Editing Horace (section)

===19th century on===

Horace maintained a central role in the education of English-speaking elites right up until the 1960s.<ref>S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 340</ref> A pedantic emphasis on the formal aspects of language-learning at the expense of literary appreciation may have made him unpopular in some quarters<ref>V. Kiernan, ''Horace: Poetics and Politics'', x</ref> yet it also confirmed his influence{{emdash}}a tension in his reception that underlies [[Lord Byron|Byron]]'s famous lines from ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage|Childe Harold]]'' (Canto iv, 77):<ref>S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 334</ref>

{{poemquote|
Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse.
}}

[[William Wordsworth]]'s mature poetry, including the [[Preface to the Lyrical Ballads|preface]] to ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'', reveals Horace's influence in its rejection of false ornament<ref>D. Money, ''The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'', 323</ref> and he once expressed "a wish / to meet the shade of Horace...".<ref group="nb">The quote, from ''Memorials of a Tour of Italy'' (1837), contains allusions to ''Odes'' 3.4 and 3.13 (S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 334–35)</ref> [[John Keats]] echoed the opening of Horace's ''Epodes'' 14 in the opening lines of ''[[Ode to a Nightingale]]''.<ref group="nb">"''My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / my sense...''" echoes Epodes [[:wikisource:la:Epodi#XIV|14.1–4]] (S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 335)</ref>

The Roman poet was presented in the nineteenth century as an honorary English gentleman. [[William Makepeace Thackeray|William Thackeray]] produced a version of ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber I/Carmen XXXVIII|1.38]] in which Horace's 'boy' became 'Lucy', and [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]] translated the boy innocently as 'child'. Horace was translated by [[Sir Theodore Martin]] (biographer of [[Albert, Prince Consort|Prince Albert]]) but minus some ungentlemanly verses, such as the erotic ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber I/Carmen XXV|1.25]] and ''Epodes'' 8 and 12. [[Edward Bulwer-Lytton]] produced a popular translation and [[William Ewart Gladstone|William Gladstone]] also wrote translations during his last days as Prime Minister.<ref>S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 335–37</ref>

[[Edward FitzGerald (poet)|Edward FitzGerald]]'s ''[[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam]]'', though formally derived from the Persian ''[[ruba'i]]'', nevertheless shows a strong Horatian influence, since, as one modern scholar has observed, "''...the quatrains inevitably recall the stanzas of the 'Odes', as does the narrating first person of the world-weary, ageing [[Epicurus|Epicurean]] Omar himself, mixing [[Symposium|sympotic]] exhortation and 'carpe diem' with splendid moralising and 'memento mori' [[nihilism]].''"<ref group="nb">Comment by S. Harrison, editor and contributor to ''The Cambridge Companion to Horace'' (S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 337</ref> [[Matthew Arnold]] advised a friend in verse not to worry about politics, an echo of ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber II/Carmen XI|2.11]], yet later became a critic of Horace's inadequacies relative to Greek poets, as role models of [[Victorian Age|Victorian]] virtues, observing: "''If human life were complete without faith, without enthusiasm, without energy, Horace...would be the perfect interpreter of human life.''"<ref>M. Arnold, ''Selected Prose'', 74</ref> [[Christina Rossetti]] composed a sonnet depicting a woman willing her own death steadily, drawing on Horace's depiction of 'Glycera' in ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber I/Carmen XIX|1.19.5–6]] and Cleopatra in ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber I/Carmen XXXVII|1.37]].<ref group="nb">Rossetti's sonnet, ''A Study (a soul)'', dated 1854, was not published in her own lifetime. Some lines: ''She stands as pale as Parian marble stands / Like Cleopatra when she turns at bay...'' (C. Rossetti, ''Complete Poems'', 758</ref> [[A. E. Housman]] considered ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber IV/Carmen VII|4.7]], in [[Prosody (Latin)#First Archilochian|Archilochian]] couplets, the most beautiful poem of antiquity<ref>W. Flesch, ''Companion to British Poetry, 19th Century'', 98</ref> and yet he generally shared Horace's penchant for quatrains, being readily adapted to his own elegiac and melancholy strain.<ref>S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 339</ref> The most famous poem of [[Ernest Dowson]] took its title and its heroine's name from a line of ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber IV/Carmen I|4.1]], ''Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae'', as well as its motif of nostalgia for a former flame. [[Kipling]] wrote a famous parody of the ''Odes'', satirising their stylistic idiosyncrasies and especially the extraordinary syntax, but he also used Horace's Roman patriotism as a focus for British imperialism, as in the story ''Regulus'' in the school collection ''[[Stalky & Co.]]'', which he based on ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber III/Carmen V|3.5]].<ref>S. Medcalfe, ''Kipling's Horace'', 217–39</ref> Wilfred Owen's famous poem, quoted above, incorporated Horatian text to question patriotism while ignoring the rules of Latin scansion. However, there were few other echoes of Horace in the war period, possibly because war is not actually a major theme of Horace's work.<ref>S. Harrison, ''the nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 340</ref> The Spanish poet [[Miquel Costa i Llobera]] published his renowned collection of poems named ''Horacianes'', thus being dedicated to the Latin poet Horace, and employing Sapphics, Alcaics and similar types of stanzas.<ref>{{cite book |title=Costa i Llobera i el món clàssic (1854-1922)|last1=Cifre Forteza |first1=Bernat| publisher=Lleonard Muntaner Editor|page=313}}</ref>

