'A Certain Self-Knowledge'

For the sheer pleasure of it, here is a freely translated excerpt from the English poet-critic C.H. Sisson’s version of Horace’s Epistle II.3, “Ars Poetica,” published in 1974: 

“The man who can actually tell when a verse is lifeless

Will know when it doesn’t sound right; he will point to stragglers,

And equally put his pen through elaboration;

He will even force you to give up your favourite obscurities,

Tell you what isn’t clear and what has got to be changed,

Like Dr. Johnson himself. There will be no nonsense

About it not being worth causing trouble for trifles.

Trifles like that amount in the end to disaster,

Derisory writing and meaning misunderstood.”

 

Sisson’s translation is cantankerous, amusing and very un-Nabokovian. It is also among the most valuable sources of writerly know-how published during my lifetime. The work consists of a ten-page overview titled “The Ars Poetica in English Literature,” the 467-line translation and twelve pages of notes. There’s nothing stuffy about any of it:

 

“One may recommend the use of Johnson’s dictionary, as an ordinary working tool, to the apprentice writer—an expression which includes all writers worth their salt.”

 

This practical advice from the notes to lines 40-78, in which Horace (via Sisson) commends the use of new coinages, saying that “new-made words can flower, if they come from good roots.” The pun is tartly precise. He adds that neologisms should “not be allowed to run wild.”  Characteristically, Sisson urges tradition-minded novelty, moving forward while ever looking back:

 

“For why should the reader

Allow to Sterne what he will refuse to Joyce?

And why should I not add something, however little,

To the language which Chaucer and Shakespeare made more pointed?”

 

Among writers, masters are few. Most of us remain apprentices, a few are promoted to journeyman but the learning and hard work never cease. There is no graduation. Even the more gifted among us remain perpetual beginners. Implicit in apprenticeship is knowledge handed down. We study under those who excelled before us even if they died, like Horace, two millennia ago, or Johnson, more than two centuries ago. Of course, there are no guarantees. Perseverance doesn’t necessarily forgo failure. Here is Johnson’s definition of apprentice: “One that is bound by covenant, to serve another man of trade, upon condition that the tradesman shall, in the mean time, endeavor to instruct him in his art.” And here is Sisson in his notes to Horace:

 

“Find what you can write about and you have solved your problem. Of course the aspiring writer has to face the possibility that the answer may be, Nothing. At any rate the beginning, as the continuation, of literary capacity involves a certain self-knowledge. Nothing is further from it, therefore, than the intoxications of publicity and reputation.”

 

I recommend Horace: Poet on a Volcano by Peter Stothard (Yale University Press, 2025) and Horace in English: Poets in Translation (Penguin, 1996), edited by R.S. Carne-Ross and Kenneth Haynes. Quintas Horatius Flaccus was born on this date, December 8, in 65 B.C. and died in 8 B.C. at age fifty-six.