Horace's Ars Poetica and the Deconstructive Leech
M.A.R. Habib
It is something of an irony, as I hope to
show, that the Ars Poetica became a classic of literary criticism.
The famous notion of ut pictura poesis, a poem is like a painting,
has been quoted countless times, whether in support of allegorical technique,
highly imaginative writing or "concrete" poetry. But this is an analogy
that Horace threw out casually, its only point being to show how the beauty
of a poem, like that of a painting, is not intrinsic to the art work but
depends on the observer's point of view. One painting will be better when
viewed from afar, another when observed closely. This casual tone is typical
of the entire piece, which is written as an informal letter from an established
poet giving advice to the would-be poets of the wealthy Piso family.
Horace's text would seem to deserve a reading in the light of deconstructive practices, on a number of accounts. To begin with, although the letter was an acknowledged Roman literary genre, the highly personalised form of the text disclaims any intention of writing a "technical" treatise in the sense of Longinus or Aristotle. Some of Horace's richest insights take the form of asides and almost accidental digressions. The text is multilayered: on the one hand we hear the informal speaking voice of a man who makes no claim to be impersonal or objective; his "principles" are drawn from experience, not theory. On the other hand, these "insights" seem to be no more than part of a self-conscious literary game. This self-mocking, consciously fragmented and self-situating strategy anticipates, albeit in a philosophically cruder form, some of the attitudes which have marked deconstructive criticism. I should like to examine certain ambivalences and aporiai in Horace's text concerning the notions of subjectivity and objectivity, author and audience, as well as of "private" and "public". Rather than foreclosing my arguments by initially stating a conclusion, I propose an analysis of these aporiai which situates them in a progressively widening context. Beginning with the Ars, this inquiry will broaden to include consideration of Horace's poetry and thence key elements of his political circumstances.
I
Horace never unequivocally answers the crucial questions he raises concerning the nature of literature, at times appearing blatantly indifferent. Rome in Horace's day, we should recall, was a vast metropolis of a quarter of a million people, crawling with poets. Horace's closes his letter with an image of the poet as a leech which sucks the blood out of its audience: "if he once catches you, he holds tight and kills you with his recitation, a leech that will not release the skin till gorged with blood."(1) By this time, Horace's authorial manipulation is complete. He has led the reader through a forest of recommendations, only to disappear with a glib remark. Whatever we have made of Horace's views so far, the text's ending impels us to go back and read again, on another level. Few works of Derrida question themselves more fully than this.
These levels of interpretation can be shown
to deconstruct each other. In Book X of the
Republic, Plato had
viewed poetry not as a self-subsistent entity but as adjectival of reality:
indeed, it was to be judged by its distance from reality. Aristotle had
treated poetry as something in itself (in keeping with his metaphysics)
but had introduced subjective elements of the audience's response into
his definition of tragedy, which was thus affective rather than substantial.
But this was merely a pseudo-subjectivity: it assumed that members of an
(hypothetical) audience would respond in a uniform way. With Horace, however,
the definition of art contains a genuine subjective element, in terms of
both author and audience. To begin with, the writer's materials are not
pregiven: "When you are writing, choose a subject that matches your powers..."(2)
In a striking image of reciprocity, Horace views the reader's response
as part of the existence of the poem: "As you find the human face breaks
into a smile when others smile, so it weeps when others weep: if you wish
me to weep, you must first express suffering yourself..."(3)
Talking of drama, Horace reinforces his point: "Here is what the public
and I are both looking for..."(4) Not only,
then, is the audience the ultimate criterion of genuine artistry but literature
is intrinsically dialogic: the presumed response of a particular audience
guides its "creation." The audience that Horace has in mind is no abstract
entity. He is keenly aware of its changing moods and historical shifts
of taste. Interestingly, Horace embeds this changeability firmly within
the substratum of language. He considers it to be perfectly in order for
a poet to "render a known word novel" and even to "mint" words: "when words
advance in age, they pass away, and others born but lately, like the young,
flourish and thrive."(5)
In addressing the relation between form and
content, expression and thought, deconstructive theory extrapolates the
meaning of "form" beyond its designation of merely poetic or literary language
to encompass language itself. This is one implication of Derrida's statement
that the "system of writing in general is not exterior to the system of
language in general..."(where "writing" designates the enabling circumstances
of language).(6) Hence there is an internal
connection between form and content; the latter cannot be prior to the
former as implied in Pope's view of form as the external "dress of thought."
