The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

The thesis and tone of The Swerve echo Jacob Burckhardt's now somewhat discredited 19th century characterization of the Italian Renaissance with its celebrations of life and beauty as a "return to paganism" (as though the Middle Ages didn't have its festivals and gai savoir). Burckhardt's book may be outdated as history but is nevertheless a masterpiece of Romantic historiography that repays rereading. Greenblatt is no Burckhardt, but it sounds like his book will also be valuable - even only insofar as it is successful in familiarizing contemporary readers with the role of characters like the colorful Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla and their manuscript-hunting Humanist confreres, many of whom were employees, like Poggio himself, of the Papal court.

Greenblatt seriously overstates the role of Lucretius, whose influence, until the mid to late 18th century was arguably quite marginal. Peter Gay's The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism, unfortunately not mentioned by Greenblatt, deals at length with the influence of Lucretius on French Enlightenment thinkers, many of whom really were "pagans", i.e., materialists and epicureans. The standard view, of course, is that a revival of Platonic idealism, not of "pagan" materialism, was responsible for the Renaissance preoccupation with beauty and harmony.

Poggio's fifteenth century discovery of the manuscript of Lucretius's De rerum natura was not commented on much by Renaissance humanists, who confined themselves to remarks about Lucretius's grammar and syntax. It was printed in 1511 with a commentary by Denys Lambin, who termed Lucretius's Epicurean ideas "fanciful, absurd, and opposed to Christianity" -- and Lambin's preface remained standard until the nineteenth century. Epicurus's unacceptable doctrine that pleasure was the highest good, writes Jill Kraye, "ensured the unpopularity of his philosophy". See Jill Kraye's "Philologists and Philosophers" in the Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism [1996], p. 153-154.

If Renaissance Humanists such as Valla and Erasmus seemed to paradoxically endorse Epicureanism, it was in a Christianized and Platonized form in which love of God and life of virtue were seen as the highest pleasures. They certainly did not endorse Lucretius's materialism and they probably didn't even see the significance of his belief in atoms. Montaigne in his Essays, on the other hand, quotes Lucretius repeatedly, often without attribution, indicating that Lucretius's naturalism, if not his Epicureanism, was appealing to him.

In The Swerve, Greenblatt describes the fascinating 1989 identification of Montaigne's personal annotated copy of Lucretius. Greenblatt also cites Pietro Redondi's controversial portrayal of Gallileo as a closet materialist, while gliding hurriedly over the many objections that have been raised to Redondi's assertions. As a liberal and believer in science, myself, I fully sympathize with Greenblatt's predilections. He is a lively writer, but I think the public would have been better served by more balanced presentations, such as can be found, for example, in the writings of Anthony Grafton, who is especially good on humanism during transitional period between the Renaissance and the French Enlightenment. Grafton also traces the interrelationship of humanism and modern liberal ideas in a way that is attractive and convincing.

In the early 15th century Western Europe was just emerging from a couple of centuries of plague, famine, and conflict. Led by the city states of northern Italy, the Europeans were attempting to find their footing, and to do so they looked back 1500 years or more to the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. Scholarly humanists began to search out and restudy old scrolls and ancient manuscripts in order to relearn much of what had been lost during the Dark Ages. Of these none was more important than Poggio Bracciolini, a papal secretary whose Pope had been overthrown and replaced, and who dealt with his loss of power and income by searching monasteries in Germany and Switzerland for forgotten scripts. His greatest discovery was Lucretius' long poem On The Nature Of Things, which he copied and had distributed, ensuring that it became a seminal document of the emerging Renaissance.

Lucretius had been a Epicurean philosopher during the Roman Empire, who taught that the soul did not survive death and that all living things were made up tiny particles or atomi. Epicureans called on people to enjoy a good life (not a hedonistic one as is often supposed) without worrying about the wrath of God or the gods, who did not concern themselves with anything so insignificant as human affairs. This has a modern ring to us, as it should since Lucretius' writings, as Stephen Greenblatt so ably shows, helped to shape the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Lucretius' ideas were unwelcome to many in the Church hierarchy, and those who followed his ideas were often in danger of perseuction or even execution.

