![]() ![]() Rich Romans possessed thousands of wine amphorae. Of course, it’s hardly surprising that poems about pleasures mention wine a lot, but the precision with dates goes further. A trademark of Horace’s poetry is vintage wines: time and again he tells us the precise year of a wine that he wants to serve at a banquet. Horace’s poems give us an example for poetry that evokes the presence of the banquet to us and at the same time creates some distance between the banquet and us. The central question my book attempts to answer is how poems can do that: how can poetry give us the almost magical impression that something is happening here and now? Carpe diem poems aim to transcend the page of the book and become truly present. And yet even such written carpe diem texts attempt to evoke music and presence: texts seem to sing, resounding echoes seem to arise from the page. Later poetry was not designed anymore to be sung at banquets but to be written on scrolls. Such songs created present enjoyment at the same time as they praised present enjoyment. Poetry, too, is closely linked with banquets: in archaic Greece, carpe diem poems were sung at banquets. These were the pleasures that could be encountered at ancient banquets, that is, the Greek symposium and the Roman convivium. The pleasures of life in carpe diem poems are sensuous pleasures: food, wine, music, sex. Poets long before and after Horace made this the central message for their works. At any rate, the expression carpe diem became a shorthand for a motif that tells us to enjoy life while we can: “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”. And though Robin Williams and almost everyone else translates carpe diem as “seize the day”, a more accurate translation would be “pluck the day”: we are asked to pluck the day and enjoy it like a ripe grape. ![]() The phrase carpe diemwas coined by the Roman poet Horace, who lived in the first century BC. My book sets out to show why ancient Greek and Roman poets were fascinated with carpe diem. And recently a book that collected “quotes and mottoes for making the most of life” was published under the title “Carpe that f*cking diem” – illustrious company for my book with its slightly tamer title then. “ Carpe diem” is one of the most recognisable Latin phrases: in our day it is a popular slogan on T-shirts millions know the words through the movie Dead Poets Society, in which the actor Robin Williams in his role as English teacher tells his students: “ Carpe diem. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |