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Statius
Yesterday, the mail brought to me a very thick book; to the arrival of which I had been looking forward with some anticipation. I have never read the Roman Poet Statius' epic, Thebiad, and I am looking forward to browsing through it a little later today.
Dante believed that Statius had been one of the early Christians. A poet at the court of Domitian, an emperor hostile to the Faith, he wrote his epic, and a fragment of another epic about Achilles (one wonders how he would have described Achilles'and Patroclus' erotic romance), and five (if I recall the number correctly) books of short poems, which were gathered in one collection entitled Sylvae,
Statius was a Canonical Poet---both in his art, and in his influence (witness his presence in Dante's Divine Comedy, the second Canticle). In all of his Poetry, he was well aware of the literary precedents of Greek and Roman poetry---especially of Vergil, but of others as well. His lines were not just so much prose arranged in vertical stacks, as are so many "poems" today; and, if he did need to indulge in a little "Woe is me" (which seems to be one of the chief subjects of so many poems being posted today), he does it with elegance, style, in metrical lines that can be clearly identified, and with the symbols, metaphors, and tropes that are part of the Canon. Poetry is community; and its Canon is a community of Poets, living and dead, who share the precious privilege of writing Poetry, and who approach it as a serious art, requiring verbal skill; and not as a mean of acquiring attention, or of the pretense that a common blog entry can even dare aspire to the status of a finished, polished, completed, Canonical poem. Statius revered his predecessors and their precedents. And, in turn, he has been honored by those Poets who respect, and revere, and enjoy the Canon---such that he was included in the great Dante's great and awesome Comedy.
Starward
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