Horace, Pleasure and The Text

HORACE, PLEASURE AND THE TEXT
Author(s): WILLIAM FITZGERALD

Source: Arethusa, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 81-104
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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HORACE, PLEASURE AND THE TEXT
WILLIAM FITZGERALD
There is no doubt that reading Horace can be one of the greate

pleasures that classical literature has to offer, but there is also
doubt that at some point most of us suspect that it is a guilty pleasu
Of course, there are not one but many pleasures to be had from read
Horace. There is, first of all, the vicarious pleasure to be had fro
what Horace himself so manifestly enjoys. Here is Thomas Otway
an epistle to Richard Duke:
But when to give our minds a Feast indeed,

Horace, best known and lov'd by thee, we read,
Who can our Transports or our Longing tell,
To taste of Pleasures, prais'd by him so well?
With thoughts of Love, and Wine, by him, we're fir'd,
Two things in sweet Retirement much desir'd.
A generous Bottle and a Lovesome She,
Are th' only Joys in Nature, next to Thee.1
Clearly Leishman, who quotes these lines in his book Translatin

Horace, regards these as guilty pleasures since he spends seve
pages defending Horace from the advocacy of "Restoration Wit
We are more sophisticated readers now, and are happy to relinqu
these all-too-substantial pleasures to the vulgar. A more subtle p
' Quoted by Leishman 1956.30-31.
81
ARETHUSA VOL. 22 (1989) 1.
82 William Fitzgerald
sure, frequently cited by classicists, is
the pleasure of savoring and describin
obliquities of statement, and that civi
which are closely related to the patric
tion.2 If we feel a bit squeamish abou
refuge in what is the most neutral ple
"mosaic of words" so definitively desc
of reading Horace is the pleasure of e
the limits of its potential. Nietzsche
thority in modern literary studies and
in The Pleasure of the Text, which is a
sure respectable. Barthes does not qu
the strongest "artistic delight (EntziX
hardly surprising, since this is what h
To this time I have not had the sam

any poet that an ode of Horace gav
ning. In some languages what is her
be hoped for. This mosaic of words
sound, as position, as concept radia
right, to the left and over the whole,
extent and number of the signs, this m
of the sign achieved thereby — all
lieve, me, elegant (vornehm) par exc
poetry by contrast seems somewhat
garrulousness of feeling (Gefuhls-G
Here we have the canonical descriptio

Horace, but even this is permeated b
mager seems to have been disturbed
since when he quotes it he leaves out
guishes elegant aristocratic conversat
A representative example of this approach to

of Gordon Williams 1970.174: "Stylistic tact a
standing qualities, but for this to be appreciated
attuned to the tone of the poet's voice, for it is
that significant tonal effects, often dependen
Nietzsche 1967-77, Vol. 6.154-55.
Commager 1962.50.
Horace, Pleasure and the Text 83
Nietzsche does not say why this mosaic

might speculate that the few words so s
spread their influence in all directions
onies of Rome exerting their influence
would appear to be no innocent pleasur
but then pleasure is seldom innocent. B
the concept of pleasure has become so s
there is a whole "mythology" that wou
(political) right: "On the right . . . every
cal, is shoved over to the left and pleasure
to our side, you who are finally coming
And on the left, because of morality (fo
cigars), one suspects and disdains any '
tainly, it is with some justice that peop
of art are suspected of wanting to protect
of engagement, but Barthes is surely ri
that pleasure is not something simple, an
the complexity of its mechanism should r
natives of disdain or championship. How
a confusion of goals that is never really
say that it is deliberately equivocal abou
the end Barthes wants to use the conce
actly the kind of exclusive club that the "m
use of the word. Barthes's first project,
promising and useful, is to analyze the
general sense, to reveal the structure of t
open the apparently irreducible simplicity
to see the exercise of and claim to pleas
performed in various contexts and rela
is to distinguish a classical, bourgeois p
jouissance, and when Barthes uses that
"orgasm" is primary. In this context, v
reduced to a litany: "Classics. Culture (th
more diverse, the pleasure will be). In
Euphoria. Mastery. Security: art of living.
be defined by praxis (without any dan
and place of reading: house, countrysid
5 Barthes 1975.22-23.
tamily where it should be, i.e., close
lavatory that smelled of orrisroot),
ment (by fantasy), the unconscious
spoken: whence criticism."6 By con
duces a loss of ego-stability and ruptu
text of pleasure. Perhaps the most u
text (usually modern) is in Barthes's
description that allows us to see the
text and Nietzsche's Horace: "These
tion, adorned with all the violence o
mechanical vibration touches strangely
itself immediately, these poetic wor
geois pleasure withdraws, conserve
jouissance spends,8 Jouissance defies
or one is not and, to borrow the word
consign pleasure to the right, "Wel
finally coming to the jouissance of l
of jouissance.
Fortunately, The Pleasure of the Text provides a more subtle
analysis of the classical pleasure than the litany that allows it to be
opposed to jouissance. Certainly much of that litany might be applied
to the pleasures of Horace, and has been, though the returns are
rapidly diminishing. I would like now to consider two poems of Horace
in the light of some observations of Barthes connected with what I
have called his first project, and I call it that only because it interests
me more than the other. Barthes would certainly have given prece
dence to the latter: on the jacket of the French edition it is stated that
the intention of the book is to affirm the pleasure of the text against the
indifferences of science and the puritanism of ideological analysis
(hence its unsystematic procedure), and to affirm the jouissance of the
text against the leveling of literature to mere charm.9 My own approach
Barthes 1975.51.
Barthes 1953.39.
"To spend" is the Victorian expression for having an orgasm. In the preface to Richard
Miller's translation of Le plaisir du texte, Richard Howard comments: "The Bible
they translated calls it 'knowing' while the Stuarts called it 'dying,' the Victorians
called it 'spending,' and we call it 'coming'; a hard look at the horizon of our literary
culture suggests that it will not be long before we come to a new word for orgasm
proper — we shall call it 'being.'" (vi).
Barthes 1973.
is closer to ideological analysis, but if it is p

