and the Greek lyric poets who inspired him. The first section of this thesis establishes the claims that Horace himself makes about his relationship to the Greek poets through an examination of several poems in which he reflects on his status as a lyric poet. The second and third sections consist of comparative analysis in which poems of Horace are set against selections of Greek lyric. In the second section, this analysis is focused on the appearance of the personal voice or lyric ‘I’ in Horace’s poetry and in Greek lyric. In the third section, the focus shifts to the use of the lyric addressee, an aspect of the occasion or “moment” for which a poem is supposedly written. The conclusion applies these comparative arguments to a re- evaluation of Horace’s own claims, arriving at an assessment of Horace’s lyric achievement which suggests the necessity for a re-evaluation of Greek lyric as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Prometheus» 45, 2019, 175-181 CAESAR's VENI VIDI VICI
    «Prometheus» 45, 2019, 175-181 CAESAR’S VENI VIDI VICI AND PLUTARCH In two papers, published in 2010 and 2012 respectively, and sub- sequently taken up, with minor changes, in his 2014 book Plutarch and his CORE Roman Readers1, Philip A. Stadter contends that both the quotationMetadata, citationfrom and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Firenze University Press: E-JournalsHorace2 and the mention and appraisal of Cicero’s Lucullus3 contained in Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus proceed from a direct reading of the two Roman writers rather than from second-hand knowledge. Though this position differs from the opinion more commonly held, it must be admitted that Stadter pleads his case with plausible arguments, though of course insufficient to attain certainty, as he himself is ready to admit4. The purpose of this paper, however, is not to discuss this matter. At the end of the second of these essays Stadter adds an appendix entitled Plutarch’s Aesthetic Appreciation of Latin, treating the same problems discussed in a paper of mine published some years earlier5. Contrary to my contention, and to the opinion of most scholars, Stadter maintains that Plutarch’s renouncing to compare Demosthenes and Cicero as orators for being avowedly unqualified to assess the stylistic merits achieved by Cicero in Latin, preceded by the remark about his having started to 1 P.A. Stadter, Plutarch’s Latin Reading: the Case of Cicero’s Lucullus, in: L. Van der Stockt, F. Titchener, H.G. Ingenkamp, A. Pérez Jiménez (eds.), Gods, Daimones, Rituals, Myths and History of Religions in Plutarch’s Works.
    [Show full text]
  • The Use of the Countryside in Horace's Odes
    Wesleyan University The Honors College The Foliate Lyre: The Use of the Countryside In Horace's Odes by Andrew Michael Goldstein Class of 2002 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in Classics Introduction The tradition oflyric poetry had long been dormant-analyzed and categorized by the Alexandrian bookkeeper-poets, then shuttled away onto a shelf in the form of the Anthology-when Horace breathed new life into the genre with the Odes. In the Odes, Horace awakened the old voices of lyric poetry, the exuberant, spontaneous voices of ancient Greece, and adapted them into a unique genre of Latin lyric that bore his own poetic mark. He revived many of the themes of Greek lyric, retouching them slightly to apply to Roman life in the burgeoning empire of Augustus, but his also added an element of his own. In Greek lyric, themes oflove, war, politics, and the symposium were pervasive and during the centuries when the genre had originally flourished these themes were addressed in subtle and original ways by poets who became famous for their individual voices throughout all Greece. The depiction of the natural world, however, was almost entirely absent from Greek lyric poetry, and when it was addressed in a poem is was merely as a compositional element, a piece of scenery to create a certain atmosphere. More than six hundred years after Archilochus invented lyric poetry on the island of Paros, Horace introduced for the first time a vivid natural world into the genre, an entire rustic landscape with its own inhabitants and values, traditions and beliefs.
    [Show full text]
  • Horace: Poet & Persona
    ���������������������������������������� Horace: Poet & Persona Why should we still read Horace? What does he say to us now? (1) age: the inherent interest of the old, things that are still around after so long a time - the same as the fascination of ancient coins. (2) repute: Horace was esteemed a good poet. In the long span of Latin literature (ca. 3rd cent BC - Renaissance), the most prominent writers included Cicero, Caesar, Catullus, Vergil, Tibullus, Tacitus, Lucan, Seneca, Pliny -- all concentrated in the 1st century BC and AD. But the height of Latin literature was under Augustus (30 BC-14 AD), especially the early part of that Augustan age, and in that period the two poets counted supreme were Vergil and Horace. We have all the poetry Horace published, whereas many ancient writers are represented by only a surviving sample of their work. (3) human interest: in Horace's day Rome dominated a wide empire. In his lifetime, Caesar was assasinated and Augustus became princeps. So when Horace talks of everyday life, he opens a window to that period. (4) message: Horace wrote lyric, but he still has a lesson to teach us today. Horace studied philosophy, but it was practical ethics that most involved him: What constitutes a good life? How do we have a happy life? When Horace was born in Venusia, Apulia, in 65 BC, Cicero was at his peak. Caesar was about 35, campaigning in Gaul, in Horace's youth. Horace writes touchingly in his poetry about his father, a freedman (ex-slave) and auctioneer's agent (a middleman who could make a good deal of money).
