TERM PAPER

ARS POETICA

SALMANUL FARIS K

I MA ECL

“If in a picture, Piso, you should see

A handsome woman with a fish’s tale

Or a man’s head upon a horse’s neck

or limbs of beasts of the most different kinds

covered with feathers of all sorts of birds

would you not laugh, and thinks the painter mad?”

Ars Poetica, or “The Art of Poetry,” is a poem written by ancient Roman poet Horace who advises in the poem about the poets on the art of writing poetry and drama. The work was written during the Augustan age and it was known as the golden age of Roman literature. In that glorious age of literature, Horace was one of the leading members of the illustrious circle of poets patronized by the emperor Augustus. At the same time a great satirist of his time. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and stands almost equal to Virgil in Poetry. 

Horace produced a number of lyric poems (epodes), odes, and verse epistles. His epistles are mostly deals with the subject of poetry. "Epistle to Florus", “Epistle to Augustus” and ”Epistle to the Pisones" are examines the role of poetry in its state and asserts the merit of poetry. The famous “Epistle to the Pisones” is known as “Ars Poetica” or “The Art of Poetry”. Ars Poetica has influenced the writers of the subsequent generations in Europe. Some of the writers considered Ars Poetica as their literary manual.  

Quintilian was the first person who give the title Ars Poetica (Art of Poetry) or Fiber de' Arte Poetica (book of the poetic art) to Horace’s “Epistle to the Pisones”. Pisones are a famous Roman family with an interest in literature, poetry and literary criticism. Precisely to the senior Piso, Lucius Calpurnius Piso and his two sons. Ars Poetica is letter in form, a long conversational poem discussed about poetry. This form of poetry were widely imitated by later poets like, Geoffrey Of Vinsauf in the twelfth century, Pierre De Ronsard in the sixteenth century Nicolas Boileau in the seventeenth, Alexander Pope in the eighteenth, Lord Byron in the nineteenth, and Wallace Stevence in the twentieth.

In his distinguished critical work “Essay on Criticism”, Pope pays the following tribute to Horace:

Horace still charms with graceful negligence,

and without method talks us into sense,

Will, like a friend, familiarly convey,

The thrust notions in the earliest way.

The genre of literary theory in verse form present many challenges. Because of the requirements of  versification, the structure of Horace’s text is dictated less logical argumentation than by verbal association and rhetorical one.

While heavily indebted to Greek literature, and in particular to Aristotle (especially the Poetics and Rhetoric), the Ars Poetica is neither a systematic exposition of a coherent theory of poetic composition nor a comprehensive textbook for aspiring writers. Instead it is an argument for poetry as craft. Another key principle that dominates the whole of the An Poetica is decorum. It is the most acceptable Horatian principle which appealed to later European neoclassical critics.

They often applied standards of decorum as more rigid than Horace himself would have. The Ars Poetica" has no clear design or the theory of poetry and drama. Here the poet  mixes numerous literary maxims in a manner which is likely to confuse an ordinary reader. A critic rightly calls the poem “art without an art”. Horace had borrowed his doctrines and precepts from the study of Greek masters, especially from Aristotle’s "Poetics". Plato had emphasized on the didactic angle of poetry and had said that it should make better citizens. On the other hand, Aristotle laid stress on the aesthetic delight of poetry, Horace synthesizes both there ideals and says: “a poet should instruct, or please, or both”—line 370.

“Ars Poetica” begin with the ‘unity’ and ‘consistency’. If a painter should wish to unite a horse’s neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs [of different animals] taken from every part [of nature], so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight. It is a question for the reader which is whether he laughed at such sight or not? Through this suggestion Horace try to say about the unity and consistency.

A poem must have organic unity; all the parts must be vitally connected with one another. The poet is free to indulge his fancy, but he must not lapse into absurdity and create monsters or impossible figures.  The poet must choose only those subjects which he is able to deal with. The subject must suit both the power and style of the poet.

We can categorize the topics which discussed in the poem.

