The Art of Poetry (Ars Poetica)

Summary

The Art of Poetry, known by its Latin title Ars Poetica, is a verse letter of about 476 lines that Horace addressed to a Roman nobleman named Piso and his two sons, probably late in his life. Ancient readers also called it the Epistle to the Pisos, and by the time of the teacher of rhetoric Quintilian it already bore the title Ars Poetica. After Aristotle's Poetics it has been the most influential short treatise on literature in the Western tradition. It is not a tidy textbook. Horace moves by association, as in conversation, from one piece of advice to the next, with jokes, examples and sharp images. He begins with a painter who joins a human head to a horse's neck and ends in a fish's tail: a poem, too, must be simple and unified, of a piece from end to end. He warns against the purple patch, a showy description stitched onto a work where it does not belong, and against the poet who promises a great deal and delivers little: the mountain labours, and a mouse is born. Homer, by contrast, hurries into the middle of things. Horace discusses fitting words and the coining of new ones, which he compares to leaves that fall and grow again, the metres proper to each kind of poem, and the rules of the stage: characters true to their age and type, violent deeds reported rather than shown, five acts, a god brought in only when the knot demands one, and a chorus that takes the side of the good. In the later part he turns to the poet himself. Good writing begins in wisdom, learned from philosophy; the poet aims to profit or to please, and wins every vote by mixing the useful with the sweet. He must welcome honest criticism, keep a draft for nine years before publishing, and avoid the vanity of the mad poet who, at the end, falls into a pit and refuses to be pulled out. John Conington's translation of 1870 renders the letter in crisp rhymed couplets. For classical Christian students the poem is a foundation for judging imaginative writing: it teaches that art serves truth and goodness, that craft demands patience and humility, and that delight and instruction belong together. It stands behind Sidney's Defence of Poesy, Boileau, and Pope's Essay on Criticism, and its phrases still shape how we talk about stories.

Top Lessons

• A work must be one whole

  Horace begins with an absurd painting to show that every part of a poem must serve the whole. Students can apply the rule to their own essays and stories.

• To profit and to please

  Horace says the poet who mixes the useful with the sweet wins every vote. Literature at its best both delights and teaches.

• Humility in craft

  Horace advises nine years of revision and honest critics. Good art requires patience and the willingness to be corrected.

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