Stephen M Kershner (Austin Peay State University)
Statian scholarship reveals the Silvae to be experimental poetry, challenging the still-dominant Augustan style based on Vergil et al., while manipulating the Domitianic patronage system (Zeiner 2005, Newlands 2002, Kershner 2010, Rühl 2015, Coffee 2015). More work remains, however, on Statius’ metapoetic attitudes within the Silvae—what Hinds calls “poetological policy statements” (Hinds 2000)—and their effect upon Statius’ poetic production (McNelis 2008, Chinn 2005). Primarily, the Silvae still need a satisfactory account of Statius’ compositional principles that make the Silvae dynamic individually and collectively.
Here, I argue that a key rhetorical feature in the Silvae’s texture—the idea that Statius' poetry is audacious and ex tempore and, thus, inferior to his Latin literary predecessors—is a careful strategy to promote his groundbreaking approach to poetic composition in the Silvae. I demonstrate that Statius, as a poetically bold poet, connects to a contemporary Flavian argument on how to break free from the downward spiral of dull and imitative poetry (Williams 1978, Zeiner 2005, Myers 2015). For Statius to promote himself and his poetry as exceptional, in both contemporary and future contexts, it was necessary to re-contest the poetic principle of audacia, morally ambiguous and tendentious as a compositional principle. In the Silvae and Thebaid, Statius performs a two-step negotiation of audacia’s meaning: he reinforces the positive meaning as “heroic boldness” instead of “morally transgressive deviance” and suggests that audacia is necessary to compose fresh poetry by linking it to creative genius, something like "bold ingenuity."
Statius establishes this new poetic style first by claiming an audacious and hasty style in the prose prefaces to his Silvae (i.e., Silvae 1.pr.1-10; 3.pr.1-5; Newlands 2009, Pagán 2010), emphasizing celerity and the boldness of his pen. Then he constructs a symbolic system in various Silvae and passages in Thebaid to describe people well known as bold in the positive sense of boldness. For example, he openly exhibits sympathy and admiration for famously audacious actors like the first sailing vessel, Prometheus, and Daedalus (Silvae 3.2.61-78). Statius demonstrates that, without audacity, meaningful progress and innovation is impossible for humans. By reconfiguring audacity and classifying himself, his famous father (Silvae 5.3.47-50), and even Vergil (Silvae 4.7.25-28) as “daring in their artistic talent” (audax ingenii), Statius erects a theoretical foundation for expanding this positive audacia in discussions of his own poetic composition.
Statius shows that he is different from the lackluster poets of his day; he composes poetry that thinks big and accomplishes much, poetry that stands with the Latin canon. I argue that Statius’ notions of audacity and poetic simultaneity affect the performative success of the Silvae. Statius shows that he belongs with Vergil and Horace rather than with Flavian poets, like Martial, Valerius Flaccus, or Silius Italicus. Statius shows that innovation and boldness in composition is a special virtue rather than a deviant behavior; he understands that his own place within the Greco-Roman literary tradition depends upon this exceptional, progressive approach rather than the mediocre pursuit of the norm.