Horace is the second great Roman poet after Virgil, who set himself the task of creating exemplary literature. He believed that poetry is the "gymnastics of language". Horace did not like the lyrics of Catullus and strove to write works that would be similar to the high content and moralistic poems of Virgil.

The reader is interested not only in the work of the great Roman poet, but also in his historical era, biography. Horace Quint made great contributions to world literature, although he came from a simple family. In his poems, he formulated his own wisdom and gave a number of recommendations of a moral and ethical plan, which were based on the philosophy of the golden mean.

Horace: biography and life path

The Great was born in 65 BC. e. in Venusia. His work falls on the first decade of the reign, which took the place of Caesar. He was born into the family of a freedman who took care of his son's education and left him a small estate after his death.

The life of the poet was directly connected with the activities of the Maecenas. When Caesar was killed in Rome, Quintus Horace Flaccus joined the supporters of Brutus. It was the Maecenas who helped him establish himself in life: he presented the estate and introduced Augustus into the circle.

Horace died of a sudden illness in the 8th century BC. e. He was buried next to his virtue Maecenas on the outskirts of Esquiline.

Features of creativity

Quintus Horace Flaccus was a multifaceted poet who created samples of poetry in various lyrical genres - odes and hymns. Both works are quite solemn in form and mood. However, his odes, published in four books, are not aimed at praising anyone's merits, but reflect the poet's life wisdom and his philosophy. Horace gives advice in them, referring to the one to whom the odes are dedicated.

All the work of the great Roman poet can be divided into several cycles by genre:

1. Epodes (poems-couples of an iambic character).

2. Satires (accusatory works). Written in hexameter.

3. Odes (lyrical poems dedicated to an event).

Horace, whose biography is represented by three periods of creativity, all his life adhered to the philosophy of the golden mean, built on wisdom, prudence, beauty, virtue and harmony.

Message Genre

Quintus Horace Flaccus, whose poems were mostly dedicated to individuals, was very successful in this. He wrote 23 epistles, the last of which - "To the Pisons" - became the second work on literary criticism after Aristotle's "Science of Poetry", which indicates its importance in the context world literature. The main thing in the aesthetics of Horace is reasonableness, conformity to nature, so that the style and chosen words are fully consistent with the topic being raised. His poetry is difficult to understand. Johann Wolfgang Goethe once wrote that the images in the messages are like a "pendulum". The composition of lyrical poems is complicated by the fact that Horace could skillfully move from one image to another, using different poetic meters in the text. His poems are filled with various geographical names, and he also pays attention to detail.

Thematic groups od Horace

Reflection poems are the embodiment of wisdom. Quintus Horace Flaccus, whose work is mainly represented by four books of odes, writes in this thematic group about the short duration of life and the speed of the current time. For him, the desire for honors and wealth is meaningless. In the odes, the theme of love, a feast, sounds, but unlike the poems of Catullus, their tone is happy and comforting. You can count 7 female names to which Horace writes meditation poems. In one of his odes (No. 30 “To Melpomene”), he raises the problem of the immortality of the poet and enters into the tradition, starting from Egyptian poetry, that the immortality of a person is achieved as a result of his work, creation. Horace sees his infinity in poetry.

Analysis of Ode No. 30

This work received the conditional name "Monument". The classics of Russian literature liked the poem so much that the idea of ​​the immortality of the poet’s work was borrowed by Gavrila Derzhavin (“I erected a wonderful, eternal monument to myself”), Alexander Pushkin (“I erected a monument to myself not made by hands”), Valery Bryusov (“My monument stands, from the stanzas consonant complex"). The last two, as an epigraph, borrowed stanzas in Latin that Horace once said. The biography of the poet, as you know, was far from enviable: from childhood he did not know luxury and on his own tried to remain in the memory of people for many centuries.

Ode No. 30 is called "To Melpomene" and completes the third book of odes; Melpomene in mythology is the muse of tragedy. In the work, Horace talks about his achievements and at the end makes an appeal to crown himself with a laurel crown. To date, the poems of Lomonosov and Vostokov are considered the most successful translations of ode No. 30.

Satyrs of Horace

Peru of the great Roman poet owns several collections of satires. From this it is worth inferring that he became famous not only as a master of odes. Horace's satires resemble philosophical reasoning over the meaning of life, it is in them that he expresses the philosophy of the golden mean. The main object of ridicule is the false path of happiness, the pursuit of imaginary benefits. Quint Horace Flaccus, whose poems are satirical in nature, ironically over revelers and drunkards. One of his life recommendations says that you should not become a slave to wine and abuse this drink to satisfy sadness. Despite the fact that human passions and vices become the object of ridicule in satires, in them he also writes about the personal: in satire No. 6, for example, he tells the story of his life. Horace, having a low origin, lives, and does not know luxury.

Master of verses

Horace sometimes does not hide his origin in his poems and is not ashamed that he is the son of a freed slave. According to the literary critic Mikhail Gasparov, the poet used 12 types of ancient Greek stanzas in his poetry, his genius lies in his masterful knowledge and mastery of poetic art. In the first book of his odes, he gave a "parade" of these sizes, presented the sapphic, alcaean and other stanzas. In addition to odes, Horace, whose years of life were very productive, worked with epodes, which are very similar in form to choruses. They express their political content and, like in iambs, they ridicule the shortcomings of the people and people (the clearest example is “To the Roman People”).

