Horace - biography. Quintus Horace Flaccus - ancient Roman poet

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

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 moral and ethical recommendations based on the philosophy of the golden mean.

Horace: biography and life path

The great Roman poet was born in 65 BC. e. in Venusia. His work falls on the first decade of the reign of Octavian Augustus, who took the place of Caesar. He was born into the family of a freedman who took care ofeducation of his son 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 gave him the estate and introduced Augustus into the circle.

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

Features of creativity

Quint Horace Flaccus was a multi-faceted 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 works of the great Roman poet can be divided into several cycles by genre:

1. Epodes (poems-couples of 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

Quint Horace Flaccus, whose poems were mostly dedicated to individuals, was very successful in this literary genre. He wrote 23messages, 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 of 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 personal names, place names, and he pays attention to detail.

Thematic groups od Horace

Meditation Poems are the embodiment of wisdom. Quint 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 we alth 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, the creation of literary works. Horace sees his infinity in poetry.

Analysis of Ode No. 30

This work has 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 most successful translations of ode No. 30 are considered to be poems by Lomonosov and Vostokov.

Horace's Satyrs

Peru 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 it to satisfy sadness.drink. 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, being content with little and does not know luxury.

Master of meter measurements

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 mastery of 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 political content and, like in iambs, they ridicule the shortcomings of the people and people (the clearest example is “To the Roman People”).

Horace's recommendations with explanations

"Be happy with what you have." 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 good things should be received in an honest way and be content with little.

"Money is useless 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,died suddenly. Horace believes this philosophy is wrong: you need to evenly spend the money you earn and live fully, without restrictions.

"Disperse the sorrows of life with wine, but know when to stop." Hedonism as a trend in aesthetics promotes the idea of pleasure as the highest goal of 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 seven 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.

The history of Roman literature in names

The most famous Roman comedian is considered to be 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 Nason 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 whothe first began to write fables in verse form. He became famous for his own works and translations of Aesop.

Initially, the term "prose" was 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 famous prose writer, behind him in importance is Petronius the Arbiter, who wrote the Satyricon.