Ars Poetica

by Horatius, P.H. Schrijvers (Translator and contributor)

Latin - Dutch

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Writing, Literary Criticism, Roman

93 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 20

About the author

Odes and Satires Roman lyric poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus exerted a major influence on English poetry.

(December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC)

Horace, the son of a freed slave, who owned a small farm, later moved to Rome to work as a coactor, a middleman between buyers and sellers at auctions, receiving 1% of the purchase price for his services. The father ably spent considerable money on education of his son, accompanied him first to Rome for his primary education, and then sent him to Athens to study Greek and philosophy.

After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Horace joined the army, serving under the generalship of Brutus. He fought as a staff officer (tribunus militum) in the battle of Philippi. Alluding to famous literary models, he later claimed to throw away his shield and to flee for his salvation. When people declared an amnesty for those who fought against the victorious Octavian Augustus, Horace returned to Italy, only to find his estate confiscated and his father likely then dead. Horace claims that circumstances reduced him to poverty.

Nevertheless, he meaningfully gained a profitable lifetime appointment as a scriba quaestorius, an official of the Treasury; this appointment allowed him to practice his poetic art.

Horace was a member of a literary circle that included Virgil and Lucius Varius Rufus, who introduced him to Maecenas, friend and confidant of Augustus. Maecenas became his patron and close friend and presented Horace with an estate near Tibur in the Sabine Hills (contemporary Tivoli). A few months after the death of Maecenas, Horace died in Rome. Upon his death bed, Horace with no heirs relinquished his farm to Augustus, his friend and the emperor, for imperial needs, and it stands today as a spot of pilgrimage for his admirers.

Reviews

[Carmine R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sorpresa dal passato

"E' sempre stato permesso imprimere nel nostro linguaggio il sigillo dell'oggi. Come nel volger degli anni i boschi mutan le foglie e a cader son le prime, così muore il tempo dell'antica parola e, com'è delle giovani vite, a fiorire sono le ultime nate. È la morte il nostro destino, e con noi ciò che è nostro."

"L'avarizia non dunque il tuo male: sei assolto. E con questo? Scampi forse dagli altri vizi? è privo il tuo cure della vana ambizione? Ignora il terrore della morte? La collera ignora o sa farsi beffe dei sogni...? Sai contare lieto i tuoi anni? Perdonare gli amici? Divenire migliore e più dolce col passo imminente della vecchiaia? Hai ormai abbastanza scherzato, abbastanza mangiato e bevuto: è tempo che tu te ne vada"

"Fra le speranze e gli affanni, fra ciò che temi o t'adira, fa conto che ogni giorno che vivi per te sia quello supremo: grato sopravverà, domani, l'ora in cui non avevi sperato"

Non ho la pretesa di effettuare un'analisi profonda e inattaccabile sotto il profilo storico o filosofico: il mio retaggio scolastico impedisce, inevitabilmente, di essere credibile; la stessa goffaggine iniziale, durante il primo approccio, è un'ulteriore conferma della volontà di mantenere un profilo basso ed umile.
"L'Arte poetica" di Orazio risulta, a tutti gli effetti, una corrispondenza epistolare; e scopo del componimento è il veicolare una riflessione a tutto tondo sulla poesia, analizzando la stessa in ogni sua minima sfaccettatura e componente.
Partendo dal concetto di omogeneità e coerenza nelle parti che compongono il tutto, Orazio dipana i propri pensieri ed estende la riflessione non solo sulla credibilità dei personaggi narrati, ma soprattutto alle modalità di esposizione della propria opera: il poeta, figura comunque autonoma dal giudizio del volgo e dalla volubilità delle mode (presenti oggi come nell'Avanti Cristo), deve assolutamente mostrare umiltà nell'ispirazione dei grandi del passato - Omero è spesso chiamato in causa -, oltre ad accettare la critica di chi può garantirgli un beneficio a livello di formazione.
Unire l'utile al dilettevole: messaggio principale di Orazio, il quale passa anche attraverso la scelta di utilizzare un registro linguistico medio, è proprio quello di abbracciare un pubblico ampio, auspicando che il ruolo della poesia - di tipo formativo ed educativo - non venga sacrificato come successo con l'evoluzione della commedia antica.
Il fallimento della commedia, secondo Orazio, è identificabile soprattutto nell'assenza del labor limae, cioè tutto quel lavoro di rifinitura stilistico e contenutistico capace di garantire sobrietà nella prosa nonché precisione chirurgica dei contenuti da offrire all'ascoltatore.
L'opera di Orazio, notevolmente più profonda e complessa rispetto al mio misero commento, abbatte qualunque dubbio di anacronismo che potrebbe sorgere nel lettore, dimostrandosi meritevole dello spazio ritagliatosi nella letteratura universale.

