While biographical speculations provide somewhat unsatisfactory evidence for Hemingway's familiarity with Horace, the text of The Sun Also Rises repeats the themes and subject matter of Horace's Odes to a remarkable degree-extensively enough, I contend, to suggest that Hemingway had in fact read Horace and drew on that reading as he wrote The Sun Also Rises. Thomas calls Horace's "Hebraic didacticism" (117), a trait which might have been a point in Horace's favor for Hemingway, considering the novelist's regard for Ecclesiastes. Interestingly, Pound's reservations about Horace were partly based on what Ron E. Pound does, however, list Horace with Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid as "people who matter" in a letter to Iris Barry in 1916 (Paige 138). Whether Horace was among these we cannot say for certain given Pound's love-hate relationship with Horace, it is difficult to tell whether he would have recommended the poet. An avid reader of Latin poetry himself, Pound encouraged Hemingway to read "those ancient authors who formed what he and Eliot called the Tradition" (Reynolds 29). (4) Another force compelling Hemingway to read Latin poets was Ezra Pound. (3) He did, however, learn the language with ease-and his teacher, Laura Bayne Woodruff, seems to have exhorted her students to include Horace in their continued study of the classics. (2) He studied the language for three years at Oak Park/River Forest High School during that time, he might have become acquainted with Horace's name but probably did not study the poet in depth. The Sun Also Rises reflects a number of the themes characteristic of the Odes, and Jake Barnes in particular resembles Horace's persona, especially that of the later poems.Īlthough Hemingway certainly read Latin and was familiar with a number of Latin poets, the depth and breadth of his knowledge of Horace is unknown. Although it is highly unlikely that Hemingway conceived the novel as a work in the tradition of Horace specifically, its similarities to Horace's Odes provide an interesting subject for study. The Odes of Horace, for instance, bear a striking resemblance to Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. (1) Such similarities are not my primary concern here, but require mention because the subject matter of Ecclesiastes has often surfaced in other works of Western literature. Notwithstanding recent protests that Hemingway did not understand his own novel, a considerable amount of ink has been spilled on the resemblance between The Sun Also Rises and the book of Ecclesiastes. SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF The Sun Also Rises, critics have fluctuated in their willingness to believe Hemingway's statement that the novel is about the earth's "abiding forever" (SL 229). Further, all three texts demonstrate a conviction that life is passing and that it is important to "seize the day." Both Horace and Hemingway, for example, employ a sexually impaired narrator and praise rural over urban living-Ecclesiastes claims neither of these features. The inclusion of Horace's Odes among Hemingway's influences explains a number of phenomena not found in the novel's explicit source-Ecclesiastes. This essay argues that Hemingway read Horace's Odes and incorporated that reading into The Sun Also Rises.
Umbra et pulvis sumus free#
MLA style: "'Pulvis et umbra sumus' Horace in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises." The Free Library.
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