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Horace and His Influence

Chapter 51: NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
By Grant Showerman
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The author offers a concise critical study of Horace, analyzing his personality, poetic techniques, and philosophical outlook as an interpreter of Italian landscape, daily life, religion, popular wisdom, and Hellenism. Chapters examine moral themes such as the vanity of wishes, pleasures, life and purpose, and sources of happiness. A second section traces reception from antiquity through the Middle Ages to modern Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and England, while a final part considers Horace's influence on literary ideals, translation practice, creative method, and private conduct, concluding with reflections on his enduring appeal to a cultivated minority.

'Tis true, composing is the Nobler Part,
But good Translation is no easy Art.

Theodore Martin's rendering of I. 21, To a Jar of Wine, already quoted in part, is an example. Another brilliant success is Sir Stephen E. De Vere's I. 31, Prayer to Apollo, quoted in connection with the poet's religious attitude. No less felicitous are Conington's spirited twelve lines, reproducing III. 26, Vixi puellis:

VIXI PUELLIS NUPER IDONEUS

For ladies' love I late was fit,
And good success my warfare blest;
But now my arms, my lyre I quit,
And hang them up to rust or rest.
Here, where arising from the sea
Stands Venus, lay the load at last,
Links, crowbars, and artillery,
Threatening all doors that dared be fast.
O Goddess! Cyprus owns thy sway,
And Memphis, far from Thracian snow:
Raise high thy lash, and deal me, pray,
That haughty Chloe just one blow!

To translate in this manner is beyond all doubt to deserve the name of poet.

We may go still farther and claim for Horace that he has been a dynamic power in the art of translation, not only as it concerned his own poems, but in its concern of translation as a universal art. No other poet presents such difficulties; no other poet has left behind him so long a train of disappointed aspirants. "Horace remains forever the type of the untranslatable," says Frederic Harrison. Milton attempts the Pyrrha ode in unrhymed meter, and the light and bantering spirit of Horace disappears. Milton is correct, polished, restrained, and pure, but heavy and cold. An exquisite jeu d'esprit has been crushed to death:

What slender youth, bedew'd with liquid odours,
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On faith and changèd gods complain, and seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire!
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who, always vacant, always amiable
Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful! Hapless they
To whom thou untried seem'st fair! Me in my vowed
Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.

But let the attempt be made to avoid the ponderous movement and excessive sobriety of Milton, and to communicate the Horatian airiness, and there is a loss in conciseness and reserve:

What scented youth now pays you court,
Pyrrha, in shady rose-strewn spot
Dallying in love's sweet sport?
For whom that innocent-seeming knot
In which your golden strands you dress
With all the art of artlessness?
Deluded lad! How oft he'll weep
O'er changèd gods! How oft, when dark
The billows roughen on the deep,
Storm-tossed he'll see his wretched bark!
Unused to Cupid's quick mutations,
In store for him what tribulations!
But now his joy is all in you;
He thinks your heart is purest gold;
Expects you'll always be love-true,
And never, never, will grow cold.
Poor mariner on summer seas,
Untaught to fear the treacherous breeze!
Ah, wretched whom your Siren call
Deludes and brings to watery woes!
For me—yon plaque on Neptune's wall
Shows I've endured the seaman's throes.
My drenchèd garments hang there, too:
Henceforth I shun the enticing blue.

It is not improbable that the struggle of the centuries with the difficulties of rendering Horace has been a chief influence in the development of our present exacting ideal of translation; so exacting indeed that it has defeated its purpose. By emphasis upon the impossibility of rendering accurately the content of poetry in the form of poetry, scholastic discussion of the theory of translation has led first to despair, and next from despair to the scientific and unaesthetic principle of rendering into exact prose all forms of literature alike. The twentieth century has thus opened again and settled in opposite manner the old dispute of the French D'Alembert and the Italian Salvini in the seventeen-hundreds, which was resolved by actual results in favor of D'Alembert and fidelity to spirit as opposed to Salvini and fidelity to letter.

In what we have said thus far of the dynamic power of Horace in literary creation, we have dealt with visible results. We should not be misled, however, by the satisfaction of seeing plainly in imitation, adaptation, translation, quotation, or real creation, the mark of Horatian influence. The discipline of the literary ideal in the individual, and the moulding of character in literature as an organism, are effects less clearly visible, but, after all, of greater value. If the bread and meat of human sustenance should appear in the body as recognizable bread and meat, it would hardly be a sign of health. Its value is in the strength conferred by assimilation. With all respect and gratitude for creation manifestly due to Horace, we must also realize that this is but a superficial result as compared with the chastening restraint of expression and the health and vigor of content that have been encouraged by allegiance to him, but are known by no special marks. It is no bad sign when we turn the pages of the Oxford Selections of Verse in the various modern languages and find but few examples of the visible sort of Horatian influence. To detect the more invisible sort requires the keen eye and the sensitive spirit of the poet-scholar, but the reader not so specially qualified may have faith that it exists. With Goethe writing of Horace as a "great, glowing, noble poet, full of heart, who with the power of his song sweeps us along, lifts us, and inspires us," with Menéndez y Pelayo in Spain defining the Horatian lyric, whether Christian or pagan, by "sobriety of thought, rhythmic lightness, the absence of artificial adornment, unlimited care in execution, and brevity," and holding this ideal aloft as the influence needed by the modern lyric, and with no countries or periods without leaders in poetry and criticism uttering similar sentiments and exhortations, it would be difficult not to believe in a substantial Horatian effect on literary culture, however slight the external marks.

3. Horace in the Living of Men

Let us take leave of these illustrations of the dynamic power of Horace in letters, and consider in conclusion his power as shown directly in the living of men.

First of all, we may include in the dynamic working of the poet his stirring of the heart by pure delight. If this is not the highest and the ultimate effect of poetry, it is after all the first and the essential effect. Without the giving of pleasure, no art becomes really the possession of men and the instrument of good. As a matter of fact, many of the most frequently and best translated Odes are devoid both of moral intent, and, in the ordinary sense, of moral effect. To Pyrrha, Soracte Covered with Snow, Carpe Diem, To Glycera, Integer Vitae, To Chloe, Horace and Lydia, The Bandusian Spring, Faunus, To an Old Wine-Jar, The End of Love, and Beatus Ille are merely jeux-d'esprit of the sort that for the moment lighten and clear the spirit. The same may be said of The Bore and the Journey to Brundisium among the Satires, and of many of the Epistles.

But these trifles light as air are nevertheless of the sort for which mankind is eternally grateful, because men are convinced, without process of reason, that by them the fibre of life is rested and refined and strengthened. We may call this familiar effect by the less familiar name of re-creative. What lover of Horace has not felt his inmost being cleansed and refreshed by the simple and exquisite art of The Bandusian Spring, whose cameo of sixty-eight Latin words in four stanzas is an unapproachable model of vividness, elegance, purity, and restraint:

O crystal-bright Bandusian Spring,
Worthy thou of the mellow wine
And flowers I give to thy pure depths:
A kid the morrow shall be thine.
The day of lustful strife draws on,
The starting horn begins to gleam;
In vain! His red blood soon shall tinge
The waters of thy clear, cold stream.
The dog-star's fiercely blazing hour
Ne'er with its heat doth change thy pool;
To wandering flock and ploughworn steer
Thou givest waters fresh and cool.
Thee, too, 'mong storied founts I'll place,
Singing the oak that slants the steep,
Above the hollowed home of rock
From which thy prattling streamlets leap.

Or who does not live more abundant life at reading the Chloe Ode, with its breath of the mountain air and its sense of the brooding forest solitude, and its exquisite suggestion of timid and charming girlhood?

"You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy
As some stray fawn that seeks its mother
Through trackless woods. If spring-winds sigh,
It vainly strives its fears to smother;—
"Its trembling knees assail each other
When lizards stir the bramble dry;—
You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy
As some stray fawn that seeks its mother.
"And yet no Libyan lion I,—
No ravening thing to rend another;
Lay by your tears, your tremors by,—
A husband's better than a brother;
Nor shun me, Chloe, wild and shy
As some stray fawn that seeks its mother."

But there are those who demand of poetry a usefulness more easily measurable than that of recreation. In their opinion, it is improvement rather than pleasure which is the end of art, or at least improvement as well as pleasure. In this, indeed, the poet himself is inclined to agree: "He who mingles the useful with the pleasant by delighting and likewise improving the reader, will get every vote."

Let us look for these more concrete results, and see how Horace the person still lives in the character of men, as well as Horace the poet in the character of literature.

