CARPE DIEM

by James Lincoln Warren

I’m always amused whenever I see a tee-shirt or a coffee mug emblazoned with the motto, Carpe Diem. This is usually translated as, “Seize the day”, although a more literal translation is to “Pluck (off) the day”, as in pulling an apple off a tree. (“Seize” will do, however.) People like this phrase because it’s in Latin, which makes it sophisticated, and for its upbeat injunction to charge full speed ahead into life. But—and this is why it amuses me—that’s not what it actually means, not exactly.

The term comes from the Roman poet Horace, and as is so often the case with phrases, the familiar version has been truncated from the original, Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero (“Seize the day, trusting least in tomorrow”). As you might expect of a poet, Horace used the phrase in a poem, one of his Odes. Essentially, Horace was expressing a commonly held attitude—one of the Hebrew prophets expressed the same sentiment as, “let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die” (Isaiah 22:13).

In other words, one is not to live each day optimistically as if it were the first day of the rest of one’s life—one is to live each day as if it were the last day of one’s life, because the inevitable march of time destroys all. Not so upbeat after all, huh. But just the right mix of melancholy and sensation to write smashing poetry. And thus was born a genre of poem, using Horace’s famous phrase as its label.

There are lots of other examples from the Romans (and the Bible), but the Carpe Diem as a poetic convention really took off in the 17th century, and in keeping with the spirit of that lusty age, it acquired a more specific connotation: sex. The Carpe Diem became the thinking man’s pickup line. Essentially, your basic 17th century Carpe Diem goes something like this:

You’re young and beautiful. So am I. In case you haven’t noticed, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and before you know it we’ll be old and decrepit and senile and lose interest in anything fun. Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s screw each others’ lights out while we still have time.

Here’s a prime example, one of my favorites:

To Phillis

Phillis, why should we delay
Pleasures shorter than the day?
Can we (which we never can)
Stretch our lives beyond their span;
Beauty like a shadow flies,
And our youth before us dies;
Or would youth and beauty stay,
Love hath wings, and will away.
Love hath swifter wings than Time;
Change in love to Heaven does clime.
Gods that never change their state,
Vary oft their love and hate.
    Phillis, to this truth we owe
All the love betwixt us two:
Let not you and I require
What has been our past desire;
On what Shepherds you have smil’d,
Or what Nymphs I have beguil’d;
Leave it to the Planets too,
What we shall hereafter do;
For the joys we now may prove,
Take advice of present love.

—Edmund Waller (1606-1687)

Not bad, huh? But a funny thing happened to the Carpe Diem on its way to the theater. It died off, a victim of time, just as it warned young maidens to get their frolicking in before they drop off the twig. Almost nobody ever writes a good, lip-smacking Carpe Diem anymore. This is not just the result of the vagaries of fashion, either—the underlying sentiment is still very much alive.

So what happened?

It’s like this: have you ever read anything so good, so amazingly articulate and expressive, so heart-wrenchingly moving and brilliantly paced, so unalterably and indescribably perfect that you threw up your hands and cried, “Why do I bother? I’ll never write anything as good as that!”

Of course you have. Usually, of course, you repent, and do the best you can, and realize that what you’re doing isn’t really all that bad, and anyhow there’s enough different about it that it ought to be worth reading, even if it won’t become a classic.

But sometimes it’s actually true. Sometimes you shouldn’t bother. That’s because no matter what you do, it will always be compared negatively against a masterpiece.

And that’s what happened with the Carpe Diem. Andrew Marvell wrote one so good that all the other poets around simply gave up. Here it is:

To his Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

    But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

    Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

—Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Whoa.

There’s actually a term for when this sort of thing happens. It’s called genre explosion, and is the reason why certain art forms reach a dead end. A genre is said to have been exploded when it has been exploited so thoroughly that the form has nothing new to offer the reader, usually as the result of a definitive work. I’ll bet you can think of other examples. The Carpe Diem died because Marvell blew it up.

And what amazes me is that the mystery genre, and all its subgenres, doesn’t seem to be susceptible to explosion. I just finished re-reading The Long Goodbye the other night, and I can’t imagine a better hard-boiled P.I. novel. Likewise, as far as I’m concerned, The Hound of the Baskervilles has a lock on best ratiocinative detective novel ever written. I don’t know why anybody would want to write about an amateur little old lady detective when you know it’s going to be compared to Miss Marple.

So I go on writing my own hard-boiled series and ratiocinative detective series and I even wrote a story where the detective is a little middle-aged widow on a fixed income. (My excuse is that the story takes place in London in 1769 and hinges on a little known fact concerning who was legally responsible for determining cause of death back there and then—I want her to come back, but I haven’t found the right crime to justify her return as yet.) And I can’t believe my luck that after all the great stuff that came before me, there is still an appetite for more. I don’t know why this should be true, but I’m grateful it is so.

I shall leave the Gentle Reader with an important warning. Now that you know what Carpe Diem really means, even so, that does not mean that anybody who displays the motto on a coffee cup or tee-shirt is lusting after you. Disappointing, I know, but there it is.