Themes and Style of Horace’s Odes. Insight into the Relationship with Models, Civil Poetry, the Brevity of Life and Carpe Diem
For his lyric production , Horace claims the title of Roman Alcaeus , placing himself with the Greek author in a relationship of imitatio which means above all obedience to the lex operis (the rules that organize the literary genre in which the poet wishes to operate).
In reality, the poet behaved quite freely towards the models, in the sense that despite traditional themes, occasions and situations, that Roman sensibility was never lacking. Moreover, Horace and the Roman poets themselves proudly claimed their original creative contribution to the genre, constituting the motif of the primis ego; in particular, Horace is proud of having been the first to popularize the methods of lyric poetry , underlining the technical difficulties in transferring metric and expressive structures from one language to another.
Alcaeus and Horace: Similarities and Differences
A characteristic feature of Horace’s lyric poetry that he takes from the model is the resumption of the initial inspiration of a composition: several of Horace’s odes therefore open with an almost quotation that functions as a motto, only to then develop their own different procedure.
- Alcaeus : linked to social occasions (symposium, religious festival), Alcaeus’ lyric poetry is based on a simplicity of themes and language, and expresses the passions and hatreds of an aristocrat personally involved in the social struggles of his city.
- Horace : the interest in the res publica is that of an intellectual who lives in the shelter of the powerful lords of Rome and who writes lyric poetry for reading, describing imaginary or highly stylised situations and aspires to literary refinement and sophistication: all the more so since in Horace’s lyrics private interest is united with the search for inner happiness through autercheia (inner self-sufficiency) and tranquillitas animi (as Hellenistic philosophy had taught).
Other models from which Orazio draws inspiration:
- Sappho (who is especially resentful in the ode to jealousy)
- Anacreon (from whom he takes the delicate grace and the theme of melancholy for lost youth)
- Choral lyric poetry , especially Pindar (of whom we recognize first of all the themes of the awareness of the high function of poetry and the possibility of the poet to confer immortality, not only on a stylistic level, but also long periods and the solemnity of the gnome, that is, the short sentence of a moral nature)
- Hellenistic world (from which comes a vast repertoire of themes, images and situations, but also ideology and sensibility)
Brevity of life and carpe diem
In Horatian lyric poetry a central role is played by the position of meditation and philosophical culture: it is no longer (cf. Satire) a moral research based on the critical observation of others, but the central point becomes the awareness of the brevity of life which therefore includes the motif of carpe diem as a need to appropriate the joys of the moment, without getting lost in vain and useless projects and hopes. The invitation to pleasure is not excluded, however, by the living awareness that that pleasure itself is fleeting, as is the life of man, and therefore the ability of the wise man lies in grasping the present in its fleetingness, behaving as if each day were the last.
Wisdom therefore clashes with the immutable data of the human condition such as old age and death, but it cannot eliminate them, only fight them to transform restlessness and bitterness into acceptance of destiny.
In all this, divine favor manifests itself by transfiguring the various circumstances of daily existence into miracles, and is always connected with the vocation of a poet (the gods and the Muses save Horace to reserve him for that destiny).
The meditation of the poet-sage, free from the ferments of human life and protected by the gods, passes through autarchy ( self-sufficiency), the aurea mediocritas , serenity and balance.
Civil Poetry in Horace
On the celebratory Greek lyric poetry linked to the Hellenistic monarchs, Horace grafts national ideas and suggestions from epic and historiography with an original meaning of 1 with the celebration of the characters, events and myths of the Augustan regime. The relationship with the ideology of Augustus is based on the sharing of the moralistic approach of the criticism of luxury, extravagance and folly and the admiration of virtus and rationality against the forces of chaos.
The operation responded to the personal needs of a generation that, following the civil wars, looked with enthusiasm and hope to Prince Augustus as a guarantor of peace. Therefore, Horace’s interventions cannot be simply dismissed as political propaganda in verse, first of all because if he faithfully reflects the themes of the ideology of the principality, he also knows how to take advantage of one of the strong points of the same ideology, such as its characteristic of flexibility, to avoid dogmatic closures (for example the exaltation of virtus even in a historical enemy as represented by Cleopatra ).
Furthermore, Horace becomes the interpreter and voice of the feelings and aspirations of contemporary society with uncertainties, fears but also joys, such as a sincere gratitude towards the peacemaker of the empire .
Horace, Odes
They often correspond to the different categories into which Greek lyric poetry was divided:
- Convivial poems (which refer to the models of Alcaeus and the Hellenistic epigram, with the support of the traditional Roman symposium)
- Erotic poems (in which Horace seems to look at passion with ironic detachment, yet not ignoring it but instead recalling it with melancholy. With a few exceptions, love is analyzed as a rather obvious ritual in which the poet observes with a smile the credulity of the young lover or the seriousness with which the characters play their part)
- Hymns (compared to Greek religious lyric poetry, Horace retains the formula and the rhythm [second-person invocation, the illustration of the places of worship] but characteristic of Horatian lyric poetry are the references and developments of a literary nature.
Apart from these clear categories, it is often difficult to distinguish an ode into a well-defined typology, since Horace often uses the Alexandrian procedure of crossing genres, whereby he contaminates different lyrical categories in the same composition.
