The Unity and Historical Occasion of Horace, Carm. 1.7 (original) (raw)
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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).
Horace's Mythological Lexicon: Repeated Myths and Meaning in Odes 1-3
This dissertation examines repeated mythological references in the first three books of Horace's Odes. Several mythological figures occur more than once in the Odes; those studied in this dissertation are Daedalus and Icarus, Prometheus, Tantalus, Hercules, and Castor and Pollux. I argue that in Odes 1-3 recurrent myths constitute part of a personal lexicon, a mythological vocabulary Horace uses to speak about themes such as hubris, poetry, and immortality; for example, Daedalus and Icarus, Prometheus, and Tantalus are consistently linked with immoderation, and Hercules and the Dioscuri are consistently emblematic of complementary aspects of Augustus' rule and of his future deification. This mythological lexicon can be read across poems so that the interpretation of a mythological figure in one poem can aid in understanding the use of the same mythological figure in another poem, and the collective effect of all of the uses of that figure is itself something that can be analyzed and interpreted. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The first word of thanks goes to my advisor, Jenny Strauss Clay, whose Odes seminar in the spring of 2010 first taught me how to love this seemingly impenetrable poet. She has consistently supported and guided me, since I first embarked on this project, even during one year when neither of us was in residence in Charlottesville. Her ability to ask the right questions and to put her finger on key problems has left a lasting impression on my thinking for which I am deeply grateful. Thanks are also due to John F. Miller, whose kind and sensible advice at every stage of the process, from the prospectus through the final chapter, has been invaluable. I am also grateful to Tony Woodman, who has been a warm, inspiring figure in my development as a classicist both by encouraging me to sharpen my ideas and by inviting open-ended conversations about Horace. Thanks also to Paul Cantor, whose European literature course helped me become a better teacher and enriched my appreciation for the whole compass of the literary tradition in which Horace is situated. I would also like to thank the dear friends and mentors each of whom has in their own way played a crucial role throughout not only this project but also everything that led up to it: Rachel Bruzzone,
Nostalgia for Paradise: The Escape from Time in Horace's Epode 16
American Journal of Philology, 2022
Epode 16, Horace’s famous decline poem about Rome before Actium, has long been viewed as a cynical response to Vergil’s prophecy of a returning Golden Age in Eclogue 4. In this article, I argue that there is another, unrecognized intertext for Epode 16—Pindar’s Olympian 2—to which Horace’s bleak poem alludes in a “window reference” refracted through Vergil’s bucolic. As such, Horace’s cynicism represents, in fact, a lament over the lost simplicity and timelessness of Greek oral poetry, and an attempt to reclaim for his listeners/readers the originary experience of listening. In so doing, Horace takes up the Pindaric mantle of poet-prophet.
Antichthon, 2023
Within the rhetorical frameworks of exhortation and illustrative exemplum, Horace's second and sixth Roman Odes offer compressed, contrasting images of a young person's education and transformation, presenting these as stories about a puer and a virgo, respectively, in a lyric mode that does not narrate. In the first of these stories (Carm. 3.2.1-12), Horace slyly usurps characters from Vergil's unfinished Aeneid, alluding to some of its distinctive narrative techniques, but also draws on the similes and plot structure of its Iliadic model. The second of Horace's stories (Carm. 3.6.21-32) plays off his first, as he converts the adulta virgo who figures in Carm. 3.2 into her antitype. This story has as its intertext an obscene Hellenistic epigram by Automedon. Horace makes both intertextual and metatextual use of his models, while his indirect references, through Homer, to Vergil's intended design for his emerging Aeneid may be considered under the new heading of extratextual.
Antichthon
Within the rhetorical frameworks of exhortation and illustrative exemplum, Horace's second and sixth Roman Odes offer compressed, contrasting images of a young person's education and transformation, presenting these as stories about a puer and a virgo, respectively, in a lyric mode that does not narrate. In the first of these stories (Carm. 3.2.1–12), Horace slyly usurps characters from Vergil's unfinished Aeneid, alluding to some of its distinctive narrative techniques, but also draws on the similes and plot structure of its Iliadic model. The second of Horace's stories (Carm. 3.6.21–32) plays off his first, as he converts the adulta virgo who figures in Carm. 3.2 into her antitype. This story has as its intertext an obscene Hellenistic epigram by Automedon. Horace makes both intertextual and metatextual use of his models, while his indirect references, through Homer, to Vergil's intended design for his emerging Aeneid may be considered under the new heading of ...
Flaccus’ Poetics: Horace-Paris saved by Mercury-Augustus
Augustan Poetry New Trends and Revaluations, 2020
I would like to thank Artur Costrino and Artur Padovan for helping me elaborate the English version of this article. I would also like to thank Stephen Harrison for his corrections and suggestions. 1 Freudenburg (2014). AUGUSTAN POETRY 214 is identifi ed with the eff eminate Paris, a warrior suitable for the lyre and love, and, conversely, Horace as a lyric poet unfi t for war. In this second part I also explore an aspect sometimes forgotten in reading certain poems, although it is not a new trend in Horatian studies, the poetic book format Opening the book of Epodes, the poet, addressing his friend Maecenas, calls himself imbellis ac fi rmus parum (epod. 1.16), being, by litotes-a weak mode of expression-not suitable for war. Previously, the feeble poet, even when speaking about the brave (v.10: qua ferre non mollis uiros), uses the euphemism that Cavarzere (1992, 121) noted as a possible joke on the poet's own cognomen (Flaccus). He also notes that the litotes at v. 16-imbellis ac parum fi rmus-is likely an echo of Homer 2. I think that it is a sure reference to the second book of the Iliad (v. 201), in which Odysseus, to rebuke those who want to return home, addresses one of them in these terms: ... ἀπτόλεμος καὶ ἄναλκις (unwarlike and feeble). Horace, therefore, portrays himself, not wanting to go to war, as a weak warrior who wants to return home, like Th ersites, whom Odysseus addresses (vv. 246-264) and makes him the object of the Achaean's laughter. Th us the poet, in turn, laughs at himself. Th is inaugural weakness-and comedy-will pervade all the epodic work so that the iambic poet who once led his opponents to death, like Archilochus and Hipponax 3 , wants, conversely, to die, but powerless-in many ways-he is subjugated by Canidia the sorceress, his most constant opponent, and suff ers at her 2 Cavarzere (1992, 122). 3 On the paradoxicality of the arquiloquean Horace, see Barchiesi (2001, 154) and Harrison (2001, 167-74). However, for the resumption of the despised genre of the infi del Lycambes and of the bitter enemy of Bupalus, see Cucchiarelli (2008, 92-4). Remember that Archilochus also has his moments of weakness when leaving the shield: fr. 5 W.
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