[Emad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highlights:

Take up a subject equal to your strength, O writers,
And mull over well what loads your shoulders will bear,
And what they will not.

The author of the promised work must choose and discard.

Will the Roman refuse the license to Vergil and Vaius
And grant it to Plautus and Caecilius?

It isn't enough for poems to be things of beauty:
Let them STUN the hearer and lead his heart where they will.
A man's face is wreathed in smiles when he sees someone smile;
It twists when he sees someone cry; if you expect me
To burst into tears, you have to feel sorrow yourself.

The order and inner coherence and careful connection
Are what make your writing take hold: your major success
Consists in mastering the language that is common to all.

The better-class patrons may take offense (the freeborn
The knights, the wealthy) and refuse to award the crown,
As it were unwilling to see in a favorable light
What the roast-beans-and-chestnuts crowd finds so entertaining.

Shall I therefore run wild and write without any restrictions
Or consider that everyone is bound to see my mistakes
And cautiously keep well within the bounds of indulgence?

What a fool am I to purge myself of my bile
Seasonably, every spring! If I'd only refrained,
I'd be unsurpassed as a poet. But perhaps it's not worth it
To lose your head and then write verses instead,
So I'll play the whetstone's part, giving edge to the steel,
Without being able to cut. And though I write nothing,
I'll point out the writer's mission and function and show
Him where his best material lies and what
Nurtures and shapes the poet, what best accords
With his role, what worst, where the right path goes,
and the wrong.

The Principal source of all good writing is wisdom.
A man who has learned what is owing to country and friends,
The love that is due a parent, a brother, a guest,
What the role of a judge or senator chiefly requires,
What part is played by the general sent off to war,
Will surely know how to write the appropriate lines for each of his players.

I will bid the intelligent student
Of the imitative art to look to the model of life
And see how men act, to bring his speeches alive.

Fictions that border on truth will generate pleasure,
So your play is not to expect automatic assent
To whatever comes into its head, nor to draw forth a child
Still alive from Lamia's stomach after she's dined.
Our elders will chase off the stage what is merely delightful;
Our young bloods will pass up the works that merely make sense.
He wins every vote who combines the sweet and the useful,
Charming the reader and warning him equally well.

A poem is much like a painting: one will please more
If you see it close up, another if seen from a distance;
One prefers being viewed in the shade, while the other
Prefers being seen in broad daylight and doesn't shrink back
From piercing glance of the critic. One pleased once;
The other will always please, though it's called for ten times.

So a poem, designed and destined to afford the soul
Genuine pleasure, if it falls somewhat short of the top,
Sinks right down to the bottom.

If you ever do write something though,
Be sure to expose it to such ears as Tarpa the Censor's,
And your father's, and mine. Then put the parchment away
For a good nine years! What you haven't yet published
You can always destroy, but once a word is let go,
It can't be called back.

The question is raised
Whether nature or art makes a poem deserving of praise.
I fail to see what good either learning can be
Which is not veined with natural wealth or primitive genius.
Each needs the other's help and friendly alliance.

