Ars Poetica (Fairclough)

If a painter chose to join a human head to the neck of a horse, and to spread feathers of many a hue over limbs picked up now here now there, so that what at the top is a lovely woman ends below in a black and ugly fish, could you, my friends, if favoured with a private view, refrain from laughing? Believe me, dear Pisos, quite like such pictures would be a book, whose idle fancies shall be shaped like a sick man’s dreams, so that neither head nor foot can be assigned to a single shape. “Painters and poets,” you say, “have always had an equal right in hazarding anything.” We know it: this licence we poets claim and in our turn we grant the like; but not so far that savage should mate with tame, or serpents couple with birds, lambs with tigers.

Works with noble beginnings and grand promises often have one or two purple patches so stitched on as to glitter far and wide, when Diana’s grove and altar, and The winding stream a-speeding mid fair fields or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is being described. For such things there is a place, but not just now. Perhaps, too, you can draw a cypress. But what of that, if you are paid to paint a sailor swimming from his wrecked vessel in despair? That was a wine-jar, when the moulding began: why, as the wheel runs round, does it turn out a pitcher? In short, be the work what you will, let it at least be simple and uniform.

Most of us poets, O father and ye sons worthy of the father, deceive ourselves by the semblance of truth. Striving to be brief, I become obscure. Aiming at smoothness, I fail in force and fire. One promising grandeur, is bombastic; another, over-cautious and fearful of the gale, creeps along the ground. The man who tries to vary a single subject in monstrous fashion, is like a painter adding a dolphin to the woods, a boar to the waves. Shunning a fault may lead to error, if there be lack of art.

Near the Aemilian School, at the bottom of the row, there is a craftsman who in bronze will mould nails and imitate waving locks, but is unhappy in the total result, because he cannot represent a whole figure. Now if I wanted to write something, I should no more wish to be like him, than to live with my nose turned askew, though admired for my black eyes and black hair.

Take a subject, ye writers, equal to your strength, and ponder long what your shoulders refuse, and what they are able to bear. Whoever shall choose a theme within his range, neither speech will fail him, nor clearness of order. Of order, this, if I mistake not, will be the excellence and charm that the author of the long-promised poem shall say at the moment what at that moment should be said, reserving and omitting much for the present, loving this point and scorning that.

Moreover, with a nice taste and care in weaving words together, you will express yourself most happily, if a skilful setting makes a familiar word new. If haply one must betoken abstruse things by novel terms, you will have a chance to fashion words never heard of by the kilted Cethegi, and licence will be granted, if used with modesty: while words, though new and of recent make, will win acceptance, if they spring from a Greek fount and are drawn therefrom but sparingly. Why indeed shall Romans grant this licence to Caecilius and Plautus, and refuse it to Virgil and Varius? And why should I be grudged the right of adding, if I can, my little fund, when the tongue of Cato and of Ennius has enriched our mother-speech and brought to light new terms for things? It has ever been, and ever will be, permitted to issue words stamped with the mint-mark of the day. As forests change their leaves with each year’s decline, and the earliest drop off: so with words, the old race dies, and, like the young of human kind, the new-born bloom and thrive. We are doomed to death—we and all things ours; whether Neptune, welcomed within the land, protects our fleets from northern gales—a truly royal work—or a marsh, long a waste where oars were plied, feeds neighbouring towns and feels the weight of the plough; or a river has changed the course which brought ruin to corn-fields and has learnt a better path: all mortal things shall perish, much less shall the glory and glamour of speech endure and live. Many terms that have fallen out of use shall be born again, and those shall fall that are now in repute, if Usage so will it, in whose hands lies the judgement, the right and the rule of speech.

