Lucretius - On the Nature of Things - Swerves - Early Sculpture 'Lucretius Re-Reading On the Nature of Things' - 1988' by Peter G Pereira and Selected

Lucretius Re-Reading 'On the Nature of Things'

Sculpture (6'x 2'x2' - Plaster, Glass Wood and Plastic)

by Peter G Pereira - 1988

There has been much Deserved Excitement over Steven Greenblatt's Book

The Swerve

Winner of both The Pulitzer and National Book Award

On the Life and Times and Influence of Lucretius and his Masterwork

From Book II

On the Nature of  Things

 We wish thee also well aware of this:

The atoms, as their own weight bears them down


Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times,


In scarce determined places, from their course


Decline a little- call it, so to speak,


Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont


Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one,


Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;


And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows


Among the primal elements; and thus


Nature would never have created aught.

Lucretius


 

I re-discovered Lucretius much like had been done by the Monk Poggio in the 15th Century...looking through a Used Book Store for treasures of History Past in the 20th,

He searched the Monasteries of Renaissance Italy,

I searched through the Antiquarian Markets of Omaha, Nebraska.

To which I had relocated at age  14.

There at a favorite Used Book Store which I traded Romance Novels and Loose Change

to build my Library of Classics, Poetry, Science, Mathematics, Art, Philosophy, Comic Books and Modern Fiction

I found  a tattered Penguin Classic translation of

On the Nature of Things....

and Devoured.

One had the feeling in the context of having read, listened to or seen the works of  Dante, Botticelli, Vivaldi...Galileo, Newton...Voltaire, Darwin, Freud, Jefferson...Seurat,  Einstein and many others that one had found

the Mother Lode...

a Source Code by this young Epicurean

Lucretius

composed about 50 BCE.

Little had been know but that he disappeared for a thousand years and died at the age of 43.

I devoured the Book's Poem

and with some youthful arrogance

with my Spiderman's wrist-web set about linking threads to create a Muir Net that tied  many Great Thinkers of Recent  History Together...Atomic Theory, Gravity...the Renaissance and Enlightenment's Theistic Discernment...Pointillism and Relativity all the way to Jefferson's On the  Pursuit of Happiness...

now to Myself.

I had begun doing a series of  3-dimensional Paintings and Sculpture Portraits in Plaster of various Figures and Subjects to which I found Kinship and whom I Admired...among them them Lucretius

Detail ( with Enlightenment Lightbulb)

Bust of Lucretius (Plaster and Wire Mesh)

by Peter G Pereira - 1986

 LUCRETIUS
(De Rerum Natura)
On the Nature of Things

The Poem (Opening Stanzas) BOOK I

...Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,


Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars

Makest to teem the many-voyaged main

And fruitful lands- for all of living things

Through thee alone are evermore conceived,

Through thee are risen to visit the great sun-

Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,

Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,

For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,

For thee waters of the unvexed deep

Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky

Glow with diffused radiance for thee!

For soon as comes the springtime face of day,


And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,

First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,

Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,

And leap the wild herds round the happy fields

Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,

Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee

Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,

And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,

Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,

Kindling the lure of love in every breast,


Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,


Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou alone


Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught

Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,

Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,

Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse


Which I presume on Nature to compose

For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be

Peerless in every grace at every hour-

Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words

Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest

O'er sea and land the savage works of war,

For thou alone hast power with public peace

To aid mortality; since he who rules

The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,

How often to thy bosom flings his strength

O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love-

And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,

Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,

Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath

Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined

Fill with thy holy body, round, above!

Pour from those lips soft syllables to win

Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!

For in a season troublous to the state

Neither may I attend this task of mine

With thought untroubled, nor mid such events

The illustrious scion of the Memmian house

Neglect the civic cause.

Whilst human kind

Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed

Before all eyes beneath Religion- who

Would show her head along the region skies,

Glowering on mortals with her hideous face-

A Greek it was who first opposing dared

Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,

Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke

Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky

Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest

His dauntless heart to be the first to rend

The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.

And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;

And forward thus he fared afar, beyond

The flaming ramparts of the world, until

He wandered the unmeasurable All.

Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports

What things can rise to being, what cannot,

And by what law to each its scope prescribed,

Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.

Wherefore Religion now is under foot,

And us his victory now exalts to heaven.

I know how hard it is in Latian verse

To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,

Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find

Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;

Yet worth of thine and the expected joy

Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on

To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,

Seeking with what of words and what of song

I may at last most gloriously uncloud

For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view

The core of being at the centre hid.

And for the rest, summon to judgments true,

Unbusied ears and singleness of mind

Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged

For thee with eager service, thou disdain

Before thou comprehendest: since for thee

I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,

And the primordial germs of things unfold,

Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies


And fosters all, and whither she resolves


Each in the end when each is overthrown.


This ultimate stock we have devised to name


Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,


Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.
 

Detail (Lifesize Bust) of Lucretius

Peter G Pereria 1988

Publishing Lucretius - The Blog 5/25/2012