it would also resist the leveling of literatur
ings will not display the critical tact that i
those who would display a sensitivity to th
sitivity that consists in echoing his delicate to
words, I do not intend to reproduce what i
be the pleasure of Horace's charm. The poem
only pleasurable poems, but poems that pro
text of particular relationships and connec
poses. Horace was not simply a poet who
pleasure, he was also a poet who raised the q
defined his own situation as a poet; several
his patrons, for instance, situate him in re
terms of the opposition politics-pleasure, a
Horace presents himself as the spokesman o
ethics of pleasure.10 These aspects of Horac
and it is important to understand the func
pleasure in Horace if we are to understand the
and reading of lyric in which he played suc
The poem that stands at the end of book o
one of the shortest and slightest of the whole
Persicos odi, puer, apparatus,

displicent nexae philyra coronae;
mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum
sera moretur.
simplici myrto nihil allabores

sedulus euro: neque te ministrum
dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta
vite bibentem.
Boy, I hate those Persian preparations:

crowns woven with bast displease me;
don't bother to look for where
the late rose lingers.
For the opposition politics-pleasure, see C.1.6; 1.20; 2.12; 2.17; 3.4.37-40 and the
remarks of Anderson 1974.45-46. The "ethics of pleasure" is developed in those
poems in which the carpe diem theme links enjoyment with a proper recognition of
our mortal status, for instance, C.1.4; 1.9; 2.3 and 3.19.
I care nothing that you lab

plain myrtle: myrtle's not un
for you who serve, nor for m
under the thick vine.
The immediate pleasure of this poem, and here the pleasure that it
gives and the pleasure that it claims are intimately connected, is de
rived from its emphatic, even aggressive shortness, especially as it
comes after the grandiose Cleopatra ode and at the end of the long first
book." Barthes has pointed out that the text about pleasure is neces
sarily short, provoking the question "Is that all?" This in turn produces
the answer, "Yes, I have a right to pleasure," for pleasure can only be
spoken through the indirection of a claiming (revendication). The text
about pleasure is therefore always implicated in a short dialectic with
two moments: "the moment of doxa, of opinion, and that of paradoxa,
of contestation."12 The shortness of a literary work is not simply a
matter of size — witness the "tedious brief scene of young Pyramus"
in Midsummer-Night's Dream — and what makes this ode of Horace
short (and slight) is best understood with the help of Barthes's dialectic.
First, we wait to hear from what standpoint the speaker rejects the
various luxuries paratactically accumulated in the first six lines; this
puts into play what Barthes calls doxa, which is here the moral rejec
tion of superfluous pleasure, or perhaps of pleasure itself, insofar as
it is always superfluous. But we are pulled up short when the state
ment that grounds these accumulated rejections turns out to be, putting
it bluntly, "I'm having a nice drink."13 "Is that all?" we ask, to which
the implicit answer is "I have a right to pleasure." In the end, Horace
11 On the question of what significance to attach to the poem's position, see Nisbet and
Hubbard 1970.422-23. Nisbet and Hubbard cite some of the symbolic readings of
the poem that have intended to give it more weight and to make a more impressive
end to the book. I will argue that the poem is, by implication, concerned with Horace's
status as a poet, though I do not think that it is an apology for a particular kind of
style (Fraenkel) or subject matter (Pasquale). Certainly the rejection of "Persian"
luxuries is relevant to its position next to the Cleopatra ode, see Nussbaum 1971.91-97.
12 Barthes 1973.31. Translation mine.
13 Syndikus 1972.341-42 points out that the opening prepares us for a tirade from a
Stoic "Sittenprediger" but the luxuries that are in fact cited turn out to be rather tame,
and are not subjected to a moral perspective. One might compare C.2.18 for a more
conventional, morally motivated rejection of luxury.
simply reveals himself, in the accusative