In what measure the exploits of kings and captains and the sorrows of war may be written, Homer has shown. Verses yoked unequally first embraced lamentation, later also the sentiment of granted prayer: yet who first put forth humble elegiacs, scholars dispute, and the case is still before the court. Rage armed Archilochus with his own iambus: this foot comic sock and high buskins alike adopted, as suited to alternate speech, able to drown the clamours of the pit, and by nature fit for action. To the lyre the Muse granted tales of gods and children of gods, of the victor in boxing, of the horse first in the race, of the loves of swains, and of freedom over wine. If I fail to keep and do not understand these well-marked shifts and shades of poetic forms, why am I hailed as poet? Why through false shame do I prefer to be ignorant rather than to learn? A theme for Comedy refuses to be set forth in verses of Tragedy; likewise the feast of Thyestes scorns to be told in strains of daily life that well nigh befit the comic sock. Let each style keep the becoming place allotted it. Yet at times even Comedy raises her voice, and an angry Chremes storms in swelling tones; so, too, in Tragedy Telephus and Peleus often grieve in the language of prose, when, in poverty and exile, either hero throws aside his bombast and Brobdingnagian words, should he want his lament to touch the spectator’s heart.

Not enough is it for poems to have beauty: they must have charm, and lead the hearer’s soul where they will. As men’s faces smile on those who smile, so they respond to those who weep. If you would have me weep, you must first feel grief yourself: then, O Telephus or Peleus, will your misfortunes hurt me: if the words you utter are ill suited, I shall laugh or fall asleep. Sad tones befit the face of sorrow; blustering accents that of anger; jests become the merry, solemn words the grave. For Nature first shapes us within to meet every change of fortune: she brings joy or impels to anger, or bows us to the ground and tortures us under a load of grief; then, with the tongue for interpreter, she proclaims the emotions of the soul. If the speaker’s words sound discordant with his fortunes, the Romans, in boxes and pit alike, will raise a loud guffaw. Vast difference will it make, whether a god be speaking or a hero, a ripe old man or one still in the flower and fervour of youth, a dame of rank or a bustling nurse, a roaming trader or the tiller of a verdant field, a Colchian or an Assyrian, one bred at Thebes or at Argos.

Either follow tradition or invent what is self-consistent. If haply, when you write, you bring back to the stage the honouring of Achilles, let him be impatient, passionate, ruthless, fierce; let him claim that laws are not for him, let him ever make appeal to the sword. Let Medea be fierce and unyielding, Ino tearful, Ixion forsworn, lo a wanderer, Orestes sorrowful. If it is an untried theme you entrust to the stage, and if you boldly fashion a fresh character, have it kept to the end even as it came forth at the first, and have it self-consistent.

It is hard to treat in your own way what is common: and you are doing better in spinning into acts a song of Troy than if, for the first time, you were giving the world a theme unknown and unsung. In ground open to all you will win private rights, if you do not linger along the easy and open pathway, if you do not seek to render word for word as a slavish translator, and if in your copying you do not leap into the narrow well, out of which either shame or the laws of your task will keep you from stirring a step. And you are not to begin as the Cyclic poet of old:

Of Priam’s fate and famous war I’ll sing.

What will this boaster produce in keeping with such mouthing? Mountains will labour, to birth will come a laughter-rousing mouse! How much better he who makes no foolish effort:

Sing, Muse, for me the man who on Troy’s fall

Saw the wide world, its ways and cities all.

Not smoke after flame does he plan to give, but after smoke the light, that then he may set forth striking and wondrous tales—Antiphates, Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops. Nor does he begin Diomede’s return from the death of Meleager, or the war of Troy from the twin eggs. Ever he hastens to the issue, and hurries his hearer into the story’s midst, as if already known, and what he fears he cannot make attractive with his touch he abandons; and so skilfully does he invent, so closely does he blend facts and fiction, that the middle is not discordant with the beginning, nor the end with the middle.