In common with deconstructive attitudes, deriving in part from Derrida's
attempt to undermine the "opposition" of "exteriority" and "interiority",(7)
Horace appears to view this relation (between content and literary/general
language) as internal. The content and thought, that is, cannot be prior
to language.
Horace's recognition of this internal connection is not, like Pope's, an appeal to some abstract organic unity. It embraces an historically specific awareness that language as form determines, and prescribes the limits of content. Horace's insight here is nevertheless bound by a logocentric framework within which "meaning", although viewed as perishable over time, is treated as self-identical rather than relational. That relationality is only abstractly recognised by Horace, which is why he can talk of the old order of words passing away, as well as of words acquiring a new meaning. Even when he speaks of "minting" words, this seems to entail external accidental additions to the language rather than language being extended through increasing recognition of its intrinsic inadequacy. Hence Horace's gesture toward self-deconstruction is incomplete; he deals with different literary forms as results, independently of their generative conditions. Speaking, for example, of the function of the chorus, he affirms that this "should favor the good, give friendly advice...approve those who scruple to do wrong; it should praise...justice and laws...and offer supplication and prayer to the gods..."(8) This prescription for the chorus seems to be independent of any aspect of the audience's response. It assumes a rigid line between right and wrong as well as the propriety of respecting the law and the gods. Such rigidity seems out of place in the Ars, which in general espouses flexibility in every artistic concern.
II
This brings us to the other side of Horace's ambivalence as regards the "objective" status of literature. Having insisted on the ontological contribution of the reader or audience to what is termed "literature", he describes recent changes in the make-up of the audience itself. Once, he says, the audience for a play was "a public...easily counted, not too large, sparing in their ways, pure in their habits, modest in their attitude." But as Rome began to expand her territories and cities encompassed a greater variety of populace, "more and more freedoms were granted in metre and music."(9) This enlargement and "corruption" of the audience dictate directly what is permissible and desirable on stage. But if the audience now lacks "taste", where does this leave Horace's characterisations of good literature? Horace frankly admits that often a "play that is...properly characterized, though lacking charm and without profundity or art, draws the public more strongly and holds its attention better than verses deficient in substance and tuneful trivialities."(10) But is this statement anything more than a platitude? Surely a play "without profundity" [pondus]is "deficient in substance"; and one component of "art" is the absence of "tuneful trivialities". What is the point of this statement? Is it merely a slip, or a test of the reader? Lost in a maze of seemingly "ordinary" precepts, such as "My instruction would be to examine the model of human life and manners..," the tautology draws no attention to itself. How else, except by pure silence, could Horace express his cynicism towards "breaking down" the art of poetry - itself a deconstructive art - into analysable and advisable stages than by using a surfeit of language over meaning, of signifier over signified, the useless verbal materiality flaunting the absence of its correspondent concept? Horace is of course making a point: the mere depiction of good character, in the absence of any further virtues, can carry a play. And perhaps a contrast is implied between drama and poetry. But to make the point that simply would be to collude too deeply with, to invest himself too unequivocally in, his own advice (and, by implication, the Roman literary establishment). The self-parading surfeit of language allows him to keep his distance, embroiling the reader in a self-referential circle while he, Horace, steps clear of the closure, free to glide on to the next, unrelated point.
In fact, it's never clear why Horace repeatedly
alludes to the "role" of wealth in the production of literature. On the
one hand he can say that like "a crier gathering a crowd to buy goods,
a poet, who is rich in property, rich in money put out at interest, is
inviting people to come and flatter him for gain."(11)
And, echoing Plato, he derides a situation where poetry alone of all the
professions can be practised without knowledge and with impunity: "a person
who has no idea how to compose verses nevertheless dares to. Why shouldn't
he? He is free and well-born..."(12) Yet
this derision goes hand in hand with Horace's sincere advice on how to
succeed in the midst of this sorry state of affairs:
a poet has matched every demand if he mingles
the useful with the pleasant, by charming and, not less, advising the reader;
that is a book that earns money for the Sosii [publishers]; a book that
crosses the sea and, making its writer known, forecasts a long life for
him.(13)
This matching "every demand" carries the thrust
of Horace's approach to literature, which views aesthetics as a practical
combination. It's not just that literature is written well or badly and
subsequently sells better or worse. The recipe for its financial success
is already inscribed in its aesthetic function, literature being a commodity
in both aesthetic and monetary respects. Once again we see an internal
connection, as in deconstructive criticism, between literature as "a thing
in itself" and the broader establishment which gives this artwork its quality
and meaning.