To appreciate this better, we must return to the theme of Horace's personal quality. We have already seen that in no other poet so fully as in Horace is the reality of personal contact to be felt. The lyrics, as well as the Epistles and Satires, are almost without exception addressed to actual persons. So successful is this attempt of the poet to speak from the page that it needs but the slightest touch of imagination to create the illusion that we ourselves are addressed. We feel, as if at first hand, all the qualities that went to make up Horace's character,—his good will, good faith, and good-nature, the depth and constancy of his friendship, his glow of admiration for the brave deed, the pure heart, and the steadfast purpose, his patient endurance of ill, his delight in men and things, his affection for what is simple and sincere, his charity for human weakness, his mildly ironical mood, as of one who is aware that he himself is not undeserving of the good-humored censure he passes on others, his clear vision of the sources of happiness, his reposeful acquiescence, and his elusive humor, which never bursts into laughter and yet is never far away from it. We are taken into his confidence, like old friends. He describes himself and his ways; he lets us share in his own vision of himself and in his amusement at the bustling and self-deluded world, and subtly conciliates us by making us feel ourselves partakers with him in the criticism of life. There is no better example in literature of personal magnetism.

And he is more than merely personal. He is sincere and unreserved. Were he otherwise, the delight of intimate acquaintance with him would be impossible. It is the real Horace whom we meet,—not a person on the literary stage, with buskins, pallium, and mask. Horace holds the mirror up to himself; rather, not to himself, but to nature in himself. Every side of his personality appears: the artist, and the man; the formalist, and the skeptic; the spectator, and the critic; the gentleman in society, and the son of the collector; the landlord of five hearths, and the poet at court; the stern moralist, and the occasional voluptuary; the vagabond, and the conventionalist. He is independent and unhampered in his expression. He has no exalted social position to maintain, and blushes neither for parentage nor companions. His philosophy is not School-made, and the fear of inconsistency never haunts him. His religion requires no subscription to dogma; he does not even take the trouble to define it. Politically, his duties have come to be also his desires. He will accept the favors of the Emperor and his ministers if they do not compromise his liberty or happiness. If they withdraw their gifts, he knows how to do without them, because he has already done without them. He conceals nothing, pretends to nothing, makes no excuses, suffers from no self-consciousness, exercises no reserve. There are few expressions of self in all literature so spontaneous and so complete. Horace has left us a portrait of his soul much more perfect than that of his person. It is a truthful portrait, with both shadow and light.

And there is a corollary to Horace's frankness that constitutes another element in the charm of his personality. His very unreserve is the proof of an open and kindly heart. To call him a satirist at all is to necessitate his own definition of satire, "smilingly to tell the truth." At least in his riper work, there is no trace of bitterness. He laughs with some purpose and to some purpose, but his laughter is not sardonic. Sane judgment and generous experience tell him that the foibles of mankind are his own as well as theirs, and are not to be changed by so slight a means as a railing tongue. He reflects that what in himself has produced no very disastrous results may without great danger be forgiven also in them.

It is this intimate and warming quality in Horace that prompts Hagedorn to call him "my friend, my teacher, my companion," and to take the poet with him on country walks as if he were a living person:

Horaz, mein Freund, mein Lehrer, mein Begleiter,
Wir gehen aufs Land. Die Tage sind so heiter;

and Nietzsche to compare the atmosphere of the Satires and Epistles to the "geniality of a warm winter day"; and Wordsworth to be attracted by his appreciation of "the value of companionable friendship"; and Andrew Lang to address to him the most personal of literary letters; and Austin Dobson to give his Horatian poems the form of personal address; and countless students and scholars and men out of school and immersed in the cares of life to carry Horace with them in leisure hours. Circum praecordia ludit, "he plays about the heartstrings," said Persius, long before any of these, when the actual Horace was still fresh in the memory of men.

If we were to take detailed account of certain qualities missed in Horace by the modern reader, we should be even more deeply convinced of his power of personal attraction. He is not a Christian poet, but a pagan. Faith in immortality and Providence, penitence and penance, and humanitarian sentiment, are hardly to be found in his pages. He is sometimes too unrestrained in expression. The unsympathetic or unintelligent critic might charge him with being commonplace.

