The Poetics of Closure: Horace Odes III.17-28

Abstract

One of the most important achievements of recent Horatian scholarship has been the rediscovery of structure — not the mechanical dissection of poems into component parts, but an awareness of how form is inseparable from content and how unity proceeds from design. Although the individual ode has by now received sufficient attention, the structure of the first lyric collection remains problematic. On the one hand, elaborate visual and numerological schemes have been proposed to account for the poems' placement. But such patterns could only be discovered by very selective handling of the evidence, and their neatness and level of abstraction raise doubts about their likelihood and significance. Partly as a corrective to these excesses, some recent scholars have gone to the other extreme, denying any extensive design. But while no single principle is likely to account for the disposition of all eighty-eight poems in twelve different meters, several considerations suggest that Horace had at least some concern for design. These include the well-documented interest in poetry books among Hellenistic and Roman writers; the aesthetic implications of the book roll, the physical format of which necessitates sequential reading; the existence of certain undisputed signs of arrangement in Odes I-III such as the frame of Odes I.1 and III. 30 or the grouping of Parade Odes (Odes I.1-9) and Roman Odes (Odes III. 1-6); and, finally, the relatively restricted thematic repertoire which facilitates the discovery of connections among odes by poet and reader alike. Since controls can be applied to this, as to all other literary study, the existence of larger structures and their relevance to an appreciation of the poetry is a legitimate subject for inquiry.