THE SWERVE

The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt

The book is advertised as How the World Became Modern – and by the end the first step might be taken, but in fact for three fourth of the book that is misleading.  It is about – “(Gian Francesco) Poggio Bracciolini (February 11, 1380^[2] – October 30, 1459) was an Italian scholar, writer and humanist. He recovered a great number of classical Latin texts, mostly lying forgotten in German and French monastic libraries, and disseminated manuscript copies among the educated world.” (Wiki) and is his life story with the most important accomplishment being the finding of the text/poem of Lucretius in a remote monastery and having it copied and brought back to the world after 400 years.

It is about the first half of the fourteen hundreds and another of those periods of papal irresponsibility and malfunctioning.  He had perfected his handwriting, which in this era of no computers, typewriters… was a very important art.  It was so good that he rose to the position of private secretary to the first John XXIII (first because he becomes excommunicated and removed from office and the name was taken up again over 500 years later in 1958 when another pope took the name John Paul.

It shows the culture and life of Italy and Rome and is really enlightening history and Poggio’s life culminates in the struggle that tried to unite the church under one pope again – there were three.  It shows the degradation, sexual follies, financial mischief, the fortunes in indulgences…  At the conference to end the divided papastry Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague came to offer their dissent from the actions of the church – two admirable men who were given safe passage to the convention where they were then arrested and burned (Hus) or jailed in a dungeon for a year and then burned alive (Jerome).  This is not a book to make you feel good about religion (if you still do).

Poggio then goes on a quest to find old manuscripts and his prize is Lucretius poem which opens up many ideas (ideas that would get you killed in the upcoming inquisition – another great religious invention).  It also tells a lot about books, libraries, and the fact that it is amazing that we have anything from the age of the Romans left to us.

What did Lucretius write in his poem Cari De Rerum Natura?

·        Everything is made of invisible particles (atoms) 

The church was against atoms just as it opposed the heliocentric solar system and a moving and not flat earth.

·        The elementary particles of matter – “the seeds of things” – are eternal

·        Elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size

·        All particles are in motion in an infinite void.

There is not beginning, end, middle or limits.

·        The universe has no creator or designer

·        Everything comes into being as a result of a swerve

It is the slight movements that create collisions, combinations, shifts in events and objects.  If everything simply moved in straight lines the world would be simple and we would have no life and no variety.

·        The swerve is the source of free will

·        Nature ceaselessly experiments

·        The universe was not created for or about humans

·        Humans are not unique

·        Human society began not in a Golden Are of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival.

·        The soul dies

·        There is no afterlife

·        Death is nothing to us

·        All organized religions are superstitious delusions.

·        Religions are invariable cruel

·        The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain.

·        The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion

·        Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder

Poggio brings it back, the church denounces its ideas, but is somehow convince that it is okay as poetry – just don’t believe what it says.  Poggio goes back to work at the Papal court and eventually returns to his homeland near Florence.  He fathers 14 by his lover in Rome and deserts them when he goes home and marries and settles in to an estate.

The text ends with a little ride through Galileo, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and a few others connecting thought and philosophy to this one piece of ancient Roman literature and the challenge it made to the prevailing (forced) attitudes and beliefs.

Once I figured out the real path of the book and what the author wanted to tell I enjoyed it and the good writing.