And if you would write,
Don't ever forget: There's a motive concealed in the fox.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Passei a tarde estudando essa Arte Poética do Horácio porque um livro desses a gente não lê, estuda. Explico. A tradução e as notas do sempre magnânimo Guilherme Gontijo Flores é sempre um passo à frente na chamada leitura apenas por prazer. O tradutor é tão amplamente qualificado que até suas notas de rodapé nos auxiliam de maneira a melhor sorver o texto poético e, não só, ampliam o nosso conhecimento da interpretação, das referências, do aspecto formal, tanto que me parece pouco elogiar apenas como uma grande edição essa da Autêntica. Até faz me lamentar ter sofrido tanto nas aulas de latim da minha graduação na UEL.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon reading Horace's The Art of Poetry, I realized that this man was a great people watcher. Having understood what a great writer needed to do to satisfy his audience, it would only be natural that he would know what to look for which made him a great observer. Out of all the classical philosophers, Horace would be the one I can agree with the most because I would like to think that literature is meant for pleasure as well as for education. Not only that but I agree with his point that some writers try to overdo it in an attempt to get some time under the limelight. Horace suggested that writers should be unique in their writing, but above all, they shouldn't attempt to be another Homer or Virgil. After all, there can only be one of those guys, and it's up to you to make a name for yourself.

[Alp Turgut · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romalı ünlü şair Horace / Horatius'un sanatın kimin için olduğunu şiirsel bir dille tartıştığı eseri "Ars Poetica - Şiir Sanatı", Homeros'un izinden giden ve içinde birçok eski şaire referans yapan genel olarak güzel bir eser. Kısa olması sebebiyle herkesin rahatlıkla göz atabileceği eserde sanat dalı hakkında yapılan bazı gözlemlerin hala konuşulduğunu farkettikçe gerçekten şaşırıyorsunuz. Örnek olarak bir sanat eserinin kalite ölçüsü ne olması gibi. Buna rağmen içerik olarak çok da zengin olduğunu söylemek zor. Benim gibi Latin Edebiyatını merak edenlere.

22.07.2016
İstanbul, Türkiye

Alp Turgut

http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...

[Angie Booktastic]

I cannot give this book a proper rating because I am still trying to wrap my head around it

[Bego · Rating 2 out of 5]

La traducción y el aparato crítico bien, pero algunas cosas algo raras

[Ezops · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aşırılığı, esriklikten gelen deliliği, söz düzeni ve biçimlerinin uygun kullanılmamasının bayağılığını kısaca şiirde doğallıktan uzaklaşan her durumu eleştiren ve ilhamın yalnızca eğitimle gerçek bir şiire dönüşebileceğini savunan bir şair Horatius. Biraz katı kuralları olsa da fikirleri ya mantığa sığıyor ya da şiir sanatında düşünmeye değer bakış açıları sunuyor. Antik roma şiirinin o günkü durumunu anlayabilmek yönünden güzel bir eserdi.

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Abridged in The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume A]

The Art of Poetry from 19bc. Unlike Plato, Horace holds poets in high regard. And unlike Aristotle, this is more practical and less of a systematic treatise on the subject.

This work coined terms like in medias res (into the middle of things) and purple prose (flowery language).


"Horace's injunction that poetry should both "instruct and delight" has been repeated so often that it has come to be known as the Horatian platitude."

Wikipedia
The following is a brief outline of the main subjects of the work:

(a) A poem demands unity, to be secured by harmony and proportion, as well as a wise choice of subject and good diction. Meter and style must be appropriate to theme and to character. A good model will always be found in Homer (ll, 1–152).

(b) Dramatic poetry calls for special care – as to character drawing, propriety of representation, length of a play, number of actors, use of the chorus and its music, special features for the satyric type, verse-forms, and employment of Greek models (ll. 153–294).

(c) A poet's qualifications include common sense, knowledge of character, adherence to high ideals, combination of the dulce with the utile, intellectual superiority, appreciation of the noble history and lofty mission of poetry, and above all a willingness to listen to and profit by impartial criticism (ll. 295–476).

This summary is taken from: Horace: Satires; Epistles and Ars Poetica, translated and edited by H.R. Fairclough. Harvard: Loeb Classical Library, 1926, p. 443.


II.3 – Ars Poetica – The Art of Poetry – (Addressed to The Pisos)
The Ars Poetica is dedicated to Horace's friend Lucius Calpurnius Piso (the Roman senator and consul) and his two sons.

