On The Swerve
A must-read
One of you, friends that I follow, maybe one of my followers, in a text or a commentary, suggested me to read The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt, that won, in addition to both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, also the Modern Language Association James Russell Lowell Prize.
Bust — Wikipedia
A book that divulges and makes it possible for millions to be aware of “De Rerum Natura” (On the Nature of Things, a thesis that was written by the philosopher of the Golden Age, in Latin literature, Titus Lucretius Carus, two thousand years ago.
As it’s written in one of the various commentaries on the book, “The story is told with panache, creating a book that is at once scholarly and engagingly popular”,
I can add that he wrote it with the same skills he attributes to Poggio Bracciolini[1], “a superbly well-trained scribe, with exceptionally fine handwriting, and a high degree of accuracy”.
I read it marvelled and passionate, but not all at once because, au long of it, I had to reread previous paragraphs or pages to better understand what the parts were meaning to my life and beliefs. I am not an atheist or agnostic, I am a Doubtist, as I already wrote in one or two posts: the ones that doubt everything, inclusive of their certainties.
Lucretius thesis is astounding when almost forecasts Quantum Mechanics; its certainty of no post-mortem at all, conflicts with what are mine “doubtist” certainties, that are expressed in some of my stories.
Of course, such an excellent, laureled, largely publicized work, gave birth to several comments and reviews.
Largely appreciative,
The Washington Post — The rediscovery of this writer in the Renaissance opened the way to the modern world (and, more importantly, the invention of political science)
The Boston Globe — An intellectually invigorating, nonfiction version of a Dan Brown-like mystery-in-the-archives thriller.”
Some appreciative that includes a “but”, as the Guardian’s
“A flawed but dazzling study of the origins of the Renaissance”, and:
“But is it right to identify the recovery of Lucretius with the beginning of the renaissance?”.
The commenter didn’t read Gerard Passannante’s “The Lucretian Renaissance: Philology and the Afterlife of Tradition. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press” https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012.03.41/
On Edingburgh University Press:
“The book is also quite personal, as Greenblatt makes clear in his Preface, where he tells of his encounter with Lucretius’s poem when he was a young man with a crippling fear of death — a fear that is confronted by the great Roman writer. Greenblatt became an adherent of the materialist doctrine championed by Lucretius, and this book is an extended argument in its favour by an apologist who consistently rejects out of hand any consideration of the spiritual life”.
I couldn’t see something confirming that on The Swerve’ text; but it has nothing to do with the history.
And: “The broader thesis of the book — that the rediscovery of Lucretius was a major factor in the creation of the modern worldview — is intriguing and plausible, if exaggerated. A more problematic element, however, is Greenblatt’s pronounced anti-Christian agenda, which permeates the book: Lucretian materialism is the truth; Christian spiritualism is the falsehood that impedes its progress. Early on, Greenblatt asserts that “curiosity was said by the Church to be a mortal sin”.
This is another criticism that may be due to a reading that did not consider the core of what happened to Poggio, his entire life within the Roman Curia: it is clear, therefore, that he refers to the Catholic Church, with emphasis.
And it is also true that Catholicism was indeed one of the cruellest religions of the time, if not the most devastatingly cruel.
However, it is worth reading Benjamin Cain’s “The Horror of Life’s Meaning: from Eastern and Western Religions to Liberal Humanism”, long, extremely well-based text examining and commenting on the history of all religions, from Zoroastrianism up to now
“Lucretius was a passionate follower of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. He believed that the gods did not concern themselves with mortal affairs,”.
If I can correctly read Ben Cain’s articles, this is more or less what they prove; Again, in my doubtism, I do agree.
The most acid that I saw was Jim Hinch’s on Los Angeles Review of Books
“It is filled with factual inaccuracies and founded upon a view of history not shared by serious scholars of the periods Greenblatt studies”.
“factual inaccuracies” — Didn’t he’s gone through the endless lists of Selected Bibliography and Index? and
“not shared by serious scholars of the periods Greenblatt studies”
I searched the Internet and, besides himself, if he’s a serious scholar in the field, didn’t find of the possible ones he may have found.
Lucretius distributed his argument into six books, beginning each with a highly polished introduction.
Books I and II establish the main principles of the atomic universe, refute the rival theories of the pre-Socratic cosmic philosophers Heracleitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, and covertly attack the Stoics, a school of moralists rivalling that of Epicurus.
Book III demonstrates the atomic structure and mortality of the soul and ends with a triumphant sermon on the theme “Death is nothing to us.”
Book IV describes the mechanics of sense perception, thought, and certain bodily functions and condemns sexual passion.
Book V describes the creation and working of this world and the celestial bodies and the evolution of life and human society.
Book VI explains remarkable phenomena of the earth and sky — in particular, thunder and lightning.
The poem ends with a description of the plague at Athens, a sombre picture of death contrasting with that of spring and birth in the invocation to Venus, with which it opens.
Although the notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos, since it had received no support from most other ancient astronomers, Lucretius did not notice that.
At that time Science had progressed proving that the world was not flat, but Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were far in the future, so Lucretius believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe.
This does not affect or invalidate his whole thesis.
As I wrote in the title of this text It’s a must-read.
I know that for most of you, it is simple and less expensive to buy, either in a bookstore or on the internet, and you will receive it in one or two days.
Read and enjoy it, and, if you can, post your comments or review on it.