But by the end of that century it had become clear that prose was the natural medium for history, philosophy and science. In one respect this was a philosophy which lent itself especially well to verse treatment: because of its immersion in the physical reality perceived by our senses, it enabled Lucretius to celebrate both the immensity of the universe. Back in fifth-century Greece, four hundred years before Lucretius, it was still possible to compose philosophy in verse. In the Rome of the first century BC serious philosophy in verse, if not quite as bizarre as it would be now, was none the less markedly eccentric. Why was philosophy of such quality, presented in such magnificent dress, so entirely neglected as philosophy? The obvious answer seems to be: because it was written in verse.
(He repeats this explanation in his introduction to Alicia Stalling's 2007 translation.) In a review of the superb Ronald Melville translation of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura (I offer here a new translation of the title: Of Things' Nature), Richard Jenkyns gives an explanation of why this work was written in verse. I first got hooked on Lucretius in 1971 with The Doors' song, "Atoms in the Void":Īpart from Greenblatt's swooning appreciation of the beauty of the poem, he does not address why it's a poem or the uses Lucretius makes of poetic form. Greenblatt's précis is a text-book case of the heresy of paraphrase - a heresy, if that is what it is, that pervades the book and its appreciation of Lucretius for his "dangerous" ideas –– ideas that appeal to Greenblatt as much as they do to me for their apparently proto-secular humanism (or proto-materialism).
The Swerve is principally an engrossing yarn about the discovery of the manuscript of Lucretius’s poem by Poggio Bracciolini in the 15th century. Of course, I swerve from Greenblatt's basic orientation in his book. Greenblatt provides several pages of lucid, useful, and judicious summary of Lucretius's doctrines in Of Things' Nature (Smith's edition also provides a helpful and detailed outline of each book of the poem). Greenblatt pretty much sticks to citing this prose version throughout his book, despite his nod to Dryden as the best for conveying Lucretius's "ardor" and also noting that he consulted all the translations. The de-versification of Lucretius - treating it as prose - is an unintended theme of the most famous contemporary account of Of Things' Nature, Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011). Greenblatt begins The Swerve with an account of his youthful discovery of Lucretius through Martin Ferguson Smith's excellent prose translation.
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