difugere nives
04/22/2023
Diffugere nives, the 7th Ode in Horace's fourth and final book, is one of his most celebrated poems. Allow me to attach its text in Latin:
Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae; mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas flumina praetereunt; Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet ducere nuda choros; immortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum quae rapit hora diem. frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver proterit aestas interitura, simul pomifer Autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox bruma recurrit iners. damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae nos, ubi decidimus, quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus, pulvis et umbra sumus. quis scit, an adiiciant hodiernae crastina summae tempora di superi? cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico quae dederis animo. cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos fecerit arbitria, non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te restituet pietas; infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum liberat Hippolytum, nec lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro vincula Pirithoo.
(For English, A.E. Housman's translation is popular.)
The poem speaks for itself; it's beauty is self evident from the way Horace strings together words, and the mood is deeply poignant. Really I don't have much to say, except to highlight Horace's treatment of one of his favorite themes, that is to say the inevitablity of death.
I should probably start by reminding the reader that Odes Book 4 was published several years after the first three, though obviously the exactitudes are debated amongst scholars. Horace was an old man by the time he wrote this poem; he had experienced the loss of his good friend Virgil (yes, that Virgil) by this point too.
The sobering of old age is evident by his treatment of theme. While mortality occupied Horace in the first three books of the Odes, his treatment of it was far more lighthearted, as in the following exerpt of Odes 1.11:
Ut melius quicquid erit pati Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam, ... sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
(yes, he invented carpe diem)
Down to wording, Odes 1.11 shares much in common with 4.7 -- to "immortalia ne speres" inevitably involves "spem longam reseces" ("spem longam" meaning hopes with respect to a far away time). There's this idea of the gods' unknowable control over the human lifespan, the fleeing of the hour, so on and so forth....Really, it would take a book to examine the vastness of Horace's occupation with death; it comes up in too many poems to really behold so late at night.
Regardless: Odes 1.11, and indeed most of Horace's earlier morbid poems have a lighthearted spin. Sapias, vina liques -- the most beautiful way of saying "Let's get drunk, babe!" In these earlier poems (cf. 2.14), Horace's resolution to the death problem is to carpere diem -- pluck the day, by means of getting drunk. Odes 1.11 is a bit funny in a way, if you imagine the framing of the poem as him trying to convince a girl to party with him.
Compare Odes 4.7. Even the most morbid of Horace's earlier poems have a certain levity ("thank the gods we survived" in 2.17, "let's drink your good wine" in 2.14...) -- none here. Like the great heroes of old, "pulvis et umbra sumus". Woof. Beautiful, though. In this Ode, is no brightside to encourage us to live in spite of our fates, merely the reassurance that even piety is not enough to save a mortal soul, that even heroes suffer in the underworld.
I find it fascinating that the first of these heroes is Aeneas. Of course, he's of the most important figures in Roman mythology, especially during Horace's age as Augustus (his patron's patron) uses his image to cement his own identity and legacy as a ruler. But everything is intentional, and readers now and then would identify Aeneas with Virgil, the author of Aeneas' epic. Virgil, "animae dimidium meae", half of Horace's own soul.
Is part of Horace's emphasis on death reflective of his own grief?
The average Roman aristocrat could have expected to live until 70 or so if he survived youth. Horace died at 56, a few years after Odes 4 was published. He outlived his patron, Maecenas, another "meae [...] partem animae", by only a few months.
We cannot know when we will die, or when parts of us will vanish to dust. Let's enjoy ourselves regardless.
Thine,
Augustus Alexander Lazarus the squirrel.