drinking beneath the shady vine: this is the
of the doxa that one must give an account of
Horace appeals to the self-evidence of ple
other context for the decorum implied by
testation of doxa pleasure is claimed.
Let us now consider another strand of the immediate level of
the poem, which also reveals the mechanism of Barthes's dialectic.
Like most ancient poems, this one is addressed to someone — a slave.
In the context of this situation the utterance of the poem is strange,
since the slave is given no order.14 Like the reader, the slave stands
ready, waiting to hear what he should do if not what his master so
compendiously dislikes, but he is merely told that the unelaborated
myrtle is not unbecoming for either him or his master. It might be
objected that this constitutes an implicit order, and, as we shall see, the
lines about the myrtle are very complex, but for the moment I would
like to isolate the formal aspects of the utterance as they relate to the
address of the master to the slave. Against the expression of the master's
dislikes, conveying the authority of the one who must be pleased, there
is no balancing expression of preference, for the slave is not told what
the master likes/wants instead, merely that the myrtle is not unsuit
able for either of them; both agents are now in the accusative. The fact
that this final statement is cast in a double negative (neque... dedecet)
contributes to the draining of authority from the voice of the master,
and we can now see that there is a single diminuendo of emphasis and
will from odi, displicent and mitte sectari, through nihil... euro to neque
. . . dedecet, and that this diminuendo comes to take the place of the
two-part form that we would expect of the master's address to a
slave ("Don't do this, do that!" or "I don't like this, I like that.")
Again, we have a dialectic of opinion and its contestation. This time,
though, pleasure is claimed by contesting its implication not in a moral
discourse, but in a discourse of authority, an implication that was
considerable in a slave-owning society. In the context of the poem as
address to a slave, we again find ourselves asking "Is that all?" and
the answer is "J (rather than the master) have a right to pleasure."
Horace's poem exemplifies an important aspect of Barthes's
analysis of pleasure: pleasure is not so much represented as claimed,
14 Contrast the epigram by Philodemus quoted by Nisbet and Hubbard 1970.422.
William Fitzgerald
and it is claimed by the short dialectic that we have seen functioning

in Horace's poem through the short-circuiting of two forms of dis
course that would absorb pleasure; insofar as pleasure can be spoken,
it can only be spoken through the indirection of a claim which realizes
it against those discourses. On the surface, though, the poem seems
to imply that pleasure is something simple that is there independently
of the fuss and paraphernalia that simply has to be removed in order
for it to be revealed. It has been pointed out that, in spite of this stance,
the poem is a highly wrought artefact whose lingering over the things
that are rejected suggests that it is at least half in love with them. This
is certainly true, and there is more to it than the "tension of attitudes"
that Commager describes when commenting on this contradiction.15
I propose now to examine this and similar contradictions in relation to
the poem's problematic of pleasure, simplicity and work in the context
of the master-slave relationship.
Let us begin with the first two and a half lines of the second
stanza, which seems to be the turning-point of the poem. I say "seems"
because although it introduces the first positive (simplici myrto), and
a change in the authoritative tone (nihil. . . euro), it can be read in a
quite different way that would align it with the first stanza. If we follow
the word-grouping suggested by the line-break, we get: "I diligently
see to it that you make no special effort with/add nothing to the un
adulterated myrtle.'"6 Sedulus euro recalls the committed voice of the
first stanza, but the contrast between nihil allabores and sedulus euro
suggests that it is Horace who is now the worker, as well as the voice
of authority. Both readings are needed here, for the poem stages the
conflict between the idea of pleasure as a simple given that can be in
dicated by removing the luxuries that smother it, and as something that
can only be claimed through a more complex operation in which the
poem diverts, transforms and appropriates the work of the slave rather
than simply ordering it away. The poem subverts its own claim that
pleasure can be simply uncovered and revealed by a rejection of the
15 Commager 1962.117-18.
16 Most commentators take nihil. .. euro together and sedulus with allabores, but Quinn
1980.195 takes sedulus euro together and translates "I am particularly anxious that you
should not go out of your way to add anything. . .." My translation, "I diligently see
to it that ..." reflects the almost invariable association of sedulus with action (see
examples in OLD) better than Quinn's "I am particularly anxious."
superfluous; instead, it shows pleasure to b

performed on the unpleasure from which i
In the light of the above we can return to
the opening line, which sandwiches the two a
between the burdensome luxuries that wou
three lines take a more complex attitude
Crowns woven with bast may displease the
jection produces a vivid sense of their tactilit
said. The word displicent contains the elemen
form of placeo, which in this context brin
(fold); the appearance of simplici in the me
of the fifth line reinforces our tendency to
folding as well as a displeasure. The line d
coronae, with its interlocking of the juxtap
weaving (displicent nexae) with the interw
philyra coronae creates an intense effect o
also used this metaphor for writing), and t
jection of this intricacy that is carried by
sentence. Horace is substituting his own la
reclaiming pleasure from its alienation in the
master and slave, a division that robs the mas
ness, since all he can do in this context is
plicitly, the poem claims that the pleasure of
of the work of the slave, and furthermore th
the master is capable of understanding plea
to be prevented from his officious and mi
though, the expression of the pleasure of t
work of the slave, since it must be claimed as
alienated by the slave's work, and claimed
slave's work: nihil allabores/sedulus euro. P
pendently of the contexts from which it mu
In the final two lines of the first stanz
slave not to go looking for the late rose, im
pleasure has nothing to do with the luxury of
has cost others a great deal of work. Here aga
come to the master through the work of t
jected as reclaimed from the work of the slav
poet. Horace has himself installed the ros
lingering of the stanza, but it is not the sa
have fetched, rather it is the rose that has bee
that officious fetching.17 O

proper relation to the abort
mager's suspicion that Horac
rejects is not quite correct, fo
is realized only through the
search and that stands in a c
larly, it is not true that the
slave's work, for it can only
the two types of work. In the
pleasure is really an originally
purposes of which the slave m
or whether it in fact emerges
formulation is prompted by
relationship. If the latter is
(though not recovered) throu
is here a diversion or approp
The time has now come
There are those who will hav
analysis of the master-slave
alienation, they will say, is s
thought of a society that wa
slaves and their role in the
but Horace's relation to the sla
just a Roman, but a Roman p
network of Roman social re
slaves, freedmen and forei
Horace himself, who had ris
through the patronage18 of
17 In her answer to the Arion( 1970.1

how, as a struggling Latin student,
read mitte sectari as "send to seek
"The dying, artistically-aristocra
talisman to me." When she was inf
she was disillusioned by a Horace w
"negative it with a puritanical, but
reading of the passage would prese
mand, as I see it, is the condition for
object.
" This word needs to be used with some caution in connection with Roman poets, as
White 1979 has shown. In the late Republic and early Empire, poets were not sup
freedman. His constant insistence on his in

ularly his use of the very Sabine farm that wa
of that patronage, as a symbol of independenc
Horace to situate himself socially against th
nation and illiberality, although he does no
established status to which to refer. This lack
even for poets who did not need any financ
ported or commissioned in the way that they have been

shown that the relation between poets and their "p
another manifestation of the general and informal
pervaded Roman social life; he argues that, though poe
not regular stipends), the motive for attaching oneself
probably the opportunity for publicity that this offere
point that between senatorial politics and demeaning
much in the way of professions for the educated man
was not recognized as a profession in the same way
that "Poets attached themselves to the houses of the g
there was nowhere else for them to go" (85). The que
examined in the important collection of essays edite
bution to that collection, James Zetzel argues that Hora
Republic and early Empire, was not financially depe
"the existence of artistic patronage must be understoo
which the major poets were working, the conventions t
verse." (Gold 1982.89). While his implication that patro
as a determining factor for these poets is surely correc
sufficient poets were employing "as a literary conventi
contemporaries, as for earlier generations, a reality" (9
position between art and life ("In the Satires, as in m
age, art not life is both the subject and object of poetic
poets there was a real anxiety about their status in Roman
anxiety that we must see the reversals of normal h
Roman social realities; Zetzel states that when Horace p
and princeps he has "transcended the need for Maece
but this elides all the complexities of this gesture in a lea
the autonomy of art. Perhaps he is assuming that H
dependent or entirely independent in relation to his pa
his focus on the financial aspect of the relationship.
As far as the concrete rewards of the protection of
that Horace's paupertas impulit audax./ ut versus facer
square with the facts, as Zetzel points out (89-90), but t
after Philippi Horace found himself deprived of his fa
and that this loss was made up by Maecenas' gift to hi
' See Commager 1962.312.
most of the major poets from Catullus
of self-definition by poets against c
very pursuit of poetry as a serious c
appropriation of the language of R
military and conjugal life by these l
versal of the Roman hierarchy of va
hold on to a Roman identity that was,
or, more probably, a tense combina
would be worth pursuing. In the case
we see two things happening: first,
disconnect his own pleasure from th
who provides it, and then Horace th
sure to the occupied Roman replaces
work against that of the slave. The
is not explicitly brought up in this
position of the poem leads us to re
about Horace as poet (which is what
third and fourth books), but we hav
Horace to Maecenas in poems like 3.2
Horace in this poem to see its releva
away from his business in noisy Ro
where "I (Horace) have had for a lon
broached, along with flowers of ros
for your hair" (1-5). In Satires 2.7.8
tells him that, though he is Davus' m
who manipulate him like a puppet, we
out the anxiety, and similarly in E
cuses his lack of literary production to
extended parable about buying a sla
Perhaps the most famous ancient
of the Horatian text is Petronius' cu
ticularly apposite to this poem, parado
luck or happiness (félicitas) of expre
ing work. What it describes is that
20 See Ross 1975.9-15 on Catullus* applicatio

affair with Lesbia. There are many other ex
Roman poets of which the most striking is t
21 Satyricon, 118.5.
Horace in which we feel both the knotty c

epiphanic Tightness of the larger unit, a se
Barthes's description of pleasure as the exe
ology." In 1.38 Horace has situated this pa
tween nihil... euro and sedulus... euro, in the
between master and slave, so that this text on
in the particular context in which it is an
and for the Roman poet. The complexity of t
sure reflects Horace's anomalous position a
purveyor of pleasure to the unleisured, and i
situating of pleasure in the dialectic between
that of the poet.
I turn now to another of Horace's mos
which is also a text about pleasure in the
though rather more elusive relationship:
Ο fons Bandusiae splendidior vitro

dulci digne mero non sine floribus,
eras donaberis haedo,
cui frons turgida cornibus
primis et venerem et proelia destinât;
frustra: nam gelidos inficiet tibi
rubro sanguine rivos
lascivi suboles gregis.
te flagrantis atrox hora Caniculae
nescit tangere, tu frigus amabile
fessis vomere tauris
praebes et pecori vago.

