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    Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet
    Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet
    Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet
    Ebook271 pages5 hours

    Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet

    By Harry Eyres

    3.5/5

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    A wise and witty revival of the Roman poet who taught us how to carpe diem

    What is the value of the durable at a time when the new is paramount? How do we fill the void created by the excesses of a superficial society? What resources can we muster when confronted by the inevitability of death? For the poet and critic Harry Eyres, we can begin to answer these questions by turning to an unexpected source: the Roman poet Horace, discredited at the beginning of the twentieth century as the "smug representative of imperialism," now best remembered—if remembered—for the pithy directive "Carpe diem."
    In Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet, Eyres reexamines Horace's life, legacy, and verse. With a light, lyrical touch (deployed in new, fresh versions of some of Horace's most famous odes) and a keen critical eye, Eyres reveals a lively, relevant Horace, whose society—Rome at the dawn of the empire—is much more similar to our own than we might want to believe.
    Eyres's study is not only intriguing—he retranslates Horace's most famous phrase as "taste the day"—but enlivening. Through Horace, Eyres meditates on how to live well, mounts a convincing case for the importance of poetry, and relates a moving tale of personal discovery. By the end of this remarkable journey, the reader too will believe in the power of Horace's "lovely words that go on shining with their modest glow, like a warm and inextinguishable candle in the darkness."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJun 4, 2013
    ISBN9781466834033
    Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet
    Author

    Harry Eyres

    Harry Eyres has been a theatre critic, wine writer, poetry editor and is currently the author of the 'Slow Lane' column in the Financial Times. He is a poet and gives regular poetry readings at venues such as the Poetry Café in London, and has contributed to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is the author of a collection of poetry, Hotel Eliseo, and of the Beginner's Guide to Plato's The Republic, Wine Dynasties of Europe, The Viking Guide to Cabernet Sauvignon Wines and the Which? Wine Guide 1995/6. He lives in London.

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    • 4/5
      I don't have a great frame of reference to compare this book to, but I did quite enjoy it. The subtitle, "Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet," is I think accurate in a lot of ways: the author, Eyres--a journalist/poet/critic/trained classicist--sort of explores his own past and the Roman author Horace's in view of Horace's poetry.I found this book in the remaindered book section of my local bookstore several years ago but hadn't gotten around to reading it now; I think that, in many ways, this was the perfect time for me to read it. Like Eyres, I learned Latin growing up (though I didn't go to anywhere near the kind of stuffy grammar school that he did), and I have extremely fond memories of reading a few of Horace's Odes. I also have started, with my current abundance of time due to world events, learning Greek--a language I've wanted to pick up for years to round out the great Classical languages--so I've also been thinking a lot about the Classical world recently. And I made it to Rome a few months ago, so the more travelogue-esque portions of the book (Eyres travels to various places in Italy associated with Horace) also resonated with me in that way.In all honesty, I'm not sure that I'd recommend this book generally just because it's so extremely niche, but I really enjoyed it a lot. It sometimes leans a little snobbish, but I think that overall the positives outweighed the snobbery.

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    Horace and Me - Harry Eyres

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