"Odes" 1.9: A Study in Imaginative Unity

Abstract

THE GENESIS of paper is the curt dismissal of Odes 1.9 by Eduard Fraenkel in his recently published Horace.' Out of more than four hundred and fifty pages of comment on most of the works of Horace, twenty-one lines are expended on ode, seven of faint praise followed by fourteen of more explicit damnation. It is distressing enough to see charming ode printed with the caption Winter in second-rate anthologies; but when the same sort of misinterpretation is given currency in so scholarly a book as Fraenkel's, it is time for some counter-criticism. The problem, as Fraenkel's brief comment indicates, is basically one of finding unity amid apparent incongruity. Let us take up Fraenkel's challenge and see whether it is true that this incongruity cannot be removed by any device of apologetic interpretation. If Fraenkel failed to grasp the solution, at least he saw the problem, and we may use his statement of it as a starting-point: To put it somewhat crudely: the 'Hellenistic' ending of the ode and its 'Alcaean' beginning have not really coalesced. Or, a few lines above, Its heterogeneous elements have not merged into a harmonious unit. Line 18 nunc et campus et areae and what follows suggest a season wholly different from the severe winter at the beginning.