Now hear what I, and with me the public, expect. If you want an approving hearer, one who waits for the curtain, and will stay in his seat till the singer cries “Give your applause,” you must note the manners of each age, and give a befitting tone to shifting natures and their years. The child, who by now can utter words and set firm step upon the ground, delights to play with his mates, flies into a passion and as lightly puts it aside, and changes every hour. The beardless youth, freed at last from his tutor, finds joy in horses and hounds and the grass of the sunny Campus, soft as wax for moulding to evil, peevish with his counsellors, slow to make needful provision, lavish of money, spirited, of strong desires, but swift to change his fancies. With altered aims, the age and spirit of the man seeks wealth and friends, becomes a slave to ambition, and is fearful of having done what soon it will be eager to change. Many ills encompass an old man, whether because he seeks gain, and then miserably holds aloof from his store and fears to use it, or because, in all that he does, he lacks fire and courage, is dilatory and slow to form hopes, is sluggish and greedy of a longer life, peevish, surly, given to praising the days he spent as a boy, and to reproving and condemning the young. Many blessings do the advancing years bring with them; many, as they retire, they take away. So, lest haply we assign a youth the part of age, or a boy that of manhood, we shall ever linger over traits that are joined and fitted to the age.

Either an event is acted on the stage, or the action is narrated. Less vividly is the mind stirred by what finds entrance through the ears than by what is brought before the trusty eyes, and what the spectator can see for himself. Yet you will not bring upon the stage what should be performed behind the scenes, and you will keep much from our eyes, which an actor’s ready tongue will narrate anon in our presence; so that Medea is not to butcher her boys before the people, nor impious Atreus cook human flesh upon the stage, nor Procne be turned into a bird, Cadmus into a snake. Whatever you thus show me, I discredit and abhor.

Let no play be either shorter or longer than five acts, if when once seen it hopes to be called for and brought back to the stage. And let no god intervene, unless a knot come worthy of such a deliverer, nor let a fourth actor essay to speak.

Let the Chorus sustain the part and strenuous duty of an actor, and sing nothing between acts which does not advance and fitly blend into the plot. It should side with the good and give friendly counsel; sway the angry and cherish the righteous. It should praise the fare of a modest board, praise wholesome justice, law, and peace with her open gates; should keep secrets, and pray and beseech the gods that fortune may return to the unhappy, and depart from the proud.

The flute—not, as now, bound with brass and a rival of the trumpet, but slight and simple, with few stops—was once of use to lead and aid the chorus and to fill with its breath benches not yet too crowded, where, to be sure, folk gathered, easy to count, because few—sober folk, too, and chaste and modest. But when a conquering race began to widen its domain, and an ampler wall embraced its cities, and when, on festal days, appeasing the Genius by daylight drinking brought no penalty, then both time and tune won greater licence. For what taste could you expect of an unlettered throng just freed from toil, rustic mixed up with city folk, vulgar with nobly-born? So to the early art the flute-player added movement and display, and, strutting o’er the stage, trailed a robe in train. So, too, to the sober lyre new tones were given, and an impetuous style brought in an unwonted diction; and the thought, full of wise saws and prophetic of the future, was attuned to the oracles of Delphi.

The poet who in tragic song first competed for a paltry goat soon also brought on unclad the woodland Satyrs, and with no loss of dignity roughly essayed jesting, for only the lure and charm of novelty could hold the spectator, who, after observance of the rites, was well drunken and in lawless mood. But it will be fitting so to seek favour for your laughing, bantering Satyrs, so to pass from grave to gay, that no god, no hero, who shall be brought upon the stage, and whom we have just beheld in royal gold and purple, shall shift with vulgar speech into dingy hovels, or, while shunning the ground, catch at clouds and emptiness. Tragedy, scorning to babble trivial verses, will, like a matron bidden to dance on festal days, take her place in the saucy Satyrs’ circle with some little shame. Not mine shall it be, ye Pisos, if writing Satyric plays, to affect only the plain nouns and verbs of established use; nor shall I strive so to part company with tragic tone, that it matters not whether Davus be speaking with shameless Pythias, who has won a talent by bamboozling Simo, or Silenus, who guards and serves his divine charge. My aim shall be poetry, so moulded from the familiar that anybody may hope for the same success, may sweat much and yet toil in vain when attempting the same: such is the power of order and connexion, such the beauty that may crown the commonplace. When the Fauns are brought from the forest, they should, methinks, beware of behaving as though born at the crossways and almost as dwelling in the Forum, playing at times the young bloods with their mawkish verses, or cracking their bawdy and shameless jokes. For some take offence—knights, free-born, and men of substance—nor do they greet with kindly feelings or reward with a crown everything which the buyers of roasted beans and chestnuts approve.

