The Swerve - Greenbaltt

Stephen Greenblatt, with the publication of his latest history lesson, "The Swerve, How the World Became Modern", has awakened one dormant desire in me...to learn Latin. I grow tired of not being able to read the original Latin text and am forced to depend on the interpretations of others.

Greenblatt has written a necessary and rich interpretation of how humanist book hunters, not our first bibliophiles, existed during the dark ages and struggled to uncover that which lay dormant after the collapse of the Roman empire. He would assert it was the discovery of these ancient texts that led to the world becoming modern...although he doesn't directly assert it...only in the sub-title and perhaps jacket text are the specifics of the assertion which mention a presumed influence on Galileo, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and of course Thomas Jefferson. He only devotes a few pages in the last chapter to discuss the role of Lucretius in the thinking of these paradigm shifting individuals. The final proof is left unfortunately to the student.

Greenblatt takes us on a tore of Italy during the 15th Century through the life of Poggio Bracciolini. A well educated, seemingly middle class (if there were such a thing) scribe who rose through the ranks, with the help of a few mentors, to become a career bureaucrat on the Pope's staff in Rome. During his career he was a learned humanist who cared deeply about ancient works and dedicated most of his life to their preservation. Among other things his most celebrated discovery was that of the lost work of Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things" which he discovered while searching monasteries in Central Europe. As he unveils some of the philosophy contained with this lost work he tries hard to depict the politics and the dangerous balance for a humanist standing on the toes of the Inquisition while trying to enlighten.

Among other very astute observations pertaining to the "Nature of Things" Lucretius made the observation that all matter is composed of very small indivisible particles called atoms. Atoms cannot be destroyed and are the building blocks of all matter. "The Swerve" as it is called, is the continuous acting and reacting of these atoms to cause the destruction and creation of everything we perceive and interact with inside the tangible universe. Quite a weighty thought today let alone 2000 years ago. And the reason these weighty thoughts didn't drive a Renaissance of sorts at the time was because the growth of Christianity and specifically the Catholic Church systematically buried these notions.

His attack on the Catholic Church is well trodden territory and easy pickings. Yet he fails to properly credit the same Church, in fact he goes to great measure to distance his hero, Poggio Bracciolini from the Church, for providing him with the necessary means by which he could attend to his life long passion. Whereas Greenblatt is not short on judgment when it comes to reporting on the moral failings of presumably pious members of the Church, he does not equally judge the moral failings of those enlightened individuals whom are merely employed by the Church.

The astounding discovery here, is not so much that the writings of Lucretius (once rediscovered) had a direct influence on a world struggling to recover from the dark ages but rather it was the Roman empire itself that was becoming more enlightened and perhaps more so than anyone had previously imagined. If Lucretius was but one of many dozens of poets/scholars who filled the Roman Empire with the enlightened thoughts of atomic particles and the greater pursuit of happiness, whose thoughts and writings were never recovered, how did this early enlightenment fail to survive the growth of the Christian Church? Meaning, was it the deliberate work of the Church or the failings of this particular philosophy to catch-on. In order for an idea to catch-on there has to be something to it, something more. Christianity might just have been what society was searching for at the time. Just as the time was right for an enlightenment albeit 1,500 years later.

Although Greenblatt writes well I can't help feeling I was in an undergraduate history class and must remember the lecture as given, thus interpreted, rather than as a graduate student wherein I might discover and debate the meaning as would, it appears ironically, all the enlightened readers who gathered along the seashore, at the base of Mt Vesuvius, to debate modern philosophy 2000 years ago, were doing when they were frozen in time.

Sure enough Greenblatt takes us back to that time yet what he tells us does little more to aid our understanding since his own thoughts are still frozen with Lucretius and have not advanced beyond the atoms and the void.