Search

The reception of Horace since the 1935 bimillennial of his birth and the political instrumentaliza-tion of his works has reflected radically different cultural situations in Germany and Anglo-America. Regarded in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) ambivalently as political lackey or escapist, Horace was largely ignored in the agenda of most West German poets. An older generation of prominent English-language poets, in contrast, rediscovered Horace in the 1960s as a challenging literary master and advocate of an engaging life style. By the 1980s younger poets felt free to compose major works of a more generally social nature assuming an acquaintance with the Roman poet. A recent outpouring of translations and adaptations, unmatched in Germany, has reasserted Horace's presence in the contemporary literary consciousness of England and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]