Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How The World Became Modern?

Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern is about the controversial poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, which was written in first century BC. The book tells of the poem’s loss in the Dark Ages and later rediscovered during the Renaissance. The title, “The Swerve” comes from Lucretius description of the unpredictable movements by which particles collide and take on new forms. The rediscovery of Lucretius poem, it is suggested, was a kind of "swerve" which helped to create the new social norms for the Renaissance. The poem by Lucretius promoted new ways of thinking that early medieval church leaders found threatening to their cause, for which the leaders banned the work and many of the copies did not endure the Dark Ages.

In early 15th century Western Europe was just starting to recover from epidemics, famine, and feuds that lasted centuries. The city-states of Italy were beginning to look back to the classic Greek and Roman civilizations to re-study old scrolls and

manuscripts to re-learn what was lost in the Dark Ages. Poggio Bracciolini’s discovery of Lucretius’ work On The Nature Of Things is his greatest achievement and Stephen Greenblatt shows how that discovery influenced the world and ‘swerved’ the power of the Church as well as helped shape the Renaissance.
Poggio Bracciolini was born in Tuscany in the 14th century; he was a scribe and scholar known for his excellent handwriting as well as his vast knowledge of the Latin language.

Both of these skills made him suited for his role as apostolic secretary, transcribing the official decrees for the succession of popes. Bracciolini was not a Christian believer but rather a rational humanist; his passion was the poetry, literature and philosophy that had vanished with ancient Rome. He belonged to a circle of early Renaissance book-hunters who traveled across Europe looking for books in monasteries hoping to copy and re-distribute the forgotten works of literature. In 1417, he discovered the last surviving manuscript of On the Nature of Things, by Roman poet Lucretius, in a German monastery; Greenblatt’s phrase that described the impact of this find is “the world swerved in a new direction.” The discovery of the text renewed poem’s life and revived its influence to the

world.
The main thesis of The Swerve is that the discovery of the ancient work, On the Nature of Things, was influential in shaping the thoughts and ideas that ultimately altered the world and steered it into the modern age. The message taken from Lucretius’ poem was rebellious and invigorating; Greenblatt expands on this message by labeling the Renaissance as a whole and by establishing a new way of life by the rediscovered free feeling of the past. With the rediscovery and redistribution of Lucretius’ poem the church lost some of its hold on society.
The focus of On the Nature of Things is on the fear of death; for Lucretius, there is no God, no pattern and no purpose only atoms in flux. The impact of these ideas helped to explain a period of history that seemed especially devoted to the pursuit of beauty and pleasure, the Renaissance. The Renaissance allowed society to move away from supernatural explanations to see the universe as only consisting of matter. The people began to think like Lucretius during this period.
Greenblatt also focuses on how slow the spread of the poem was through society and how it offered a powerful alternative to church doctrines. Greenblatt never loses sight of the 15th century figurehead, Bracciolini, who set the ‘swerve’ in motion. The Renaissance had been under way before Bracciolini made his discovery but according to Greenblatt the discovery pushed the Renaissance more toward secularism and a focus on the modern material world.
Lucretius’ ideas had been strongly affected by Epicurus. Epicurus was an even more ancient thinker compared to Lucretius. He had done much to express and encourage atomism, the theory that nothing in the world was supernatural but rather everything was made up of a cluster of atoms or a void of atoms; which eliminated the gods, superstitions, and the anxiety of death, replacing them instead with rational thought, peace of mind, and the greatest of all desires—the pleasure of the understanding. Epicureanism was not just a scientific belief but also an entire new viewpoint of life. It began to give artistic and personal freedom back to those who lost it in the Dark Ages.
It is not difficult to figure out why Lucretius was ostracized by the Church in the early middle ages. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, who were not liked by the Church but were not ostracized because their theories left enough artistic freedom for the establishment a creator. Their moral techniques could, with some leniency, fit to a Christian doctrine. Epicureanism simply would not be appropriate in the Church teachings. Although it was in fact a strict philosophy in which “pleasure,” meant freedom from pain and fear rather than self-indulgence. Epicureanism became symbolized among most Christian writers with self-indulgence.
Greenblatt’s book is written in a clean and engaging style; yet, he tells four to six different stories while explaining why the poem has such an impact on society. For me, I had to re-read chapters to try and understand the point he was attempting to make. He jumps from story to story without finishing either before jumping to another. But nevertheless all the stories were interesting and many of them covered new material that had me interested in researching his other works.