Venus and love: the poem opens with a hymn to Venus, mother of Aeneas, and ends its fourth book calling passion a wound that festers, so are the two reconciled or is the poet divided against himself?

Lucretius, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Lucretius answers

The hymn names the power that brings every living thing to birth and makes the spring. A Roman poem addressed to Romans begins with her because she is the mother of their race, and because the name is the one they already know for that power. The fourth book speaks of something else, and I draw the line myself where I treat of love: what I condemn is the chain, not the pleasure.

The pleasure I leave standing. He who shuns love is not bereft of the fruits of Venus; he chooses those joys which bring no pain, and for the heart-whole that pleasure is more untainted than for the love-sick.¹ The lover at the very moment of possession ebbs and flows with an undetermined current, not sure what to enjoy first with eyes or hands.

He presses what he has grasped until it hurts, fastens his teeth in the lips, dashes mouth against mouth, because his pleasure is not unalloyed and secret stings spur him to hurt the very thing whence those germs of madness arise.¹ That is the sick-room. The hymn is the garden. A man may bless the spring and still refuse to let one face rule him.

The cure is plain. The sore gains strength and festers by feeding, and day by day the madness grows, unless you scatter the first wounds by new blows and heal them while fresh. So flee the images that feed your love, and turn the mind elsewhere.² Nor is it easy after the fact: to avoid being drawn into the meshes is not so hard a task as, once caught amid the toils, to break through the strong bonds of Venus.³

Yet even then you may escape, unless you stand in your own way and refuse at the first to look over every blemish of mind and body in her whom you woo.³ For lovers are blind. Black she is called honey-dark, the squat one a Grace, the stammerer lisping, the dumb one modest, the half-dead with cough frail.³ I laughed at all this, and I did not do it to mock the lover's joy.

A poem that is a cure must use bitter medicine, and the honey on the cup is the verse around it. So I am not divided. The Venus who makes the world and the Venus who enslaves a man are one power seen from two sides. One side shows what she does when she is let work freely, the other what she does to a man who has bound himself to a single image and lost his own peace.

The position in brief

Venus in the first lines is the power that brings all living things to birth and makes the spring, called by the Roman name because the poem is Roman and the goddess is the mother of Memmius's people; she is asked for peace because a Roman reader needs it and because the poet knows what the name means.⁴ Love in the fourth book is a different thing: the images of one person feeding a desire that nothing can satisfy, a wound that grows by feeding, a madness that wastes a man's strength and his estate.⁵⁶

The physical pleasure is Venus too, and he does not condemn it; he condemns the chain. The two passages are one doctrine seen from the garden and from the sick-room.⁷⁸

Sources

Nor is he who shuns love bereft of the fruits of Venus, but rather he chooses those joys which bring no pain. For surely the pleasure from these things is more untainted for the heart-whole than for the love-sick; for in the very moment of possession the passion of lovers ebbs and flows with undetermined current
On the Nature of Things, pp. 179–180
For the sore gains strength and festers by feeding, and day by day the madness grows, and the misery becomes heavier, unless you dissipate the first wounds by new blows, and heal them while still fresh
On the Nature of Things, pp. 179–180
For to avoid being drawn caught, into the meshes of love, is not so hard a task as when caught amid the toils to issue out and break through the strong bonds of Venus.
On the Nature of Things, pp. 182–183
Thus, then, he who receives a blow from the darts of Venus, whoso'er it be who wounds him, inclines to that whereby he is smitten; for an unspoken desire foretells the pleasure to come. This pleasure is Venus for us; from it comes Cupid, our name for love, from it first of all that drop of Venus's sweetness has trickled into our heart and chilly care has Book LV, ll. 1060-1089 179 followed after.
On the Nature of Things, pp. 179–180
Then the same madness returns, the old frenzy is back upon them, when they yearn to find out what in truth they desire to attain, nor can they discover what device may conquer their disease; in such deep doubt they waste beneath their secret wound. Remember too that they waste their strength and are worn away with effort, remember that their life is passed Book IV, Ul. 1122-1149 181 beneath another's sway.
On the Nature of Things, pp. 181–182
But Venus lightly breaks the force of these pains in love, and fond pleasure mingled with them sets a curb upon their teeth. For therein there is hope that from the same body, whence comes the source of their flame, the fire may in turn be quenched. Yet nature protests that all this happens just the other way; and this is the one thing, whereof the more and more we 180 Book LIV, ll.
On the Nature of Things, pp. 180–181
Yea, through seas and mountains and tearing rivers and the leafy haunts of birds and verdant plains thou dost strike fond love into the hearts of all, and makest them in hot desire to renew the stock of their races, each after his own kind.
On the Nature of Things, pp. 28–29
For to avoid being drawn caught, into the meshes of love, is not so hard a task as when caught amid the toils to issue out and break through the strong bonds of Venus. And yet even when trammelled 182 Book IV, Ul. 1149-1179 and fettered you might escape the snare, unless you still stand in your own way, and at the first o'erlook all the blemishes of mind and body in her, whom you seek and woo.
On the Nature of Things, pp. 182–183

Where the argument is made

Book I.1-43, the hymn, 'Mother of Aeneas and his race, delight of men and gods'
IV.1030-1287, the physiology of love, the images that feed desire, 'the sweet golden moisture' turned to care, the lover's wasting, the advice to flee the images and to see the beloved as she is
II.1-61, 'Sweet it is, when on the great sea the winds are buffeting the waters, to gaze from the land on another's great struggles,' on the peace the Epicurean watches from
V.962-965 and V.1011-1027 on love among the first men and the first households

How the argument was received

The oldest crux in the poem's reading; every commentator from Sellar to Santayana has had to reconcile the hymn with the diatribe.