The Swerve

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Supposing you were fluent in ancient and modern Latin as well as French, Spanish, and Italian, and of course Greek; that you had trained yourself to be focused and swift at your work and to make a minimum of errors; and further that your handwriting was acknowledged to be particularly clear and elegant.

Nowadays you would have a lengthy career in valet parking to look forward to. But in the early 15th century you might find yourself as the equivalent of senior speechwriter for the pope. This was the job of Poggio Bracciolini, until Pope John XXIII was unthroned and Poggio found himself an unemployment statistic. (Pope John XXIII is better known as Antipope John XXIII or, to some, John XXII. See Gibbon.)

Since Poggio was already in Germany for the Council of Constance, which deposed his man, he took to the road to look for old books. In 1417 there weren’t a lot of bookstores and public libraries, so he went to monasteries where he was able to find and rescue from oblivion numerous copies of ancient Greek and Latin works before the monks palimpsested them, scraped the letters off the vellum and reused it for Bibles and prayer books. One of the ancient books he found was Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. The Swerve is about Poggio’s discovery and the effect the revival of that book and others like it had on the late medieval world, leading to what we call the Renaissance.

There are a lot of reasons to read this lengthy essay by Stephen Goldblatt, his limpid prose style for one and his short history of the decline of the Roman Empire for another. But what I most enjoyed was the explanation of what is in De Rerum Natura, atomism and the Epicurian philosophy, and how these idea led to the Renaissance and eventually to the Age of Reason.

Poggio wasn’t the only book hunter. In the mid-14th century, Petrarch was a book lover: Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

Poggio tells the sad story of the decline of western civilization into the dark ages. Says Goldblatt: The other libraries of the ancient world fared no better than [the great library in, Alexandria.] A survey of Rome in the early fourth century listed twenty-eight public libraries, in addition to the unnumbered private collections in aristocratic mansions. Near the century’s end, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus complained that Romans had virtually abandoned serious reading. Ammianus was not lamenting barbarian raids or Christian fanaticism. No doubt these were at work, somewhere in the background of the phenomena that struck him. But what he observed, as the empire slowly crumbled, was a loss of cultural moorings, a descent into febrile triviality. ‘In place of the philosopher the singer is called in, and in place of the orator the teacher of stagecraft, and while the libraries are shut up forever like tombs, water-organs are manufactured and lyres as large as carriages.’ Moreover, he noted, sourly, people were driving their chariots at lunatic speed through the crowded streets.

Mutatis mutandis.

2011  No 132

Comments

[Readramble.wordpress.com]

So glad you read this one, Mary. I've been wondering about it, since it became a finalist for the National Book Award. Great review. To be read.

[tijden]

I also want to read it i really love to read the mix of past and future

[Marje]

Thanks for your well thought-out review... I'm in the middle of the delicious "Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman" at the moment, but have listed The Swerve as my next read... looking forward to it!

[Mary]

Read, The book well deserves to be a National Book Award winner.

tijden, Swerve really brings home the influence of the classical past on many historical eras, including our own.

Marje, I, too, am in the middle of Catherine the Great. I had to send the copy I was reading back to the library but there's a copy under the Christmas tree for Wilhelm and of course I expect I'll get to it first.