Horace’s Dark Carpe Diem

Horace’s Dark Carpe Diem P. Taylor I cannot deny that Horace makes a good point in several of his odes when he encourages us to seize the day (carpe diem). But I have to admit that, even though I know I should live every day to the fullest, most of the time I take it easy and even waste time. Even when I finally read his famous carpe diem poem I still did not know why I was not motivated to live more fully. However, when I read a few of his other poems that convey the same theme, I began to understand: you cannot be motivated to seize the day until you can imagine the time when you do not have any more days. Horace taught me that imagining my death motivates me to live. Horace begins his famous carpe diem ode (I.XI) by admitting that there’s no use trying to figure out what will happen in the future, and he spends most of the ode saying, don’t worry about it (Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint [You do not need to ask, we’ll never know, what fate the gods give, neither mine nor yours], lines 1-2). That only leaves a few lines to encourage us to seize the day (sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi / spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida / aetas: carpe diem [be wise, prepare wine, and put off far-away hope since time is short], lines 6-8). Honestly, I do not find it compelling. If I should not put any trust in the future (minimum credula postero, line 8), I could just as well spend my time playing computer games indoors on a nice day. Those long Asclepiadean lines do not make me want to jump up either (Ancona 33). Fortunately, Horace has more compelling things to say on the subject. In his winter ode (I.IX), Horace takes us into the deep icy cold of winter outdoors. By the end of the poem he takes me laughing and dancing and having a secret outdoor meeting with girl, as if it’s not winter anymore. I was confused: when did it become spring? It’s like his seasons were not separate. Then, like an optical illusion, I looked at it in a different way and everything changed. Spring is my time of life now but someday it’s going to be winter, yet it is all one life. If I can imagine right now when my life will be winter, when I need to stay shut indoors sitting by the fire, then I should want to make the effort now to go out and enjoy music and dancing—and I should not be afraid to talk to that girl, either. That is why Horace starts with winter and ends with spring. We have to begin knowing that we are going to get old and die before we can really enjoy life. This is different from saying we cannot know the future, which he emphasized in the carpe diem ode; we know for sure we will not live forever. Horace juxtaposes the words just as he juxtaposes the seasons and the ideas of life and death (Clackson 362; Ancona 32). For example, look at the last stanza: nunc et latentis proditor intumo gratus puellae risus ab angulo pignusque dereptum lacertis aut digito male pertinaci.

(Now too is her delightful laugh a traitor to the girl hidden in a secret corner, and her poorly held love token is snatched from her arm or finger, lines 21-24.) The word order juxtaposes two images and one sound: 1) hiding in a secret corner, and 2) a love token taken from one hand into another (carpe pignum!), with 3) the laughter sounding between the two. This literal translation shows how mixed up the word order is: Now too (1)hidden (3)betrayer (1)innermost (3)delightful (1)girl’s (3)laughter in a (1)corner and (2)token taken away from arms or fingers (1)badly holding on (Smith 11). The idea of holding on to a love token and hiding is parallel to winter (trees hidden under snow, water hidden under ice in stanza one) and staying indoors (heathstones hidden under fire logs, wine hidden in jars or held in cups in stanza two). The idea of laughter and moving hands is parallel to the music of loves and dances in the fourth stanza. Horace says that if you really want to live you have to hold these contrasting ideas together in your mind just as you have to read them all together in this poem. Yet, despite the interlocking word order, Horace uses an Alcaic meter that imposes a fair amount of unity on the stanza, as the first two lines have an identical meter and the third follows for the most part (Ancona 111):

It’s as if Horace is saying that, despite the contrast of loving and hiding, it’s all part of life. Now that we understand what Horace is doing in ode I.IX, we can find him expressing the same theme in a few other odes. In ode II.III he asks, why do tall pines and white poplars love to have their branches hang* with hospitable shadows? (Quo pinus ingens albaque populus / umbram hospitalem consociare amant / ramis?, lines 9-11. *I use “hang” in the slang sense of socialize because it makes a nice pun). The last two stanzas keep reminding us that we are going to die, but, before we get there, Horace offers: Huc vina et unguenta et nimium brevis flores amoenae ferre iube rosae, dum res et aetas et Sororum fila trium patiuntur atra. (Call for wine and perfume and the all too short-lived petals of lovely flowers, while fortune and age and the dark threads of the Three Sisters [fate] allow, lines 12-15.) By the time we get to ode III.XIV, Horace’s whole message is that Death is invincible (indomitaeque morti, line 4); no matter what we do we are not going to live forever. (It reminds me of Shel Silverstein’s song, “Still Gonna Die.”) If I had not already read the

winter ode, I would find this poem to be depressing. However, the point is not to creep us out about death, but to remind us that without being able to imagine it while we are living, we will never live as fully as we could.

Works Cited Ancona, Ronnie. Horace: Selected Odes and Satire 1.9. Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005. http://books.google.com/books?id=aGb_YfHTUYEC Clackson, John. A Companion to the Latin Language. Wiley, 2011. http://books.google.com/books?id=HgQjpHUIBWkC Silverstein, Shel. “Still Gonna Die.” http://www.songtextemania.com/still_gonna_die_songtext_shel_silverstein.html Smith, C., trans. The Works of Horace translated literally into English Prose. Harper Bros., 1894. http://books.google.com/books?id=jVl0AAAAIAAJ “Horace.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace