Review of P. Vesperini, Lucrèce: Archéologie d’un classique européen
(2019) ASDIWAL : revue genevoise d’anthropologie et d’histoire des religions — Vol. 13, n° 1, p. 234-236 (2019)
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- Abstract
- Paul Veyne's L'élégie érotique romaine (Seuil, 1983) famously concludes with a chapter on « Our Intense Style, or Why Ancient Poetry Bores Us » ; on the heels of his beautiful, defamiliarizing Droiture et mélancolie: Sur les écrits de Marc Aurèle (Verdier, 2016), Pierre Vesperini's new Lucrèce: Archéologie d'un classique européen meditates a problem one might name, after Veyne, « Our Blessed Rage for Order, or Why Roman Poetry Should Bore Us ». Or, rather, should interest us differently, for V. argues that Roman poems, exemplified by the De Rerum Natura (DRN) of Lucretius (L.) does not do what post-romantic theories hold a good poem should do: cohere in its structure, argue in good faith, and persuade us of its truth. For V., these presuppositions flow from a desire to view Romans and Renaissance (but not the Middle Ages) as prefiguring one's own values; V. offers Lucrèce, a revisionist history of L. and his influence, as an antidote to such anachronism. His bête noire he names the « myth of L. », its latest avatar Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Norton, 2011). For V., Greenblatt's work emblematizes scholars' tendency to see in L. an image of their own modernity, whether centred on atomism, free enquiry, rationalism, or the scientific method. V.'s criticism of Greenblatt's errors of commission—his repeated assertions of Poggio's solitude turn him into what V. stereotypes (in English) as an American « cow-boy » (p. 225)—and omission—what of Poggio's orthodox eagerness to suppress heresy? (p. 229)—embodies V.'s aim to liberate L.'s nachleben from what he views as the self-seeking light of hagiographic teleology. It is an ambitious task, indeed.
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Trinity Cambridge
Citations
Kachuck, A. (2019). Review of P. Vesperini, Lucrèce: Archéologie d’un classique européen. ASDIWAL : revue genevoise d’anthropologie et d’histoire des religions, 13(1), 234-236. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/22837 (Original work published 2019)