Horace, Ars Poetica 470-476 (the closing lines of his poem).
The negative impact of recitationes. Some run for their lives. Others stay, but die.
It’s not too clear why the poet keeps on making verses.
Has he desecrated ancestral ashes, disturbed
A sad spot struck by lightning, sacrilegiously? Yes,
He’s mad: like a bear, that’s broken the bars of its cage
The pest puts all to flight, learned or not, with reciting:
Whom he takes tight hold of, he grips, and reads to death,
A leech that never looses the skin, till gorged with blood.
The negative impact of recitationes. Some run for their lives. Others stay, but die.
It’s not too clear why the poet keeps on making verses.
Has he desecrated ancestral ashes, disturbed
A sad spot struck by lightning, sacrilegiously? Yes,
He’s mad: like a bear, that’s broken the bars of its cage
The pest puts all to flight, learned or not, with reciting:
Whom he takes tight hold of, he grips, and reads to death,
A leech that never looses the skin, till gorged with blood.
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