A long syllable following a short is called an iambus—a light foot; hence it commanded that the name of trimeters should attach itself to iambic lines, though it yielded six beats, being from first to last the same throughout. But not so long ago, that it might reach the ears with somewhat more slowness and weight, it admitted the steady spondees to its paternal rights, being obliging and tolerant, but not so much so as to give up the second and fourth places in its friendly ranks. In the “noble” trimeters of Accius this iambus appears but seldom; and on the verses which Ennius hurled ponderously upon the stage it lays the shameful charge either of hasty and too careless work or of ignorance of the art. Not every critic discerns unmusical verses, and so undeserved indulgence has been granted our Roman poets. Am I therefore to run loose and write without restraint? Or supposing that all will see my faults, shall I seek safety and take care to keep within hope of pardon? At the best I have escaped censure, I have earned no praise. For yourselves, handle Greek models by night, handle them by day. Yet your forefathers, you say, praised both the measures and the wit of Plautus. Too tolerant, not to say foolish, was their admiration of both, if you and I but know how to distinguish coarseness from wit, and with fingers and ear can catch the lawful rhythm.

Thespis is said to have discovered the Tragic Muse, a type unknown before, and to have carried his pieces in wagons to be sung and acted by players with faces smeared with wine-lees. After him Aeschylus, inventor of the mask and comely robe, laid a stage of small planks, and taught a lofty speech and stately gait on the buskin. To these succeeded Old Comedy, and won no little credit, but its freedom sank into excess and a violence deserving to be checked by law. The law was obeyed, and the chorus to its shame became mute, its right to injure being withdrawn.

Our own poets have left no style untried, nor has least honour been earned when they have dared to leave the footsteps of the Greeks and sing of deeds at home, whether they have put native tragedies or native comedies upon the stage. Nor would Latium be more supreme in valour and glory of arms than in letters, were it not that her poet, one and all, cannot brook the toil and tedium of the file. Do you, O sons of Pompilius, condemn a poem which many a day and many a blot has not restrained and refined ten times over to the test of the close-cut nail.

Because Democritus believes that native talent is a greater boon than wretched art, and shuts out from Helicon poets in their sober senses, a goodly number take no pains to pare their nails or to shave their beards; they haunt lonely places and shun the baths—for surely one will win the esteem and name of poet if he never entrusts to the barber Licinus a head that three Anticyras cannot cure. Ah, fool that I am, who purge me of my bile as the season of spring comes on! Not another man would compose better poems. Yet it’s not worth while. So I’ll play a whetstone’s part, which makes steel sharp, but of itself cannot cut. Though I write naught myself, I will teach the poet’s office and duty; whence he draws his stores; what nurtures and fashions him; what befits him and what not; whither the right course leads and whither the wrong.

Of good writing the source and fount is wisdom. Your matter the Socratic pages can set forth, and when matter is in hand words will not be loath to follow. He who has learned what he owes his country and his friends, what love is due a parent, a brother, and a guest, what is imposed on senator and judge, what is the function of a general sent to war, he surely knows how to give each character his fitting part. I would advise one who has learned the imitative art to look to life and manners for a model, and draw from thence living words. At times a play marked by attractive passages and characters fitly sketched, though lacking in charm, though without force and art, gives the people more delight and holds them better than verses void of thought, and sonorous trifles.