"Be happy with what you have in your hands." The poet meant a simple truth of life, which says that you need to live and enjoy today and not condemn the creator because not every person is noble and rich. All benefits should be obtained in an honest way and be content with little.

"There is no use in money if you save it but don't spend it." How many cases history knows when a person has striven all his life to earn capital, denying himself a lot, and, having earned it, suddenly died. Horace considers such a philosophy to be wrong: you need to evenly spend the money you earn and live fully, without restrictions.

"Disperse the sorrows of life with wine, but know the measure." Hedonism as a trend in aesthetics promotes the idea of ​​pleasure as the highest goal. human life. Horace shared this point of view in half: drinking wine, of course, can satisfy sorrows, but you should not abuse it.

"Fall in love, but don't suffer from love." Horace, whose biography is full of family female names, brought out the truth, thanks to which a man can live in harmony with his heart. He does not deny love, but opposes passion and suffering.

History of Roman Literature in Names

The most famous Roman comedian is Titus Maccius Plautus. He wrote about fifty comedies, but only 19 have come down to us. In total, he owns over 20 thousand lines of poetry.

Titus Lucretius Carus and Gaius Valerius Catullus are the brightest representatives of Roman literature of the period of the republic. The first is the author of the work "On the Nature of Things", and the second became famous for his love poems.

Publius Virgil Maron tried himself in many literary genres. This ancient Roman poet is the author of the heroic poem "Aeneid"

Publius Ovid Naso is called the younger contemporary of Horace. He is the author of the poem "The Science of Love", written in an ironic spirit, as well as the collection of songs "Amores".

Phaedrus is an outstanding fabulist, who was the first to write fables in verse form. He became famous for his own works and translations of Aesop.

The term "prose" was originally used by the Romans to refer to unrhythmic speech. The first works in non-poetic form appeared much later. Apuleius, the author of the adventurous novel The Golden Ass, is considered to be a well-known prose writer, behind him in importance is Petronius the Arbiter, who wrote the Satyricon.

"Epodes" ("Choruses") - a collection of poems written in iambic meter. In these works of his, Horace focuses on the ancient Greek lyricist Archilochus. There are 17 episodes in the collection. The themes of contemporary Roman reality sound in them. Most of the epodes are personal invective, but with a focus on exposure individual moments social reality.

In epode IV, Horace attacks some upstart freedman (name not mentioned), who, thanks to his wealth, "sits like a prominent horseman in the forefront" (verse 35); with anger, the poet falls upon the witchcraft common at that time, branding the old women involved in this craft ( common name sorceress Canidia) - epodes III, V, XII. In Epode V, a boy is killed by sorceresses in order to prepare a “love potion” from his insides. Horace addresses them with threats:

“All of you, vile old women, with stones
Beat the crowd on the street
And the corpses of wolves will be torn to pieces by predatory
And the Esquiline birds"
(Epod V, verses 97 - 100; translated by F. A. Petrovsky).

WITH great strength there was a motive of condemnation of civil wars, shaking Rome and undermining its former power (epodes VII and XVI). Epode VII, addressed to the Roman people, begins with the words:

"Where, where are you going, criminals,
Drawing swords in madness?!
Are there really few fields and waves of the sea
Drenched in Roman blood?
(Epod VII, verses 1–4; translated by A. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky).

In epode XVI, written in 40 BC. e. - ten years before the release of the entire collection, Horace speaks of the detrimental consequences of civil wars, that Rome dooms itself to a suicidal death:

“For two generations already languishing civil war,
And Rome is destroyed by its own power ... "
(Epod XVI, verses 1–2; translated by A. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky)

The poet does not see a way out of this situation, he enthusiastically sings of the wonderful life on the "blissful islands", urging his compatriots to flee to these islands, which have not yet been affected by the general collapse. But there is no answer to the question posed by the poet himself about the location of the fabulous happy islands in this (XVI) epod. Thus, the “blissful islands” are just a pipe dream. And then battles of Aktion in Epode IX, addressed to patron, Horace, having ridiculed Antony for his submission to Cleopatra, glorifies the princeps for the first time. This is the only epode where the poet expresses his positive point of view and expresses a positive attitude towards politician. As for the first epod (according to its location in the collection), it should be singled out especially for the programmatic motives expressed by Horace regarding his position in life, and his attitude towards Octavian Augustus and Maecenas. The poem is the last of the epods by the time of creation. The addressee of this work is the patron of the poet Maecenas, whose devotion Horace declares:

“And in this, and in every one, I am ready for a campaign,
hoping for your love
And not at all in the hope that I will succeed
Harness more oxen to plows ... "
(Epod I, verses 23–26, translated by N. Gintsburg).