fies nobilium tu quoque fontium,
me dicente cavis impositam ilicem
saxis, unde loquaces
lymphae desiliunt tuae.
(C. 3.13)
Ο Bandusian spring, more brilliant than glass,

worthy of sweet wine and flowers,
tomorrow you will be presented with a kid,
whose forehead swelling with its first horns
destines it for love and for battles;
in vain: for it will stain your cold
waters with its red blood,

this offspring of the misch
You the fierce hour of the Do
cannot touch, you provide lov
to the bulls tired from the pl
and to the wandering herd
You too will be one of the fam
when I tell of the oak-tree pla
rocks, from which your pratt
waters are leaping down.
This is a dedication poem, though

complicates its generic status by
poem into a potentially grandiose
art: the humble spring will be rai
springs of poetic inspiration (Cas
virtue of having been described b
tion poem can now lay claim to m
the primary utterance of the fin
have missed it:
Give me the humblest note of those sad strains,

Drawn forth by pressure of his gilded chains,
As a chance sunbeam from his memory fell
Upon the Sabine farm he loved so well;
Or when the prattle of Bandusia's spring
Haunted his ear — he only listening.23
Commager quotes these lines as an example of the "sentimental echoes"

that have obscured a true hearing of this poem, and his objection
focuses on the words "he only listening." Now, of course, the last
22 The spring, raised from insignificance to the heights of fame, is like Horace himself,
ex humili potens (C.3.30.12). Wilson 1968.295-96 makes much of this comparison,
which is certainly viable, but he goes too far in saying that "in praising the spring he
is almost praising himself." It has been argued that the spring is to be thought of as
being on the Sabine farm and that he has transferred the name of a spring near Venusia
to one in the neighborhood of his farm (Fraenkel 1957.203); this would strengthen
the association of the spring's elevation to Horace's own.
23 Quoted by Commager 1962.323.
stanza begins with Horace taking a much

to the spring than "only listening," but w
the spring will achieve fame through his de
ing the hollow rock, from which the pra
prattling waters take over from Horace's spe
lymphae tuae) and it is with the sound of the
of the poet become a kind of speech, that th
really inverted the traditional association
spiration, as Commager argues?25 Surely
and poetry is more complex than he allows w
of the spring do not create his poetry; rath
to nature." The effect of this stanza, its ple
flict between proud boast and humble li
for the spring and letting it speak for itself.
sian dialectic here, for the doxa that the spri
poet in order to be promoted to classic st
that this glorification will be no more than
poet in favor of the spring, for which the p
ditions under which we can hear its pratt
"I have a right merely to listen." We can find
in Wordsworth also, I think. The word "l
ing" is usually pronounced as a disyllable,
("Haunted his ear — he only listening") a
patible with "only"; and yet the word's t
pentameter scheme serve to counterpoint
24 "But in this poem it is Bandusia, and not the poet t

1957.203.
25 Commager 1962.323. Wilson 1968.295 cites a number of passages in which Horace

presents nature as a source of inspiration to him, however, like Commager, he be
lieves that here the relationship is reversed because the spring is identified with Horace.
26 Commager 1962.323 disapproves of Wordsworth's "stock epithet 'prattling'" and
Quinn 1980.269 sees "loquaces" as a more daring figure than our "babbling brook,"
claiming that the spring is fully articulate. I have retained Wordsworth's "prattling"
because it is crucial to make a distinction between dicente (fully articulate speech)
and loquaces, which, as I will show, has to refer to something just below the threshold
of human speech. The OLD has two sections on the word, the first of which groups
together uses that refer to an excess of words (loquaciousness, gossiping) that be
come inarticulate by virtue of overload, and the other uses that elevate something
that cannot speak to figurative powers of articulation (speaking looks, etc.). Loquax
seems never to refer to fully articulate speech.
I X /XIX
draws out the listening ("he only l
insists on itself as an intensely act
The final stanza of Horace's ode
the power of his poetry can raise a h
spring is a source of inspiration to t
the poem ends indicates. Horace's
inspired by nothing more, or less, t
cant spring; that is the paradoxa tha
of pleasure. We should note, thoug
spring truly comes to be heard throu
oak placed on the hollow rock that a
rock to prattle. The rather compli
between spring and poet will be ex
we have an oscillation between l
analogues of that opposition (speec
pride and humility), that may rem
The mosaic can be seen either as a
placed or as a shimmer of light an
Nietzsche describes as the result o
seems to have been there before hi
he shows that the shimmer and prat
fect of the solid structure of the lin
3 and 4 creates an icon of the stru
top of each other, while that betw
of liquid to appear: the structure of
of the poetry, which in turn is the
of pleasure.
If this is a poem of pleasure we should be disturbed by the
presence of the blood sacrifice, which is a crucial element of Horace's
relation to the spring. Commentators have observed, often with shock,
that the traditional offering of flowers associated with the Fontinalia
is set aside in favor of a blood sacrifice; the description of the kid about
to be cut off in the prime of life, his warm blood staining the chilly
spring, has also given offense.27 Where is the much vaunted humanitas
See the objections of Campbell cited by West 1967.129. West urges us to shed our
local prejudices in dealing with this passage, but would Horace have recognized his
words in West's paraphrase: "the blood spurting from an animal's jugular, an ancient
religious observance of your race . .."? (130). Here one modern attitude (Campbell's
squeamishness) is shed for another.
of Horace in all this? There have been var

lem: the occasion of the poem is not the Fon
ancient precedent for blood sacrifice to a sp
as sentimental as us about animals and their
ment is undoubtedly true, but the fact r
Horace deliberately provokes empathy f
destined for death. Williams characterizes
Horace arouses as a "detached, slightly cal
he is right to see something disturbing in t
a pathos that is hard to miss in this part
may know about the general attitude of
fice. Commager retrieves the passage by
cliché: "the 'offspring of the wanton floc
hensive vitality, and as the warm blood min
is easy to sense a suggestion of the transfor
Yes, but the ease with which we trot out th
uneasy! In what follows I am not going t
the blood sacrifice from the standpoint of a
am I going to try to characterize the pre
on the kid; instead I will consider the rhe
of the sacrifice in the context of the develo
speaker and addressee. What is at stake i
28 The festival of the Fontinalia was celebrated, as

