"Poets wish to profit or to please"
About this Quote
Horace is drawing a clean little line that still feels like a dare: poetry can’t pretend to be innocent of its effects. To “profit” is not just to make money; it’s to yield advantage - moral instruction, social standing, civic usefulness, even the poet’s own authority. To “please” is equally loaded: pleasure isn’t a dessert course, it’s persuasion. By reducing poetic ambition to these two verbs, Horace strips away the romantic alibi that art is pure self-expression. The poem is a tool, and the poet knows it.
The elegance is in the compression. “Wish” admits desire without sanctifying it; poets don’t claim a higher calling, they want something. And the “or” is provocatively simple, like a binary that invites argument. Horace’s larger point (in the Ars Poetica) is that the best work fuses both aims - it instructs while entertaining - but he frames it as an opposition first to puncture vanity. If you’re only “profiting,” you risk dull sermonizing. If you’re only “pleasing,” you risk becoming disposable charm.
Context matters: Horace is writing in Augustan Rome, where literature is braided into patronage, politics, and public morality. A poet’s “profit” may include surviving at court, flattering power, or shaping Roman taste into something stable after civil war. The line’s subtext is almost managerial: be honest about your function, because your audience already knows you’re not above the marketplace - of money, status, and influence.
The elegance is in the compression. “Wish” admits desire without sanctifying it; poets don’t claim a higher calling, they want something. And the “or” is provocatively simple, like a binary that invites argument. Horace’s larger point (in the Ars Poetica) is that the best work fuses both aims - it instructs while entertaining - but he frames it as an opposition first to puncture vanity. If you’re only “profiting,” you risk dull sermonizing. If you’re only “pleasing,” you risk becoming disposable charm.
Context matters: Horace is writing in Augustan Rome, where literature is braided into patronage, politics, and public morality. A poet’s “profit” may include surviving at court, flattering power, or shaping Roman taste into something stable after civil war. The line’s subtext is almost managerial: be honest about your function, because your audience already knows you’re not above the marketplace - of money, status, and influence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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