HORACE [65 B.C—8 B.C]—Additional materials

HORACE [65 B.C—8 B.C]—Additional materials for research scholars

S. Sreekumar

Introduction

Horace lived in the glorious Augustan Age, named after Octavian Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. The emperor patronized the artists and to this age belong the greatest of the Roman writers—Virgil, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid and Livy. While in poetry, he ranks next only to Virgil, in criticism he alone is the ruling god. At the Renaissance he was classed equal to Aristotle.

Works of Horace

Two books of Satires, Four books of Odes, Ars Poetica

Ars Poetica  was originally known as Epistle to the Pisos. It was Quintilian who gave it the title, Ars Poetica.  This is Horace’s chief critical work. It is a letter in verse offering advice on literary matters to a father and two sons of the name of Piso. The book follows no method or plan. It is very brief in keeping with its epistolary form, covering no more than sixteen pages and less than five hundred lines of verse in the original Latin. Its main topics of discussion are poetry, poetic style, and drama.

Classicism

There were two schools in his day—the Old Latin and the modern Alexandrian. The Old Latin was the school native to Rome, popularized by the achievements of poets like Ennius and Naevius. The Alexandrian originated with the Greek Scholars of Alexandria (in upper Egypt). It followed traditions that were different from and inferior to those followed by the ancient Greek classics. 

Horace felt that these two models were unsatisfactory to provide models for the mighty themes that surged in his mind. Only the ancient Greek models were felt equal to the mighty call the poet had to answer. Horace began a new movement in Roman Literature—the revival of the ancient Greek tradition in preference to the prevalent Alexandrian and the Old Latin. Horace was at one with Virgil in opting for this revived tradition in Roman Literature. Virgil demonstrated his enthusiasm in poetry whereas Horace did it in poetry and criticism.

Horace greatly admired the Greeks. He considered a devoted attention to them an essential equipment of the would-be writer:’ You, my friends, study the great originals of Greece; dream of then by night and ponder them by day”.

HORACE’S OBSERVATIONS ON POETRY

Nature of Poetry

Horace believed that poetry is not mere imitation alone. He said that a poet ‘often mingles facts with fancy, putting on something of his own’. He did not like too much fancy on the part of the poet and added that ‘fiction composed to please should be very near to the truth’.

Function of Poetry

Poetry should inculcate a love of all that is noble in life so that the young men may be perpetually influenced for good. He synthesized the views of Aristotle and Plato in his views on poetry. Poets improve and please, unite the agreeable and the profitable and at once delight and instruct the reader. He believed that great poetry must be both pleasure-giving and morally improving.

Subject matter

Horace makes just two observations about the subject matter of poetry. Let your theme be what it may, provided it is simple and uniform. Choose a theme suited to your powers and ponder long what weight your shoulders refuse to bear and what they can support. He who chooses his theme wisely will find that neither words nor lucid arrangement fail him for sound judgment is the basis and source of good writing.

Kinds of Poetry

Horace believes that poetry has settled kinds with a metre appropriate to each.

The Epic celebrates the exploits of princes and leaders and the sad story of war. The right metre is the one employed by Homer—the dactylic hexameter.

For the mournful elegy and songs of thanksgiving, the elegiac measure—or a couplet of which the first line is a dactylic hexameter and the second a dactylic pentameter.

For tragedy, comedy and satirical verse which dealt with familiar themes, the iambic  metre which has a conversational ease, so necessary to all these three forms, and

For the lyric that sang hymns to the gods and godly men, or songs of victory or love or wine the various lyrical measures

It does not occur to Horace that the literary forms are not eternally fixed and must change with life and customs. In his own century was born a new kind called the sonnet which though a lyric is a different form. Horace never thought about new forms like novel, dramatic monologue, epic-dramas or tragi-comedies.

Language of poetry

Horace insists on the right choice of words and their effective arrangement in composition. A poet is free to use both familiar words and new ones if they satisfy the two requirements of expression—clearness and effectiveness. If no familiar word is found, the poet has the licence to invent a new one. New words will be appreciated if they originate from Greek sources. The poet’s skill lies in making the familiar words appear strange and the strange one familiar.

Nature and Art

Horace also examines the question of the place of genius and art in the success of a poem. Genius meant natural talent and art meant training. Horace believed that each one of these gifts needed the other. But like Aristotle he gives more importance to art than to genius.