October 13 by throwing flowers into springs and pu
usual libations of wine in addition; Williams 1968.89
unorthodoxy of Horace's sacrifice. Quinn 1980.269 a
of the poem must be mid-summer because of the refer
stanza, but concedes that eras (3) would seem to ind
ular event, such as the festival. Syndikus 1972.149-4
the festive character of sacrifice for the ancients an
while he may be right in castigating modern sentim
this particular poem does evoke sympathy for the k
the whole story. As for parallel literary sacrifices
Ovid F.3.300 and Iliad 23.147: in the first case king
and Picus sacrifices a sheep to a fountain at which
Achilles, at the funeral of Patroclus, reminds the
vowed a sacrifice of fifty rams for his return hom
all close to the Horatian context. Horace makes no de
a king (kings naturally do things big).
29 Williams 1968.89.
30 Commager 1962.323-24.
thing akin to Commager's fo

sure; but if we consider this
action, rather than treating
Horace a more challenging e
In order to approach the
have to take seriously the fact
fore avoid the strategy by w
monologue that merely confo
lyric poem to a person or th
out that the poem is in hym
trophic nature goes no furth
erties of the ancient hymn th
function. If the poem apostr
become an object capable of
the responsive structure of th
culminating in the continuit
(dicente) and the spring's fluid
The poem begins by settin
spring that is not so much r
spring as splendidior vitro,
glass," the speaker constitutes
his own voice just as it does th
echoes the "O" of the apostr
in the middle of the line fill o
encounter with the spring, itse
reveals what one might call
"O" that is the pure voice of e
31 This is the approach of Quinn 19

monologue and argues that the "m
"inner meditation," but that the
some form of address as an "excuse
complete elimination of the poem's
excellent treatment of the rhetoric
32 It is interesting to see that Ronsar
in his imitation of this poem (Ode
Ο fontaine Bellerie,
Belle fontaine, chérie. . .
33 The "Ο" fulfills what Jakobson 19

is that function of a communicat
Culler (1981) has a very good treatm
To anticipate a little, the movement of the po

reflecting structure of delight to the dialec
with its two sets of terms and its reciprocity
the poet and the prattling of the spring.
The reflecting surface of the spring, and
speaker and addressee, is disturbed by the p
Although the spring is worthy (digne) of t
wine and flowers, an offering that would ref
what the spring will get. By promising to sac
the customary wine and flowers, the speak
with the spring insofar as he is not content m
ness of the spring as the spring had reflected
This unbalancing paves the way for the sta
that this ordinary spring (tu quoque, 13) will
The promise of the blood-sacrifice and
potential life of the kid cut short by this sacr
the relation between speaker and spring bu
delight with which the poem begins. Critics h
this element of the poem creates a dissonance
that it is either a result of miscalculation or that it manifests a fault
of sensibility. The dissonance puts something at stake, and this is

crucial for the transformation of the immediate surface of delight into
the dialectic of pleasure with its ideological operations. The dissonance
created by the passage on the kid is resolved on another level of the
text: the disturbing mixture of pathos and ironic callousness in the
narrative of the kid's career is neutralized on the aesthetic level as
the kid's career is resolved into the economy of poetic energy, released
over the enjambement between the two stanzas, dammed up in the
premature caesura of the second line after frustra, and then set flowing
again in the long, sinuous phrase that completes the second stanza. In
entities apostrophized in relation to the act by which the poetic voice constitutes
itself; as we shall see, Horace's apostrophe to the spring will constitute it as what I
will call the other side of his own speech, which comes out most clearly in the final
stanza with its dialectic between dicente and loquaces. Although the poem is cast in
hymn form, it is important to observe that Horace here addresses the spring, and not
some deity in addition to or instead of the spring, which as Syndikus 1972.138 points
out, distinguishes it from comparable Greek poems. This means that the spring
comes to be responsive in the framework set up by the apostrophizing poet; it is not
an independently existing subject, which would be more true in the case of a hymn to
a deity.
this way the rupture of the kid's