But the notion of literary autonomy is a two-faced
coin. Stamped on the one side with an image that reflects its enabling
conditions, its other side refuses to mirror the artist's personality or
biography. To the extent that these impinge on any explanation or interpretation
of the work, they are public property, part of a language inescapably social.
Horace recognises the effacement of "private" personality as the reverse
side of the coin of publication: "it will be permissible to destroy what
you have not published: the voice once sent forth cannot return" [nescit
vox missa reverti].(14) Horace's imagery
here, using vox instead of, say, liber, is planted on the
same soil as an insight at the heart of Derrida's comments on speech and
writing. One of Deconstruction's prime targets of attack is of course the
idea, embodied (according to Derrida) in Western philosophy, that speech
or voice is the outward form of meaning's self-presence. Horace's lines
could be read as implying that the act of publication effects a disembodiment
of voice: once personalised, in the form of speech, it now leaves the author
forever to become entwined in the huge network of presupposition and openness
to alternative meaning known as "writing".
But what has Horace, in this "classic", really told us about art and literature? Effectively, he has merely reiterated the then customary notion of literature as a compromise of pleasing and instructing. Even his deprecation of poetry as a "game" is conventional. And his emphasis on poetry as an act of labour, as effort (ars) rather than innate creativity (ingenium), was hardly original: a controversy had long been raging concerning these.(15) Even here, Horace traverses a safe via media: "I do not see of what value is application [studium] without abundant talent or of what value is genius [ingenium] when uncultivated..."(16) It's true that Horace made an advance in terms of the persistence with which he insisted on poetry as an act of labour. But so much recycling of traditional attitudes has a partial basis in Horace's political circumstances. Once a republican, having fought on the side of Brutus against Antony and Octavian, Horace gradually moved towards acceptance of the divine status of the new Emperor Octavian, now Augustus. Though till late in life Augustus cherished a liberal stance towards men of letters, poets provided one platform for the propagation of his programmes of religious, cultural and agricultural reform. The complexity of Horace's shifting allegiance is of course recorded in his poems which, like most Roman literary texts, were highly self-conscious artefacts. We can perhaps read the Ars Poetica as a distilled form of this poetic self-consciousness. But how could such a text, which seems merely to rationalise conventional poetic practice, achieve the status of a classic? And, isn't Horace undertaking, in the Ars, something largely superfluous? After all, it is poetry which acts as his deconstructive vehicle: how can the deconstructive leech, gorged with blood, itself be deconstructed?
III
We might seek an answer in Horace's vision
of poetic and political disharmony. The same ambiguities and hesitancies
which plague the Ars pervade the poems to an even more striking
extent. And it seems to be precisely this series of hesitancies, aporiai
if you will, with its modern emphasis on individualised creation and its
withdrawal from totality of political or aesthetic commitment, which marks
off Horace's work from anything written by Aristotle, Longinus or Vergil.
It is the indelible writing of himself, his personal background, into his
poetic significance which, ironically, is universalisable. And, with equal
irony, it is Deconstruction which calls for such universality: the universality
of the "trace", of "otherness". According to Derrida, every gesture towards
objectivity is already infected with the trace of subjective origins, and
Derrida effectively elevates such self-consciousness to the status of a
methodological goal.
Many of Horace's odes are concerned with death,
a common enough theme; what is relatively peculiar to him is that his (conventional)
endeavour to transcend death, his refusal to accept death as an absolute
limitation on meaning and language, is indissolubly tied to his acute consciousness
of his humble origin. The issue of "origins" lies at the heart of Horace's
political ambivalence which, in turn, underpins his polyvalent aesthetic
stance. Despite Juvenal's cynical remark that "When Horace cried `Rejoice!'
/His stomach was comfortably full..,"(17)
Horace tends to see his art as something aligned with poverty rather than
riches. He appears almost obsessed with his mediocre subsistence. (We might
share Juvenal's cynicism on the ground that Horace's "modest" house was
actually a twenty-four room mansion with three bathing pools, though this
was indeed modest compared with the vast possessions of many of the Senatorial
class.) In the Ars, Horace had erected a sharp opposition between
a business mentality and the frame of mind conducive to writing poetry:
"do you think that when once this...anxiety about property has stained
the mind, we can hope for the composition of poems...?"(18)
The same opposition informs the poems, not merely in the form of passing
disgruntlement but as part of the world view controlling them. Horace's
views of poetry appear to be entirely practical in their motives and devoid
of metaphysical, political or religious implications. He is more concerned
with the immediate labour behind poetry as a craft. But those broader concerns,
deflected into the status of formal phenomena in Horace's verse, lurk underneath
the guise of philosophical, political and financial indifference.
