Renaissance literary theory and practice

by Charles Sears Baldwin

Sit fas vestra mihi vulgare arcana per orbem,

Pierides, penitusque sacros recludere fontes,

Dum vatem egregium teneris educere ab annis,

Heroum qui facta canet, laudesve deorum,

Mentem agito, vestrique in vertice sistere montis.

It invites noble youth to write Latin poetry. The doctrine is mainly an expansion of the “Ars poetica” of Horace;[51] the exemplar is Vergil.

I. Though heroic poetry is the highest, choose according to your talent heroic or dramatic, elegiac or pastoral. Let the great work wait while you sound and explore it; but meantime seize those parts that come at once, and make a prose sketch of the whole. The preparation of schooling in poetic and rhetoric is necessary as training in appreciation. [The rest of the canto is addressed, over the pupil’s shoulder, to teachers.] Greek, established in Italy by the Medici, and especially Homer, stimulate comparison. Of the Latins, the Augustans, especially Vergil, have first claim. The others may wait till taste has been matured by these. The master’s function is to awaken and guide love of the best poetry without forcing it. Even recreation may be pointed by classical suggestions. Calf love must be handled with care. So soon as young ardor has penetrated through passion to poetry, the boy should study its monuments and taste the other arts. Though travel is useful, and some experience of war, the central thing is unremitting study of the poets. Thus metric, instead of remaining merely a set of rules, becomes the testing of one’s own adjustments by memories of reading, the oral revision of a mind full of great poetry. Young ambitions should not be quelled by too severe criticism, nor lack the privilege of retirement and freedom. The world that grudges these owes its glory nevertheless to poets, who have sacrificed worldly rewards to live in their own peace. As the fire stolen by Prometheus, poetry is a divine gift.

II. The second canto repeats Horace’s counsel: begin on a subdued tone and at the crisis (in mediis). The action, planned as a whole and clearly forecast, should control the description. Greek is more tolerant of descriptive dilation than is becoming to us Latins. Need I caution against the dilation that comes from gratuitous display of erudition? The detail of Vulcan’s shield for Aeneas has the point of exhibiting the history of Rome. Variety has its claims; but rolls of kings, legends, myths, comic relief, though delightful as description, should not deviate. Be careful of verisimilitude. Do not plan for length. Work day and night on a conception limited and tried out this way and that. If amplification seems desirable afterward, Vergil shows many ways. [The citations are mainly descriptive.] Inspiration comes when it will, and does not obviate revision. Study nature: the ways of age, of youth, of woman, of servants and of kings, for appropriateness, as in Vergil; for so you learn to move, as Vergil by Euryalus. Study in others, especially in the ancient Greeks, their conceptions (inventa) without hesitating to borrow as Vergil from Homer. So may Rome ever excel in the arts and teach the world. Alas for our discords and the bringing in of foreign tyrants! though distant nations had already honored Tuscan Leo and the Medici. The crusade against the Saracens became only a dream.

III. Flee obscurity; let poetry be clear in its own light. Vary to avoid repetition. Figures give vividness to both poetry and oratory; but verse is freer with hyperbole, metonymy, personification. Figures should avoid display, incongruity, dilation. Style must always be appropriate. Follow the classics, use suggestions from other poets, adapting the old to the new, even borrowing. As a poet need not fear new words that are already recognizable, so he may go to Greek, as his classical ancestors before him. He may venture cautiously on archaism, periphrasis, compounds, adaptations. Never let words carry you beyond your meaning, except to serve the music of verse. Verse is a shrine closed to the mass of men, open to the few by a narrow way. For it must range beyond mere correctness to harmony with the persons, with the scene, with each of the three styles. Such counsels, sure as they are, will not guarantee high achievement. That can be given only by Apollo. Let us close by celebrating the supreme poet Vergil.