The subject-matter of Poetry

The subject-matter of poetry should be simple, i.e., from familiar material, and uniform, that is full of wholeness. He says that he who chooses his subject wisely, will find that neither words nor lucid arrangement will fail him, for sound judgment is the basis and source of good writing.

Poetic Diction

Horace will always be remembered for his theory of poetic diction. Poetic diction, he says, can never be altogether established and stationary affair. The function of language in poetry is to express; but man’s experience, which poetry exists to express, is continually changing, since it is continually adding to itself. With the growth of experience, the language of poetry must keep pace, if it is to be truly expressive. Language is like a tree; and its words are like leaves. As the years go on, the old leaves fall, and new leaves take their place; but the tree remains the same. Horace’s observations on poetic diction are like those of Aristotle. Following Aristotle, he also emphasises the right choice of words and their effective arrangement in composition. A poet is free to use both familiar and new words. New words continually go on coming to the poet like new leaves to the tree. The poet must not rely wholly on the vocabulary of his predecessors; he must coin new words too.

His Observations on Style

Horace wished that the writer should observe the settled forms and shades of style in poetry. He pointed out some of the shortcomings of style. ‘I endeavour to be brief and become obscure; sinew and spirit desert the searcher after polish : one striving for grandeur becomes bombastic; whosoever is excessively cautious and fearful of the tempest crawls along the ground; and he who yearns after too prodigal a variety in his theme— he paints a dolphin in the forest, or a wild boar amid the waves. If the poet does not have genuine artistry, the effort to avoid an imperfection leads him into graver butchery.

Metres and their appropriateness

‘Homer has shown us in what metre may best be written the deeds of kings and great captains, and sombre war. Verses of unequal length were first used for laments, later also for the sentiment that attends granted beseechings. The Muse has given to the lyre the celebration of the gods and their offspring, the victorious boxer, the horse, first in the race, the amorous yearnings of youth, and the unrestrained pleasures of wine. If one does not know and cannot observe the conventions and forms of poems, he does not deserve to be called a poet. Comic material, for instance, is not to be treated in the verses of tragedy ; similarly, it would be outrageous to narrate the feast of Thyestes in verse proper to common daily life and almost to comedy.’ Sincerity of Emotion       

‘It is not enough for poems to have beauty; they must also be pleasing and lead the listener’s soul whither they will. If you would have me weep, you must first express grief yourself.

Views on Drama

In Ars Poetica the treatment of drama is desultory. No systematic theory of drama is presented on a larger basis. Only fragmentary and casual views are expressed, e.g. ‘Either follow tradition or invent a story which is consistent. But the conventional features of traditional characters should be preserved.’ ‘If in your tale you represent the renowned Achilles, let him appear restless, passionate, inexorable and dauntless.’ ‘If you commit a new theme on the stage and venture to create a new character, ct the first impression be preserved to the end, and let his nature be consistent. ‘Let not Medea murder her children in front of the audience nor impious Atreus cook human flesh in the public nor Procne be changed into bird. Let a play be neither shorter nor longer than five acts and let no god intervene unless some problem arises that demands to be solved. The number of actors should not be more than three and the chorus should form an integral part of the action and its songs should advance and subserve the interest of the plot.’ ‘Let it support the good and give them kindly counsel, restrain the wrathful and favour those who fear to sin; let it praise the fare of a simple table, salutary justice and Law and Peace with open gates’.

Horace studies drama under three heads : plot, characterization and style. Plot should be borrowed from familiar material; the chorus should be an integral part of the plot; characters should behave consistently and naturally; iambic metre was most suitable for drama. Dramatic speech should observe propriety : it should suit the character, its sex, its age; its station in life, its circumstances, its moods. A god will speak differently from a mortal, a man from a woman, an aged man from a heated youth, a prosperous merchant from a poor farmer, a man in grief from a man in joy, an angry-fellow from a playful one. if you utter words ill-suited to your part, I shall either doze or smile.’ In all this Horace closely follows Aristotle.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.      Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. New Delhi: Blackwell, 2006. Print

2.        The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch B Vincent. New York: W.W Norton and Company Ltd. 2001. Print.

3.      Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Wadsworth: Cengage, 2012. Print

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