The Swerve – How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
Review by Adriana Gomes
In April Stephen Greenblatt was honored with The Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “The Swerve – How the World Became Modern.”
In its citation, the Pulitzer board described “The Swerve” as “a provocative book arguing that an obscure work of philosophy, discovered nearly 600 years ago, changed the course of history by anticipating the science and sensibilities of today.”
“The Swerve” tells the story of an ancient poem, “On the Nature of Things,” written 2,000 years ago by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, and rediscovered in a library, possibly in a German monastery, in the winter of 1417, by the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini.
Poggio requests the manuscript to be copied, and then sends it to his friend and fellow humanist Niccolò Niccoli in Florence, Italy. He emphasizes its beauty, and Lucretius impeccable use of the Latin language; but he doesn’t duel on the poem Epicurean philosophical values. As the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its dogmas unquestioned during the Renaissance, publicly manifesting sympathy for the revolutionary ideas in On the Nature of Things was extremely risky.
As Greenblatt writes: no respectable citizen openly said, “The soul dies with the body. There is no judgment after death. The universe was not created for us by divine power, and the whole notion of afterlife is a superstitious fantasy.” Still, Lucretius influenced many artists, thinkers, and scientists with Epicurus extraordinary notions.
When talking about atoms Lucretius, who disliked technical language, doesn’t use the Greek philosophical term, but he states that everything is made of invisible particles, “Everything is formed of these seeds and, on dissolution, returns to them in the end. Immutable, indivisible and infinite in number, they are constantly in motion, clashing with one another, coming together to form new shapes, coming apart, recombining again, enduring.”
“The Swerve” argues that “On the Nature of Things“ changed the course of history by bringing back the Epicurean philosophy to light. The copying and translation of the book fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and influenced writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare, and even Thomas Jefferson.
I appreciated how Greenblatt, in writing nonfiction, tells a story with a flow I usually encounter in fiction. I found the book intriguing and stimulating. Two weeks ago if someone asked me what was my favorite book, I would have answered “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” a novella by Gabriel García Márquez. Ask me today and I might say “The Swerve – How the World Became Modern“ by Stephen Greenblatt.