1-23 – Unity and simplicity are necessary in a poem.
24-37 – We, who would be poets, must guard against all extremes.
38-44 – We must well consider our powers before we write.
45-72 – We may coin new words when necessary, but this must be done with care: words, like all other things, are subject to change.
73-85 – The various kinds of poetry: epic, elegiac, dramatic, lyric.
86-98 – We must suit our style to the different kinds of poetry.
99-118 – The words also must be suitable to the character in whose mouth the poet puts them.
119-152 – A writer should follow the traditions of the Muse; or, if he strikes out something new, must be consistent. No better guide can we follow than Homer.
153-178 – A writer too should observe the characteristics of each age of man.
179-188 – Some things should be represented on the stage, others related to the spectators.
189-201 – Certain rules not to be transgressed. The role of the Chorus.
202-219 – Of the music of the stage, and how it changes with the fortunes and manners of the people.
220-250 – The Satyric drama, which accompanied the tragedy, is not the same as comedy, and has its rules and wholesome restraints.
251-274 – On the Iambic and Spondee. The Greek taste is to be followed, rather than the license of the Roman poets, in respect to meter.
275-294 – The origin of tragedy & its development. To it succeeded the old comedy – vigorous, but scurrilous. The Latin poets deserve some praise, but their great fault is their careless, slovenly style.
295-308 – Genius cannot afford to dispense with the rules of art. The critic has his place in literature.
309-322 – Knowledge is the foundation of good writing. Poetry without sense is but a harmonious trifling.
323-333 – The Greeks had genius; the Romans are a money-getting race.
334-346 – The object of the poet should be to give instruction and delight.
347-360 – We do not expect perfection in a poem, but we do expect care and pains.
361-365 – A short comparison between poetry and painting.
366-390 – Mediocrity in poetry is insufferable – For this reason, be careful before you publish.
391-407 – The origins and office of poetry in early days.
408-418 – Genius is necessary for a poet – and yet, without art and study, genius will fail.
419-452 – Let poets avoid flatterers. Quinctilius was an honest friend, whose mission it was to tell an author unpleasant truths.
453-476 – A poet goes as mad as Empedocles; let all beware of him and keep out of the way of one who will not be helped.

[Eir]

Som att läsa Stephen Kings 'Att skriva' men med ett ständigt behov av att själv tolka vad som faktiskt sägs. Tror ändå jag föredrar den här lol.

[Guenevera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horace begins with a horse-head attached to a human body and ends with a leech sucking blood; in between: purple patches, mountains give birth to mice, and language trees changing their leaf-words to match the seasons.

We thought the poem is a devolution. There is no way to teach the art of poetry, there is only the muse.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graduate students, please read 290-1; professors, 431-7; officials and business writers, 229-33; and writers for tv, please, please read 181-90.

[Metin Yılmaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eski yazarlardan sıklıkla bahsedilmesi algıyı biraz yorsa da kısa olması ve güzel çevirisi sayesinde meraklısını tatmin edecektir diye tahmin ediyorum. Yazıldığı zamanlar daha iyi anlaşılmıştır mutlaka.

[Mert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Puanım 4/5 (%75/100)

Aristo'nun Poetika'sından esinlenip Horatius'un kendi deneyimleri ve düşünceleriyle yazdığı eser. Türkçe baskısı olmadığı için Poetika ile birlikte aldım. İki kitabı aslında karıştırmak mümkün, özellikle başlık benzerliğinden. Kitap 3 ana bölümden oluşuyor;

1)Şiirin Kompozisyonu: Genel İlkeler
Şiir oluşturma, uyum, söz düzeni gibi temel şeylerden bahsediyor.

2)Drama: İlkeler ve Tarih
Tiyatroya adanmış bölüm. Karakterlerin inandırıcılığı ve satir draması kısımları özellikle çok hoşuma gitti.

3)Şair: Hedefleri ve Uğraşı
Yunan ve Romalı şairler arasında karşılaştırmalar yapılmış. Şairi öven, onun üstün ve önemli biri olduğundan bahsediyor. Bana R.W. Emerson'ın "poet prophet" düşüncesini anlattı. (Şair normal insanlardan üstün birisi olarak onları eğitip daha iyi hale getirmelidir düşüncesi.)

