Poet’s Freedom and Its Boundaries. Literary Patronage in the Eyes of Roman Authors of Late Republican and Augustan Period, (in:) Freedom and Its Limits in the Ancient World, ed. by D. Brodka, J. Janik, S. Sprawski, Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press 2003 (= "Electrum” Vol. 9), p. 91-111. (original) (raw)
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A Commentary to Selected 'Epistles' of Horace
This on-line commentary is geared to intermediate Latin students. I hope it helps students to enjoy these poems and that the on-line resources will add further historical, social, and cultural contexts to this work. The completed version exists as a webpage (www.oberlinclassics.com) with a lot of additional hyperlinks and illustrations, but I have uploaded a PDF of the notes for those who want it accessible in this format.
Horace's poetic inspiration and its unity in his works (summary)
This book focuses on the terms and issues of poetic inspiration in Horace's literary works. The interpretation of these terms and issues allows us to identify a unity in the way the poet treats the matter of inspiration throughout his work. In addition to the three basic research directions for his poetic inspiration: the biographical-historical, the literary, and the aesthetic, we focus on philosophy which we believe plays an important role in explaining Horace's poetic motives. From this point of view, inspiration as literary experience, not just as literary expression, is a new dimension of the poet's perception of life in a literary work. This view is interpreted by the function of ἀναζωγράφησις in Aristotelian and Stoic thought. This book offers an answer to the question: 'At what degree, and on what level, do the traditional elements of poetic inspiration play a functional role and contribute to the presence of Horace's poetic "ego" in the process of his writing?' The way Horace treats traditional sources of inspiration is mostly influenced by intellectual and ethical interventions dominant in the literary text. Our research has indicated that Horace's motivation for writing does not depend on the conventional use of inspirational matters at either a literary or a meta-literary level. It is the poet's own mentality and its process which is dominant in Horace's verse collections. It is his own presence and meditation as a source of inspiration that is common in many senses in all of his work. This book examines the issue of inspiration in the different verse collections of Horace (Sermones, Iambi, Carmina I-III, Carmina IV with Carmen Saeculare, and Epistulae). The titles of the subchapterscharacteristic phrases or verses taken from the poet's workare the keys for interpreting the verbal depiction of Horace's poetic inspiration. These poetic phrases or verses also show the essential internal connection between Horace's will to write poetry and the functional role that this motive has for the thematic unity of his work. References to Horace's poetic inspiration, whether conventional or original, are embodied in the context and play a role in explaining the system of correlations that allow the poet to perceive real and literary matters and ultimately to write poetry about them. Traditional key words of inspiration such as Muse (or related deities), enthusiasm, ingenium and ars, are examined for their role and function in the poetic context from which other, new impulses/motives arise that actuate the poet to his task, i.e. pudor, sensus, mens, consilium, animus, consultum, integritas, as well as the stoic terms προαίρεσις and προκόπτων. Specifically in Sermones, where the satiric persona focuses on melius vivere (Serm. 1. 4. 135) and melius scribere (Serm. 1. 10. 47), the poet's insania and rare uses of invocation for poetic inspiration are not the satirist's bestacknowledged impulses. Even ingenium, the most accepted poetic impulse, with or without ars, becomes in fact a gift, a characterization given by others (docti amici) as a kind of recognition. What Horace admits as a source of inspiration is pudor and his own sensus in his poetic attendance (instead of being inanis, Serm. 1. 4. 77) or insanus poeta (Serm. 2. 3. 1-8) with a fervent ingenium (Serm. 1. 10. 70-1). Pudor is also related to the way the poet chooses to write satire: with consilium proprium , which is also different from ingenium because it focuses on reasoning (mens, animus).
2003
Poet's freedom and its boundaries Literary patronage in the eyes of Roman authors of Late Republican and Augustan Period I will start as if in medias res by quoting a passage from Horace, Epistles 1. 1. 1-12: Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende camena, spectatum satis et donatum iam rude quaeris, Maecenas, iterum antiquo me includere ludo. non eadem est aetas, non mens. Veianius armis Herculis ad postern fixis latet abditus agro, ne populum extrema totiens exoret harena. est mihi purgatam crebro qui personet aurem 'solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne peccet ad extremum ridendus et ilia ducat', nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono; quid verum atque decens, euro et rogo et omnis in hoc sum; condo et compono, quae mox depromere possim. This opening is what we call a recusatio. Horace declines the iussa of his patron, Maecenas, who wants him to continue composing lyric poetry. Horace, however, after publishing three books of Carmina patronized by Maecenas (therefore: 'prima dicte mihi, summa dicende camena', 1. 1), feels like opening a new chapter in his life, and he finds such suggestions inadequate, if not intrusive. The situation as described by the poet seems quite credible, so we could easily take it at face value, considering what we know (or maybe rather what we presume we know) about the relationship between Horace and Maecenas. As a matter of fact, we have no grounds for thinking that the poet's statement is wholly and purposely false and does not refer to any external factor at all. Quite on the contrary, it is highly probable that Maecenas could have given to Horace some guidance on what kind of poetry he should write and, being pleased with the Odes, encouraged him to 'steer the same course'. This declaration though must be brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Recusatio as Political Theatre: Horace's Letter to Augustus
Among the most potent devices that Roman emperors had at their disposal to disavow autocratic aims and to put on display the consensus of ruler and ruled was the artful refusal of exceptional powers, or recusatio imperii. The practice had a long history in Rome prior to the reign of Augustus, but it was Augustus especially who, over the course of several decades, perfected the recusatio as a means of performing his ongoing hesitancy towards power. The poets of the Augustan period were similarly well practiced in the art of refusal, writing dozens of poetic recusationes that purported to refuse offers urged upon them by their patrons, or by the greater expectations of the Augustan age, to take on projects that exceeded their powers or the limits of a refined and unassuming style. It is the purpose of this paper to put the one type of refusal side-by-side with the other, in order to show to what extent the refusals of the Augustan poets are informed not just by aesthetic principles that derive, most obviously, from Callimachus, but by the many, high-profile acts of denial that were performed as political art by the emperor himself. The paper thus concerns ‘the culture of refusal’ in ancient Rome, analyzing the kind of cultural work that gets done by saying ‘no’ to big projects and to big powers in ways that are highly stylized, oft-repeated, and encoded as specifically Roman (the mos maiorum). Key texts in this discussion are Augustus’ Res Gestae, and Horace’s epistle to Augustus.
The Unity and Historical Occasion of Horace, Carm. 1.7
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