HORACE’S OBSERVATIONS ON DRAMA

Horace studies drama under three heads—plot, characterisation and style.

Plot

Should be borrowed from familiar material, preferably the known Greek legends in which the story being already known the author could distinguish himself by originality of treatment.

If an untried theme has to be chosen it has to be consistent from the beginning till the end.It has also to be an indivisible whole in structure, the middle harmonizing with the beginning, and the end with the middle. Only the relevant events of the story should be joined into an unbreakable union.

Events repugnant to sight, or difficulty to believe—a mother murdering her children or a human being changing into an animal should be reported epic-wise rather than shown on the stage. What is heard is less shocking or incredible than what is seen.

Supernatural should not be introduced to solve a human problem unless there is no other way.

He lays down two conditions for the chorus. It should form an integral part of the plot so as not to disturb the unity of action by hanging like a loose thread and that its comments should be directed to a noble end.

Finally, the length of the play should be neither shorter nor longer than five acts, or it will ever win favour and be asked for again. How he arrived at this is difficult to say but he was followed in this by writer and critics alike when the dramatic art was revived after the Renaissance.

Characterization

In characterization, the dramatist could either draw on the ancient Greek legends or invent new characters. Characters were to be true to their traditional prototypes to pass muster with the audience, and in the latter to be true to themselves.

A character who is one at one time and another at another is not a consistent character unless he persists in his changefulness. Horace demands truth to life or verisimilitude—‘ A child in a play should behave like a child, a young man like a young man, a middle-aged man like a middle-aged man, and an old man like an old man’.

Style

For drama, both comedy and tragedy, Horace considered the iambic metre as the most suitable. He recommended it for two reasons—

1. It is close to dialogue, being nearer the spoken speech than any other metre, and

2. With every second syllable pronounced louder than the first, it could be heard above the din of the audience.

Dramatic speech should also observe propriety—a god will speak differently from a mortal, a man from a woman, an aged man from a heated youth, a prosperous merchant from a poor farmer, a man in grief from a man in joy, an angry fellow from a playful one. ‘If you utter words ill suited to your part, I shall either doze or smile’.

HORACE’S OBSERVATIONS ON THE SATIRE

Surprisingly, there is no mention of the satire, the form in which Horace specialized, in Ars Poetica. For that we have to turn to his two books of Satires, where he had earlier dealt with the subject.

Horace considers the satire a new verse-form unknown to the Greeks. He admits that satire existed in a different form in the Greek comedies. However it is clearly Roman than any other form.

According to Horace, a satirist would have

§    wit or the intellectual faculty to please in an unexpected way,

§    the faculty to see the fun of things,

§    vigour or the power to hit hard, and

§    sincerity of expression reflecting the man in the author.

A satire is witty or playfully pleasure-giving and not slanderous or abusive, its object being the correction of foibles and not their punishment. The sin and not the sinner should be the target of attack. It should guard against bitterness on the one hand and sheer buffoonery on the other. In style it should observe three conditions—it should adopt everyday speech, it should be brief and to the point at every step and it should be polished. And lastly, it should be varied in tone, now following one mood, now another, so as not to satiate the reader with one running note.

Estimate of Horace

Horace was the chief spokesman of the Ancients in the battle between the Ancients and the Moderns raging in his day. To him neither of the two traditions appeared adequate enough to fulfil Rome’s great requirements. He therefore sought the best standards in literature, which he found only in ancient Greek classics.

Horace cannot be credited with any logical theory of poetry including dramatic poetry. All is borrowed from the Greek masters, although in one great particular he makes a near approach to originality—his compromise of pleasure and profit as the objects of poetry.

For two other pronouncements he made his mark on the succeeding generations—the need for decorum or proportion, and the need for ceaseless toil as the price of poetic greatness.

The subject chosen must be proportionate to the poet’s powers, the word to the meaning, the style to the subject, the treatment to the literary kind, the sentiments to character, and so on.

As for the need for toil, he would not hesitate to ‘reject that poem which has not been pruned by length of time and many an erasure, and has not been amended ten times over to a perfect polish’. His object was to teach the would-be poet to achieve perfection in his art not by any freak of chance but with a full knowledge.

Lecture notes by Dr. S. Sreekumar, purely meant for scholarly purposes. Refer to other materials on Horace given in earlier blogs.