Evan Simpkins Dr.

Sweets Roman Lyric Class Horace: The Playful Critic When reading the epistles and satires of Horace, one comes across illuminating, pithy statements on the nature of poetry. That is in addition to the Ars Poetica, which is an attempt, with more or less detail, to treat the whole of the poetic art. These pithy statements, taken in conjunction with the Ars Poetica, hint at a complete poetic theory (including a division of genres) hidden in what are, in some ways, Horaces most elusive expressions. First of all, in a few verses of the satires, Horace alludes to what can may be the core principles of his poetic theory. As with many of his most insightful comments, he couches them in disparagement of himself. The New Comedies of Plautus, Terence, and others came under fire for their lack of inventiveness, and in Horaces response, he suggests that linguistic inventiveness is at the heart of the poetic art: Literary critics / inquire whether New Comedy is, or is not, poetic: / Its diction, its subjects, lack the force and the fire of great thought, / And, except for the meter, its no different from pure prose. / . . . Take these (lines) / I transcribe, or that Lucillus used to compose, and remove / the rhythm and meter, shuffle their order, changing / the first word for the last: it wouldnt be like breaking up / After the foul discordant Fate / broke down Wars brazen pillars and her gate. . . . / For in these lines youll find though dismembered, the limbs of a poet. (Satire 1.4.60-5) You find allegory, metaphor, and expressive, emphatically placed adjectives. That poetry uses the medium of language is evident to all, Horace makes this clear by addressing the Ars to you who aspire to be writers (35), and most all of his injunctions refer to representations in speech.

After driving home the point that aspiring writers should only put things together which belong together, Horace jumps right into the subject of diction: use care and subtlety in placing your words and, by the skillful choice of setting, give fresh meaning to a familiar word (50). Similarly, Aristotles rule, in the Poetics, chapter 22, is that diction should be clear (by the use of familiar words) and striking (by the use of words from other languages, metaphors, etc.). However, Horace goes so far as to say that only writers who include these striking and inventive elements are poets. Therefore, according to Horace, inventive, striking and clear diction belongs to the essence of poetry. This inventiveness in language which is proper to the poet (poesis means making after all) implies something that has significance for all fine arts. For Horace proposes that the inventiveness of poetry is imitative when he says, the experienced poet, as an imitative artist, should look to human life and character for his models . . . (Ars 319-23). And, A likeness in bronze is no more true an expression of the subjects features than a poets account . . .1 (Epistle 2.1.250). Further, in the Ars, Horace uses many metaphors for the poetic art taken from painting and sculpture, which are clearly imitative. For example, he uses the fact that by the Aemilian gladiatorial school there is a craftsman in bronze who will mould fingernails and reproduce wavy hair to the life, but the total effect of his work is unsatisfactory . . . to show that poetic skill requires the representation of a whole and not merely the ability to reproduce particular effects (33). So imitation or representation is a key to understanding Horaces poetics. Similarly, Aristotle derives the fine arts from our natural aptitude for and pleasure in imitation. He distinguishes the art of non-fictional writing, like Platos and Empedocless, from poetry by the fact that poetry is imitative, just as Plato, in the Meno, separates prayers from poetry because they are not pure fabrications. In that passage of the Meno, Socrates has been
1

Italics added

told in a dream to write poetry, and, since taken strictly philosophy is not poetry, he starts by writing a prayer in verse. But, because poets are properly makers, he takes a story, a manufactured reality, and puts that to verse. So Horace appears to be building upon both Platos and Aristotles theories when he suggests that poetry is an imitative art. In addition to the imitative nature of poetry, Horace suggests that an emotional catharsis is at the center of a poem, that poet seems to me able to do the hardest of tasks,2 / who illusorily torments, / stirs up, soothes, (and) fills my heart with false terrors . . . (Tr. Simpkins Epistle 2.1. 210). The poet, like the magician, manufactures illusory, emotionally charged images of the world. Poetry stirs up and soothes the emotions, especially fears (terrores). This principle is also expressed in the Ars, where catharsis, though a special concern of dramatists, is also seen as a concern of poets in general: It is not enough that poems should have beauty; if they are to carry the audience with them, they must have charm as well. Just as smiling faces are turned on those who smile, so is sympathy shone with those who weep. If you want to move me to tears, you must first feel grief yourself (82). This is a general instruction to poets on how to produce catharsis. Not only does Horace bring to mind the imitative and cathartic principles of poetry as such, there is also a division of poetic genres in his writings. Horace marks a gradation (though, in part, tongue in cheek) between his epistolary and others epic and dramatic poetry: As for me, I wouldnt prefer / my little conversations that creep along close to the ground / to epic narrationsof far away lands and streams, / of forts flung high in the hills, of barbarous realms, / of wars over all the world brought to final conclusion / by you, of the gates of Janus at last swinging shut / and keeping the peace, of that Rome the

Literally, walk a tightrope, however, per extentum funem. . . ire is listed as proverbial for an exceedingly hard task . . . Brink 233