To the Greeks the Muse gave native wit, to the Greeks she gave speech in well-rounded phrase; they craved naught but glory. Our Romans, by many a long sum, learn in childhood to divide the as into a hundred parts. “Let the son of Albinus answer. If from five-twelfths one ounce be taken, what remains? You might have told me by now.” “A third.” “Good! you will be able to look after your means. An ounce is added; what’s the result?” “A half.” When once this canker, this lust of petty gain has stained the soul, can we hope for poems to be fashioned, worthy to be smeared with cedar-oil, and kept in polished cypress?

Poets aim either to benefit, or to amuse, or to utter words at once both pleasing and helpful to life. Whenever you instruct, be brief, so that what is quickly said the mind may readily grasp and faithfully hold: every word in excess flows away from the full mind. Fictions meant to please should be close to the real, so that your play must not ask for belief in anything it chooses, nor from the Ogress’s belly, after dinner, draw forth a living child. The centuries of the elders chase from the stage what is profitless; the proud Ramnes disdain poems devoid of charms. He has won every vote who has blended profit and pleasure, at once delighting and instructing the reader. That is the book to make money for the Sosii; this the one to cross the sea and extend to a distant day its author’s fame.

Yet faults there are which we can gladly pardon; for the string does not always yield the sound which hand and heart intend, but when you call for a flat often returns you a sharp; nor will the bow always hit whatever mark it threatens. But when the beauties in a poem are more in number, I shall not take offence at a few blots which a careless hand has let drop, or human frailty has failed to avert. What, then, is the truth? As a copying clerk is without excuse if, however much warned, he always makes the same mistake, and a harper is laughed at who always blunders on the same string: so the poet who often defaults, becomes, methinks, another Choerilus, whose one or two good lines cause laughter and surprise; and yet I also feel aggrieved, whenever good Homer “nods,” but when a work is long, a drowsy mood may well creep over it.

A poem is like a picture: one strikes your fancy more, the nearer you stand; another, the farther away. This courts the shade, that will wish to be seen in the light, and dreads not the critic insight of the judge. This pleased but once; that, though ten times called for, will always please.

O you elder youth, though wise yourself and trained to right judgement by a father’s voice, take to heart and remember this saying, that only some things rightly brook the medium and the bearable. A lawyer and pleader of middling rank falls short of the merit of eloquent Messalla, and knows not as much as Aulus Cascellius, yet he has a value. But that poets be of middling rank, neither men nor gods nor booksellers ever brooked. As at pleasant banquets an orchestra out of tune, an unguent that is thick, and poppy-seeds served with Sardinian honey, give offence, because the feast might have gone on without them: so a poem, whose birth and creation are for the soul’s delight, if in aught it falls short of the top, sinks to the bottom. He who cannot play a game, shuns the weapons of the Campus, and, if unskilled in ball or quoit or hoop, remains aloof, lest the crowded circle break out in righteous laughter. Yet the man who knows not how dares to frame verses. Why not? He is free, even freeborn, nay, is rated at the fortune of a knight, and stands clear from every blemish.

But you will say nothing and do nothing against Minerva’s will; such is your judgement, such your good sense. Yet if ever you do write anything, let it enter the ears of some critical Maecius, and your father’s, and my own; then put your parchment in the closet and keep it back till the ninth year. What you have not published you can destroy; the word once sent forth can never come back.

While men still roamed the woods, Orpheus, the holy prophet of the gods, made them shrink from bloodshed and brutal living; hence the fable that he tamed tigers and ravening lions; hence too the fable that Amphion, builder of Thebes’s citadel, moved stones by the sound of his lyre, and led them whither he would by his supplicating spell. In days of yore, this was wisdom, to draw a line between public and private rights, between things sacred and things common, to check vagrant union, to give rules for wedded life, to build towns, and grave laws on tables of wood; and so honour and fame fell to bards and their songs, as divine. After these Homer won his renown, and Tyrtaeus with his verses fired manly hearts for battles of Mars. In song oracles were given, and the way of life was shown; the favour of kings was sought in Pierian strains, and mirth was found to close toil’s long spell. So you need not blush for the Muse skilled in the lyre, and for Apollo, god of song.

