Horace's Narrative Odes

Book excerpt: Narrative has not traditionally been a subject in the analysis of lyric poetry. This book deconstructs the polarity that divides and binds lyric and narrative means of representation in Horace's Odes. While myth is a canonical feature of Pindaric epinician, Horace cannot adopt the Pindaricmode for aesthetic and political reasons. Roman Callimacheanism's privileging of the small and elegant offers a pretext for Horace to shrink from the difficulty of writing praise poetry in the wake of civil war. But Horace by no means excludes story-telling from his enacted lyric. On the formallevel, numerous odes contain narration. Together they constitute a larger narrative told over the course of Horace's two lyric collections. Horace tells the story of his development as a lyricist and of the competing aesthetic and political demands on his lyric poetry. At issue is whether he canever truly become a poet of praise.