Parthians fear / with you as its prince if my powers but matched my desires. (Epistle 2.1.244-6) And, he distinguishes between his poetry and drama, do not by any means think I find fault with3 what I decline to do myself, / because others handle it well; / that poet seems to me able to do the hardest of tasks, / who illusorily torments, / stirs up, soothes, fills my heart with false terrors, / and now like a magician places me in Thebes, now in Athens. (Tr. Simpkins Epistle 2.1. 208-13) You can see here that Horace acknowledges the critical tradition (i.e. Aristotle) which states that drama is a nobler poetic form than epic and, implicitly, that epic is nobler than lyric. However, this acknowledgement is tinged with sarcasm, though its not clear that Horaces sarcasm extends to an actual denial of the tradition or merely a playful laugh, making fun of his humble place between Homer and Sophocles. These texts can be read either way. Compare Greenoughs gloss on line 208 of Epistle 2.1 and Bovies translation, respectively: ac ne forte, etc.: i.e.
for fear you should think I damn with faint praise the works of poets in a line which I do not attempt myself, and so you should distrust my opinion on the state of the

art, I assure you that I think the dramatic art is the most difficult, and merits the highest praise when it is well done, in that its effect is so powerful upon the spectator;

and

Bovie, please dont think that Im unwilling to praise / Well written plays, even though I

dont write them myself. / The dramatist walks on a tightrope, it seems to me. The translation above occupies a middle ground to Greenoughs, which has Horace kneel before drama, and Bovies, in which Horace has relatively little praise for it. The context of the passage is the key, as well as the proverbial force of per extentum funem. In the context, Horace is mocking drama
and clearly wishes to off

set (ac ne) the appearance of bias with praise. One can sympathize with Greenough since Horaces

criticisms

of drama are foolproof if he is willing, at the same time to give it the highest praise, a

rhetorical master stroke: who could deny his sincerity then? But, it would stretch the text to read it as a
3 See Brink: to damn with faint praise . . . . Scanty, grudging, for malignus is thrown into relief by the contrary notion, benignus, ample, unstinting. 233

solid acknowledgement of the superiority of drama to all other poetry.

This is especially true in the light of the odes (e.g. ode

1.1), in which Horace seems to deem no praise too high for the lyric poet. However, whether or not you read Horace as agreeing with the tradition on the place of lyric among epic and drama, which he certainly acknowledges but just as certainly does not dogmatically embrace, he does tell us what he thinks the content of these disciplines is. To lyrical poetry the Muse assigned the task of celebrating the gods and their offspring, the winner in a boxing-match, and the horse that led the field; the task, too, of singing the woes of young lovers and the pleasures of wine (Ars 82). On the other hand, Horace says above that Epic tells of long wars and distant lands while drama stays in one place, Athens or Thebes. He is here drawing on the long standing awareness that a play is best set within a days span while an epic happily ranges farther in place and time, a lyric closer. Aristotle, on the other hand, distinguishes these genres of poetry by their means of expressionpurely through narration in the authors voice, partly through narration in the authors voice and partly through assumed characters, or acting (ch. 3). Drama is acted out and epic and lyric can be either of the first two. Because drama is acted out, it has elements not present in epic and lyric, but everything in epic and lyric (plot, character, and diction, including meter) is in drama. However, apart from the manner of their representation, the only difference among the three, as marked by Horace, is the extent of the action they represent. This is helpful in distinguishing lyric and epic poems. Horaces poetics also unites the cathartic and didactic functions of poetry. He touches upon, with varying degrees of emphasis, the imitative and cathartic nature of poetry and the division and hierarchy of the genres, but he also says that poetry teaches. The aim of the poet is

either to benefit, or to amuse, or to make his words at once please and give lessons of life (Ars 90). Horace explains himself: The foundation and fountain-head of good composition is a sound understanding. . . . The man who has learnt his duty towards his country and his friends, the kind of love he should feel for a parent, a brother, and a guest, the obligations of a senator and a judge, and the qualities required in a general sent out to lead his armies in the fieldsuch a man will certainly know the qualities that are appropriate to his characters. (90) In evoking an emotional catharsis, a poet must represent things, in some way, as they are. His representations must truly be probable. If they are not probable representations, they will fail to evoke the desired effect. However, there are signs that catharsis is the primary goal of poetry: a poem may at the same time be seemingly probable and actually impossible (not so instructive); and, a poem that moves us is good, but one which teaches without pleasure is not. This latter is the mistake of those who associate poetry with meter alone or think that poetry is just a palliative for philosophical doctrines. Neither of these produces the best poetry. Thus, while poetry aims principally at an emotional catharsis, it also instructs us in what is fitting for the characters of men, good and bad. When seeing an imitation of the actions of men, there is pleasure in recognizing that which is being imitated. This recognition is knowledge. Horace never wrote a theoretical and systematic account of poetry. The closest he comes is the practical work, the Ars Poetica, which instructs someone how to write poetry. So everything gleaned from Horaces poetics needs to be held tentatively. However, Horace suggests that poetry is an imitative art in the medium of language, most properly imitative of human actions and intending an emotional catharsis. This gives poetry a twofold aim, pleasure and instruction. But, poet first and theoretician second, much of what Horace says is tongue in

cheek, couched in mocking self-disparagement, and he played with this explanation of things according as the demands of his poetry and his audience required it.

Works Cited Aristotle. Poetics. in Aristotle, Horace, Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism. Tr. T.S. Dorsch. Baltimore: Penguin, 1965.

Brink, C.O.. Horace on Poetry: The Ars Poetica. Cambridge: U of Cambridge, 1971. ______. Horace on Poetry: The Epistles Book II. Cambridge: U of Cambridge, 1971. Greenough, J.B., ed.. Horace: Satires and Epistles. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1888. Horace. On the Art of Poetry. in Aristotle, Horace, Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism. Tr. T.S. Dorsch. Baltimore: Penguin, 1965. ______. Satires and Epistles of Horace. Tr. Smith Palmer Bovie. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1959.