Close to Archilochus in the nature of the attacks of epode X, addressed to the literary enemy of Horace - the poet Mevius. The nature of the epod is parodic, built in the spirit of parting words common in Hellenistic literature with the wish of a good journey. However, not good luck, but all sorts of troubles, Horace wishes Mevia on the way, while the addressee is endowed with all sorts of offensive names:

"Then the lecherous goat along with the sheep
Let him be a victim of the storms!
(Epod X, verses 23–24; translated by N. Gunzburg).

The collection contains epodes with lyrical themes - these are epodes XI, XIII-XV. There are ironic and parodic moments in them, but there are no sharp attacks and denunciations. In Epode XI, a sentimental love elegy is parodied. In epode XIII, addressing his friends, the poet urges, despite difficult circumstances, “to snatch an hour that was sent by chance”, because wine and songs save from severe grief. In epode XIV, justifying himself to the Maecenas in his “sluggish inaction”, Horace confirms that he “had promised to finish the song clean for a long time”, but refers to the passion for the “slave Phryne” and speaks ironically about the power of love interests. In epode XV, addressed to a woman named Neera, he reproaches her for treason and says that there will be retribution - Flakk will find himself another, more worthy one, and then: "it will be my turn to laugh."

Horace - "Satires"

Another important part of Horace's works - "Satires" - is represented by two collections: the first contains 10 satires, the second - 8. In satires, the poet turns to moral and philosophical topics. Criticizing certain human vices and shortcomings, Horace expresses his life principles. The main principle of "contentment with little", based on the philosophy of Epicurus, translates into a preaching of rural life in the bosom of nature, away from the unrest of the bustle of the city. The problem of personal happiness is connected with the philosophy of moderation, an example of which Horace considers his own life; he is content with a quiet life on the estate given to him by the Maecenas, where only a few slaves serve him, and the fruits of the land of his estate.

Horace reads his satires to Maecenas. Painting by F. Bronnikov, 1863

This "philosophy of moderation" was a peculiar form of acceptance of the Augustan regime by wide circles of the nobility and the poet himself, allowing them to maintain the illusion of independence and freedom. At the same time, in satires, Horace does not create a positive ideal, although he quite clearly shows how not to live. Blaming the vices and shortcomings of individuals, Horace avoids too harsh criticism in his works. His satire has the character of preaching virtue and wisdom, it is devoid of sharpness and accusatory power. In a number of satires (book I, satires 4, 10; book II, satires 1, 3) questions of literary theory are raised. The polemical part of these works is more connected with the name of Horace's predecessor in this genre, the poet Lucilius:

“Yes, of course, I said that Lucilius’s verses are rude,
That they run without order. Who, senseless, will
Is it to protect him? However, on the same page
I also praised him: for the caustic salt of his jokes.
This merit belongs to him, but I cannot recognize others.
(Book I, satire 1, verse 10; translated by M. Dmitriev).

Indeed, in the satires of Horace there is no “caustic salt” of Lucilius, who dared to make sharp political denunciations. Horace accuses Lucilius of the fact that his satires flow in a "muddy stream", referring to the haste in poetic work, which led to insufficient finishing of the verse. Horace himself strives for consistency in the presentation of thoughts and elegance in the decoration of his works. But Horace recognizes the merits of Lucilius and calls him the "inventor" of the genre of satire.

Horace - "Odes"

The greatest fame brought Horace his "Odes" ("Songs") - a collection of lyrical poems, consisting of four books. In these works, Horace focuses on the famous Greek poets: Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon. Perceiving their best traditions, adapting their poetic sizes, using the achievements of previous Roman poetry, Horace reaches the pinnacle of perfection of Roman lyrics.

The subject matter of Horace's odes is diverse: these are friendly messages, and philosophical reflections, and hymns to the gods, love and civil lyrics. The first book opens with a poem, where Horace speaks of his poetic vocation, which received the support of the powerful patron Maecenas. The first lines of the ode are addressed to him:

“Glorious grandson, Maecenas, royal forefathers,
O my joy, honor and refuge!”
(Book I, ode 1, verses 1–2; translated by A. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky).

Horace lists the hobbies people prefer in their lives: sports, the political arena, Agriculture, trade, idle pastime, war, hunting. For each, his occupation is "the highest happiness." And then in two stanzas (the poem was written in the first Asclepiades stanza), in an exquisite poetic form, he also speaks of his vocation: “a cool grove draws me to the highest, where nymphs lead a round dance with satyrs.” Horace expresses his hope for the mercy of the Maecenas:

“If you count me among the peaceful singers
I will raise my proud head to the stars
(book I, ode I, verses 35–36; translated by A. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky).

The second ode of the first book is addressed to Augustus, whom Horace portrays as the god Mercury, "the winged son of the blessed Maya", who received the name of Caesar on earth. So, already the initial works of the collection give an idea of ​​the ideological orientation of Horace's lyrics. And in the future, delving into the reading of Horace's works, the reader can see that the political motives that permeate the collection turn out to be associated with the glorification of Augustus and his politics.

Emperor Octavian August ("August from Prima Porta"). 1st century statue according to R.H.