Daha önceden bilgim olan bir kitaptı fakat tam olarak bitirmemiştim. Ayrıca Latince orjinal metnin de koyulması güzel olmuş. Herkes tarafından en az 1 kez okunmalı diye düşünüyorum.

[sputnik · Rating 4 out of 5]

La verdad esta muy bueno, lo leí para la clase de roma y me encanto :o creo que tiene muchos buenos consejos útiles que aún en libros actuales se siguen cometiendo, deus ex machina ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ, igual es más para escribir poemas épicos pero si tienes tips para creación de de personajes. Recomendado ٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶

[Grecia Bojórquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

X.X

[Lis Molina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una interesante forma de hablar del arte

[Catlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

would've been better if i understood more than 2% of what was being said.

[Airácula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nunca falla
Aristóteles ¿Quién te conoce?

[Recensioni in tre parole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classico. Didattico. Armonioso.

[paci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really liked it!! Much better than Aristotle’s, though harder to understand due to it being written in verse. Making a précis on a text really makes you get to the bottom of it, so now I like to think of myself as an expert on Horace’s Ars Poetica:)

[Mateo R.]

Leí aparte la introducción de la edición de Gredos. Unas notas breves sobre lo que dice:

* Hay algo de debate en la cuestión genérica. Después de todo es una epístola, un poema y un tratado metapoético al mismo tiempo.

* La fuente principal parece ser la Poética de Aristóteles (así como la Retórica e incluso la Política, y quizás Sobre los poetas) a través de un intermediario helenístico llamado Neoptólemo de Pario.

* La estructura es inusual. Para algunos teóricos es no sistemática y otros creen discernir una organización en ella.

* También establece que Horacio (además de insistir en la unidad y coherencia de la obra poética) propone los siguientes preceptos:

1) No hay que excederse a la hora de elegir tarea.
2) La poesía no sólo ha de ser bella, sino también atractiva.
3) Hay que atenerse al mito tradicional o bien crear algo coherente.
4) El poeta ha de caracterizar debidamente los rasgos de cada edad (de los personajes).
5) En la medida de lo posible, debe presentar los acontecimientos de la manera más gráfica; pero no traer a la escena los más macabros, pues es mejor confiarlos al testimonio de un mensajero.
6) Una obra dramática ha de tener, ni más ni menos, cinco actos.
7) Se ha de usar con gran parquedad del recurso del deus ex machina.
8) En la escena no han de hablar más de tres personajes.
9) Lo que el coro diga debe ser parte de la trama de la obra.
10) En el drama satírico han de mezclarse bromas y veras, pero sin dar lugar a equívocos sobre la condición del personaje.
11) Hay que seguir en todo caso a los modelos griegos.
12) Hay que desechar el poema que no haya sido pulido durante largo tiempo.
13) Las ense­ñanzas han de ser breves, las invenciones ingeniosas lo más verosímiles posible.
14) El poeta principiante ha de ser consciente de que ninguna obra mediocre es presentable.
15) Por ello, no ha de hacer cosa alguna inuita Minerua (contra la voluntad de Minerva, diosa de la sabiduría y las artes) ni esquivar la crítica objetiva.
16) Y para crítico, no vale cualquiera.

[Eliana Rivero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gusta esta arte poética por su simplicidad y por su propio carácter poético. Me parece que quizás no ahonda mucho en los temas que trata, es más un Horacio que da su opinión o su perspectiva de cómo debe ser un poeta o un escritor. Habla de un artista en general (porque también habla de la pintura), siendo su premisa y la que me parece más importante: "Intentes lo que intentes, sea sencillo y uno".

No está dividida en partes sino que los temas vienen en sucesión. Me parece muy interesante que las premisas de las que habla como las del lenguaje, o la de los personajes, sobre la creación del artista, sean tan actuales: lo que dice, cualquier escritor hoy día podría planteárselo a la hora de escribir. Hace distinciones entre la comedia y la tragedia, del carácter y tonalidad que deben tener los diálogos y los actores que representaban estas obras, de la funcionalidad del coro y otra cosa que me pareció recalcante: la dualidad del escritor entre instruir y deleitar al pueblo y al público, algo fundamental en la poesía latina y romana.