on the narrative level are mediated
that is impervious to the emotio
The possibility of absorbing the
into a continuous but varied flo
the word turgida, which brings the
of horns that presages love and wa
spring's waters (for turgidus use
that the kid's death becomes me
energy, poetic or aquatic, and in
tension of the swelling horns relea
spring.
In the third stanza, the hymnic listing of qualities (aretalogia)
presents the spring as a source of comfort to the flock. But the causal
relation between the fact that the spring is untouched by summer's
heat and that it provides cool to the flock is disguised beneath the
hymnic anaphora and asyndeton (te... tu .. .). The second line of the
stanza, which juxtaposes the untouchable spring with the supremely
tactile frigus amabile, reveals the functioning of the spring's comfort,
which depends on the neutrality that allows it to provide discontinuity
in the environment. So the hymnic distance between speaker and spring
in this stanza, which avoids the attribution of any purposefulness to
the spring, is itself a factor in the constitution of the spring as an agent
of pleasure. The spring's discontinuous otherness with respect to the
speaker, to the animate and narrative implications of the kid's warm
blood, and to the heat of the dog star, its ability not to be touched
(itangere in Latin has the same range, emotional and physical, as
English "touch"), all this is a prerequisite for the spring's being used
for the mechanism of pleasure.
But, if the spring is to serve the purposes of pleasure it cannot
exist in a total state of otherness with respect to the human world that
invokes it as its other side. Looking at the structure of the poem as a
whole, we can now see that it repeats the same action twice: the hymnic
vis à vis that constitutes the spring as the reflecting but untouchable
Other is twice disturbed by an excess on the part of the poet. In the
first case, the substitution of the blood-sacrifice for what is customarily
appropriate brings the flowing energy of the spring's waters into a
determinate relation to the swelling energy of the kid's life and to the
pathos of its truncated narrative; in the second case, the prospective
promotion of the cool, untouchable spring to one of the famous sources
οι poetic inspiration brings the sound ot tne waters

relation with the speech of the poet. These two m
hymnic confrontation draw the otherness of the
poses of the poet of pleasure. In the final stanz
spring's waters becomes that other side of articu
identified with one aspect of the Horatian poetic tex
and as this takes over from the solid, articulate c
which it becomes visible, the pleasure of pure l
from a speech that is obliged to account for itself (in
claim for a certain status). But this relieving of arti
not quite work, for the spring carries traces of a pa
it leaps down the rocks, and that is because the
coming a comforting and relieving other side to
life is that it should become complicit in the sacr
case means that there is a reciprocity between th
izing of the kid's death as a redistribution of liq
kid's narrativizing of the spring's liquidity. It is the
the spring into the operation of pleasure, putting a
reversibility of death, smudging it in the pleasu
tween narrative, with its irreversible sequence of di
the fluid energy of metaphor. But the spring, as
to the dialectic of pleasure, is always either too
far inasmuch as the untouchable spring that pr
wandering flock is the indifferent spring that i
kid's death, and too near inasmuch as any conta
rhythm of the waters with a story (and how else ca
made perceptible?) will turn its pleasurable pratt
reminder of the kid that would have leapt down
waters do (desiliunt, 16).
Clearly the relationship within which Horace
tion of pleasure in this poem is rather different fro
master-slave relationship of 1.38. It is not a socia
rather an aesthetic one, as we see from the fac
throughout associated with poetic factors, and f
between the structure of the spring and that of Ho
final stanza. We cannot say that the spring repre
thing; its function is to let Horace explore the na
ship with various forms of otherness in which pl
and most particularly with that poetic otherness
the solidity of constructed statement and narrati
bloodlessly aesthetic treatment of

sacrifice alerts us to what is at stake and to the limits of what can be
achieved.
The pleasure I have been describing is certainly a stable, classic

pleasure compared with Barthes's jouissance. In a time when criticism
is claiming for the reading experience a kind of dizzy heroism, Horace
does not seem to provide the right kind of challenge. Because there
always has to be a straight-man against whom to measure the true
poet and the dangerous pleasure to which we aspire, the poets who are
traditionally associated with Barthes's classical pleasure will no doubt
continue to be described in negative terms by the progressive and
cherished as an exclusive bastion of civilization by the conservative.
The character in Meredith's The Tragic Comedians who identifies
Horace's "small crow and croon" as "the chanted philosophy of
comfortable stipendiaries" has been echoed more recently.34 The Arion
questionaire of 1970 produced responses that are probably typical of
the attitude of nonclassicists (and many classicists) today. Northrop
Frye there says that Horace "represents the authority of the humanist
tradition, the incorporating of all its values in a lifestyle,"35 and, though
he does not say so, this lifestyle, what Barthes witheringly refers to as
the "art of life," is the lifestyle of "comfortable stipendiaries." Henri
Peyre, who sees Horace as an average, second-rate and uninspired poet,
comments that "Horace's gentle Epicureanism has charmed hundreds
of retired magistrates and army officers who have tried to turn him
into French."36 I have already referred to Brigid Brophy's response:
she finds that her reaction to Horace as a "literary strategist" is cold
admiration because he won't "commit himself to a poem's being a
baroque extravagant gesture."37 It is interesting to note that both
Brophy and Peyre compare Horace unfavorably with Lucretius, who
has been decidedly passed over in the process of establishing an au
thoritative humanist tradition, probably because it would be difficult
to use Lucretius to advocate a particular lifestyle, and certainly be
cause he does not serve the purposes of authority. I hope to have shown
that we may read Horace not simply as the author and advocate of the
34 Meredith 1893.199.
35 Frye in Arion (1970.132).
36 Peyre in Arion (1970.130).
37 Brophy in Arion (1970.129-30).
litany of classical pleasures that may quite l