In the spirit of the official ideology, Horace sings of ancient Roman prowess and in the so-called cycle of Roman odes (Book III, odes 1-6), which constitute a certain thematic unity and are written in the same poetic size- alcaic stanza. These odes are united common theme- they reflect the positive ideal put forward by the program of Augustus; the poet focuses on the state and its interests, the poet speaks of the detrimental effect of luxury and wealth, paints a picture of the degradation of Roman society, destroyed by venality: “a fighter whose liberty is bought with gold, will he become bolder?” (Book III, ode 5, verses 25–26). Horace sees a way out of this disastrous situation in the restoration of the old order, in a return to the beliefs of the gods, in the restoration of destroyed temples:

"The guilt of the fathers of the innocent defendant
You will, Rome, until restored
Fallen dwellings of the gods,
Their statues in black smoke"
(Book III, ode 6, verses 1–4; translated by N. Shaternikova).

In his works, Horace turns his gaze to the patriarchal gods, which corresponded to the official policy of Augustus, calls for the ancient Roman good morals, for the simplicity of life and for the former valor (Book III, ode 2). He sees the embodiment of valor in Augustus, who rises above all people. In ode 3 of book III, Horace prepares the apotheosis of Augustus: “I will allow him (meaning Augustus) to join the hosts of the blessed gods from now on” (verses 35–36). The reign of Augustus on earth is compared with the reign of Jupiter in heaven (book III, ode 5). In the "Roman odes" the principle of unity of composition, adopted from Hellenistic poetry, is maintained: the first and last poems of the cycle (odes 1 and 6) contain the same number of verses (48 each), both are addressed to the people, however, with a slight difference: ode 1 is addressed to youth, to a new generation; in ode 6 there is no age limit.

Philosophical motifs of "Horatian wisdom", passing through the entire collection of lyrical poems, are associated with the praise of enjoying the joys of life: love, feasts, the blessings and beauties of nature. In the spirit of a superficially perceived Epicurean philosophy, the poet put forward the principles of “seize the day” (book I, ode 11) and “use the present without thinking about the future” (book I, ode 25), that is, enjoy the joys of today. This call is combined in the works of Horace with the preaching of “contentment with little” and the life principle of keeping to the “golden mean”, which was framed in an ode to Licinius (Book II, ode 10):

“Choosing the golden mean measure.
The wise will avoid a dilapidated roof,
Avoid the palaces that are born in people
Black envy.

The wind oppresses the age-old pines more strongly,
It is harder to fall than the tallest towers.
Lightning strikes more often
Mountain heights»
(Book II, ode 10, verses 5–12; transl. 3. Morozkina).

Even in such a traditional theme for the ancient poetic tradition as feasts and wine, Horace maintains his point of view regarding moderation. In the feast verses that are often found in his lyrics, he does not give free rein to the Bacchic expanse and does not lose power over his own actions:

“But for everyone there is a measure in drinking: Liber observes the limit.
The battle of the centaurs arose after wine with the Lapith family - here
Drunk is the best lesson "
(Book I, ode 18, verses 7–9; translated by N. Ginzburg).

In ode 3 of book II, Horace, in accordance with the philosophical views of the moderate Stoics, writes:

"Try to keep the spirit calm
In the days of adversity; on happy days
Don't get drunk with glee
Subject to death, like all of us, Dellius"
(Book II, ode 3, verses 1–4; translated by A. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky).

A significant place is occupied by odes dedicated to friends. Of particular interest is the poem "To Pompey Varus" (book II, ode 7), translated by A. S. Pushkin, in which Horace recalls his flight from the battlefield when he "abandoned his shield under Philippi." This was in 42 BC. e. after the defeat of the Republicans, led by Brutus, under whose command the poet served. The theme of "loss of the shield" was found in the verses of the Greek poets Archilochus, Alcaeus, Anacreon. In the works of Horace, this topic is presented in its own way - the author uses literary reminiscences from Greek lyrics.

There is no passion in Horace's love odes. Horace is never in the grip of love. He observes other people's passions (book I, ode 5) or calls to the joys of love (book II, ode 12). The heroines of his lyrical works are numerous: Chloe, Pyrrha, Lalaga, Neobula, etc. Among all the poems on this topic, only one ode (book III, ode 9), addressed to Lydia, stands out for its lyrical tone. This poem is a dialogue between Horace and Lydia, where, in an elegant form and playful tone, the poet speaks of past mutual love, of happiness. new love when the objects of passion change, about the possibility of resuming relations with each other. The poem ends with the words: "I want to live with you and die, loving." But in this poem on a love theme, as in others, Horace does not create the image of his beloved. The heroines of the poet are not very specific, each time they are endowed with some quality peculiar only to her: Chloe is shy and impregnable (Book I, ode 23), Pyrrha is golden-haired (Book I, ode 5), Glikera “shines brighter than marble Paros "(book I, ode 19), Mirtal "the sea was more turbulent" (book I, ode 33). Horace is alien to suffering from the betrayal of his beloved: if one rejects, then you can find solace with the other. Therefore, he himself, with a playful reproach, turns to Barina, who “drives the youths of the crowd crazy”:

"You know how to lie, remembering in oaths
And father's ashes, and the night sky,
And the silence of the stars, and the gods who did not know
Death cold.