Horace's equivocation toward Augustus is well
known, but what are we to make of it? In some odes, such as II,12, he disclaims
any ability to sing of Caesar's exploits. This, says Horace with typical
irony, would require "plain prose". By the fifth ode of Book Four (i.e.
after being commissioned by Augustus to compose the Carmen Saeculare)
he seems to accept Caesar's rule as secure and prosperous. But underlying
this chronological movement from equivocation to allegiance is a more subtle
emotional development; more subtle because less overtly political, but
political nonetheless. Horace's apparent recalcitrance from politics is
couched in a quasi-religious and aesthetic language, decked with the ornaments
of Roman mythology and ethics. But his devotion to the Muses and the gods
is half-hearted: even where he self-corrects his earlier "illusions" (perhaps
"inspired" by Augustus's renovation of religious pieties?), as in I,34:
I, who have never been
A generous or keen
Friend of the gods, must now confess
Myself professor in pure foolishness...
it seems that his "devotion" to these external
powers is channelled largely through his manipulation of them: "I am the
Muses' priest..." (III,1). Certain insights of Hegel cast an interesting
light on Horace's situation here. In The Philosophy of History he
characterises Roman religion as "an instrument in the power of the devotee;
it is taken possession of by the individual, who seeks his private objects
and interests; whereas the truly Divine possesses on the contrary a concrete
power in itself."(19) Yet when Horace speaks
of his verse as an immortal monument, this is not mere self-aggrandisement,
boasting that somehow he alone will survive death. It is equally an assertion
that life's most important and durable gifts are those unconstrained by
immediacy of political circumstance or contingencies of religious and ethical
practice. Hence the monument is as much political as aesthetic, affirming
as an ultimate value the withdrawal from temporal affairs enshrined in
subjectivity. This cherishing of the private over the public is a symptom
of Horace's refusal to see the meaning of subjectivity as dispersed through
the objective forms of Roman law and duty. In his Phenomenology,
Hegel drew a famous analogy between the later Roman Empire and the modern
bourgeois state. In these societies, individuality is abstract; valued
only in terms of property and possessions, it has no real content. Hegel
says that in this period, any true ethical spirit perishes in the condition
of "right" or Law"; the "Unhappy Consciousness" is the "tragic fate of
the certainty of self that aims to be absolute."(20)
Horace inhabits a world where this kenosis of subjectivity has already
begun. He himself laments the passing of earlier generations with hardier
morals and a less decadent approach to life (III,6).
Horace's inconsistency is almost systematic.
He pays lip service to the gods, the muses and the administrative exploits
of Caesar. But it's the vacuum in subjectivity, noted by Hegel, which he
longs to fill. Even the themes of conquest and government are assessed
in the deflected form of their subjective appurtenances:
Govern your appetites: thereby you'll rule
more
Than if you merged Libya with distant Gades...
(II,2)
In the same poem Horace warns against greed
which, "when indulged, grows like the savage dropsy..." Moreover, conquest
has its limitations: "the swift years...Old age and death...no one conquers..."
(II,14). Horace insists that Death's lake will be crossed by both "Rulers
of kingdoms" and "needy peasants" alike. And even piety will not avert
this end. These apprehensions eventually ripen into a blatant questioning
of the very notion of conquest:
Why do we aim so high, when time must foil
our
Brave archery? Why hanker after countries
Heated by foreign suns? What exile ever
Fled his own mind?
(II,16)
It's worth recalling here a point argued effectively
by Perry Anderson: since the economy of the entire Roman world depended
on the slave mode of production, systematised on a massive scale and involving
a rupture between labour and the intellectual-political activities of free
citizens, the Empire was stagnant in technological terms and only through
geographical conquest could it maintain itself. Anderson's point derives
of course from Marx, who had noted that in the Roman Empire all productive
work was vilified as slave labour: "the labour of the free was under a
moral ban."(21) What incentives could slaves
have to increase their efficiency by technological or economic advances?