    [Show full text]
  • Stephen Harrison, Victorian Horace: Classics and Class
    New England Classical Journal Volume 45 Issue 1 Pages 46-49 2018 Stephen Harrison, Victorian Horace: Classics and Class. New York and London: BloomsburyAcademic, 2017. Pp. 217. Cloth (ISBN 978-1-4725-8391-8) $114.00. Daniel Barber Middlesex School Follow this and additional works at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/necj Recommended Citation Barber, Daniel (2018) "Stephen Harrison, Victorian Horace: Classics and Class. New York and London: BloomsburyAcademic, 2017. Pp. 217. Cloth (ISBN 978-1-4725-8391-8) $114.00.," New England Classical Journal: Vol. 45 : Iss. 1 , 46-49. Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/necj/vol45/iss1/9 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by CrossWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in New England Classical Journal by an authorized editor of CrossWorks. brush aside Livy’s comment about human sacrifices “being highly un-Roman” as simply “an embarrassed whitewashing” (170)? Why (and of what) would Livy be embarrassed if human sacrifices were deemed a pious act of devotion in the age of Augustus, as Stahl seems to argue? In sum, I am not entirely persuaded by some of Stahl’s readings. This study ultimately rests on a rather narrow political interpre- tation of the poem as a mere encomium of Augustus and is too quick to dismiss more complex readings of it as modern and unhistorical concoctions. Yet, Stahl’s new book still has some very valuable insights and raises some important questions. Every Vergilian scholar should read it. Chapter Six (“Before Founding Lavinium, Aeneas Inspects the Site of Rome [Aen.
    [Show full text]
  • Satires" 1 Author(S): Emily Gowers Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol
    Fragments of Autobiography in Horace "Satires" 1 Author(s): Emily Gowers Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Apr., 2003), pp. 55-91 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011166 Accessed: 10/08/2009 23:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Classical Antiquity. http://www.jstor.org EMILY GOWERS Fragments of Autobiography in Horace Satires 1 "When I was a young man, I arrived in Hollywood with very little money, checked into a cheap motel, showered, shaved, then I came here to talk to you."-Tony Curtis, asked by a TV chat show host to sum up his life so far "How one becomes what one is"-subtitle of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo The idea that Horace's Satires 1 is a kind of autobiography is far from being a new one.
    [Show full text]
  • Horace's Odesand Carmen Saeculare
    Horace’s Odes and Carmen Saeculare Horace’s Odes and Carmen Saeculare Introduction, Texts, Translations in the Original Metres and Notes By Simon Preece Horace’s Odes and Carmen Saeculare By Simon Preece This book first published 2021 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2021 by Simon Preece All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6826-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6826-6 To Dicky ibimus, ibimus CONTENTS Preface ..................................................................................................... viii Introduction ............................................................................................. xiii 1. Horace: The Life of a Poet ............................................................. xiii 2. Aspects of the Odes .................................................................... xxxv 3. On the Translations ...................................................................... lxxv 4. On the Text ................................................................................ lxxxii 5. Further Reading ........................................................................ lxxxvi Texts and Translations
    [Show full text]
  • The Death of a Poet: Ovid's References to Horace in Amores 1.15 And
    The Death of a Poet: Ovid’s references to Horace in Amores 1.15 and Tristia 3.3 Matthew Nelson LATN358: Ovid 9 April 2020 1 A recurring theme among the lyric and elegiac poets of classical antiquity was the motif of poetic immortality. During the Augustan age, Horace is arguably the most famous of the Romans to utilize immortality in his poems, claiming it in works such as Carmina 2.20 and 3.30. Since the publication of his corpus, there has been ample discussion of Horace’s treatment of death for poets – as well as his attitude towards a broader concept of death. In the decades following, Horace’s near-contemporary Ovid not only visited the same theme but referenced Horace’s poems specifically. In Amores 1.15, Ovid delivers a sphragis to his first publication and directly references Horace’s exegi monumentum ode.1 Towards the end of his career, Ovid again discussed his immortality in Tristia 3.3 and references Horace a second time – this time with a decidedly negative slant on a literary trope. Although Ovid frequently references his peers and predecessors in his verses, I contend the allusion to Horace in Tristia 3.3 specifically touches on his earlier mention of Horace in Amores 1.15. This metapoetical theme suggests that Ovid does not entirely wash his hands of the erotic poetry that likely caused his exile. To accomplish this, Ovid refutes the pairing of his Amores 1.15 and Horace’s Carmina by writing a pessimistic discussion of immortality in Tristia 3.3 in reference to Horace’s success.
    [Show full text]