But these oaths are only funny to Venus,
And the nymphs laugh, and the cruel one himself
Cupid sharpening on a bloody bar
Burning Arrows»
(book II, ode 8, verses 9–16; translated by F. A. Petrovsky).

Horace's love works, to a greater extent than others, were influenced by Hellenistic, Alexandrian poetry. Most characteristic in this respect is the ode 30 addressed to Venus in book 1.

Horace dedicates the final verses of books II and III to his poetic vocation and the theme of the poet's immortality in his works. He begins Ode 20 of Book II with the words: “I will ascend on powerful, unprecedented wings, a two-faced singer, in ethereal heights” (verses 1–2).

Ode 30 of book III, called "Monument", has gained the highest fame and enjoys worldwide fame. Here are the final lines of this piece:

“... With the glory of the well-deserved,
Melpomene, be proud, and, benevolent,
Now Delph crown my head with laurels.
(book III, ode 30, verses 14–16; translated by S. V. Shervinsky).

Thus ends the third book of lyrical poems by Horace.

According to the original plan of the poet, the collection was to consist of three books, and the "Monument" was conceived as an ode to complete this work. But at the insistence of Octavian Augustus, 10 years after the publication of a collection of three books, a fourth book was written, containing 15 poems. The poet continues to glorify Augustus and his political activity, and also sings of the stepsons of the princeps - Tiberius and Druza; pays much attention to the theme of the immortality of the poet.

Horace also owns the jubilee hymn (“Song of the Ages”), written for the national celebration, which was supposed to mark the onset of the “golden age” provided by Augustus. The hymn was written for choral performance. His words are addressed to the gods Apollo and Diana with a plea to promote the prosperity of Rome and the divine Augustus.

Horace - "Messages"

Horace's last works are the Epistles. These are letters in poetic form that have specific addressees. They are written in hexameter. The subjects of the messages are diverse due to the involvement of extensive illustrative material from life and literature. As for the main semantic orientation, in the first collection of "Messages" Horace seeks to reveal the "art of living" that he has already achieved (to keep to the "golden mean", not to be surprised at anything, to be able to be content with the available joys of life), and the second collection (of the three "Messages ”) is devoted to questions of literary theory. Of particular note is the last "Epistle" - "Epistle to the Pisos" ("The Science of Poetry"). This message was already singled out by the ancients as a separate work, considering it as a presentation of the theory of poetic art. Horace formulates the most important aesthetic principles of classicism about the unity, simplicity and integrity of the work. He talks about the content of art, about the means of influencing the audience, about the social significance of poetry and about the role of the poet. Much attention is paid to the artistic form and composition of the work, the criteria for assessing poetic skill. The poet himself speaks of the tasks that he sets himself in this, in his opinion, theoretical guide:

“Not creating myself, I will show what is the gift, what is the duty of the poet,
What gives him means, forms him and nourishes him,
What is good, what is not, where is the right path, where is the wrong one.
(Messages, book II, epistle 3, verses 306–308; translated by N. Ginzburg).

The "Science of Poetry" by Horace is a monument of ancient classical aesthetics. This work served as the basis for N. Boileau's Poetic Art.

From the very beginning of his literary activity, Horace acts as a supporter of meaningful poetry and as a master of verse, a virtuoso of metrical form. He becomes in opposition both to the lack of ideas of neoteriks, and to archaistic admiration for the ancient poets of Rome, and orientation towards Greek

Horace's early work has an aggressively polemical character; it is cast in the form of iambography or satire. Yambographic poems under the title "Epodes". In antiquity, one of the strophic forms was called epod - a couplet, in which the second verse is shorter than the first.

Horace begins with political poetry, with an ardent protest against the incessant civil wars (epod 7).

2nd epod celebrates the delights of rural pursuits,

love poems.

Horace prefers to choose opponents who represent a public danger. the desire to rise above the subjectivism of the neotherics;

On the path of Horace as a lyric poet, the Epodes are the first step towards a strictly classical style.

Much more productive is Horace in the field of satire.

the problem of individual happiness now becomes central to all of Horace's poetry.

Happiness, according to Horace, is in the “golden mean” (this expression belongs to him), in contentment with little, as a source of inner independence and dominance over passions, in serene and moderate enjoyment of the blessings of life.

False paths to happiness, the pursuit of imaginary goods - the main object of Horace's satire; it is directed against vain aspirations, greed, thirst for honors, vanity, inconstancy, envy. The tone of satire is softened, mockery is replaced by irony, the poet wants to tell the truth, laughing.

Horace calls his satires “Conversations”; some satires are built as arguments on moral and philosophical topics - about dissatisfaction with fate and self-interest, about treating friends, etc.

