Gordon Comstock has declared war on the money god and Gordon is losing the war. Orwell, who had received training in Classics at St Cyprian's and Eton, was certainly familiar with these lines.London, 1936. Horace's proverbial lines reflect on the possibility of artistic failure and the dangers of poetic pretentiousness. It is also possible that the title contains a more specific allusion to a passage from the Latin poet Horace's Ars Poetica, a treatise on the art of poetry: 'Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu? | Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus' ('What might he produce that could match his early promise? | The mountains go into labour and will give birth to a ludicrous mouse'). The title of Gordon's remaindered poetry collection hints at its artistic insignificance. The same Horace interpretation is given in the endnotes to the 2021 edition of Keep the Aspidistra Flying, in which the "Editorial material" is copyrighted to Benjamin Kohlmann, a professor in British Studies at the University of Hamburg: The second one is a dead link, unfortunately. This is from one of two threads mentioned here/ here which supposedly give the solution to the Mice question. Gordon's sense that his poems are merely portentous miscarriages of his Please him that the moneyed young beasts from Cambridge didn't recogniseĪ fairly well-worn classical allusion.
Writing (thanks for info, Martha) so this might be a relevant meaning,īearing in mind Gordon's poetic self-disgust. There are several friendly refs to Horace in Orwell's letters and Yourself, prevent you from extricating yourself.What will emerge thatĬan live up to your extravagant promise? The mountains will go into Treatment.do not in imitating another writer plunge yourself intoĭifficulties from which shame, or the rules you have laid down for Made your own as long as you do not waste your time on a hackneyed Translation: ".A theme that is familiar can be This is in a section where Horace is talking of the difficulties for a Ridiculus mus which means "The mountains will go into labour and will
In Horace's Ars Poetica comes the line Parturient montes, nascetur I found a few old Usenet (Google Groups) discussions about it, putting forward and supporting some theories. This appears to be a frequently asked question for Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and while there's no fully confirmed answer, there is at least a prominent theory.
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