Monday, July 03, 2017
Personal and Literary Experience
Eduard Fraenkel (1888-1970), Horace (1957; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 106-107 (discussing Satire 1.5, the so-called Iter Brundisinum):
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It may be questioned whether in the study of modern poetry more good than harm has been done by the sharp separation of an immediate personal experience (Urerlebnis) from an experience obtained through cultural channels such as philosophy, literature, decorative art, and so forth (Bildungserlebnis). There cannot, however, be any doubt that such a rigid dichotomy, when applied to ancient poetry, can do nothing but harm. Certainly in many poems of Horace the 'primary' and the 'literary' type of experience blend with such perfect harmony that it would be idle to try to assign priority to the one or the other.