[[File:Michelin Poster 1898.jpg|thumb|[[Bibendum]] (the symbol of the [[Michelin]] tyre company) takes his name from the opening line of [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber I/Carmen XXXVII|Ode 1.37]], ''[[Nunc est bibendum]]''.]]
Both [[W. H. Auden]] and [[Louis MacNeice]] began their careers as teachers of classics and both responded as poets to Horace's influence. Auden for example evoked the fragile world of the 1930s in terms echoing ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber II/Carmen XI|2.11.1–4]], where Horace advises a friend not to let worries about frontier wars interfere with current pleasures.

{{poemquote|
And, gentle, do not care to know
Where Poland draws her Eastern bow,
     What violence is done;
Nor ask what doubtful act allows
Our freedom in this English house,
     Our picnics in the sun.<ref group="nb">Quoted from Auden's poem ''Out on the lawn I lie in bed'', 1933, and cited by S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 340</ref>
}}[[Image:Horatius - Boek I Ode XIV - Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden.JPG|thumb|''Odes'' 1.14 – [[Wall poems in Leiden|Wall poem in Leiden]] ]]

The American poet [[Robert Frost]] echoed Horace's ''Satires'' in the conversational and sententious idiom of some of his longer poems, such as ''The Lesson for Today'' (1941), and also in his gentle advocacy of life on the farm, as in ''Hyla Brook'' (1916), evoking Horace's ''fons Bandusiae'' in ''Ode'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber III/Carmen XIII|3.13]].  Now at the start of the third millennium, poets are still absorbing and re-configuring the Horatian influence, sometimes in translation (such as a 2002 English/American edition of the ''Odes'' by thirty-six poets)<ref group="nb">Edited by McClatchy, reviewed by S. Harrison, ''Bryn Mawr Classical Review'' 2003.03.05</ref> and sometimes as inspiration for their own work (such as a 2003 collection of odes by a New Zealand poet).<ref group="nb">I. Wedde, ''The Commonplace Odes'', Auckland 2003, (cited by S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 345)</ref>

Horace's ''Epodes'' have largely been ignored in the modern era, excepting those with political associations of historical significance. The obscene qualities of some of the poems have repulsed even scholars<ref group="nb">'Political' Epodes are 1, 7, 9, 16; notably obscene Epodes are 8 and 12. E. Fraenkel is among the admirers repulsed by these two poems, for another view of which see for example Dee Lesser Clayman, 'Horace's Epodes VIII and XII: More than Clever Obscenity?', ''The Classical World'' Vol. 6, No. 1 (September 1975), pp 55–61 {{JSTOR|4348329}}</ref> yet more recently a better understanding of the nature of [[Iambus (genre)|Iambic poetry]] has led to a re-evaluation of the ''whole'' collection.<ref>D. Mankin, ''Horace: Epodes'', 6–9</ref><ref>R. McNeill, ''Horace'', 12</ref> A re-appraisal of the ''Epodes'' also appears in creative adaptations by recent poets (such as a 2004 collection of poems that relocates the ancient context to a 1950s industrial town).<ref group="nb">M. Almond, ''The Works'' 2004, Washington, cited by S. Harrison, ''The nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', 346</ref>