2. Horace Epistles 2.3.1-37 (Ars Poetica)

Translated by Smith Palmer Bovie

(from The Satires and Epistles of Horace. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1959.)

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 - 8 BCE) was a prominent poet during the reign of Augustus, having one of the leading patrons of the day in Maecenas and even receiving overtures from Augustus himself. Epistle 2.3, also known as the Ars Poetica, is a somewhat satirical letter written in verse about aesthetic propriety. The letter is addressed to two young members of the prominent Piso family. The opening lines discuss visual arts:

Suppose you’d been asked to come for a private view

Of a painting wherein the artist had chosen to join

To a human head the neck of a horse, and gone on

To collect some odds and ends of arms and legs

And plaster the surface with feathers of differing colors,

So that what began as a lovely woman at the top

Tapered off into a slimy, discolored fish--

Could you keep from laughing, my friends? Believe me, dear Pisos,

Paintings like these look a lot like the book of a writer

Whose weird conceptions are just like a sick man’s dreams,

So that neither the head nor the foot can be made to apply

To a single uniform shape. "But painters and poets

Have always been equally free to try anything."

We writers know that, and insist such license be ours,

And in turn extend it to others-- but not to the extent

Of mating the mild with the wild, so that snakes are paired

With birds, and tigers with lambs. To works that begin

On a stately note and promise more grandeur to come

A couple of colorful patches are artfully stitched

To shimmer and shine, some sequins like these, for instance,

When the altar or grove of Diana, or perhaps it’s a rainbow,

Or the Rhine is being described: "The sinuous stream

Rustles daintily, tastefully, on the midst of the sylvan scene."

But you put it in just the wrong place! You draw cypress trees

Particularly well? But you’re paid to hit off the likeness

Of the desperate sailor swimming away from his shipwreck!

This thing began as a wine jar: how come it comes

Off the wheel at last as a milk jug? Make what you want,

So long as it’s one and the same, complete and entire.

O father, and sons who deserve a father like yours,

We poets are too often tricked into trying to achieve

A particular kind of perfection: I studiously try

To be brief, and become obscure; I try to be smooth,

And my vigor and force disappear; another assures us

Of something big which turns out to be merely pompous.

Another one crawls on the ground because he’s too safe,

Too much afraid of the storm. The poet who strives

To vary his single subject in wonderful ways

Paints dolphins in woods and foaming boars on the waves.

Avoiding mistakes, if awkwardly done, leads to error.

Nearby the gladiators’ school there’s a craftsman who molds

In bronze with special skill the lifelike shapes

Of fingernails and straying strands of hair,

But the whole result of his work is much less happy:

He can’t represent the figure complete and entire.

If I were to try to cast a good piece of writing,

I’d no more prefer to be like this fellow than live

With my nose at an angle, no matter how much admired

I was for my coal-black hair and coal-black eyes.