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Propertius on Poetry and Poets: Tradition and the Individual Erotic Talent
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Extract
Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must first obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. The historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity.
T.S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’
I invoke the much-abused Eliot because here, at least, I believe he is essentially correct, especially when we consider Propertius as an individual talent working within and furthering a tradition. For Propertius wrote during what was perhaps the greatest flowering of the lyric spirit in Europe (I use the term ‘lyric’ quite generally here), along with that quite different age of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Coleridge. Perhaps no other Latin poet had such an overt concern with his relationship to the tradition, past, present and future. Overlapping with late Vergil, early Ovid, and written after Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus and Catullus (to name but a few), it comes as little surprise that Propertius' work is fraught with allusions to and comments on other poets and poetry in general — especially his favorite poet, Callimachus. In this paper I will examine in particular poems 2.1, 2.34B and 3.1, where Propertius devotes considerable effort to the delineation of his thoughts on poetry and poets. I will argue that these poems form a group which presents a consistent and coherent argument which establishes Propertius in an elegiac and Alexandrian tradition.
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- Copyright © Aureal Publications 1985
References
Notes
1. The extract is cited from Selected Essays 1917-1932 (New York, 1932), 14Google Scholar. Of course, Eliot's arguments in this essay are sometimes oversimplified. Of course, elsewhere he makes some of the most ludicrous statements about poets ever made (I am thinking here especially of his remarks on Hamlet and Milton). But has anyone ever treated the problem of the individual poet and tradition more forcefully, more eloquently?
2. I owe much of my current thought on lyric poetry to Johnson, W. R., The Idea of Lyric (Berkeley 1982Google Scholar). Johnson devotes surprisingly little space to the elegists, but most of his general statements seem to apply to them also.
3. The primary studies of 2.1 are Kuhn, J. H., ‘Die Prooimon-Elegie des zweiten Properz-Buches’, Hermes 89 (1961), 84–105Google Scholar; Wiggers, N., ‘Reconsideration of Propertius II, 1’ CJ 77 (1977), 334–341Google Scholar; and Wimmel, W., Kallimachos in Rom: Die Nachfolge seines apologetischen Dichtens in der Augusteerzeit (Hermes Einzelsehr. 16, Wiesbaden 1960) 13–43Google Scholar.
4. See Wimmel (n.3 above) for a discussion of the significance of the recusatio form here.
5. Unless otherwise noted, my text is that of Barber, E. A., Sexti Properti Carmina (Oxford 1960Google Scholar). I have also used Butler, H. E. and Barber, E. A., The Elegies of Sextus Propertius, Edited and with an Introduction and Commentary (Oxford 1933Google Scholar); Camps, W. A, Propertius, Elegies: Books I-III (Cambridge 1961–1967Google Scholar); Richardson, L., Propertius, Elegies I-IV (Norman, Okla., 1977Google Scholar). All translations are my own.
6. See Wiggers (n.3 above), 334.
7. For a good general discussion of the importance of Callimachus for Propertius, see Sullivan, J. P., Propertius: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge 1976), especially 107–158Google Scholar.
8. See Wiggers (n.3 above), 338.
9. See Richardson (n.5 above) ad loc.
10. See my argument below about the internal evidence for the integrity of 2.34B as a separate poem. This poem has been sorely neglected. See Wimmel's discussion (n.3 above), 205-213. I regard it as a separate poem. It is too completely occupied with the consideration of poets and poetry to be part of the same poem as 2.34A. For a different opinion, see Camps (n.5 above) ad loc. On the problem of integrity of Book 2, see Sullivan (n.7 above), 3-5, and for an argument for the integrity of Book 2 see the Introduction to Camps (n.5 above, 1967).
11. See Camps (n.5 above, Bk.II), 235, and Butler and Barber (n.5 above) ad loc. Camps suggests that Lynceus was actually L. Varius Rufus, a poet friend of Horace and Vergil, which would add extra poignancy to the advice given in the poem.
12. See Cat. 64.211 and Ovid Met. 8.548.
13. See Johnson's (n.2 above, 100-113) fine meditations on similar questions in Callimachus and Catullus.
14. What I am suggesting is that the type of study Roman Jakobson, Michael Riffaterre and others have developed be brought to bear on Latin poetry. For a sensitive, intelligent treatment of Catullus along these lines, see de Rivarola's, Susana ReiszPoetische Aequivalenzen: Grundverfahren dichterischer Gestaltung bei Catull (Beihefte zu Poetica 13, Amsterdam 1977Google Scholar).
15. See Sullivan (n.7 above), 117.
16. For a study of the influence of Tibullus on Propertius, see Solmsen, F., ‘Propertius in his Literary Relations with Tibullus and Vergil’, Philologus 105 (1961), 273–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17. 3.1 has received a great deal of attention. Critics have tended to focus almost exclusively on the first six lines or on the poem as part of a five part introduction to Book 3. See Camps (n.5 above, Bk.III); Nethercut, W. R., ‘The Ironic Priest’, AJP 91 (1960), 385–407Google Scholar; Wimmel (n.3 above), 214-250; Luck, G., ‘The Cave and its Sources’, CQ 51 (1957), 175–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baker, R. J., ‘Propertius III, 1, 1-6, Again’, Mnem. 21 (1968), 35–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harmon, D. P., ‘The Poet's Initiation and the Sacerdotal Imagery of Propertius 3, 1-5’, Coll. Latomus 164 (1979), 317–334Google Scholar.
18. See Nethercut (n.17 above) for an insightful discussion. Also Sullivan (n.7 above), 12-31, and Wimmel (n.3 above).
19. See Nethercut (n.17 above), especially 387.
20. Luck (n.17 above), 175; Baker (n.17 above), 38.
21. Nethercut (n.17 above), 391.
22. M. C. J. Putnam, in his excellent discussion of Book 3, observes that chiasmus is an important ‘organizing feature tor the book’ Perhaps Propertius repeats the chiastic form within this poem intentionally. See ‘Propertius' Third Book: Patterns of Cohesion’, Arethusa 13 (1980), 97–113Google Scholar.
23. Baker (n.17 above), 38.
24. Wimmel (n.3 above), 220f.: ‘Seit 2.34 weiss Properz, dass Kallimachos’ Lehre nicht mehr uneingeschränkt für das Dichten gilt. Wenn er sich weiterhin, trotz Vergils neuem Weg, auf sie berüft, dann ist das mehr denn je ein persönlicher apologetischer Kunstbegriff’
25. The instances are: 1.2.2, 2.1.5f., 3.1.1, 3.9.44, 4.2.23, 4.5.23, 4.5.56f.
26. Homer Il. 3.212; Pindar N.4, 44-45, fr. 179; Bacch. 5.9, 19.8; Sappho 188LP. See Verdenius, W. J., ‘The Principles of Greek Literary Criticism’, Mnem. 36 (1983), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27. This paper would probably have never reached this form were it not for the guidance of the late and sorely missed Prof. Alison G. Elliot. I dedicate this paper to her memory. I would also like to thank Prof. Michael C. J. Putnam for his helpful comments. All mistakes and eccentricities are my own.