Horace's sketches are distinguished by observation and the art of apt characterization, but perhaps the most significant factor in the artistic action of his satires is the intimate-personal tone coloring the reasoning.

also found in narrative form

Horace defends the right of the satirist to free denunciation of vices

Consciousness of creativity - characteristic Horace. The future author of the "Science of Poetry" The transition to the lyric poetry of reflection, outlined in the epochs, determined the creative interests of the poet for a number of years. In 23, he publishes three books of lyrical "Poems" (Carmina); ancient commentators sometimes call them odes, and this Greek name was strengthened in later literature on Horace. "Ode" - a song, or a lyrical work in verse forms of a song, and, in particular, Horace's "odes" are usually very far from "high style".

From the style of the epods, Horace moves on to the forms of monodic lyrics. His models now are Anacreon, Sappho and, first of all, Alcaeus, and the Roman poet sees his right to literary immortality in the fact that he was “the first to bring the Aeolian song into Italian modes” (“Monument”).

The lyrics of Horace are saturated with thought. Thought and imagination prevail over feeling in Horace, and the subject goes far beyond the sphere of direct subjective experiences. The events of the outside world interest the poet primarily in their place in the system of life values; Horace starts from a single fact or a specific situation, but removes them from the immediate life context and surrounds them with reflections that take shape in a series of chased images. The proponent of meaningful poetry is inclined towards didactic prose, traditional in ancient lyrics. Some features are associated with it that determine the specific structure of the Horatian ode.

Another characteristic feature of Horatian lyrics is that the appeal almost always contains some kind of will or advice.

Horace's ode is most often turned towards the future.

By. Themes and genre varieties of odes are very diverse. Appeals to the gods, political poems and philosophical reflections alternate with love, feast and friendly lyrics, with mocking and accusatory works, and with poems for various life occasions.

With all this diversity, several main groups are clearly distinguished, creating a specific look of the collection. This is primarily a group of "admonishing" poems, lyrics of reflection,

Wealth is good only when they know how to use it, but as wealth grows, worries and greed usually increase.

Love and wine are the original themes of Aeolian lyrics. Horace sometimes assumes the pose of a singer of wine and love, but this happens mainly in those cases when he is forced to reject the offers of patrons who persistently encourage him to sing the "acts of Augustus."

In the expression of subjective feelings, the Horatian love ode is very restrained.

dialogue scene of a meeting and reconciliation after a quarrel

The drinking lyrics are also distinguished by a moderate character.

Friendship is of greater value to the Epicurean. Friendly greetings, and consolations, exhortations and parting words constitute that lyrical sphere, which receives a more intimate flavor from the usually restrained Horace. A number of odes is dedicated to the Maecenas referring to star friendship

In a cycle of odes, sustained in a solemn style, Horace acts as a propagandist of religious and moral reforms.

in Horace, a satirist-moralist sometimes wakes up, scourging the vices of modernity, its depravity, effeminacy and greed. The main source of evil is the thirst for accumulation.

in Horace, writing becomes a literary genre. Some poems are actual letters, but in most cases the specific situation of the letter is only a pretext for expressing thoughts and moods.

Basically, this is the path of Epicurus: the ideas of divine control of the world do not find an echo.

By the end of antiquity, acquaintance with Horace is on the wane. The poet himself measured in the "Monument" his literary immortality by the eternity of the Roman state, but in reality the greatest flowering of his glory was yet to come.

Horace is a poet of thought and at the same time a master of a strong, concise word and a clear, concrete image. All these moments are already present in early work, but the poet does not always manage to create a single artistic whole out of them, and the figurative side often turns out to be only an illustration for abstract reasoning. Horace achieves greater integrity in his later works.

The publication of the second collection of satires and the book of epods (about 30). the first period of literary activity of Horace ends. The introductory satire of the second book contains, in essence, a farewell to aggressive-polemical poetry: the author assures that his pen will no longer offend anyone except for the purpose of self-defense. The transition to the lyric poetry of reflection, which was outlined in the epods, determined the creative interests of the poet for a number of years. In 23, he publishes three books of lyrical "Poems" (Carmina); ancient commentators sometimes call them odes, and this Greek name was strengthened in later literature on Horace. It should not be associated with the ancient term "ode" of ideas about a completely obligatory solemn pathos, as was the case in the "odic" genre of modern times. "Ode" - a song, or a lyrical work in verse forms of a song, and, in particular, Horace's "odes" are usually very far from "high style". As a pure classicist, Horace looks for examples for himself in ancient Greek lyrics, but finds them not in the solemn poetry of Pindar, but in the melik of the Aeolians.

From the Archilochian style of epodes, Horace moves on to the forms of monodic lyrics. His models now are Anacreon, Sappho and, first of all, Alcaeus, and the Roman poet sees his right to literary immortality in the fact that he was “the first to bring the Aeolian song into Italian modes” (“Monument”).

The transfer of the "Aeolian song" to Roman soil should be understood in the same way as the "display of the Parian iambs" in the epods. Horace means, first of all, the enrichment of Roman poetry with the verse and strophic forms of the Aeolian lyrics. The collection, published in 23, contains in a motley alternation of poems written in "Alcaeus" stanza, "Sapphic", "Asklepiades" and other stanzas in their various variations - a total of twelve strophic forms; they were all brand new or almost brand new to Rome, and in interpreting them Horace exhibits a metrical skill unsurpassed by any subsequent Roman poet. This unprecedented yet metrical variety appears before the reader from the very first pages of the collection, which opens with a kind of strophic parade, a group of poems of various strophic forms.