other more disruptive pleasures not incorp
tradition, but as an analyst of the mechan
texts of that pleasure. It is the tradition th
thority that has reduced pleasure to the lita
Horace himself offers us the opportunity t
Looking back on our two poems, we can
pleasures that they represent have recomm
fortable stipendiaries, retired magistrates and
the pleasures of retirement. But it is not just t
pleasures that these poems offer us. Horace
rhetorical structures through which pleasu
discourses against which it is constituted an
understand it as the Utopian, and problemat
side of dominant discursive structures. In
not see it as a simple quality that can be re
poems make an issue of textuality and are
Horace's self-definition as a poet: 1.38 is a
act of situating aesthetic pleasure and the
against the work of the most important ag
the slave; 3.13 is a brilliant exploration of
cations of what Nietzsche identified as the
text (what 3.13 does for Nietzsche, 1.38 do
félicitas). In this context, the two addressee
the outer limits within which, and by means
the pleasure of his text: on the one hand,
preparations would reify pleasure, and on t
sparkle of the spring that would dehumani
sance). Horace situates pleasure in the inter
in the dialectic of textual with servile wor
oscillation between constructed human spee
University of California, San Diego
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, W. S. 1974. "Autobiography and Art in Horace," in

Perspectives of Roman Poetry ed. G. K. Galinsky.
Texas.
Arion. 1970. Issue on Horace, vol. 9, nos. 2 & 3.
Barthes, Roland. 1953 and 1957. Le dégré zéro de l'écriture. Paris.
1973. Le plaisir du texte. Paris.
1975. The Pleasure of The Text, trans. Richard
Miller. New York.
Commager, Steele. 1962. The Odes of Horace. New Haven.

Culler, Jonathan. 1981. The Pursuit of Signs. Ithaca.
Fraenkel, Eduard. 1957. Horace. Oxford.
Gold, Barbara K. 1982. Literary and Artistic Patronage at Rome.
Austin.
Jakobson, Roman. 1963. Essais de linguistique générale. Paris.
Leishman, J. B. 1956. Translating Horace. Oxford.
Meredith, George. 1893. The Tragic Comedians. London.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967-77. Sàmtliche Werke, vol. 6. Berlin.
Nisbet, R. G. M. and Margaret Hubbard. 1970. A Commentary on
Horace: Odes Book 1. Oxford.
Nussbaum, G. B. 1971. "A Study of Odes 1.37 and 1.38: The Psy
chology of Conflict and Horace's Humanitas,"
Arethusa 4.91-97.
Quinn, Kenneth. 1963. Latin Explorations. London.
1980. Horace: The Odes. London.
Ross, David. 1975. Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry. Cambridge.
Syndikus, H. P. 1972. Horaz: Eine Interpretation der Oden. Darmstadt.
West, D. A. 1967. Reading Horace. Edinburgh.
White, Peter. 1979. "Amicitia and the Profession of Poetry in Early
Imperial Rome," JRS 69.74-92.
Williams, Gordon. 1968. The Third Book of Horace's Odes. Oxford.
1970. The Nature of Roman Poetry. Oxford.
Wilson, J. 1968. "O Fons Bandusiae," CJ 63, 7.289-296.

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HORACE, PLEASURE AND THE TEXT

Author(s): WILLIAM FITZGERALD

There is no doubt that reading Horace can be one of the greate

But when to give our minds a Feast indeed,

Clearly Leishman, who quotes these lines in his book Translatin

' Quoted by Leishman 1956.30-31.

ARETHUSA VOL. 22 (1989) 1.

To this time I have not had the sam

Here we have the canonical descriptio

A representative example of this approach to

Nietzsche does not say why this mosaic

is closer to ideological analysis, but if it is p

Persicos odi, puer, apparatus,

simplici myrto nihil allabores

Boy, I hate those Persian preparations:

I care nothing that you lab

simply reveals himself, in the accusative

14 Contrast the epigram by Philodemus quoted by Nisbet and Hubbard 1970.422.

and it is claimed by the short dialectic that we have seen functioning

superfluous; instead, it shows pleasure to b

that officious fetching.17 O

17 In her answer to the Arion( 1970.1

freedman. His constant insistence on his in

ported or commissioned in the way that they have been

20 See Ross 1975.9-15 on Catullus* applicatio

Horace in which we feel both the knotty c

Ο fons Bandusiae splendidior vitro

praebes et pecori vago.

Ο Bandusian spring, more brilliant than glass,

waters with its red blood,

This is a dedication poem, though

Give me the humblest note of those sad strains,

Commager quotes these lines as an example of the "sentimental echoes"

stanza begins with Horace taking a much

24 "But in this poem it is Bandusia, and not the poet t

25 Commager 1962.323. Wilson 1968.295 cites a number of passages in which Horace

of Horace in all this? There have been var

28 The festival of the Fontinalia was celebrated, as

thing akin to Commager's fo

31 This is the approach of Quinn 19

33 The "Ο" fulfills what Jakobson 19

To anticipate a little, the movement of the po

of sensibility. The dissonance puts something at stake, and this is

this way the rupture of the kid's

οι poetic inspiration brings the sound ot tne waters

bloodlessly aesthetic treatment of

The pleasure I have been describing is certainly a stable, classic

litany of classical pleasures that may quite l

University of California, San Diego

Anderson, W. S. 1974. "Autobiography and Art in Horace," in

Commager, Steele. 1962. The Odes of Horace. New Haven.

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