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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's
Life & Writings
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Aulus
Persius Flaccus
by Henry D. Thoreau
If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the poet,
and approach this author too, in the hope of finding the field at
length fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from the words of
the prologue,
“Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.”
Here is none of the
interior dignity of Virgil, nor the elegance and fire of Horace, nor
will any Sibyl be needed to remind you, that from those older Greek
poets, there is a sad descent to Persius. Scarcely can you
distinguish one harmonious sound, amid this unmusical bickering with
the follies of men.
One sees how music has its place in
thought, but hardly as yet in language. When the Muse arrives, we
wait for her to remould language, and impart to it her own rhythm.
Hitherto the verse groans and labors with its load, but goes not
forward blithely, singing by the way. The best ode may be parodied,
indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and trivial sound, like a
man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer, and Shakspeare, and
Milton, and Marvel, and Wordsworth, are but the rustling of leaves
and crackling of twigs in the forest, and not yet the sound of any
bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. Most of all
satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry music to
their verse, but are measured fault-finders at best; stand but just
outside the faults they condemn, and so are concerned rather about
the monster they have escaped, than the fair prospect before them.
Let them live on an age, not a secular one, and they will have
travelled out of his shadow and harm’s way, and found other
objects to ponder.
As long as there is nature, the poet is, as
it were, particeps criminis. One
sees not but he had best let bad take care of itself, and have to do
only with what is beyond suspicion. If you light on the least
vestige of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still which
stamps the faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to extol it,
while no evil is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a moment of
hate. Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own
straightforwardness is the severest correction. Horace would not
have written satire so well, if he had not been inspired by it, as
by a passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, the love
always exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire still sings
itself, and the poet is satisfied, though the folly be not
corrected.
A sort of necessary order in the development of
Genius is, first, Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint,
which is the condition of Persius, lies not in the province of
poetry. Ere long the enjoyment of a superior good would have changed
his disgust into regret. We can never have much sympathy with the
complainer; for after searching nature through, we conclude he must
be both plaintiff and defendant too, and so had best come to a
settlement without a hearing.
I know not but it would be truer to say,
that the highest strain of the muse is essentially plaintive. The
saint’s are still tears of
joy.
But the divinest poem, or the life of a
great man, is the severest satire; as impersonal as nature herself,
and like the sighs of her winds in the woods, which convey ever a
slight reproof to the hearer. The greater the genius, the keener the
edge of the satire.
Hence have we to do only with the rare and
fragmentary traits, which least belong to Persius, or, rather, are
the properest utterance of his muse; since that which he says best
at any time is what he can best say at all times. The Spectators and
Ramblers have not failed to cull some quotable sentences from this
garden too, so pleasant is it to meet even the most familiar truth
in a new dress, when, if our neighbor had said it, we should have
passed it by as hackneyed. Out of these six satires, you may perhaps
select some twenty lines, which fit so well as many thoughts, that
they will recur to the scholar almost as readily as a natural image;
though when translated into familiar language, they lose that
insular emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such lines as the
following no translation can render commonplace. Contrasting the man
of true religion with those, that, with jealous privacy, would fain
carry on a secret commerce with the gods, he says,—
“Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque
Tollere susurros de templis; et aperto vivere voto.”
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and
the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Why should he betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were
the only holy ground in all the world he had left unprofaned? The
obedient soul would only the more discover and familiarize things,
and escape more and more into light and air, as having henceforth
done with secrecy, so that the universe shall not seem open enough
for it. At length, is it neglectful even of that silence which is
consistent with true modesty, but by its independence of all
confidence in its disclosures, makes that which it imparts so
private to the hearer, that it becomes the care of the whole world
that modesty be not infringed.
To the man who cherishes a secret in his
breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most
indifferent acts may be matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with
the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness,
must be transparent as light.
In the third satire he asks,
“Est aliquid quò tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?
An passim sequeris corvos, testâve, lutove,
Securus quò per ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?”
Language
seems not to have justice done it, but is obviously cramped and
narrowed in its significance, when any meanness is described. The
truest construction is not put upon it. What may readily be
fashioned into a rule of wisdom, is here thrown in the teeth of the
sluggard, and constitutes the front of his offence. Universally, the
innocent man will come forth from the sharpest inquisition and
lecturings, the combined din of reproof and commendation, with a
faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our vices lie ever in the
direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible
imitations of the latter. Falsehood never attains to the dignity of
entire falseness, but is only an inferior sort of truth; if it were
more thoroughly false, it would incur danger of becoming true.
"Securus quò pes ferat, atque ex tempore
vivit,
is
then motto of a wise man. For first, as the subtle discernment of
the language would have taught us, with all his negligence he is
still secure; but the sluggard, notwithstanding his heedlessness, is
insecure.
The life of a wise man is most of all
extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity that includes all
time. He is a child each moment, and reflects wisdom. The far
darting thought of the child’s mind tarries not for the
development of manhood; it lightens itself, and needs not draw down
lightning from the clouds. When we bask in a single ray from the
mind of Zoroaster, we see how all subsequent time has been an idler,
and has no apology for itself. But the cunning mind travels farther
back than Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the
present with its revelation. All the thrift and industry of thinking
give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no
better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day
as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution.
Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be
postponed, but not that on the life. If this is what the occasion
says, let the occasion say it. From a real sympathy, all the world
is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in
his pocket.
In the fifth satire, which is the best, I
find,
“Stat contrà ratio, et recretam garrit in aurem.
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo.”
Only
they who do not see how anything might be better done are forward to
try their hand on it. Even the master workman must be encouraged by
the reflection, that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do that
harm, to which his skill may fail to do justice. Here is no apology
for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our
incapacity,—for what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from
our hands?—but only a warning to bungle less.
The satires of Persius are the farthest
possible from inspired; evidently a chosen, not imposed subject.
Perhaps I have given him credit for more earnestness than is
apparent; but certain it is, that that which alone we can call
Persius, which is forever independent and consistent, was in
earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration of all. The artist
and his work are not to be separated. The most wilfully foolish man
cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer
together make ever one sober fact. The buffoon may not bribe you to
laugh always at his grimaces; they shall sculpture themselves in
Egyptian granite, to stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground of
his character.
A
Note on the Text:
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1st
published in The Dial (July 1840)
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Source:
The Dial [(July 1840) pp. 117-121]
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