Reproducing the metrical construction and the general stylistic tone of the Aeolian lyrics, Horace goes his own way in everything else. As in the epods, he uses the artistic experience of different periods and often echoes Hellenistic poetry. The ancient Greek form serves as a vestment for the Hellenistic-Roman content. Horace has no translations from ancient Greek lyrics. Some odes - from relatively early ones - begin with a quote [for example, from Alcaeus "It's time for us to drink" in poem 1.37 on the occasion of the death of Cleopatra], but these quotes have approximately the same function as in our time the epigraph, and in the future the poem develops on its own.

The lyrics of Horace are saturated with thought and in this respect are the complete opposite of the lyrics of his Roman predecessor Catullus. Thought and imagination prevail over feeling in Horace, and the subject goes far beyond the sphere of direct subjective experiences. The events of the outside world interest the poet primarily in their place in the system of life values; Horace starts from a single fact or a specific situation, but removes them from the immediate life context and surrounds them with reflections that take shape in a series of chased images. The proponent of substantive poetry is prone to the didactic posture traditional in ancient lyrics. Some features are associated with it that determine the specific structure of the Horatian ode.

Another characteristic feature of Horatian lyrics is that the appeal almost always contains some kind of will or advice. The poet expresses a wish, rejects someone's proposal, seeks to influence the will of the addressee. The will is meant to be carried out, and Horace's ode is most often directed towards the future. A purely contemplative moment, familiar in the lyric poetry of the New Age and already encountered by Catullus, is least of all characteristic of Horace's odes.

Odes are very diverse in subject matter and genre varieties. Appeals to the gods, composed according to all the rules of the ancient anthem, political verses and philosophical reflections alternate with love, feast and friendly lyrics, with mocking and accusatory works, and with poems for various life occasions. With all this diversity, several main groups are clearly distinguished, creating a specific look of the collection.

This is primarily a group of "exhortation" poems, lyrics of reflection. Acting as a lyric poet, Horace does not abandon the problem of true happiness, which occupied him in satires. From the fusion of the gnomic fund of ancient Greek poetry with the principles of Epicurean philosophy, a peculiar combination is obtained, which has entered the centuries as "Horatian wisdom". The ideal of serene enjoyment of life receives its classical literary expression from Horace. In the run of time, in the change of seasons and the phases of the moon, in the withering of flowers and the vicissitudes of human fate, the poet sees a reminder of the short duration of life. Pale death is equally knocking on the shacks of the poor and on the halls of the rich. Don't worry about the future:

The current day catches

least of all

believing in the coming day.

Truly free and happy is only the one who can say at the end of the day: “I have lived,” and tomorrow, whatever it may be, cannot make the former not the former. Feasts, wine, love - these pleasures should by no means be neglected, but the basis of a blissful life - but the serenity of the spirit, able to maintain a measure in well-being and firmness in a difficult situation. The thirst for wealth and the desire for honors are equally useless. A high position is fraught with dangers:

More often the whirlwind of pine giants shakes,

The collapse of all high towers is harder,

And the bulk of the mountains attract more often

Lightning strikes

a reminder, quite timely in the days of Augustus, who was very jealous of other people's popularity. Wealth is good only when they know how to use it, but with the growth of wealth, worries and greed usually increase; but the sleep of a man with a small income is quiet. In the "golden mean", in the reduction of desires - the source of happiness, and Horace willingly draws his quiet life in the Sabine estate.

In a circle of themes, this meditative lyric comes into contact with the diatribe, but it never becomes abstract or tiresome. An instructive appeal to the addressee remains within the framework of a refined and polite conversation, which does not impose excessive demands on either attentiveness or pride of the interlocutor, and the poet knows how to vary the forms of expression of his favorite thoughts.

Love and wine are the original themes of the Aeolian lyrics. .Horace sometimes assumes the pose of a singer of wine and love, but this happens mainly in those cases when he is forced to reject the offers of patrons who persistently encourage him to sing the "acts of Augustus." The philosophy of pleasure continues to retain its "protective" character for Horace. As is natural to expect from an Epicurean, Horace's love lyrics do not go beyond the poetry of light passions. His contemporaries, the Roman elegiac poets (see below), strove to depict deep and intense passion and published entire cycles of poems dedicated to a single beloved, cycles in which there was no place for another feminine name as an object of love. Horace is completely different. He portrays his feeling as if fluttering. In his collection there are many female figures that have almost no individual features, but all these ghostly Lydias, Glickers and Chloes receive in their honor only a very small number of poems, and sometimes they are mentioned no more than once. In the expression of subjective feelings, the Horatian love ode is very restrained; using mainly the images of the outside world, Horace creates a lyrically lively situation, acquiring internal movement in its disclosure and in the thoughts and expressions of the poet's will. The author's "I" is not always the bearer of love emotion. Horace prefers to find a strong feeling in others. As an outside observer, already tempted by love shipwrecks, he draws storms that await an inexperienced admirer of a changeable beauty, the detrimental effect of passion on a healthy, strong young man, or the evil amusements of Venus, conjugating people who are not similar to each other either in appearance or spiritual qualities. Love experiences attributed to the author himself are most often colored with light irony and immersed in the atmosphere of Horatian life perception, which gives them a specific tone, despite the numerous rehashings of individual motifs of ancient Greek and especially Hellenistic love poetry. In the first collection, only one poem speaks of the suffering associated with love, but here we have the torment of jealousy, not love. Horace responds to the fashionable themes of a sentimental love elegy with playful poems; serenade (paraklausithyron) receives from him a parodic interpretation. Not without a touch of sly irony, even the love poem of Horace (III, 9), the most famous in later times, is a dialogic scene of a meeting and reconciliation after a quarrel: in three paired stanzas with a symmetrical alternation of replicas, the past, present and future of two lovers pass, looking for easy changes in love and unrest. The drinking lyrics are also distinguished by a moderate character: the poet glorifies the “modest Bacchus”.