Stephen Greenblatt has produced a fascinating chronicle of Lucretius, Poggio, and the worlds they inhabited. Much of the book is concerned with Poggio's life and times, which were very long for the period and rich and full of incident. There is also much excellent material on the tumultuous political world the Church and secular powers struggled to dominate, as well as some fascinating discussion on how Lucretius probably came to create his poem and on how its rediscovery and publication influenced the world, whose development turned or "swerved" dramatically as a result of Lucretius and other classical writers renewed popularity.

The Swerve should become an essential part of the library of anyone interested in the late medieval and early Renaissance eras.

I consider myself to be a person in the modern camp. I am non-religious, scientifically minded and a humanist and when I heard about "Swerve", I had to read it. It seemed like red meat for me. Actually it was way too much red meat.
By the time I reached half way through the book, I was feeling such rage against the Roman Catholic Church that my heart was pounding. An institution raging in obscuritanism, mass delusion,murder and suppression of the mind had blotted out the advance of Western Civilization, until a scribe found an ancient poem. I put the book down and calmed down myself. Later on, I skimmed the last half of the book.
The problem with "Swerve" is that it is a polemic and it is trying to be something else. If you want a polemic against christianity and how it has ruined Western Civilization, I recommend Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Anti-Christ". Nietzsche admitted he was writing a polemic and he was one of best polemic writers of all time. The polemical nature of this book weakens it, since it seems that the fires have to be relit constantly and you get the impression that a lot of information is being left out that does not feed the fire.
Another problem with "Swerve", is the way Lucretius is handled. His poem is treated as the only spark that ignited generations of scientific minds in Western Civilization. It is utterly too simplistic. Indeed the Catholic Church itself harbored humanists and scientific thinkers before the Reformation caused them to shamefully over react later on. The dome of Saint Peter's Basilica was not built by other worldly delusional thinkers. Did the architects of St Peter's have a copy of Lucretius with them?
"Swerve" is an interesting read, but it is like I say sometimes after seeing a movie about a historical period. If you are interested enough in the subject, go read some books on it. If you are interested in how the world became modern, you need a lot of books, not just this one.

For the past 40 years Prof. Stephen Greenblatt has been an influential scholar of Renaissance literature. He truly does know his stuff. However, his influence has not always been seen as beneficial because of an unfortunate tendency towards questionable interpretation. Too often, his books resemble very tall, very unstable houses of cards - impressive, but liable to collapse at the slightest breath of critical analysis.

Greenblatt's Hot New Book is The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. "Modern," in his view, means "Non-Religious" and the swerve came when a 15th century Italian scholar, on a book-hunting tour through old German monasteries, stumbled across a copy of On the Nature of Things, a philosophic Latin poem written by Lucretius shortly before the birth of Christ. With the rediscovery of this one ancient manuscript, Greenblatt believes, the Western mind was able to liberate itself from religious dogma, rediscover the joy of living for this life (rather than the After-life), and create the Modern World we know today.

This narrative is more than a little over-the-top. It is also simply wrong, on two fundamental counts

Greenblatt believes that Lucretius' philosophy had been a dominant school of thought in the ancient world, but was stifled in the early centuries AD because it contradicted the doctrine of the Christian Church. He also believes that this same philosophy - rediscovered in the early 15th century - was the great Game-Changer in Renaissance thought. Neither belief is true.

Any competent historian of ancient philosophy knows that, far from being a dominant force, Epicureanism was actually a minor player in the world of Greco-Roman thought - much less popular and influential than its principle rivals, Stoicism and Platonism. The philosophy of Lucretius failed to catch on not because it was un-Christian, but because pagan Greeks and Romans found its dogma of the Randomness of the Universe so intellectually and spiritually unsatisfying. Stoicism and Platonism were very different, but both schools were convinced that we live in a Cosmos, not a Chaos. Both taught that our world is not an infinite collection of atoms bouncing around randomly and forming temporary - and meaningless - conglomerates of Being. It is the product of Providential Wisdom.

