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Horace's Ars Poetica: A Systematic Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

H. L. Tracy
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Extract

The reproach of careless organization has become a commonplace in the criticism of the Ars Poetica. Some commentators have been satisfied with merely putting on a derogatory label. Others have tried transposing passages in order to reduce the work to a system. Others, with or without appeal to Horace's sources, have tried in various ways to discern or to reconstruct some plan underlying the alleged disorder. None, so far as can be discovered, have made a successful attempt to find the key to the argument in the mode and manner of its presentation.

The aim of this paper is to suggest such a key; to show that the proposed key is valid for the interpretation of all Horace's work; and particularly to show that the proper application of the key reveals in the Ars that lucid and logical thought-structure that is a constant characteristic of the Horatian manner.

Horace is a writer of one idiom only. His method in all his works is an essentially ‘lyrical’ method, whether he is working on lyrical material proper or on satire, epistle, or didactic verse. The seeming casualness of the Ars is a mannerism of the lyrical style. Everywhere in Horace a disarming informality appears on the surface. But closer reading reveals a lucid and closely patterned sequence of thought. Once the lyrical manner is understood, once the key to its interpretation is applied, Horace's typically clear logic, in ode, satire, or treatise stands revealed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 17 , Issue 51 , October 1948 , pp. 104 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1948

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References

Page 104 note 1 A convenient summary of the literature is in Wilkinson, L. P., Horace and His Lyric Poetry (Cambridge, University Press, 1946), 95Google Scholar, notes 3–6; 97, note 4. Wilkinson's own ideas about the Ars are interesting, but inconclusive: ‘…in form it is an Epistle… in essence it is a sermo, a piece treating a single general subject but gliding from one selected aspect to another by a natural process of thought-association… the lack of strict arrangement being intentional…. The Romans… were more interested in examples than in generalisations… I believe that Horace set out to amuse at least as much as to instruct…. The details, not the precepts, are the cream' (97–8). Orelli's description (Q. Horatius Flaccus4, Berlin, Calvary, 1892, vol. ii, 566) of the Ars is a generous one: epistula didacticosatirica. It leaves out only lyric, which is the topic of this paper.

Page 105 note 1 This polarity may be in a phrase—integer vitae scelerisque purus; in a pair of lines—‘manet sub love frigido / venator tenerae coniugis immemor’ or in balanced panels of imagery which divide a whole poem—as in Carm. 1. 9, where the cold forbidding aspect of the world around us is contrasted with the warm tender pleasures we may briefly indulge.

Page 107 note 1 Sunt quos curriculo, &c., 3.

Page 107 note 2 Dust, flashing wheels, excitement of the citizens, Cyprian ship, &c.

Page 107 note 3 e.g. in gaudentem patrios, 11.

Page 107 note 4 Sunt quos, hunc, illum, gaudentem, est qui, multos, me, 3, 7, 9, 11, 19, 23, 29.

Page 107 note 5 Iuvat, evehit, tollere, proprio (standing for the idea of personal power), gaudentem, indocilis (standing for the unswerving devotion to a manner of life), detestata, tenerae coniugis immemor (standing for the same devotion, expressed here obliquely through other people's attitudes), 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 18, 25, 26.

Page 107 note 6 Not very well represented here; but such phrases as palma nobilis, terrarum dominos, indocilis pauperiem pati, bella matribus detestata, 5, 6, 18, 24–5, have the epigrammatic and recapitulatory value indicated. Conspicuous examples of epigrammatic condensation are to be found in Carm. 2. 16. 13–28; 3. 16. 17–28.

Page 108 note 1 Carm. 1. 37.

Page 110 note 1 Other distinctively lyrical features of the first part of the Ars are as follows:(1) ‘LINK-WORDS’ which serve the purpose of paragraph headings, but are inter- spersed in the body of the text and guide the thought imaginatively and unobtrusively, e.g. 5, 6—amid, Pisones; 9, 10—reddatur, audendi; 15, 16, 23—purpureus, adsuitur, simplex, unum; 29, 34—rent prodigaliter unam, operis summa, ponere totum; 31, 32—arte, exprimet, molles; 40—valeant, potenter; 41, 42—ordo, ordinis. An excellent series of such link-words is in Carm. 1. 2:terruit, tetruit; monies, ulmos;aequore, Tiberim; Vestae, Iliae; rara, ruentis joining the stanzas. (2) POLARITY: I, humano, equinam; 3, 4, turpiter, formosa; 4, piscem, mulier; 21, 22, amphora, urceus; 28, humi, procellae; 33, molles, aere. (3) GRATUITOUS DETAIL: 3, atrum; 5, admissi; 7, velut aegri; 15, purpureus or late qui splendeat; 17, properantis; 28, timidus procellae.

Page 113 note 1 23.

Page 113 note 2 153.

Page 113 note 3 155–78.

Page 113 note 4 179–88.

Page 113 note 5 189–92.

Page 114 note 1 193–201.

Page 114 note 2 202–39.

Page 114 note 3 240–50.

Page 114 note 4 251–94.

Page 114 note 5 295–end.

Page 114 note 6 309.

Page 114 note 7 317

Page 114 note 8 295–324.

Page 114 note 9 325–46.

Page 114 note 10 347–90.

Page 114 note 11 391–407

Page 114 note 12 418–end.

Page 114 note 13 Op. cit., 567.