(65 - 8 BC)
1.4.2. Poetry: nature and subject matter
1.4.5. The poet, the critic, and ridicule
Horace was the friend of Maecenas and Caesar Augustus. His poetry was a kind of classical reaction to the baroque poetry of the Alexandrian era. His main critical work is the verse epistle to the Piso family commonly known as Ars poetica or De arte poetica. Another interesting work of his is an epistle to Augustus (Epistles II.I) which is concerned mainly with Latin drama.
Horace does not care much about philosophical questions. He is concerned with the mundane aspect of poetry; he is writing in a time of aristocratic patronage, and one in which "the wise and the fools, all of us write poetry," as he complains. The main role of criticism is for him to give advice to the aristocratic poet not to compromise his reputation by writing bad verse and be ridiculed.
The Ars poetica is written somewhat at random; it may be divided in three sections, dealing with poetry (poiesis or matter), the poem (poiema or form) and the poet (poietes), respectively. The treatment is a loose and conversational one, and to that extent it is "an Art written without art," as Scaliger used to say.
The medieval and neoclassical critics will develop the tradition of the ars poetica turning it into a special poetical genre: that which is concerned with the principles of poetry itself. Boileau's Art poétique, or Pope's Essay on Criticism will be typical examples. We must not forget that all these works are poetry as well as criticism: they try to formulate critical principles in a pointed and witty way, they seek to amuse, as well as to instructæand in doing this they enact the principles of the Horatian tradition they preach. They are of a much lighter nature than Aristotle's Poetics .
Horace's approach is more consonant than Aristotle's to the general literary milieu of the Renaissance, and he will be more widely known and followed. This will have some consequences, because Horace is more superficial and more prone to giving rules than Aristotle was.
Poetry need not tie itself to actual facts; poets have the license of invention, but they must use it to create a unified whole. Parts must correspond to the whole, even though in Horace "parts" and "whole" do not have the technical sense we found in the Poetics. Horace stresses the importance of guiding principles, of "art" in the sense of "knowledge." The main role of art is to keep everything in its right place and give it its right share in the whole. This idea of technical knowledge as a principle of restraint and order we call decorum : it is a classicist conception par excellence. "Decorum" is probably the key word in Horace's approach to literature, and we can link it to Aristotle's idea of the proper nature of things. In the neoclassical critics of the seventeenth century we will find the general belief that there are two principles at war in the poet's head: fancy and judgement, and that the role of judgement is to restrain the flights of fancy within the boundaries of art. There is an insinuation of this in Horace, but here the terms are simply native gift and art or technical knowledge. There is no mythology of inspiration attached to Horace's idea of genius. And the relationship between the gift of the poet and his technical expertise is usually seen as one of complementarity, rather that opposition. Art, in the work or (understood as technique) in the poet, is the supplier of what is lacking in nature. Art keeps grand style from becoming bombastic, brevity, which in itself is a merit, from being inintelligible, smoothness from becoming blandness. It also teaches a poet not to choose a subject which is beyond his powers (inventio ), to give the right distribution to the parts (dispositio ) and to keep a golden middle concerning the use of words (elocutio ): Horace authorizes moderate coinage and novelty, following usage, and understands the necessary evolution of language. Decorum, then, is not necessarily an enemy of novelty: the best effects, Horace says, can be obtained when a well-known word is skilfully set so that it looks as though it were new.
Decorum also dictates the differences between the genres. By Horace's time, the classical list of genres had been developed. This includes epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric, pastoral, satire, elegy and epigram. Each has its own rules, it is not clear whether by nature or by convention:
The changing parts and tone of each kind of poetry have had their limits set . . . . Each has had its becoming place alloted: let them keep to it.
But Horace immediately qualifies this rule with a much more subtle observation; he says that tragedy and comedy may sometimes achieve their best effects by approaching one another.
Horace is presupposing a fit audience who is capable of understanding the rules; it is not the audience at large-"I hate the ignorant common people, and I keep away from them" (Odes, III.i)-but rather an ideal aristocratic audience whose taste he is contributing to educate.
Horace gives some advice on imitation. In contrast to Aristotle or Plato, who spoke of imitation of nature or ideals, Horace means imitation of other authors. Of course, he says, you may imitate from nature and may wish to invent your own themes, but it is safer to learn from others. He warns against choosing bad models, and he praises Homer because he knows how to give unity to his work mingling fact and fiction, and because he knows how to be lively by virtue of restraining himself:
He does not begin (...) the war of Troy from the twin eggs [ab ovo ]. He ever hastens to the issue, and hurries his hearers into the midst of the story [in medias res ], just as if they knew it before; and what he thinks his touch will never turn to gold, that he lets alone.
