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The Poetics of Closure: Horace Odes III.17-28

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Matthew Santirocco
Matthew Santirocco*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

One of the most important achievements of recent Horatian scholarship has been the rediscovery of structure — not the mechanical dissection of poems into component parts, but an awareness of how form is inseparable from content and how unity proceeds from design. Although the individual ode has by now received sufficient attention, the structure of the first lyric collection remains problematic. On the one hand, elaborate visual and numerological schemes have been proposed to account for the poems' placement. But such patterns could only be discovered by very selective handling of the evidence, and their neatness and level of abstraction raise doubts about their likelihood and significance. Partly as a corrective to these excesses, some recent scholars have gone to the other extreme, denying any extensive design. But while no single principle is likely to account for the disposition of all eighty-eight poems in twelve different meters, several considerations suggest that Horace had at least some concern for design. These include the well-documented interest in poetry books among Hellenistic and Roman writers; the aesthetic implications of the book roll, the physical format of which necessitates sequential reading; the existence of certain undisputed signs of arrangement in Odes I-III such as the frame of Odes I.1 and III. 30 or the grouping of Parade Odes (Odes I.1-9) and Roman Odes (Odes III. 1-6); and, finally, the relatively restricted thematic repertoire which facilitates the discovery of connections among odes by poet and reader alike. Since controls can be applied to this, as to all other literary study, the existence of larger structures and their relevance to an appreciation of the poetry is a legitimate subject for inquiry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1984 , pp. 74 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1984

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References

Notes

1. Different versions of this paper were presented at Amherst College on 28 April 1983 and at the Columbia University Seminar on Classical Civilization on 15 December 1983. I am grateful to both audiences for stimulating discussion. I also wish to thank Professors Ronald Basto, Steele Commager, and Andrew Miller for helpful suggestions.

2. For full bibliography on trends in the scholarship as well as discussion of methodological and historical problems, see Santirocco, M. S., ‘Horace's Odes and the Ancient Poetry Book,’ Arethusa 13 (1980), 43–57Google Scholar.

3. Collinge, N. E., The Structure of Horace's Odes (London, 1961), 36–55Google Scholar; Seidensticker, B., ‘Zu Horaz, C. 1,1-9,’ Gymnasium 83 (1976), 26–34Google Scholar; Salat, P., ‘La composition du livre I des odes d'Horace,’ Latomus 28 (1969), 554–74Google Scholar; Ludwig, W., ‘Zu Horaz c. 2,1-12,’ Hermes 85 (1957), 336–45Google Scholar; idem, ‘Die Anordnung des vierten Horazischen Odenbuches,’ Museum Helveticum 18 (1961), 1-10; Silk, E. T., ‘Bacchus and the Horatian Recusation, YCS 21 (1969), 193–212Google Scholar; Moritz, L. A., ‘Some “Central” Thoughts on Horace's Odes,’ CQ n.s. 18 (1968), 116–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mutschier, F.-H., ‘Beobachtungen zu Gedichtanordnung in der ersten Odensammlung des Horaz,’ RhM n.s. 117 (1974), 109–33Google Scholar; on the Roman Odes see below n.7; on the Maecenas odes, n.8.

4. Rosenthal, M. L. and Gall, S. M., The Modern Poetic Sequence (Oxford, 1983), viiGoogle Scholar; see also Vendler, Helen, The Odes of John Keats (Cambridge, Mass., 1983Google Scholar).

5. See Esser, D., Untersuchungen zu den Odenschlüssen bei Horaz (Beitr.z.kl.Philol. 77: Meisenheim am Glan, 1976Google Scholar); more generally, Smith, B. Herrnstein, Poetic Ciosure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago, 1968Google Scholar).

6. The midpoint to Book II is determined roughly by line totals (Odes II. 1-11 = 288; 12-20 = 284), but in Books I and III by the total number of poems (Odes 1.20, III. 16). On this position in poems and books see Moritz (above n.3).