En comparación con la Poética de Aristóteles, a esta le faltaría un poco más de temas, o quizás que se profundice un poco más en lo que habla. Aunque cabe señalar que Horacio es poeta y todo lo escribe bellamente, en cambio Aristóteles era un filósofo súper centrado en las teorías. A fin de cuentas, me gustó.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is like painting. Some attracts you more if you stand near, some if you're further off. One picture likes a dark place, one will need to be seen in the light, because it's not afraid of the critic's sharp judgment. One gives pleasure once, one will please if you look it over ten times.

This guy's ideas (and the way he wrote--very organized and systematic, addressed the readers directly) are already pretty modern in sensibility. His metaphors are also really nice and vivid.

[Lucas Magrini Rigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta minuciosa obra, além de prover o texto original acompanhado de uma bela tradução, contém um extenso comentário (ou "ilustração" no português do comentador) explicando verso a verso, o que é especialmente valioso dadas as referências subentendidas.
Para ter uma leitura prazerosa, recomendo ler apenas a Epístola aos Pisões, mas para uma leitura de estudo enriquecedora, recomendo a leitura de todos os comentários.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for school.
Found it a lot more interesting and "fun" to read than Aristotle's so that's something.

[Knut Sigurd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Veldig bra bokmål

[☆Lau☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi poética favorita. Quiero mucho a Horacio. 🤷‍♀️💙

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

As to how many times I've read this book, I do not remember properly.

For starters, the introduction isn’t me. This is from one of the most brilliant tomes I had the honour of perusing on Poetica.

This is a 2019 tome by Jennifer Ferriss-Hill. It is entitled: ‘Horace's Ars Poetica: Family, Friendship, and the Art of Living’

The author says:

‘The Ars Poetica stands in a lineage of ancient works conceived of as repositories for the essentials of poetics, extending back to the writings of Aristotle, Neoptolemus of Parium, and Philodemus, and forward to pseudo-Longinus ‘On the Sublime’.

Horace’s 476-line poem was revered for over 1500 years as the indispensable guide for practicing poets; it provided a blueprint for efforts at “updated” rules of literary composition; and it inspired numerous famous translators and imitators, among them Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Ben Jonson, Nicolas Boileau, Alexander Pope, and many other European and American writers.

From the Ars Poetica have been quarried such oft-quoted phrases as in medias res (“into the middle of things”), ut pictura poesis (“poetry is like a painting”), and purpureus . . . pannus (“a purple patch”), or the dictum that poetry should be both pleasing and useful.

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism opens its entry on the work: “It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of Horace’s Ars Poetica (Art of Poetry) for the subsequent history of literary criticism.”

And yet this poem has proven hard to love for recent readers: it is “unfashionable today: unfashionable even amongst classicists, and certainly so amongst non-specialists.”

A fresh convention in ‘literary criticism’ would begin with this tome. The author would model this tome on the Aristotelian theory of Poetics.

Discussing about poetry, poetic style and drama, Horace would speak with vigour and directness as a person having a strong personal relationship with the reader. There would be a very very sharp focus on uniformity, accord and propriety. It would follow no manner or design that can be visibly made out, although scholars would determine in it the three-pronged usual divisions of an Alexandrian – Greek discourse such as: Poesis or subject matter, poema or form, and poeta or the poet… I need not jabber much. Give this tome a go.

Find a Latin instructor around you and dig into Horatius.

Ask your educator to teach you the meaning and internal reverberations of the following lines:

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
iungere si velit et varias inducere plumas
undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne,
spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
credite, Pisones, isti tabulae fore librum
persimilem cuius, velut aegri somnia, vanae
fingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uni
reddatur formae. ‘pictoribus atque poetis
quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas.’
scimus, et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim;
sed non ut placidis coeant immitia, non ut
serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni……..

Once you are through with the basic hurdles of Latin grammar, what remains is pure bliss. .

Give this a try. Up until the late Victorian age, they’d say that: “You’re a bloody uneducated dollymop!! You do not even know Horatius? You have no idea of Poetica? Be God-darned!!”

