Neer Tirage.P65
ACTA UNIVERSITATIS PALACKIANAE OLOMUCENSIS FACULTAS PHILOSOPHICA NEERLANDICA II – 2003 Horatian intertextuality in Poot’s poem “De Lente” Rudi T. van der Paardt (University of Leyden) Like his compatriots Virgil and Ovid, the Roman poet Q. Horatius Flaccus had an enormous influence on the history of Western literature. Especially his Odes, four books with poems in the tradition of the great Greek lyric poets, and his witty Epistula ad Pisones or Ars Poetica were often the models for imitation or adaptation. In several periods of Dutch literature we find poets, who have been strongly influenced by Horace. It is no coincidence that most of them were interested in poetical theory and that they were masters of poetic expression themselves. I mention the names of Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679), according to many readers the best Dutch poet ever; Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831), the many-sided scholar and poet; and the most outstanding representative of the Dutch Romantic movement, Anthonie Staring (1767–1840). Only the first of them, Vondel, will play a role in my paper, and this is because in 1654 he made an important translation of all of Horace’s Odes. It was read by many contemporaries and remained popular with later readers. One of them, we know for sure, was Hubert Korneliszoon Poot (1689–1733), the Farmer-Poet. His admiration of Horace is obvious from his adaptation of the famous second epode, Beatus ille. In Akkerleven (Farmer-Life), published in 1720, Poot gave an impression of the contrasts between the life of a trader in the big city and the rustic life with cows and sheep on the farm, the sort of life he lived more or less himself.
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