Often it is asked whether a praiseworthy poem be due to Nature or to art. For my part, I do not see of what avail is either study, when not enriched by Nature’s vein, or native wit, if untrained; so truly does each claim the other’s aid, and make with it a friendly league. He who in the race-course craves to reach the longed for goal, has borne much and done much as a boy, has sweated and shivered, has kept aloof from wine and women. He who plays at the Pythian games, has first learned his lessons and been in awe of a master. To-day ’tis enough to say: “I fashion wondrous poems: the devil take the hindmost!” ’Tis unseemly for me to be left behind, and to confess that I really do not know what I have never learned.

Like the crier, who gathers a crowd to the auction of his wares, so the poet bids flatterers flock to the call of gain, if he is rich in lands, and rich in moneys put out at interest. But if he be one who can fitly serve a dainty dinner, and be surety for a poor man of little credit, or can rescue one entangled in gloomy suits at law, I shall wonder if the happy fellow will be able to distinguish between a false and a true friend. And you, if you have given or mean to give a present to anyone, do not bring him, in the fulness of his joy, to hear verses you have written. For he will call out “Fine! good! perfect!” He will change colour over them; he will even distil the dew from his friendly eyes, he will dance and thump the ground with his foot. As hired mourners at a funeral say and do almost more than those who grieve at heart, so the man who mocks is more moved than the true admirer. Kings, we are told, ply with many a bumper and test with wine the man they are anxious to see through, whether he be worthy of their friendship. If you mean to fashion verses, never let the intent that lurks beneath the fox ensnare you.

If you ever read aught to Quintilius, he would say: “Pray correct this and this.” If, after two or three vain trials, you said you could not do better, he would bid you blot it out, and return the ill-shaped verses to the anvil. If you preferred defending your mistake to amending it, he would waste not a word more, would spend no fruitless toil, to prevent your loving yourself and your work alone without a rival. An honest and sensible man will censure lifeless lines, he will find fault with harsh ones; if they are graceless, he will draw his pen across and smear them with a black stroke; he will cut away pretentious ornament; he will force you to flood the obscure with light, will convict the doubtful phrase, will mark what should be changed, will prove an Aristarchus. He will not say, “Why should I give offence to a friend about trifles?” These trifles will bring that friend into serious trouble, if once he has been laughed down and given an unlucky reception.

As when the accursed itch plagues a man, or the disease of kings, or a fit of frenzy and Diana’s wrath, so men of sense fear to touch a crazy poet and run away; children tease and pursue him rashly. He, with head upraised, splutters verses and off he strays; then if, like a fowler with his eyes upon blackbirds, he fall into a well or pit, despite his far-reaching cry, “Help, O fellow-citizens!” not a soul will care to pull him out. And if one should care to lend aid and let down a rope, “How do you know,” I’ll say, “but that he threw himself in on purpose, and does not wish to be saved?” and I’ll tell the tale of the Sicilian poet’s end. Empedocles, eager to be thought a god immortal, coolly leapt into burning Aetna. Let poets have the right and power to destroy themselves. Who saves a man against his will does the same as murder him. Not for the first time has he done this, nor if he is pulled out will he at once become a human being and lay aside his craving for a notable death. Nor is it very clear how he comes to be a verse-monger. Has he defiled ancestral ashes or in sacrilege disturbed a hallowed plot? At any rate he is mad, and, like a bear, if he has had strength to break the confining bars of his cage, he puts learned and unlearned alike to flight by the scourge of his recitals. If he catches a man, he holds him fast and reads him to death—a leech that will not let go the skin, till gorged with blood.