Yet these defects are more apparent than real, and have never been an obstacle to souls attracted by Horace. His pages are charged with sympathy for men. His lapses in taste are not numerous, and are, after all, less offensive than those of European letters today, after the coming of sin with the law. And he is not commonplace, but universal. His content is familiar matter of today as well as of his own time. His delightful natural settings are never novel, romantic, or forced; we have seen them all, in experience or in literature, again and again, and they make familiar and intimate appeal. Phidyle is neither ancient nor modern, Latin nor Teuton; she is all of them at once. The exquisite expressions of friendship in the odes to a Virgil, or a Septimius, are applicable to any age or nationality, or any person. The story of the town mouse and country mouse is always old and always new, and always true. Mutato nomine de te may be said of it, and of all Horace's other stories; alter the names, and the story is about you. Their application and appeal are universal.

"Without sustained inspiration, without profundity of thought, without impassioned song," writes Duff, "he yet pierces to the universal heart.... His secret lies in sanity rather than impetus. Kindly and shrewd observer of the manifold activities of life, he draws vignettes therefrom and passes judgments thereon which awaken undying interest. Non omnis moriar—he remains fresh because he is human."

Horace's philosophy of life may be imperfect for the militant humanitarian and the Christian, but, as a matter of fact, it is a complete and perfect thing in itself. Horace does not fret or fume. He is not morbid or unpleasantly melancholy. It is true that "his tempered and polished expression of common experience, free from transports and free from despairs, speaks more forcibly to ripe middle age than to youth," but it is not without its appeal also to youth. Horace sums up an attitude toward existence which all men, of whatever nation or time, can easily understand, and which all, at some moment or other, sympathize with. Whether they believe in his philosophy of life or not, whether they put it into practice or not, it is always and everywhere attractive,—attractive because founded on clear and sympathetic vision of the joys and sorrows that are the common lot of men, attractive because of its frankness and manly courage, and, above all, attractive because of its object. So long as the one great object of human longing is peace of mind and heart, no philosophy which recognizes it will be without followers. The Christian is naturally unwilling to adopt the Horatian philosophy as a whole, but with its summum bonum, and with many of its recommendations, he is in perfect accord. Add Christian faith to it, or add it, so far as is consonant, to Christian faith, and either is enriched.

We are better able now to appreciate the dynamic power of Horace the person. We may see it at work in the fostering of friendly affection, in the deepening of love for favorite spots of earth, in the encouragement of righteous purpose, in the true judging of life's values.

Horace is the poet of friendship. With his address to "Virgil, the half of my soul," his references to Plotius, Varius, and Virgil as the purest and whitest souls of earth, his affectionate messages in Epistle and Ode, he sets the heart of the reader aglow with love for his friends. "Nothing, while in my right mind, would I compare to the delight of a friend!" What numbers of men have had their hearts stirred to deeper love by the matchless ode to Septimius:

"Septimius, who with me would brave
Far Gades, and Cantabrian land
Untamed by Rome, and Moorish wave
That whirls the sand;
"Fair Tibur, town of Argive kings,
There would I end my days serene,
At rest from seas and travelings,
And service seen.
"Should angry Fate those wishes foil,
Then let me seek Galesus, sweet
To skin-clad sheep, and that rich soil,
The Spartan's seat.
"Oh, what can match the green recess,
Whose honey not to Hybla yields,
Whose olives vie with those that bless
Venafrum's fields?
"Long springs, mild winters glad that spot
By Jove's good grace, and Aulon, dear
To fruitful Bacchus, envies not
Falernian cheer.
"That spot, those happy heights desire
Our sojourn; there, when life shall end,
Your tear shall dew my yet warm pyre,
Your bard and friend."

And what numbers of men have taken to their hearts from the same ode the famous

Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes
Angulus ridet,—
Yonder little nook of earth
Beyond all others smiles on me,—

and expressed through its perfect phrase the love they bear their own beloved nook of earth. "Happy Horace!" writes Sainte-Beuve on the margin of his edition, "what a fortune has been his! Why, because he once expressed in a few charming verses his fondness for the life of the country and described his favorite corner of earth, the lines composed for his own pleasure and for the friend to whom he addressed them have laid hold on the memory of all men and have become so firmly lodged there that one can conceive no others, and finds only those when he feels the need of praising his own beloved retreat!"