The only route for expansion was a "lateral" one of military conquest,
which in turn yielded more wealth and more slave labour. As Anderson has
it, "Classical civilization was...inherently colonial in character..."(22)
From this point of view, Horace's text can be read as questioning the very
foundation of Roman civilisation. Given his inclination to the "inward"
in the midst of a brutal Roman world where inwardness had little significance,
could we read Horace's attitudes as subversive? They certainly invert conventional
Roman values and the Roman emphasis on public duty; it is only poetry,
in Horace's eyes, which can conquer death (IV,8). And poetry is of its
essence private; Horace at one stage mockingly writes a poem about being
asked to compose a poem. He asserts his own scheme of values: simple living,
a mind free from envy and devotion to his muses.
Ironically, although Horace is generally against the idea of private property, looking back as he does to an age where there was "Small private wealth, large communal property" (II,15), he is all for this principle in the realm of poetry, as he states in the Ars: "A subject in the public domain you will have the right to make your own, if you do not keep slavishly to the beaten track..." [publica materies privati iuris erit, si/non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem...](23) Once again, Horace is concerned to redefine the connection between publicus and privatus. Again, Horace's insight here may go deeper than at first appears. His opposition to the principle of "private property" is not simply a reaction against the social imbalance of wealth or even the financial rat-race (a favourite point of commentators on Horace). The notion of "private property" is closely tied to the nature of the individual. Talking of the Roman legal system, Perry Anderson affirms that the "great, decisive accomplishment of the new Roman law was...its invention of the concept of `absolute property'..."(24) This had also been affirmed by Hegel, whose treatment of its implications for subjectivity is illuminating. Hegel is altogether cynical of the concept of private right. He argues that in the figure of the Emperor, whose will was absolute, "isolated subjectivity...gained a perfectly unlimited realization." And this one, capricious, monstrous will presided over a bland equality of subjects: "Individuals were perfectly equal...and without any political right...Private Right developed and perfected this equality...the principle of abstract Subjectivity...now realizes itself as Personality in the recognition of Private Right." The point here is that, as Hegel goes on to say, "Private Right is...ipso facto, a nullity, an ignoring of the personality..."(25) For Hegel, the principle of private right is a symptom of the necessary collapse of the Roman republic: there is no object (spiritual or political) beyond the objects dictated by individual greed and caprice. We needn't assert that Horace was thinking in Hegelian terms in order to believe that he too was aware of private right as an index of moral and spiritual disintegration, of the absence of a genuine subjectivity measurable in human, rather than merely abstract legal, terms. And, for all the emphasis he places on the need for literature to satisfy an audience, his withdrawal into a reconstituted subjectivity encompasses his aesthetics. He tends to regard himself as a recluse, preferring to satisfy the poetic standards of a chosen few. The inky cloak of scholarly elitism fits him with a conventional smugness: "I bar the gross crowd. Give me reverent silence./I am the Muses' priest..." (III,1) Horace's religion, of course, is poetry. This securing of a heaven of invention, a haven of privacy in the midst of a callously public world, this refilling of the substantive emptiness of "privacy", amounts to a redefinition of values, as well as of the essentially "human", which does carry a subversive potential.
But, in common with much deconstructive criticism,
this witholding of political complicity is an isolated gesture, with no
contextualising framework of practice to render it politically meaningful
or effective. What exactly is the "human" into which Horace retreats? To
begin with, it entails in the Ars an essentialism whereby human
nature is fixed: "nature forms us within from the start to every set of
fortune..."(26) This goes hand in hand
with an abstract view of the determinants of social changes: "The years
as they come bring many advantages with them and take as many away as they
withdraw."(27) This is almost on a par
with Derrida's attribution of the historical growth of various philosophical
oppositions to one indifferent cause: "the movement of differance". Moreover,
Horace seems to view "truth" and "beauty" as unproblematic concepts.
Again, Horace's reaction against the present
is too often couched in praise of the past. The virtues he commends are
unequivocally Classical: which isn't intrinsically culpable except that
these virtues are unashamedly associated with peace of mind and avoidance
of hazard:
auream quisquis mediocritatem
diligit tutus...
All who love safety make their prize
The golden mean and hate extremes...