The Epicureanism of Lucretius was no more dominant after the Christian Middle Ages than it had been before. Throughout the 15th, 16th and early-17th centuries, Platonism and Stoicism (especially the former) were once again the schools of thought most enthusiastically revived, and most influential. To contradict just one example in Greenblatt's book, Botticelli's art was philosophically informed by the Renaissance Neoplatonism of Marsilio Ficino, not by Lucretius. In the early modern world as in pagan antiquity, Epicureanism occupied a position rather like today's American Libertarian Party - a fringe-movement with a few passionate devotees but no real clout.

Many scholars questioned Greenblatt's insights into Shakespeare (as found in his 2005 "speculative biography" of the Bard, Will in the World). I believe even more doubt will be heaped upon this very questionable reading of early modern philosophy.

The grandiose subtitle of The Swerve -- "How the World Became Modern" -- is not a real argument Stephen Greenblatt wanted to make in this or any book. Rather, it is the dull edge of his and his publisher's dishonest marketing scheme to make a superficial, sub-scholarly book sound revelatory. Nowhere does Greenblatt actually claim that Epicureanism, Lucretius or the rediscovery of De rerum natura made the world "modern." Greenblatt just feels they must have had *something* significant to do with it. To this vague thesis he adds further confusion by frequently characterizing Christianity as being opposed to Epicureanism and modernity even though every figure he credits as having aided in the spread of Epicureanism was a Christian or some type of theist. Frequently (but most often buried in his endnotes), Greenblatt quietly admits this opposition between Christianity and Epicureanism is historically baseless. He qualifies his tendentious points so much it's clear they are simply the wrong points to try to make.

Greenblatt is at his best when he is illuminating history and advancing a very specific argument by telling a thick, highly contextualized story. His notoriously speculative claims are at least plausible, complete, and reasonably specific when they are based on intricate, well-sourced details. Unfortunately, the only parts of The Swerve that meet this standard are the chapters focused on Poggio Bracciolini and his world in Florence or the papal court. The material on the ancient world is much slighter. Much of it is nothing more than facile polemic against the church in its first centuries, which Greenblatt manages to present as a monolithic, oppressive force even when Christians were being fed to lions.

Medievalists will not appreciate Greenblatt's treatment of later Christianity either. He reduces nearly a millenia in the Latin west to a portrait of self-flagellating, corrupt, ignorant monks and nuns. Renaissance and Reformation scholars can only be embarrassed by the complete lack of recognition of reform movements before and after the Protestant Reformation began that Greenblatt must concede were far more enlightening and progressive in their impact than Lucretius. Worst of all, there is no depth coverage of the modern era at all in a book that purports to be about exactly that. Nowhere does Greenblatt even attempt to define modernity. Contemporary experts on that subject (e.g., Charles Taylor) are absent from his notes and bibliography. The last chapter rushes through a half dozen major figures and issues from the 16th to the 19th centuries to end with some paragraphs about Thomas Jefferson, apparently Greenblatt's idea of the greatest modern Epicurean.

Even if you take The Swerve as being more of a personal case for Epicureanism rather than a historical study of its transmission and influence, Greenblatt hamstrings his efforts by refusing to engage the most substantial challenges to Epicureanism as an ethically and politically viable philosophy. Like Jefferson's fellow slave-owing Roman predecessors, Greenblatt never seriously considers that the idea of organizing society based on individual pleasure-seeking might in practice be no different than unchecked self-interest of any kind. Nothing in Epicureanism specifically rules out the exploitation of carefully maintained servile populations. Machiavelli's view of religion as useful in maintaining a servile public is briefly mentioned, but Greenblatt characterizes Machiavelli as a skeptical fellow traveller. Thomas More's portrayal of the same idea in Utopia, however, is attacked as reaction against Epicureanism because More seems to indicate (like Plato) that fear of death and divine judgment are needed to keep most people from behaving destructively. Examples abound of Greenblatt prejudicially playing favorites like this, which may just speak to his deeply conflicted feelings about religion. Much like his telling of Poggio's life, Greenblatt may be reluctant to accept that truth does not necessarily support social order, and social order is not the same as justice, but you can't have justice without order.

