ABSTRACT
The ‘Horace’ in my title might well have been the Quintus Horatius Flaccus of Ars Poetica fame, and more specifically of ut pictura poesis fame. This would most obviously have provided access to a discussion of Discours, figure. For example, Lyotard refers to this statement, or to its presuppositions, in an analysis of the relationship of word and image in the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church:
A pedagogy which finds its support in the ancient ‘Ut pictura poesis’ of Horace, of which Plutarch attributes the earliest formulation to Simonides. It is on condition that it speak ‘clearly’ that painting will be tolerated. This clarity must be taken literally: it is the transparency of signification in the linguistic term…The figure thus strictly subjected to writing cannot create an illusion and its opacity cannot therefore capture and divert the movement of adoration. The function of the visible is [here] to signify the invisible.
(DF p. 173)