[To the Editor of the SrEcneron.]
Sni,—Two questions recently discussed in your columns have arrested my attention ; the first, for the raising of which you were yourself responsible, whether Horace was a poet ; and the second, arising out of this, whether Horace is translatable ? With the latter point and whether it is a touchstone of true poetry to be translatable I am less concerned, though I venture to doubt the accuracy of the minor premise, and believe that Horace may be interpreted as successfully as most classic writers. But with all deference to your unhesitating pro- nouncement, which has, it seems, the support of Goethe, I remain astonished at the contention that Horace was not a poet. a creator. It had never occurred to me before to.
doubt his title. Nor am I more repentant of my original sin after reading your letter in the Spectator of June 30th, which as I read it denies him the passion of the artist for his work. (Did he not himself invent the phrase " limae labor ? ") If Pope was impassioned over the lilt of his couplet—I quote your own example—was Horace less so over the cadence of his strophe ? Are "the creative mood of the mind," the "fire in the soul," entirely absent from his work ? I cannot agree.
Let me, however, first clear the ground by admitting that in considering the canons of poetry we must at all times distinguish between characteristics peculiar to the Northern peoples and the spirit of Latin poetry. In the latter we shall find as a rule little of the suggestive, of that appeal to the imagination to feel the unexpressed behind the expressed. Latin poetry is concrete, direct, and clear as the mountain outlines of the Southern landscape. It has strength, nobility and music, it can speak with the frank language of passion, but it seldom "leaves the earth to lose itself in the sky." And Horace was essentially a Latin. With this reservation there are common standards distinguishing poetry from prose. If, in the light of these, among the Latins Lucretius must claim a higher rank, if Virgil is a far greater master of language, if Catullus is supreme in passionate utterance among the poets of all time, need we, therefore, deny to Horace his title to the lesser bays and relegate him to the limbo of mere men of letters ? Many of his lyrics are no doubt full of artifice. The stanzas addressed to his mistresses are so manifestly artificial that they cannot even be dignified by the name of love-poems. And yet, has he not responded unerringly to that desire of the human spirit for harmony and melody in the expression of thought ? Has he not so rendered thoughts which, though they may lack profundity, still ring true and satisfy the instinct of the reader with such a mastery as to make his lines live for ever in our minds ?
I remember how greatly many of his Odes moved me when I was young, and the young have a keen discrimination in poetry. So strongly had he influenced me that I was tempted to make a pilgrimage to Venusium, to Mt. Vultur and the fountain head of his inspiration. I was well aware that he allowed himself to become in due course a laureate of the Empire in its evolution, a sort of unofficial Minister for Foreign Affairs who was employed to form opinion and appeal to emotions and sentiments of patriotism for definite ends. That, even in this capacity, he could have produced effects in verse which have outlived the hour for which they were intended and can still stir a response of the blood after the lapse of so many centuries points to some remarkable quality very rarely present in those effusions of laureates which are designed for specific occasions.
Not even in these is the quality of poetic imagination lacking. In the famous Ode on Regulus Horace dealt with an episode which, if not entirely fictitious, took place some two hundred years before his own time. Surely the intensely dramatic manner in which it is lyrically presented, with a pictorial value uncommon in Latin verse, reveals the poet, the creator, as well as the artist. When he lends language to the divinities of Olympus, does he not make them speak with the voice of gods ? The third Ode of the third book seems to me to leave no doubt on this point. When he is dealing with contemporary events, the least propitious for poetic treatment, as in the last phase of Cleopatra (" ausa et jacentem visere regiam, vultu sereno "), surely he rises to a height of concen- trated dramatic exposition which commands one's admiration. And could any but a poet have written the sonorous chori- arribies of his own proud epitaph, the claim to have built himself a monument, " Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series et fuga temporum."
We may concede that metrically Horace was a borrower, an imitator, if you will, of the lyrists of Greece, that his poetic value was diminished by the subservience of his lyre to politics, that he regarded satire and philosophic verse as his own proper province, and that these limitations, even if he often rises above them in his Odes, may seem to support your contention. But there still remains another aspect of his work which I have left to the last, and which seems to me to constitute his chief claim to be enrolled among the poets. It is the exception, rather than the rule, among the ancien1
Latins to encounter a love of nature for its own sake, a joy in painting the external world in the terms of poetry. With Horace this joyous perception of nature is recurrent, perhaps even malgre mi. If the reflection of Hellenic Pantheism expressed in the verse of the Epicurean is a little insincerc,his pleasure in the world of nature moves him to pure poetry. The second epode, summarizing the happy Country life- " Beatus file qui procul negotiis "—is written con amore, even if in the last four lines he remembers his vocation as a satirist
and apologetically transfers the preceding strophes to the lips of Alfus the money-lender, who after all did not retire from business. But when we refer to the tablets of memory and find without undue search such lines as :— " Rum quae Liris quiets Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnis," or again, not to burden your columns with too many examples : "So! ubi montium Mutaret umbras, et jugs demeret Bobus fatigatis, amicum Tempus agens abeunte curru," do we doubt that we are repeating real poetry, the poetry that conjures up pleasant images and the peace of the evening hills ? It would require more space than you, Sir, could afford me to do real justice to my thesis, but unless a worthier defender shall have anticipated me, let me modestly accept your challenge and stand by a life-long friend.—I am, Sir, &c., to see it closed with so fine a vindication of Horace as that afforded by Sir Rennell Rodd—a poet, a scholar and an
expert in the interpretation of the Latin spirit in literature. —En. Spectator.]
Previous page