Curiously, whereas Hamlet in Purgatory started with an anecdote about Greenblatt following his father's wishes to be remembered in traditional Jewish prayers for the dead, The Swerve begins with an anecdote about Greenblatt's mother suffering from and inflicting upon her son considerable anxiety about death. From this story Greenblatt embarks on his real argument, which is not that the modern world is Epicurean but that it isn't Epicurean nearly enough, thanks to the continued prevalence of religious ideas that keep people afraid of death and dying. Whereas the earlier book took seriously the idea that religious beliefs and superstition can provide real personal and societal benefits regardless of their truth or falsity, The Swerve swerves in the opposite direction, portraying religion as a wholly negative force. Whatever the cause, this makes for a shallow and immature book that really ought to be about the ways that ancient, medieval and early modern European elites (Christians all) entertained and preserved (rather than obstructed) a tradition of radical skepticism up until tolerance for it was broken and elites were driven by the ideological polarization and social upheaval of the 16th century into either dogmatic camps or a slowly opening secular space defined by scientific rationalism and increasingly indifference if not hostility to religion.

I too found the lone star negative review too narrowly argued, and throw my own four stars into the pot. Judging by Maureen Corrigan's recent NPR review, Greenblatt's THE SWERVE has an interest well beyond his possibly shaky claim that Lucretius sudden availability sparked the Renaissance revival of scientific humanism. More importantly, those who will now want to read Lucretius may do so in a splendid verse translation by Alicia Stalling (Penguin, 2006). Stallings was awarded a MacArthur two days ago. Her brilliance as a translator, as well her talents as a wise and scintillating poet, who knows how to bring home rhyme after rhyme, and bon mot after bon mot, out of left field is widely respected.

This book is most definitely NOT about "How the World Became Modern." It should have been titled "The Intrepid Pagan Book Hunter."
1. 95% of this book is about the life and times of Poggio in the 15th century and how he found the Lucretius poem - "On the Nature of Things." There is bit on the small amount actually known about Lucretius himself.
2. The last chapter is basically an epilogue that mentions various individuals who were aware of the poem and/or had copies. He seems to make a big deal of Thomas Jefferson having had five copies.
3. There is zero substantive evidence of how this particular poem had profound impact on key figures who actually did contribute to making the world modern: Galileo, Newton, Watt, Darwin, Einstein, Bohr, Lister, Keynes and many, many others.
4. He never defined what he means by "modern." The implication is that modern means abandoning the dogma of the Catholic church and embracing science. I am 100% in favor of abandoning dogma and embracing science, however, Lucretius' poem in not science. It is speculation and philosophy. He had no more tangible basis for his ideas, including atoms, (which Greenblatt harps on about endlessly) than the notion of the elements being earth, wind and fire.
5. To have actually delivered on the advertised topic of the book, he needed to have shown how modern scientific ideas developed, who developed these ideas (see very partial list in item 2 above) and what specific impact the Lucretius poem had on them compared to and contrasted with the plethora of other influencing factors.
6. The book is hugely inflated with barely relevant digressions and many irrelevant details. He constantly uses long lists of descriptors when a single word would be better; he includes lengthy quotes from individuals of no relevance to making the world modern; but far fewer direct quotes from "On the Nature of Things."

If your passion is the hunt in the 15th century for writings from ancient Rome, this is the book for you. If you are actually interested in "How the World Became Modern," this book is an exasperating total waste of time.

