The Teaching of Lyric Meters and the Reception of Horace in Kyiv-Mohylanian Poetics

In this article, by analyzing the use of Horace’s poetry in the teaching of metrics provided in the Kyiv Mohylanian poetics, the author shows how Latin poetry was used as a didactic tool to support the education of devout men and loyal citizens. Siedina particularly dwells on the Sapphic and Alcaic metrical systems, as they were the most widely exemplified in the poetics. Next to the ‘simple’ quotation of Horace’s lyrics, the author individuates other modes of Horatian imitation, all of which entail its Christianization: parodies, following the masterful example of M. K. Sarbiewski, the transformation of Horace’s lyric in a Christian key, and the use of Horatian meters to compose poems on Christian topics (particularly appreciated were paraphrases of the psalms by the Scottish poet G. Buchanan). Such a Christianization of Horace and other classical authors was in line with the Christian interpretation/imitation of Horace that had begun in Western Europe in the first centuries after Christ and continued in different guises well into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author observes that many motifs of Horace’s poetry could easily be made to coincide with the ethical and religious tenets of education at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy: for instance, reflections on the brevity of human life, the impossibility of achieving complete happiness, the avoidance of excesses, contentment with little, love of virtue and the like. In conclusion, Siedina asserts that the Christianization and moralization of Horace’s poetry, next to denying the legitimacy of the pagan pantheon, to which a Christian one was opposed, was a way for people to implicitly assert their own worth and distinct cultural identity, which in early-modern Ukraine, as elsewhere, in great part passed through schooling and literature.