In the literatures of Greece and Rome there are no diseases of the spirit. There is no questioning of the supreme facts of existence. They are sane. They are models of right seeing. No energy is wasted in rebellion. Their charm is not that of a wild, erratic view point for the glorifying of self. A thing to be good had to be something besides new. L’art nouveau would have met disdain.
They are sane with nature’s unchanging sanity which we are losing. They do not strain the mind to acrobatic seeing. Novelty was not synonymous with quality. This body, this life, belong to earth where they are placed. It is well not to tamper things that do not concern us. Not without reason was the box of Pandora closed. Whenever we open it, we find a new ill. Take things as they are. Be happy. It is sad we can not make pagan sanity contagious as our questioning restlessness.
In Horace there is no madness of the crusader, no fantastic gallantry of knighthood. We are glad of their absence. Pagan literature is a place of mental rehabilitation. To be en rapport with a pagan of Horace’s day it was necessary to enjoy with him. To be en rapport with a modern it is necessary to weep with him. We play the comédie larmoyante. Modern art cares for sensations. Heart-throbs are the thing! It might take for its motto:—Fac me tecum plangere. Today it is only the artist (whose soul is always pagan) who finds life good. Anatole France says that without him (the artist) we might doubt the fact.
Surely there is no one more fit to read in a garden, under the moon of autumn, than city-bred Horace with his plea for rustic merriment. He loved country life. He pictured it. They had in his day a fresher feeling for simple things, a nymph-like nearness and affection; delight in fresh grass, cool running water, young flowers with dew on them. Simple things were precious enough to be mentioned on equality with chosen guests to make happy a holiday. To the poet is given clearer vision of such things. He is equipped by nature to take pleasure in them. In addition, Latin races have had vivid sense of reality. It is one source of their strength.
Horace loved the banks of Tiber, as Keats the green English Thames-side, Hafiz, valley of the Roknabad, and Tu Fu his bamboo-shaded rivers. Each has been emphatic in dislike of going elsewhere. Each painted the home country he loved.
There are scenes among the poets, bits of landscape, more real, more endeared to me than any I see in life. They are changeless. They are superior to time. They give illusion of things that do not grow old. By sympathetic folly I remain young with them. They are always waiting for me untouched by the season. I know just where to find them. After time has made me old, to go back to them, affects me like going home. In fact, one of my ideals has been realized in the changeless things of art.
How different were the adjectives which Horace applied to natural objects from those we use! In them I can see the clear, unvexed mind that observed. He seized description by a different corner. His impressions were fresher, quicker. To him clouds were steep clouds, (nubibus arduis). He saw first the striking thing. For this reason his descriptions give the sensation of looking at an etching, crisp, sure, before repeated reproductions have blurred it. An advantage was with him. He had the world before it became second-hand. He has shown attractive scenes.
In Book III, Carmen xxix, what dainty, stepping through measures! What fastidious choosing! What fragile-pointed penciling! Sharp indeed, fine leaved, were the bristling thickets which hid the God, Sylvanus. Here is delicately modeled detail of French line engravers, such as Edelinck. Nowhere else is there such inspiring swinging up and slow, pensive drooping of moons, with such calm vistas. Moons are red gold. The sky is lapis, a Byzantine enamel. The delight when they swing to sight! Nowhere do they rise more majestically than with Latin poets. I like, too, his swift painting of forests, fields, herds and the black hills of Acadia, lofty Tusculum where wealthy Romans had country houses, and he went to banquet with his friends, or cool Lucanian pastures overlooking the Tuscan Sea; the ocean flowing among the shining Cyclades. His pictures are sure of line as an etching by Braquemond. They give some the same pleasure. They are crisp. They are oftenest of the outdoor world. Artists of all time have been indebted to this plastic picturing. When he describes wine foaming around white feet of laughing girls, we see a group by Donatello. When he paints Autumn crowned with vine-leaves, lifting his head above level plains, we see the richly colored, fluent art of Boucher. Might not the oxen with weary necks dragging the inverted plowshare be from brush of Breton or L’Hermitte? Latin blood is there!
In Horace there is appreciation of rustic life which French art realized. The order of descriptions is beautiful. One moment does not rush upon another. This is a Latin quality; nothing superimposed; nothing hurried. The influence of Horace, his spirit, is in art of France, Spain, Italy; but not in Holland or the north. There it met a counter current, which swept it back. In the north the spirit triumphed.
It is sanity of Latin races that periodically reclaims art from the crowded vagueness of the north, then shows it the way back to life, which is nature.