A few words to conclude:

And Horace would keep his enduring colophon on the subsequent generations. Why so? Simply for for two assertions. And o'er, both of these would be ultimately based on Aristotle: the need for sedateness or ratio and the need for incessant drudgery as the price of poetic immensity. Truth be told, the principal objective of Horace would be to demonstrate to the ‘would-be poet’ to achieve faultlessness in his art with a comprehensive knowledge of “what becomes him well and what becomes him ill, what is the path of excellence and what is the path of error”.

That is all there’s to it.

A few words to conclude:

And Horace would keep his enduring colophon on the subsequent generations. Why so? Simply for for two assertions.

And o'er, both of these would be ultimately based on Aristotle: the need for sedateness or ratio and the need for incessant drudgery as the price of poetic immensity.

Truth be told, the principal objective of Horace would be to demonstrate to the ‘would-be poet’ to achieve faultlessness in his art with a comprehensive knowledge of “what becomes him well and what becomes him ill, what is the path of excellence and what is the path of error”.

That is all there’s to it.

[Sinta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short and delightful piece of literary criticism. There is a lot packed in, and it’s all very entertaining

Note: I read the Leon Golden translation (it did not come with any commentary)

Quotes:
In short, let the work be anything you like, but let it at least be one, single thing.

Pick a subject, writers, equal to your strength and take some time to consider what your shoulders should refuse and what they can bear. veither eloquence nor clear organization will forsake one who has chosen a subject within his capabilities.
Unless I am mistaken this will be the special excellence and delight of good organization, that the author of the promised poem, enamored of one subject and scornful of another, says now what ought to be said now and both postpones and omits a great deal for the present.

He always moves swiftly to the issue at hand and rushes his listener into the middle of the action just as if it were already known, and he abandons those subjects he does not think can glitter after he has treated them. Thus does he invent, thus does he mingle the false with the true that the middle is not inconsistent with the beginning, nor the end with the middle.

I shall aim at fashioning a poem from quite familiar elements so that anyone might anticipate doing as well, might sweat profusely at it, and yet labor in vain after having ventured to do what I have done: so great is the power of arrangement and linkage, so great is the grace that is added to words that are adapted from ordinary language.

The foundation and source of literary excellence is wisdom... He who has learned what he owes to his country, what he owes to his friends, by what kind of love a parent, a brother, or a guest should be honored, what is the duty of a senator, what is the function of a judge, what is the role of a general sent into war-he, assuredly, knows how to represent what is appropriate for each character. I bid the artist, trained in representation, to reflect on exemplars of life and character and to bring us living voices from that source. Sometimes a tale that lacks stylistic elegance, grandeur, and skill but is adored with impressive passages and characters who are accurately drawn is a greater source of pleasure and better holds the interest of an audience than verses that lack a vision of reality and are mere trifles to charm the ear.

Poets wish to either benefit or delight us, or, at one and the same time, to speak words that are both pleasing and useful for our lives. Whatever lessons you teach, let them be brief, so that receptive spirits will quickly perceive and faithfully retain what you have said.

There are, however, mistakes that we are willing to forgive. For the string does not always retum the sound that the hand and mind desire, and although you seek a low note, it very often sends back a high one. Nor will the bow always strike whatever it threatens. But where many qualities sparkle in a poem, I will not find fault with a few blemishes, which either carelessness introduced or human nature, too little vigilant, did not avoid. What then? Just as the scribe who copies books, if he always makes the same mistake no matter how much he is warned, has no claim on our indulgence, and a lyre-player is mocked who always strikes the same false note, so the poet who is frequently found wanting turns into another Choerilus who, amidst my scom for his work, astonishes me the two or three times he is really good

Poetry resembles painting. Some works will captivate you when you stand very close to them and others if you are at a greater distance. This one prefers a darker vantage point, that one wants to be seen in the light since it feels no terror before the penetrating judgment of the critic. This pleases only once, that will give pleasure even if we go back to it ten times over.

a poem that comes into existence and is created for the gratifications of our mind and heart, if it misses true excellence by only a little, verges toward deepest failure