(II,10)
Although, unlike the translation given above, Horace's Latin does not include the word "extreme", his lines imply an Aristotelian hypostatization of the concept "extreme": as with Aristotle, the mean is defined in negative terms, by what it isn't. The "extreme" is treated as an entity in itself, held up as something to be avoided. In the light of Derrida's comments on the "margin", this could be read as a concerted peripheralisation of what is viewed as unconventional or threatening to the established order. But we should also recall that for Aristotle the "mean" was a moral end in itself. Horace's reduction of it to the status of a mere means towards attaining the privileged end of "safety" is even more conservative than Aristotle's formulation. Aristotle had at least qualified his definition of moral virtue, which consists "essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us..." [ ] (my emphasis).(28)
Moreover, it's not just safety which Horace cherishes. All his "riches", the things he craves, such as good health, peace of mind and poetry (I,31) derive from his lack of commitment even to non-commitment. These lines have a self-betraying twist:
As wealth grows, worry grows, and thirst for
more wealth.
Splendid Maecenas (splendid yet still a knight),
Have I not done right in ducking low to keep
My headpiece out of sight?
(III,16)
By "ducking low", by refusing to raise his head, Horace is referring to his shrinking from material ambition and greed. But he has ducked low in another sense: politically his head was indeed out of sight. As with much deconstructive theory, his work makes radical gestures but they remain just that, gestures. Horace is often held up as a bold spokesman for the Roman republican ideals he saw crumbling all around him. While there can be no doubt of Horace's powerful poetic gifts of satire, subtlely and concision, that is a perspective which mirrors the history of Horace criticism, which has made the Ars a classic, more than it does the actual narratives of the Augustan state.
IV
Two such narratives occur in the writings
of Tacitus and Suetonius. These surely tell us that no assessment of Horace's
views can be undertaken without some political stance as to the nature
of Augustus' rule. Suetonius portrays Augustus as evolving from an earlier,
ruthless and fickle character into a clement and benevolent ruler "assiduous
in his adminsitration of justice..."(29)
Suetonius emphasises that the Senate even insisted on Augustus' absolute
authority. Ironically, Tacitus, who has invoked the censure of left-wing
historians for his "quietist" expression of the world-view of the Roman
Senatorial class, offers a more cynical account. There was no opposition
to Imperial rule, says Tacitus, because "the boldest spirits had fallen
in battle...while the remaining nobles...preferred the safety of the present
to the dangerous past."(30) Would this
be an apt description of Horace's mentality? Horace, as the son of a freedman,
was hardly "noble". Nor, having fled the field at Philippi, was he one
of the "boldest spirits" even before Octavian's rule was consolidated.
Tacitus seemingly laments the passing of Republican ideals, urging that
in the new order "there was not a vestige left of the old sound morality."
(31)
And yet, despite certain comments suggesting that "liberty" and "sovereignty"
are incompatible,(32) Tacitus begins his
History by saying that after "the conflict at Actium,...it became
essential to peace, that all power should be centered in one man..."(33)
That the principate was necessary to peace
is a common enough view. It is accepted by Hegel(34)
and even Perry Anderson writes that the "Roman monarchy of Augustus...punctually
arrived when its hour struck..."(35) But
our problem remains: if this view was genuinely accepted by Horace, why
his equivocation? And why was his criticism so tempered? One solution would
be to say, with R.M. Ogilvie, that in contrast with other renowned poets
of his day, Horace lacked the social standing (something he was ever conscious
of) to make authoritative pronouncements, and had no real prospect of a
political career.(36) In support of this,
we might adduce Cicero's statement that certain political offices are "reserved
to men of ancient family or to men of wealth."(37)
But Cicero, like Ovid and Propertius, took risks. What better evidence
is there for this than Plutarch's description of Antony's soldiers cutting
off Cicero's head and hands for his writing of the Philippics?(38)
Or Ovid's banishment? Moreover, Suetonius states that some of Augustus'
decrees, such as his marriage laws, aroused open opposition. His views
were often impugned openly in the Senate, without retribution.(39)
In the sphere of literature, "Augustus gave all possible encouragement
to intellectuals..." He was, however, chiefly interested in moral precepts
in literature and "expressed contempt for both innovators and archaizers...and
would attack them them with great violence: especially his dear friend
Maecenas..."(40) How vulnerable, then,
was Horace, that other "dear friend" of Maecenas? It's a favourite line
of Horace commentators to say that his poems "avoid the appearance of systematic
argument." In doing this, does Horace avoid systematic argument itself?
Perhaps the baby went out with the bathwater - in all three of his bathing
pools.