I went on Amazon to order the Swerve after hearing a discussion on the radio. Generally I enjoy reading the reviews. Many are by experts in the field, others by those like me who have interest in many areas outside our careers. I found the negative review of Greenblatt's text informative if only to realize that many post opinions based only on opinion and not familiarity with the text the criticize. And so, I restrained from writing review until I had read the text.
The Swerve is much better than the review on the radio. This week Sarah Blakewell reviewed the Swerve in the NYT. Understandably as the penultimate chapter discusses Montaigne's reading and commenting on Lucretius. I do enjoy Blakewell's "How to Live or A Life of Montaigne" but her prose is not as felicitous as Greenblatt's. Yet she too has multiple anecdotes and insights into historical people and times which keep the reader alert.
These two popular texts along with 1493 involve the reader in periods of history often missed by students. All have insights into the difficulties of life today as seen in the history of our world. And does one not read history if only to find information helpful for today?
That Lucretius and others claimed to be Epicureans may be problematic. I was raised believing that Epicureanism stood for abject hedonism, an anarchistic view of the world with visions of wine woman and song. That the words of Epicurus are not available is a small issue. That Epicureans as well as others over millennia who dared to discuss or believe other than that which is the thinking of the true believers have been persecuted, flayed, and burned at stake was common throughout history and in our own culture of hate.
The final paragraph of the Swerve notes that Jefferson and Adams, two stalwart political foes and grand friends, continued to correspond until the end. At one point Jefferson wrote what appears to be a paraphrase of Lucretius. That both are Epicureans may be a push, but they both were randy, one within and the other around and about marriage. I heartily recommend the Swerve.

This is a fabulous piece of popular intellectual history. For those of us who are not professional Historians but are nonetheless interested in how we got where we are, this is wonderful stuff. I was particularly interested in how the Church became obsessed with self-abnegation during the Dark Ages. Explains a lot. I have no idea how to judge if On The Nature Of Things is really as crucial as Greenblatt thinks, but it's a damn good story, regardless. And good stories are very useful.

I just finished "The Swerve" and must say I am a bit perplexed.

In the Preface, the author describes the reasons for his deep emotional attachment to "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius. My sense is that he let this emotional attachment get the better of him.

On page 68 (of the e-book) he states that "On the Nature of Things" is the work of a disciple who is transmitting ideas that had been developed centuries earlier. Epicurus, Lucretia's philosophical messiah, ......". Throughout the book, more reference seems to be made to Epicurus than Lucretius by the people that the author wants to propose as having been influenced by Lucretius. The final statement of the book, as if to emphasize how much the world has been changed by Lucretius is Thomas Jefferson's statement that he is an Epicuran.

So this reader is left with the question of why the focus on Lucretius? The answer to me can only be that the author found a good story in the discovery of a copy of the manuscript by a papal secretary, Poggio (and not the only one as seems to be alleged in the beginning - another was later found). And a good story it is, weaving us through the inner working of monasteries, the copying of manuscripts, papal intrigue, "book hunters", and the preservation of "pagan" manuscripts in Europe. What the author failed to do for this reader is convince me that "On the Nature of Things" caused, much less was significant to, the Renaissance. Much is made of the work describing atoms, as was described previously by Leuccippus and Democritus, and that life's ultimate goal is pleasure and the avoidance of pain, Epicurus' central tenet, as being supremely influential in moving the(western)world forward in its thinking, and some of these thoughts, over 2,000 years old are quite remarkable in their prescience, but by no means unique to Lucretius. But if these thoughts were so influential in moving the Renaissance forward did some of the clearly wrong claims in "On the Nature of Things" not hinder its development? This is not addressed.

Other critics have complained of its seeming anti-Catholic tone, and as a recovering Catholic, I sympathize with you. But I didn't find anything in the book unfair to the Catholic church of the time.

I found the book entertaining and enlightening in many respects, so 4 stars still.