"The Mad Poet" after Horace, "Epistula ad Pisones (Ars Poetica, 453–476)" and "Profession of Beliefs" after the Archpoet, and from French, "Art" after Théophile Gautier

Abstract

Having often read praises of Horace’s poetic treatise on poetry, commonly called the Ars Poetica [The Art of Poetry] although it is formally named Epistula ad Pisones [Letter to the Pisos], I was quite disappointed in the first English translations I read in the 1960s and 1970s. Most versions seemed to me to be dull, without energy, very pedantic and stilted. No one reading these versions could imagine what made the work important or memorable. Although English translations have greatly improved since then, I would still like to offer a new version of the concluding section, which I have named The Mad Poet. These lines (453–476) may be the first ever description of a poetry reading (and you thought today’s amateur poets could be pushy and obnoxious). I translated the section almost literally, trying to use a vigorous vocabulary that still remained faithful to the original Latin. In one instance, I changed the active voice into passive, to allow the English syntax to be smoother.