The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (PDF)

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction • Winner of the National Book Award • New York Times BestsellerRenowned scholar Stephen Greenblatt brings the past to vivid life in what is at once a supreme work of scholarship, a literary page-turner, and a thrilling testament to the power of the written word.In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. He was Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery, Lucretius’ ancient poem On the Nature of Things, had been almost entirely lost to history for more than a thousand years.It was a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small material particles in eternal motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions. Its return to circulation changed the course of history. The poem’s vision would shape the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein, and—in the hands of Thomas Jefferson—leave its trace on the Declaration of Independence.From the gardens of the ancient philosophers to the dark chambers of monastic scriptoria during the Middle Ages to the cynical, competitive court of a corrupt and dangerous pope, Greenblatt brings Poggio’s search and discovery to life in a way that deepens our understanding of the world we live in now.“An intellectually invigorating, nonfiction version of a Dan Brown–like mystery-in-the-archives thriller.” —Boston Globe

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐”The Swerve” is a magnificent scholarly celebration of Poggio’s role in recovering this famous manuscript of Lucretius.There are only two full-scale biographies of Poggio Bracciolini. The only English one is William Shepherd’s

⭐(1837). [See my own Amazon review.] It shows its age. Some of the language can strike us as quaint. Many turns of phrase seem too long in coming to the point and flowery, in the 19th-century rhetorical style. On another hand, some formulations are sharp and strikingly concise. Long quotations in Latin (in the notes at the bottom of pages) are shown without translation. The lack of an initial table of contents and the lack of any kind of index are particularly irksome. In addition there are some errors in the text. For instance, Pope John XXIII is mislabeled XXII, following the renumbering of Gibbon, (as John XXI skipped the XX numbering, there had been no Pope John XX).It is helpful to check details and dates against the superior biography by the German scholar Ernst Walser,

⭐(German Edition, Berlin, 1914; Reprints: Georg Olms,1974; Nabu Press, 2011), which remains by far the most complete biography to-date, with more recent, accurate, and detailed information than William Shepherd’s, but unfortunately not translated into English.Poggio was marked by the passion of his teachers for books and writing, inspired by the first generation of Italian humanists centered around Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), who had revived interest in the forgotten masterpieces of Livy and Cicero, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) and Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406).Poggio joined the second generation of civic humanists forming around Salutati. Resolute in glorifying “studia humanitatis” (the study of “humanities”, a phrase popularized by Leonardo Bruni), learning (studium), literacy (eloquentia), and erudition (eruditio) as the chief concern of man, Poggio ridiculed the folly of popes and princes, who spent their time in wars and ecclesiastical disputes instead of reviving the lost learning of antiquity.[See Anthony Grafton,

⭐, (Un. of Michigan Press, 1997).]The literary passions of the learned Italians in the new Humanist Movement, which were to influence the future course of both Renaissance and Reformation, were epitomized in the activities and pursuits of this self-made man, who rose from the lowly position of scribe in the Roman Curia to the privileged role of apostolic secretary. He became devoted to the revival of classical studies amid conflicts of popes and antipopes, cardinals and councils, in all of which he played an official part as first-row witness, chronicler and (often unsolicited) critic and adviser.After John XXIII had been elected pope (later labeled antipope) by the dissident Council of Pisa (May 1410), he was deposed by the Council of Constance in May 1415, while Gregory XII abdicated in July 1415, as agreed with the Council to clear the way to a restoration of a unified papacy.Poggio’s duties had called him to the Council of Constance in 1414, following John XXIII. After John XXIII’s termination, the papal office in Italy remained vacant for two years, which gave Poggio some forced leisure time in 1416-17.He indulged in some welcome relaxation from the papal court environment. In the spring of 1416 (sometime between March and May), Poggio visited the baths at the German spa of Baden. In a long letter to Nicolli, he reported his discovery of a “Epicurean” lifestyle — one year before finding Lucretius — where men and women bathe together, barely separated, in minimum clothing: “I have related enough to give you an idea what a numerous school of Epicureans is established in Baden. I think this must be the place where the first man was created, which the Hebrews call the garden of pleasure. If pleasure can make a man happy, this place is certainly possessed of every requisite for the promotion of felicity.” Poggio also persevered in his pursuit of manuscript hunting, exploring the libraries of Swiss and Swabian abbeys. His great manuscript finds date to this period, 1415-1417. The treasures he brought to light at Reichenau, Weingarten, and above all St. Gall, retrieved from the dust and abandon many lost masterpieces of Latin literature, and supplied scholars and students with the texts of authors whose works had hitherto been accessible only in fragmented or mutilated copies.One of Poggio’s finds that has become especially famous was, in January 1417, in a German monastery (never named by Poggio, but probably Fulda), the discovery of the only manuscript of Lucretius’s “De Rerum Natura” known at the time. Poggio spotted the name, which he remembered as quoted by Cicero.This was a Latin poem of 7,400 lines, divided into six books, giving a full description of the world as viewed by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. It has been translated as “On the Nature of the Universe” (Oxford World’s Classics).The manuscript found by Poggio was not even preserved, but he sent the copy he had ordered to Niccolo Niccoli, who made a transcription in his beautiful book hand (the creator of italic script), which became the model for the more than fifty other copies circulating at the time. Poggio complained that Niccoli didn’t return his original copy for 14 years! Later two 9th-century manuscripts were discovered, the O (“Oblongus”, ca. 825) and Q (“Quadratus”) codices, now kept at Leiden University. The book was first printed in 1473.This miraculous discovery is the subject of Greenblatt’s magnificent book “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” (Sept. 2011). The book details the sensational discovery of the old Lucretius manuscript by Poggio. It describes the strange materialistic Epicurean physics based on the atomism of Democritus — the world is made only of atoms (irreducible, indestructible, non-divisibles), “the seeds of things”, forming objects through the random collision due to the clinamen, the “swerve” — and its ethics. Greenblatt analyzes the poem’s subsequent impact on the development of the Renaissance, the Reformation and modern science.The book won the 2011 National Book Award for Non-fiction, and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. It was well received by the public, although many critics contended that Greenblatt’s enthusiasm sounded hyperbolic, and doubted that the Lucretius manuscript had any immediate influence on the development of the European Weltanschauung.[See for instance David Quint’s review, “Humanism as Revolution”, (The New Republic, Sept. 28, 2011), and Anthony Grafton’s “The Most Charming Pagan”, (The New York Review of Books, Dec. 8, 2011)]Anthony Grafton remarked: The discovery can be seen as a miracle, since monks, “athletes of holiness” lived the opposite of Epicurus’s model life. “The monasteries, in Greenblatt’s account–a curious blend of ‘Gibbonian irony and Sadean relish’ –were not quiet, dignified centers for the performance of the liturgy and the copying of texts but ‘theaters of pain.’ Their inmates vied to torment themselves more effectively than their rivals, wielding everything from whips and chains to iron crosses fixed with nails into their bodies. In these houses of self-punishment, classical texts naturally aroused relatively little interest, and pleas for the pursuit of pleasure were stigmatized as especially evil. Only a swerve or two–the fact that a copy survived in a library that Poggio happened to explore–saved ‘On the Nature of Things’ from the extinction suffered by most of Epicurus’ own works.” However, concludes Grafton, “We never quite learn, in the end, how the world became modern…[But Greenblatt] has brought Lucretius a good many new readers, to judge from the fact that A.E. Stallings’s wonderful Penguin translation of the poem is now Amazon’s best-selling title under Poetry.”This discovery was enhanced by the translation from Greek into Latin of “The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius” (ca. 1430), including three full letters by Epicurus. This convergence introduced the philosophy of Epicurus to the mindset of the Italian humanists, and was noted essentially by philosophers and literary circles for its views on ethics and religion (understood in its original sense as the binding down power of beliefs) — its proclaimed indifference of gods to human affairs, who didn’t create the world either; its condemnation of superstitions; its ridiculing of the fear of death since the soul dies with the body; its dispelling the notion of founding morality on an illusory afterlife and its imagined terrors — and its advocation of the pursuit of beauty and pleasure (happiness) and the avoidance of pain. In fact, the new philosophy was seen as liberating thinking from the Christian worldview of asceticism and preoccupation with angels and demons, and indulging the pleasure of knowledge, the natural curiosity for the workings of the real world and history.[See the fundamental article by David Sedley, “Lucretius”, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, SEP, Aug. 2008) and Ronald G. Witt,

⭐(Cambridge Un. Press, March 2012)] Additional support came from a dialogue by Lorenzo Valla, “De Voluptate” (“On Pleasure”, 1431) revised as “De Vero Bono” (“On the True Good”, 1433), where Valla construed Epicurean “pleasure” as a component of Christian charity and beatitude, rejecting the classical association with Stoic virtue.[See the excellent article by Lodi Nauta, “Lorenzo Valla”, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, SEP, 2009)]The recovery of Lucretius’s iconoclastic poem had to face the hostility of the Catholic Church. Jerome had already “reported” that Lucretius had died in madness from a “love philter”. “The poet Titus Lucretius was born. Later he was turned mad by a love potion, but in the intervals in between the madness he composed some books, which Cicero afterwards edited. He killed himself when he was 44 years old.” In Chronological Tables, (ed. A. Schoene, 171st Olympiad 96-93 BC, 171.3).Epicurus’s philosophy was labeled as “atheism” by the Catholic Church, which tried to suppress Lucretius’s book.After teaching Epicurean philosophy was banned in Florence in 1513, Machiavelli (1469-1527) made his own copy by hand, and 16th-century scholars used Lucretius covertly, his book fuelling an underground counterculture opposed to the medieval ideas of the “gothic” Dark Age. This was the key period of Italian humanists launching the recovery of reason and liberation from faith and superstition through reconnecting with the Greco-Roman texts, as well described by John Addington Symonds in

⭐(7 vol., 1875-86), Voltaire and David Hume. Thomas More made the pursuit of pleasure the focal point of his