But let us not be unduly harsh. Many historians
agree that, all said and done, the Republic in its final phase was already
rotten, individual self-aggrandisement already having replaced loyalty
to the State. Hence we have the individual (rather than State-sanctioned)
military exploits of Caesar and Crassus. The Republic had been, in any
case, only a nominal democracy, actual power residing with unbroken continuity
in the aristocratic class. The Imperial administration, moreover, kept
intact the basic legal framework of the Republic, especially its economic
laws. The primary change was that the will of a monarch replaced that of
an oligarchy. Both during and after the Republic, the will of the citizen
in practice counted for little. This is reflected in the prevailing philosophies
of the time: Scepticism, Stoicism and Epicureanism. It was Epicureanism
which claimed Horace's lifelong allegiance, a school of thought which was
cynical of the gods and which discouraged social and political involvement.
No doubt a poet in Horace's equivocal position found here a platform for
his own non-involvement.
But again, Hegel's views here are illuminating.
He suggests that the purpose of all of these philosophies was the
same: to render the soul indifferent to the real world. They were all a
"counsel of despair to a world which no longer possessed anything stable."(41)
Marx says much the same thing: "the Epicurean, [and the] Stoic philosophy
was the boon of its time; thus, when the universal sun has gone down, the
moth seeks the lamplight of the private individual."(42)
A common saying of the Epicurean sect was "tyrants for all their violence
could not destroy the internal happiness of the wise man."(43)
Hence, although we can sympathise with Horace's position, we should bear
in mind that his potentially subversive withdrawals into subjectivity,
like his prescriptions in the Ars Poetica, were not original but
merely commonplaces of his day. His originality was exclusively on the
level of form. It seems that Augustus has been universally praised for
bringing "order" to the Roman State. Within this scheme of thinking, Horace's
text is indeed marked by the merits and limitations of deconstruction.
But it took a thinker of Marx's historical acuity to assert blandly that
the "order" of Rome "was worse than the worst disorder..." The emperors
had simply regularised the Republican exploitation of the provinces, resulting
eventually in "universal impoverishment" throught the Empire.(44)
Perhaps we should give the last word to Engels:
Old Horace reminds me in places of Heine,
who learned so much from him and who was also au fond quite as much
a scoundrel politice. Imagine this honest man, who challenges the
vultus
instantis tyranni [the threatening face of a tyrant] and grovels before
Augustus. Apart from this, the foul-mouthed old so and so is still very
lovable.(45)
What greater, and more honest, deconstructive tribute could Horace ask for?
* * *
Department of English, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, PA 17815,U.S.A.
References
1. Horace, The Art of Poetry, trans. Burton Raffel (New York, 1974), p. 62. This volume contains a verse translation by Raffel and a prose translation by James Hynd. For the most part, I have cited Hynd's translation except where Raffel's somewhat orthodox (but effective) rendering emphatically registers points that the present paper is attempting to evince. Hereafter cited as Horace.
6. Of Grammatology, tr. G.C. Spivak (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins, 1974), p. 43.
7. See Of Grammatology, pp. 45-52.
15. For a valuable account of these aspects of Horace, see Steele Commager, The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study (Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 42-9.
17. Satire VII, in Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires (London: Penguin, 1974), p. 165.
19. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 295.
20. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A.V. Miller (Oxford University Press, 1977) p. 455.
21. "Origin of Family, Private Property and State," in Marx and Engels: Selected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1968), p. 560.
22. Perry Anderson, Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism (Norfolk: Verso, 1978), pp. 26-28.
25. The Philosophy of History, pp. 315-16, 320.
29. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, tr. Robert Graves (Middlesex: Penguin, 1989), p. 73.
30. The Complete Works of Tacitus, ed. M. Hadas, tr. A.J. Church & W.J. Brodribb (New York: Random House, 1942), p. 4.
34. The Philosophy of History, p. 313.
36. R.M. Ogilvie, Roman Literature and Society (London: Penguin, 1980), pp. 142, 144.
37. Cicero, On the Commonwealth tr. G.H. Sabine & S.B. Smith (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929), p. 135.
38. Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic (Middlesex: Penguin, 1968), p. 319.
41. The Philosophy of History, p. 318.
42. Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (Moscow: Progress, 1978), pp. 207-08.
44. Marx and Engels: Selected Works, p. 559.
45. Engels, Letter to Marx, December 21, 1866, in Marx and Engels: On Literature and Art, p. 210.