brainspill/timed essay: horace, odes i

Horace uses nature as a source of metaphor in his writings. This is especially evident in his discussion of more universal experiences, such as love and death, as he uses the imagery of a perilous wilderness and winter, respectively, to explain and enrich his views on such subjects.
Both 1.5 and 1.23 of Horace's odes use the imagery of wilderness and consequent trial by fire to describe the initiation of youth into the world of relationships. In both poems, the more experienced lover is depicted as an overwhelming if not outright(ly) predatory force of nature. Pyrrha is compared to the ocean whose aquatic dramatics nice! (but awkward) will astonish her young lover ("insulens emirabitur aspera aequora ventis nigris"-- "in surprise, he will be astonished (at) the sea perilous with black clouds" 1.5.6-8). Chloe's seductor, though claiming to be otherwise, is in fact a threat to her innocence: "persequor te ut aspera tigris frangere" (I, a troublesome tiger, persue you in order to crush (you) 1.23.0-10). Both of the lovers are described as "aspera," meaning calamitous, troublesome, perilous; however, both Chloe and the puer are "temptiva" (ready, suitable, 1.23.12) to suffer and grow from the experience of love.
Nature takes on a very different appearance in Horace's poems about death; here, nature is not characterized as something quite so predatory. Rather, it is relentless and constant; vast infinitudes that no individual man can change and therefore must learn to accept. The snowed-in scene described in the first two stanzas of 1.9 demand acknowledgement and acceptance of certain inevitabilities (winter); the command to dissolve the cold ("dissolve frigus" 1.9.5, with "frigus" as a metaphorical fear of death) segues perfectly to a more overt statement of Horace's Epicurean philosophy: "permitte divis cetera" (let the rest to the gods 1.9.9, with an accompanying echo of an uncontrollable ocean). The winter-as-death and ocean-as-eternity images are similarly present in 1.11, which has the most concise declaration of Epicureanism: "carpe diem" (1.11.8 - seize the day). Again, the winter is the end of life, but not, ultimately, what one should be concerned with: "ut melius quidquid erit pati" (how much better suffering whatever will be 1.11.3). If winter is ever characterized negatively, in 1.25, it is only because the romanti-sexual aspect has been reintroduced into the poem. <- I wish you had more time to discuss this.