Pluck the Day
“Pluck” the day? Is that anything like “seize” the day? Well yes . . . and no. But first, an anecdote.
I recently attended the wake and funeral of a very dear friend of our family. Her nephew was also there. He had been one of my students more than twenty years before. When I introduced him to my wife, he proudly informed her that, thanks to my class, he never forgot how to spell “necessary.”
Our friend’s nephew was referring to one of my standard rants. It went back to my very first years as a teacher. In my naivety, I was astounded when I saw, over and over again, the following mistake on vocabulary tests. I had put the Latin term necesse est on the sheet. Students were supposed to write the English equivalent next to it. I can’t tell you how many times I saw “nesecary” or “nesesecary” or I don’t remember what just to the right of the clearly typed Latin term.
Attention and Brain Power
The point is, they could have simply copied the spelling of the Latin word in writing out the English. They were, literally, right next to each other. A not insignificant number of students didn’t even make the tiny amount of effort necessary to do that. For many years afterward I used this example to impress upon students the importance of paying attention and using their available brain power.
Another one of my rants has to do with the poet Horace. Like the “necessary” rant, it’s one my students tend to remember for a long time. Everyone, it seems, is familiar with the phrase carpe diem from Horace’s Ode 1.11. This phrase is normally rendered into English as “seize the day.”
The problem is, carpere does not mean “seize.” Its usual meaning is to “pluck” or “pick” at something. It’s what a rhapsode does to the strings of his lyre. It’s why in English we describe as “carping” when someone keeps picking (figuratively) at another person. Another example is carpal tunnel syndrome (ouch!), whose symptoms affect primarily the thumb and the next three fingers. That is, the parts of the hand used to make a plucking motion.
Don’t Even Ask
Now, I can’t deny that “seize the day” sounds a lot more inspiring than “pluck the day.” How does one pluck a day, anyway? Here’s where it pays to go to the source. What exactly is Horace getting at in the eleventh poem in his first book of odes?
Horace’s poem is a brief Epicurean meditation on living in the moment. He starts by warning his listener (identified as Leuconoe) not to even try to discern the future:
Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros.
You shouldn’t ask (it’s blasphemy to know) what end to me, which to you
the gods have given, Leuconoe, nor try the Babylonian
numbers (i.e., consult an astrologer).
Nefas is a very strong term. It literally means “unspeakable,” something so offensive to the gods that you shouldn’t even say it. “How much better,” he says, simply “to endure whatever will be”:
Ut melius quicquid erit pati!
The Ol’ Switcheroo
He elaborates on this thought with one of those concrete images that make Horace’s poetry so memorable:
Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum
Whether Jupiter endows you with many winters or a last one,
which enfeebles with stones (lit. pumice stones) set against it
the Tyrrhenian Sea.
This image is especially arresting because Horace confounds our expectations. Even 2,000 years ago the trope of the sea wearing down the rocks was a commonplace. Here, it’s the other way around: the rocks wear down the sea. It’s a striking picture that has all the more impact precisely because it takes us by surprise. It’s a fresh take on an old image.
In the Vinyard
Horace then throws two more quick images our way:
sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces.
You should be wise: strain the wine and, since time is short,
prune back long hope.
The first is a distinctly Horatian commonplace: wine as an image representing enjoyment. The second image is only hinted at. Reseces is a viticultural term. Prune back long hope as you would a grape vine. Next,
Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas:
While we are speaking, an envious age has fled.
Time is short indeed.
Now Horace returns to the image of the grape vine when he says: carpe diem! Pluck the day, that is, like you would a ripe grape. Carpere is, in fact, precisely the term for this. By the way, try seizing a ripe grape sometime and see what happens – it could be messy.
Anyway, the poem closes with
quam minimum credula postero.
Trust in tomorrow as little as possible.
Carpe diem is the climax of the poem. Pluck the grape. Seize the moment while it’s in front of you. The grape left on the vine may be gone tomorrow, or it may be withered wasted.
It Pays to Pay Attention
So there it is. Is it a terrible thing to say, “seize the day”? No, and in fact, even though it is an imprecise rendering of the phrase carpe diem the familiar English translation does translate the spirit, at least, of Horace’s poem. So why do I make a big deal of it?
For a couple reasons. First, as is the case with the spelling of “necessary,” it shows that it pays to pay attention. Details matter. The poet has chosen a particular word for a reason. What is he doing? A haphazard rendering of his words can obscure what’s he’s really up to. It can turn an evocative image into a mere abstraction.
The rant is the hook to draw students into the poem. Working out the correct translation leads them to see how the rest of the poem builds up to the half-expressed image of the grape on the vine. That, in turn, helps them appreciate more broadly Horace’s marvelous way of using concrete images to express his ideas, an appreciation they can bring to other poems as well.
A little rant goes a long way. So by all means, Pluck the Day!
Ode 1.11: Pluck the Day
Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. Ut melius quicquid erit pati!
Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