7. See Santirocco, M. S., ‘The Two Voices of Horace: Odes 3.1-15,’ Archaeologia Transatlantica (Brown Univ.), forthcomingGoogle Scholar.

8. See idem, ‘The Maecenas Odes,’ TAPA 114 (1984) forthcoming.

9. See Kiessling, A. and Heinze, R., Q. Horatius Flaccus: Oden und Epoden 8 (Berlin, 1955), 330Google Scholar.

10. See Verrall, A. W., Studies Literary and Historical in the Odes of Horace (London, 1884; repr. Port Washington, N.Y., 1969), 108–10Google Scholar, for these and other possible seasonal sequences.

11. See Commager, S., The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study (New Haven, 1962), 259–61Google Scholar.

12. For the family's history see Treggiari, S., ‘Cicero, Horace, and Mutual Friends: Lamiae and Varrones Murenae,’ Phoenix 27 (1973), 245–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. See Fuqua, C., ‘Horace Carm. 1, 23-25,’ CP 63 (1968), 44–46Google Scholar.

14. See Commager (above n.11), 242-44.

15. See Gornall, J. F. C., ‘Horace, Odes III,19: Does It Contain a Gap in Time?’ G&R 18 (1971), 188–90Google Scholar, with literature cited.

16. The youth's indifference is conveyed by the final picture of him standing aloof with hair scattered (sparsum, 14) in the breeze. This imagery perhaps establishes a slight link with the two preceding odes (sparge rosas, ‘scatter roses,’ Odes III. 19.22; spargit … frondes, ‘[the wood] scatters its leaves,’ Odes III. 18.14).

17. Collinge (above n.3), 54, observes that, despite their topical interconnection, each of these odes has a different ‘mental climate:’ ‘The reader is invited to pass from the hearty and heated and naive banqueters and their demens strepitus to the cold, sophisticated scene with Nearchus …; and thence to resort to the dusty but more humane air of a scholar's study where a jar is unsealed and a learned parody worked out.’

18. Norden, E., Agnostos Theos (Berlin, 1913), 163Google Scholar.

19. E.g. by Kroll, W., Studien zum Verständnis der Römischen Literatur (Stuttgart, 1924), 227, n.6; Commager (above n.11), 127Google Scholar.

20. This may also refer indirectly to Messalla's speech on wine in Maecenas' Symposium (Servius ad Aen. VIII.310). No further philosophical resonance, however, should be detected, pace Onians, R. B., The Origins of European Thought (Cambridge, 1954), 43Google Scholar, where madet is referred to the ancient concept of wisdom as moisture.

21. Norden (above n.18), 143-63.

22. For this inconsistency see Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), 150–51Google Scholar.

23. In answer to those who would argue from line 17 that moral innocence, not simplicity, is at issue, it should be noted that immunis means ‘giftless’ (i.e. ‘without large gifts;’ see Williams, G., The Third Book of Horace's Odes [Oxford, 1969], 121Google Scholar), rather than ‘guiltless’ (pace Porphyrion, recently revived by Camps, W. A., ‘Critical and Exegetical Notes,’ AJP 94 [1973], 143–44Google Scholar, and Syndikus, H.-P., Die Lyrik des Horaz II [Darmstadt, 1973], 205 n.17Google Scholar). The former sense is consistent with the context here and with Horatian usage (Odes IV. 12.23; Epist. 1.14.33), and, as Bentley demonstrated (Q. Horatius Flaccus,3 I [repr. Berlin, 1869], 204–5Google Scholar), immunis is unparalleled in the latter sense without a defining word (e.g. immunis scelerum).

24. See Williams, G., ‘Poetry in the Moral Climate of Augustan Rome,’ JRS 52 (1962), 28–46Google Scholar.

25. See Silk, E. T., ‘A Fresh Approach to Horace, II,20,’ AJP 77 (1956), 255–63Google Scholar.

26. The others are Odes 1.16-17, 26-27, 34-35; 11.13-15, 19-20; III.1-6. Their significance was noted early by Sturtevant, E. H., ‘O matre pulchra filia pulchrior,’ CR 26 (1912), 119–22Google Scholar.

