Homage to Horace

 

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known these days as "Horace," was a Roman poet of the time of Augustus.  He was the son of a freedman, and therefore nothing special in status as measured at the time, but he made his mark in the history of the time and not merely as a poet.  He had the mixed fortune of living during the time Rome was changing from a republic of sorts to an empire as we know an empire to be now; in fact, the model of an empire as we know it.  He was on the wrong side of that metamorphosis for a time, serving in the army of Marcus Brutus in opposition to the avenging adopted son and grand nephew of Julius Caesar, to be known as Augustus, and Marcus Antonius and that other member of the Second Triumvirate, little remembered in comparison, Lepidus. 

Brutus having lost, Horace wisely pivoted and became a great fan of Augustus, and in his good graces, due, it would seem, to his friendship with others who introduced him to Augustus' friend and fixer, Maecenas.  Maecenas was also a patron of the arts, and Horace became a favorite of his; he even conveyed to him a villa, the remains of which can still be seen, which Horace treasured.

The painting of Horace appearing at the head of this post is by Giacomo Di Chirico, an artist of the 19th century.  I don't know who is intended to be represented by the figures floating above his shoulders.  By location, they seem similar to the angel and devil often shown as giving us counsel, or trying to persuade us, in Christian tradition.  But presumably the painter was aware of the fact that Horace was not a Christian.  My guess would be they represent the Muses.

Horace is probably most famous in these time due to a quote from one of his Odes in turn made famous by the movie The Dead Poets Society.  The quotation is "Carpe diem" which in the movie was translated as "seize the day."  But it seems the more correct translation is "pluck the day."

For me, "seize" is inappropriate because to seize something is to take hold of it forcefully, to capture it, to take possession of something forcefully.  There's nothing of that spirit in the Ode in question, nor is there anything like that in the spirit of Horace.  Horace is no Nietzsche, throttling joy.  He is a poet of moderation in thought and conduct.  He seeks contentment, and wisdom.  One should pluck fruit when it is ripe; no too soon, not too late.  The present moment is what we have, and worrying over and trying to predict the future is vain and disturbing.  Thus we should pluck the day as we would a ripe fruit and enjoy it.

Epicurean and Stoic sentiments and suggestions abound in Horace's work.  Whether he was especially one or the other isn't clear to me.  It seems that scholars think him more Stoic than Epicurean, but I suspect he was more of a hybrid of the two, as other Romans were--though Seneca tells us he's a Stoic, he often quotes Epicurus in his letters with approval.  In any case, however, Stoic references are clear in his works, particularly when he writes, as he often does, of the wisdom of not letting things beyond our control disturb us or move us to commit misconduct and error.

Horace's poems are clear and simple.  Though the constant references to mythology and events described in Homer are annoying, they're sparse compared with those of other poets of the time (excepting Martial, who is always an exception).  They're filled with good sense, they praise friendship as an ideal, they resound with a love of the natural world, they deplore superstition, exalt Reason and the intelligent spirit running through nature.

His works are those of a genial. gifted, intelligent, urbane, kind, wise and sophisticated man of the world.  There's no angst or despair, no malice, no grandiosity; he's not pompous.  He flatters his benefactors artfully, but not slavishly.  An admirable man and artist, I think.

Despite the fact that there is no melodrama or Sturm und Drang in his works, no ennui, he's remembered with admiration after 2,000 years.  My guess is that's the case because what he writes of is the wisdom and contentment which is gained from living in the moment, necessarily meaning there is no self-pity or self-regard, or despair to consume and confuse us.  

Tempus Fugit

The title to this post is also that of one of my favorite Miles Davis tunes.  It means, of course, "time flies" but may have been derived from a line in Virgil's Georgics--Fugit Irreparabile Tempus.  That line has a darker meaning.  Time passes swiftly, and once it passes, is irretrievable.

The past is the great and inaccessible storehouse of our lives, and contains all our mistakes, our achievements, our actions, thoughts, and too often loved ones and friends.  It is the quintessential thing not in our control; there's nothing we can do about it.  Yet it haunts us, rides us like a hag.  It also, though, has made us what we are.  If we can control ourselves, why can't we control our past?

Well, because it's not here, though we are.  What we may say, employing metaphor, "made us" need not be here with us.  We remember the past; we don't possess it.  Remembering the past doesn't consist of living the past.  We did that already.  We can, in a sense, repeat the past, which is merely to say make mistakes we made before.

Just what the past consists of is, like so much else it seems is apparent, a subject of philosophical debate.  I doubt if it can be intelligently claimed to be anything but things that happened.  Nobody thinks the past is taking place now; nobody confuses it with what takes place now.  There seems little need to debate this, but it has been made a subject of debate.  The past isn't the books, films, sounds about the past we read, see and hear.  Again, this is an obvious conclusion.  We know the past can be misrepresented.  So can what takes place now.  There is no reason to believe the past is or is not exactly what common sense indicates is the case.  For some, of course, this only makes it a more attractive subject for consideration, common sense being prima facie deficient to certain of us.

The past is a concept regarding which I think it would be useful to apply the pragmatic maxim:  "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

Peirce, the maker of the maxim, seems to have reconsidered it over time, and there have been those who have different ways of looking at it just as Wallace Stevens noted we may have thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird.  But it appears to me that Peirce thought of it most consistently as a method by which to make ideas clear; particularly ideas that are bandied about in philosophy.

The "past" has practical bearings to the extent it is thought of, studied, used by us, here and now.  There are various ways in which it can have practical bearings, on us and on others and on the rest of our world, which is to say that it has consequences.  There is no need that it be defined any further than that requires.  To the extent we define it otherwise, we're engaged in flights of fancy.  Such flights of fancy usually involve our tendency to think in terms of things.  Thinking of the past as a thing naturally leads one to treat it as a thing, an object regarding which we speak.

What has practical bearings is not the thing which is past, it's what happened in the past and its effects we encounter today. 

We need no flights of fancy in order to acknowledge the significance of the past.  The past is hugely significant, as it effects how we think, feel and act.  Our past, though, is in particular irretrievable and because it necessarily involves things we did or did not do, those we knew but no longer see, it is inevitably a source of regret though it may also, sometimes, be a source of be a source of fondness.  There are good memories as well as bad.  But we humans tend to do or not do more that we regret than we are proud of, and when we regret what we did or did not do that regret arises from our sense of responsibility.

What's done cannot be undone.  This is the tragedy of the time-bound.  We can't avoid the mistakes we've already made and the consequences of those mistakes can only, at best, be mitigated.