It must be kept in mind that Horace is not advocating a frozen kind of beauty: he thinks that only the poems which follow the rules of art will be able to draw the hearer's feelings; charming a cultivated audience is the true test of beauty.
It is surprising that Horace being a "lyrical" poet he skips lyrical forms in his account of poetry and devotes instead most of his treatise to drama, a genre which was neither dominant in Rome nor practised by Horace himself. This may be one sign of the conventional nature of the Ars poetica.
Horace's discussion of drama is also based on decorum. He complains of silly plays with complicated scenery, multitudinary casts and disjointed plots, and he gives some clear-cut laws which will become the credo of neoclassical writers:
· characters in comedy must be typical, and speak and behave according to their age and nature;
· traditional characters in tragedy must not be altered;
· invented characters must be consistent;
· unbelievable or immoral actions must be narrated and not shown on stage;
· plays must have 5 acts;
· the deus ex machina must not be used in unworthy occasions;
· only three actors can speak at one time in a scene;
· the chorus must behave like one of the actors, and side with the good characters.
Much of this was found in Aristotle in a slightly less categoric formulation.
Horace writes a thumbnail history of Greek and Roman theatre (see also the epistle to Augustus), and recognizes the superiority of Greek models; Roman poets and playwrights he sees in general as rude and careless as far as technique is concerned.
Being a Roman and a mediator between his age and the superior Greek culture of the past, Horace is already to some extent a neoclassical writer: he has a classical tradition behind him, models to follow and to adapt, which is the basic defining trait of neoclassicism. However, Horace is not in favour of an unreasonable admiration to past writers. He says that they often have important defects, which must be criticised and not foolishly justified. He defends novelty and change; we have here a classical forerunner of the defence of the moderns against the ancients. This will be remembered in the long debate between the classicists and the moderns during the late seventeenth century. What is more, Horace says that in favouring change he is following the example of the Greeks, the classics themselves: "If novelty had been as despised by the Greeks as it is by us, would we have anything old?"
Horace presents us an ideal of the poet as a man of society, who faces a public of learned and cultivated aristocrats. He laughs at extravagant "bohemian" poets who claim to be inspired by the Muses; he advises them to cut their hair and their nails, and to wash without any fear of washing their inspiration away. We may notice that now the theories of inspiration linger on as myths, but that they are already an object of ridicule. Now it is the natural gift of the poet, and not an external inspiration, which is opposed to technical knowledge. Neoptolemus, one of Horace's influences, distinguished the technically skilful from the born poet. Horace is insisting on the necessity of rules, but it is not that he does not believe in the necessity of a natural gift: "the source and fountainhead of writing well is wise thinking." But much study and care are also needed. One must not trust one's own judgement, but rather ask friends for their sincere opinion before one ventures to publication, and , in any case, let the poems lay for a long time before you decide anything. The bad poet falls to the depths of ridicule.
Horace claims that there is no use for bad or middling poets : "to be second-rate is a privilege which neither men nor gods nor bookstalls ever allowed." Better write nothing. This is the kind of advice we would not find in Aristotle; Horace is writing an entirely different type of criticism. Horace gives some advice to critics, too. Criticism must be "a whetstone,which can make steel sharp, though itself cannot cut." The critic must never try to flatter the poet when asked for advice, but rather say their sincere opinion. The flatterer is the worst enemy of the poet. On the other hand, they need not be too harsh critics of petty faults in a good work. Not all works are equally ambitious and not all follow the same rules: we must see them in context and not ask from them the kind of pleasure they cannot provide. However, Horace concludes, the poet is free not to listen to criticism and make a fool of himself: "Poets should have the right and the power if they choose to destroy themselves. To save a man against his will is as bad as to murder him." He concludes the work with a caricature of the bad poet trying to read his poems to people who escape from him. This is a caricature of the inspired poet, the Democritean divine madman, and it is advice as well as satire.
Horace's definition of the aim of poetry is perhaps the most widely known, though not often in the original:
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.
These are three different aims, and not just one ("delectare et docere"), as is often affirmed. It is clear, however, that Horace favours the third, a combination of pleasure and profit. In his epistle to Augustus (a more formal piece than the Art of poetry), he speaks of two aims: to teach, and to placate the anger of the gods. The poets were the first civilisers of mankind, those who taught men to tell good from bad, to establish laws and to worship the gods. Horace interprets in this way the myths of Orpheus and Amphion.
But there is another aim of poetry which is more pervasive in the Ars poetica. Writing good poems which instruct or delight is only the means to the real end, which is to achieve fame and immortality through one's works. This aspiration is more in tune with Horace's urban approach to poetry and criticism, and can be seen more clearly in some of his odes, for instance "Exegi monumentum aere perennius":
(Odes III.30)