![]() ![]() It appears, perhaps most powerfully and famously in Andrew Marvell’s 1681 poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” 4 where the idea of death becomes life’s and love’s greatest ally in the battle against the demands of authority, convention, and law. The carpe diem ethos informs works as diverse as the fourth-century (CE) Latin poetry of Ausonius, 3 to the troubadour poems of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to the plays of Shakespeare and the poetry of John Donne and Robert Herrick. 39)-“Seize the day, trusting as little in the next as possible” 2-has a political resonance, as it tells Leuconoe, and all who have followed since, to live now, and love now, despite the demands of authority, because each second of scruple, doubt, and delay brings men and women closer to a death that is non-negotiable, non-delayable, and everlasting. Horace lives and works in an increasingly authoritarian Rome in which the passing of such laws as the Lex Iulia de Maritandis Ordinibus and the Lex Iulia de Adulteriis Coercendis (of 18 and 17 BCE) represented an ongoing attempt to use the power of government to “reform Roman private morality.” 1 In such an environment, Horace’s line, “carpe diem quam minimum credula postero” ( Horace 1998, p. xi, tells his mistress that life is short, so they must ‘enjoy the day,’ for they do not know if there will be a tomorrow” ( Glancy 2002, p. ![]() It takes its name from a phrase by the “Latin poet Horace, who in Ode, I. Carpe diem poetry, a tradition dating back to the Augustan era in Rome, presents a worldview that seems filled with a sense of the fragility and shortness of life but at its essence, it is concerned with individual choice in a world that often attempts to circumscribe, or even eliminate, the possibility of such choice.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |