Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

A Corruption of True Selfhood 107
“quiver laden with poisoned arrows,” both symbols of war, civilization, and
human-imposed order, had been marginally useful. Now, however, the context
in which we live is corrupted. The self is burdened by the weight of society and
its constructions. Horace longs for the days in which such paradigms did not
exist to impinge on the freedom of the self.
In pining for the past, Horace insists that we attempt to return to the era in
which the self could exist free from social constraints; he sees a full reversion as
an unattainable goal. The impossibility to escape the constrained expression of
selfhood is embodied in the form of Ode 1.22. The poem is composed in the
established parainetic style. However, the verse itself, as will become evident,
advocates an escape from such formality in self expression. Such a paradox is
illustrative of Horace’s entire dilemma. He cannot fully break from the formal
restraints on the self, though he can acknowledge the selfhood he strives to
attain in a conceptual sense.
For Horace, it is necessary to try to abandon prevalent cultural biases and
literary conventions to return to the days of lyric and recapture lost elements of
the self. Song represents the ultimate form of free expression and selfhood. Horace
recounts a personal anecdote to serve as an instructive example of how,
theoretically, to execute his plan. First, he deliberately displaces himself from
the confines of Roman society, recalling how he “wandered free from care /
singing of Lalage in Sabine / woods, unarmed, beyond my bounds” (Horace
22.9-11). That Horace walks “Free from care,” paralleling language in the
opening line of the poem in which he longs for a state “free from sin,” signifies
his attempt to wander “beyond [his] bounds.” Though he cannot fully escape
man’s sin of constraining the self, he mimics an escape from Roman society in
wandering beyond the reaches of his property.
While there, he sings of Lalage, suggesting that he is not, himself, chanting
in incoherent tongues. Rather, he recalls aloud their beauty from an external
perspective. Again, the act reflects his inability to fully abandon his Roman heritage
despite his attempt to do so. As Horace encounters a wolf who flees from
him in the wood, he notes that “warlike / Daunia does not rear [such a beast] in
her widespread / groves of oak” (Horace 1.22.13-15). Horace highlights his
homeland as a warlike society, again summoning thoughts of civilization and an
ability to transcend beyond it by escaping society and submerging himself in
liberal expression.
Horace clings to unstructured expression as he endeavors to establish a
self-sufficient identity. He instructs the reader to “put me in uninhabitable /
regions beneath the Sun’s close car— / and I’ll love my Lalage’s sweet talk /
and sweeter laugh” (Horace 1.22.21-4). The language in Horace’s closing lines
harkens back the words in Sappho’s lyric, recalling expressions of self that are
free from the constraints of form and style. Through Lalage, Horace can
approach a selfhood that exists beyond the reach of social influences and even
serves to nurture him through the type of isolation described above in Ode 1.1.
However, by personifying Lalage as a woman, Horace expresses a love for an