27. See above, n.25.

28. For further comparison of the Bacchus odes see Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), 257–60Google Scholar; on the god's development in the collection see Silk (above n.3); and for ambiguities in Horace's attitude to political poetry see Connor, P. J., ‘Enthusiasm, Poetry, and Politics: A Consideration of Horace, Odes, III,25,’ AJP 92 (1971), 266–74Google Scholar.

29. See Silk (above n.25), 263: ‘… in Book III,25, the Bacchic enthusiasm is presented as an apologetic or explicatory epilogue to the long poem (III,24) …’

30. See Copley, F., Exclusus Amator (APA Monogr.17: New York, 1956), 55–58Google Scholar; Henderson, W. J., ‘The Paraclausithyron Motif in Horace's Odes,” AC 16 (1973), 51–67, with 66 n.45 on the text of line 7Google Scholar.

31. Jones, C. P., ‘Tange Chloen Semei Arrogantem,’ HSCP 15 (1971), 81–83Google Scholar, citing Hellenistic parallels for the topos of the disdainful beloved's future misery; other examples in Cairns, F., Generic Composition in Greek and Latin Poetry (Edinburgh, 1972), 80–81Google Scholar, though Odes III.26 is omitted.

32. Kiessling and Heinze (above n.9), 363.

33. See Lieberman, S., ‘Horace and le mot juste,’ CW 62 (1969), 214, 219–20Google Scholar.

34. For Thracian cold as the counterpoint to love see Odes 1.25. 9-12; Verg. Ecl. 10.66.

35. Kiessling and Heinze (above n.9), 361.

36. The same technique occurs at Odes I.14-15 where the shared nautical imagery underscores the poems' allegorical intent.

37. Smith (above n.5), 172.

38. Ibid., 175-6.

39. For the frame of Odes 1.5 and III.26 see Wili, W., Horaz und die augusteische Kultur (Basel, 1948), 182Google Scholar; on its programmatic function see Jones (above n.31), 82. This parallelism provides further support for Zielinski's despised deae at Odes 1.5.16, on which see Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I (Oxford, 1970), 79–80Google Scholar.

40. See Quinn, K., Latin Explorations (New York, 1963), 253–66Google Scholar; for the relation of the two parts of the ode see also Friedrich, W.-H., ‘Europa und der Stier: angewandte Mythologie bei Horaz und Properz,’ NGG phil.-hist.Kl.5 (1959), 81–100Google Scholar.

41. Kilpatrick, R. S., ‘Remember Us, Galatea: Horace, Carm. 3.27,’ GB 3 (1975), 191–204Google Scholar, citing as a close parallel Epist. I.20 in which Horace's book (liber) is compared to a slave rashly leaving his master's house and then experiencing the same fears, self-recrimination, and glory as the traveller in Odes III.27.

42. The general meaning, ‘song,’ assigned to the word here by Lewis & Short and the new Oxford Latin Dictionary is otherwise unexampled and neglects the force of its primary meaning as well as of its new Horatian context. Most commentators, however, recognize some nuance, either of slowness, repetitiveness, or finality: see, e.g., Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book II (Oxford, 1978), 30–31Google Scholar; Kiessling and Heinze (above n.9), 374; Williams (above n.23), 143. The sense of finality suits the context best, and derives easily from the figurative use of nenia in the idiom, neniam dicere + dative = ‘to put an end to,’ which Horace here adapts in the passive voice (dicetur … Nox … nenia).

43. For another interpretation see Poeschl, V., Horazische Lyrik (Heidelberg, 1970), 180–96Google Scholar.

44. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Harrison, J. A. (New York, 1902) XIV, 195–6Google Scholar, cited by Rosenthal and Gall (above n.4), 6.

45. From Eliot's 1959 Paris Review interview, quoted by Rosenthal and Gall (above n.4), 165.