Friendship is of greater value to the Epicurean. Friendly greetings, and consolations, exhortations and parting words constitute that lyrical sphere, which receives a more intimate flavor from the usually restrained Horace. The author's characteristic combination of serious and playful, his art of medium colors finds a fertile ground in the tones of friendly lyrics, and many of Horace's most elegant poems belong to this area. One of these poems (II, 7) on the occasion of the return to Italy of the amnestied Pompeius Varus, a comrade-in-arms of the poet in the republican army of Brutus, was translated by Pushkin (“Which of the gods returned me”). A number of odes are dedicated to the Maecenas, including the well-known poem (II, 17), in which Horace, referring to the stellar friendship that connects his fate with the fate of the Maecenas, promises not to outlive his friend.

A special category is odes on political and social topics. The poet's patrons expected works from him in honor of August, but reconciliation with the empire took place much more slowly with Horace than with Virgil. We have already seen that after the early republican poems of Horace until the end of the 30s. did not touch upon political issues and returned to them only during the struggle with Antony, which attracted the sympathy of the Italian population to the side of Octavian. Like Alcaeus in his time, Horace depicts the Roman state as a "ship" that threatens to become a toy of the winds.

You were an annoyance, you were an anxiety to me,

Became love now, thought is not easy.

The death of Cleopatra already provides material for a jubilant poem. Octavian is now presented as the leader who brought Italy out of the impasse of civil wars and saved Roman society from the threat of social upheaval.

I'm not afraid of embarrassment

Not to be killed until the whole earth

Our Caesar rules,

Horace writes in 24 and immediately recalls Spartacus. He tries to approach the empire from two points of view: from the position of an apolitical slave owner, a private person who wants to serenely enjoy the blessings of life under the protection of the new system, and from the position of a moralist, dejected by the fall of civil prowess in Roman society; but the consistent implementation of both one and the other point of view would lead to a divergence from the official guidelines that required civic activity and at the same time limited this activity. Horace is therefore forced to remain extremely cautious in the treatment of political topics. The events of the recent past are "fire hidden under deceptive ashes", although Octavian's course of reconciliation with the republican aristocracy allows one to introduce the mention of "the glorious death of Cato" in a poem dedicated to the princeps and his family. But the praises of Octavian in the collection of 23 turn out to be very restrained in tone, when compared with other monuments of this time, for example, with Virgil's Georgics or with the later poems of Horace himself. Augustus is glorified in connection with those slogans of his foreign and domestic policy that were acceptable to Roman patriots with a conservative-republican bias. In a cycle of odes, sustained in a solemn, somewhat "pindarizing" style (the so-called "Roman odes", III, 1 - 6), Horace acts as a propagandist of religious and moral reforms in a conservative spirit, heralded by Augustus. The primacy of Italy over the Hellenistic East receives mythological consecration in the prophecy of Juno, who promises Rome power over the world, provided that the walls of Troy are not restored. The official slogans of religious renewal sound false in the mouth of the skeptical Horace, but the preaching of moral reform is associated with the poet's usual themes of curbing desires and fighting greed. Epicurean motifs interspersed with the praise of the Stoic "virtue" and with the propaganda of the warrior spirit.

The idealization of ancient morals and ancient simplicity is not alien to the philosopher of “contentment with little”, and in Horace sometimes a satirist-moralist wakes up, scourging the vices of modernity, its depravity, effeminacy and greed. The main source of evil is the thirst for accumulation. Huge estates with luxurious palaces and decorative gardens lead to a reduction in arable area and the dispossession of small owners:

The Scythians, who spend their lives in a wagon, and the wild Getae, who do not know private ownership of land, have a better way of life and purer morals than the Romans.

The versatility of the content and its high ideological level, the novelty and variety of verse forms, the plasticity of lyrically animated images, the compressed expressiveness of style, which develops a great wealth of verbal energy in a few words - these are the virtues of the Horatian odes. The poet achieved this art in a long work on improving the style, in the constant study of the classics of lyric poetry: a bee industriously collecting the juice of flowers - an image used by Horace himself to characterize his work.