To speak of sterner virtues, what a source of inspiration to righteousness and constancy men have found in the apt and undying phrases of Horace! "Cornelius de Witt, when confronting the murderous mob; Condorcet, perishing in the straw of his filthy cell; Herrick, at his far-away old British revels; Leo, during his last days at the Vatican, and a thousand others," strengthened their resolution by repeating Iustum et tenacem:

"The man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamors can control
No threat'ning tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent....
Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurtling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors then unfurl'd,
He would unmoved, unawed behold:
The flames of an expiring world
Again in crashing chaos roll'd,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurl'd,
Must light his glorious funeral pile:
Still dauntless midst the wreck of earth he'd smile."

Of this passage Stemplinger records thirty-one imitations. How many have had their patriotism strengthened by Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, the verse which is aptly found in modern Rome on the monument to those who fell at Dogali. How many have been supported and comforted in calamity and sorrow by the poet's immortal words of consolation on the death of Quintilius:

Durum: sed levius fit patientia
Quicquid corrigere est nefas,—
Ah, hard it is! but patience lends
Strength to endure what Heaven sends.

The motto of Warren Hastings was Mens aequa in arduis,—An even temper in times of trial. Even humorous use of these phrases has served a purpose. The French minister, compelled to resign, no doubt drew substantial consolation from Virtute me involvo, when he turned it to fit his case:

In the robe of my virtue I wrap me round
A solace for loss of all I had;
But ah! I realize I've found
What it really means to be lightly clad!

But the most pronounced effect of Horace's dynamic power is its inspiration to sane and truthful living. Life seems a simple thing, yet there are many who miss the paths of happiness and wander in wretched discontent because they are not bred to distinguish between the false and the real. We have seen the lesson of Horace: that happiness is not from without, but from within; that it is not abundance that makes riches, but attitude; that the acceptation of worldly standards of getting and having means the life of the slave; that the fraction is better increased by division of the denominator than by multiplying the numerator; that unbought riches are better possessions than those the world displays as the prizes most worthy of striving for. No poet is so full of inspiration as Horace for those who have glimpsed these simple and easy yet little known secrets of living. Men of twenty centuries have been less dependent on the hard-won goods of this world because of him, and lived fuller and richer lives. Surely, to give our young people this attractive example of sane solution of the problem of happy living is to leaven the individual life and the life of the social mass.

IV. CONCLUSION

We have visualized the person of Horace and made his acquaintance. We have seen in his character and in the character of his times the sources of his greatness as a poet. We have seen in him the interpreter of his own times and the interpreter of the human heart in all times. We have traced the course of his influence through the ages as both man and poet. We have seen in him not only the interpreter of life, but a dynamic power that makes for the love of men, for righteousness, and for happier living. We have seen in him an example of the word made flesh. "He has forged a link of union," writes Tyrrell, "between intellects so diverse as those of Dante, Montaigne, Bossuet, La Fontaine, Voltaire, Hooker, Chesterfield, Gibbon, Wordsworth, Thackeray."

To know Horace is to enter into a great communion of twenty centuries,—the communion of taste, the communion of charity, the communion of sane and kindly wisdom, the communion of the genuine, the communion of righteousness, the communion of urbanity and of friendly affection.

"Farewell, dear Horace; farewell, thou wise and kindly heathen; of mortals the most human, the friend of my friends and of so many generations of men."

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following groups of references are not meant as annotations in the usual sense. Those to the text of the poet are for such persons as wish to increase their acquaintance with Horace by reading at first hand the principal poems which have inspired the essayist's conclusions. The others are for those who desire to view in detail the working of the Horatian influence.

Besides the works mentioned above, reference should be made to:

  • Campaux, A., Des raisons de la popularité d'Horace en France. Paris, 1895.
  • D'alton, J.F., Horace and His Age. London, 1917.
  • McCrea, N.G., Horatian Criticism of Life. New York, 1917.
  • Stemplinger, Eduard, Horaz im Urteil der Jahrhunderte. Leipzig, 1921.
  • Taylor, Henry Osborn, The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages. New York, 1903.[2]
  • The Century Horace.

and, also, to the two following works, cited and quoted in the text:

  • Duff, J. Wight, A Literary History of Rome. London, 1910.[2] (p. 545)
  • Tyrrell, R.Y., Latin Poetry. Boston, (lectures delivered at The Johns Hopkins University, 1893). (p. 164)

Note: Translations of Horace, not otherwise assigned or not enclosed in quotation marks, are those of G.S.

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