⭐(1516). Lucretius was repeatedly quoted by Montaigne in his

⭐(1580).[See Alison Brown,

⭐. (Harvard Un. Press, 2010)And Frederick Krantz, “Between Bruni and Machiavelli: History, Law, and Historicism in Poggio Bracciolini”, in

⭐(Cambridge Un. Press, 1987), p. 119-152.]This heralded the dramatic change of world focus that Greenblatt calls “the swerve” in Western civilization. Greenblatt quotes one of Epicurus’s disciples: Living with pleasure is impossible “without living prudently and honorably and justly, and also without living courageously and temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic.”This basic philosophy of pleasure and the need for friends, (later termed “pursuit of happiness”), was the key to Epicurus.It was grotesquely caricatured by Christian critics as unrestricted sensual indulgence. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), burnt at the stake as a “heretic” by the Inquisition (1600) had incorporated some of Lucretius’s ideas into his own cosmology and pantheism.[See Riccardo Fubini,

⭐, (transl. Martha King, Duke Un. Press, 2003).]Fuller recognition of Lucretius’s physics — its theory of atoms and the “swerve” — by modern physicists did not happen until at least the 17th century with the atomism of Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), while Isaac Newton (1642-1727) also declared his support for atomism.Lucretius’s modern-sounding views on evolution (of geology, nature, and primitive human society) were not acknowledged by scientists until the 18th century, when Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Charles’s grandfather, announced ideas of evolution in his poems “The Loves of the Plants” (1789) and “The Temple of Nature” (1803) . Thomas Jefferson owned eight editions of De Natura Rerum.[See, Gordon Lindsay Campbell, “Lucretius on Creation & Evolution”, (Oxford Un. Press, 2003)]Whoever has read Lucretius cannot forget his description of the three methods of primitive man’s love-making: woman’s own desire, man’s brutal force, or seduction with “pira lecta” (choice pears).”Et Venus in silvis jungebat corpora amantum;conciliabat enim vel mutua quamque cupidovel violenta viri atque inpensa libidover pretium, glandes atque arbita vel pira lecta.(Book V, 962-965)And Venus used to join the bodies of lovers;for either common desire attracted each womanor the violent force of a man and his excessive lustor a bribe, acorns and arbute-berries or choice pears.[See Robert D. Brown, “Lucretius on Love and Sex”, (Brill, 1987), in the series “Columbia Un. Studies in the Classical Tradition”]. The whole world of courtship in New York City remains driven by the sophisticated use of “pira lecta”. Ancient Greek materialist physics was the subject of Karl Marx’s Ph.D. thesis. Karl Marx started working on the materialism and atheism of the Greek atomists under the guidance of Bruno Bauer at Bonn University. Marx presented his thesis, “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature” to the more liberal Un. of Jena, which granted him his Ph.D. in April 1841. When Bauer was expelled, on express order of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, from his position as lecturer in theology in the spring of 1842 for his revolutionary ideas on the New Testament writings, Marx abandoned any hopes for an academic career.Both Harvard philosopher George Santayana and French philosopher Henri Bergson were strongly influenced by Lucretius’s ideas of evolution and ethics.Greenblatt has paid an outstanding homage to Lucretius and Poggio Bracciolini, two great figures of the Western World’s emancipation from the Middle Ages’ obscurantist Christian worldview into a modern vision of humanism — based on the retrieval of Greco-Roman texts, literacy, education, experimental knowledge, and centered on human aspirations — bringing our horizon back from the celestial heaven of angels and demons down to earth, and the reality of what the ancient Greeks called polis, nature and our cosmos.

⭐Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt received many honors and acclimations since it was published earlier this year and these accolades are justly deserved. This is one of the best, most erudite books to be published in years. If anyone wants to understand the differences between Blue staters and Red staters, this is the book that does it. Along with making a credible claim that Botticelli, Descartes, Shakespeare, Newton, Galileo, Thomas Jefferson, Montaigne, the philosophes, Greenblatt demonstrates how Lucretius created the secular culture that is behind the development of human liberty that came with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.The Middle Ages, with its focus on religion and viewing things through a “spiritual lens,” probably was about as intellectually stimulating for the average person as life in Mao’s China during the cultural revolution only it lasted for 1,000 years.. One viewed nature and the natural world as re-enforcing the rules of Bible and that there were no laws or science that could mitigate man’s life on earth. There are a number of factors that lifted western man out of this abyss-Kenneth Clark viewed the advancement of civilization as something that occurred by the skin of its teeth. However the gradual rediscovery of ancient texts certainly played a part by shifting the intellectual focus away from pointless theological squabbles and onto useful knowledge. The discovery of the concept of “zero,” something acquired following the fall of Cordova and the rediscovery of Aristotle is example. However there was much more to be rediscovered.The ancient world was one of choices and lacked the stifling unity that an official church or religion usually insists upon. There was more than just Aristotle and Cicero as book hunters would discover over the next 300 years and these would shakeup civilization immensely.Greenblatt makes a strong case that if any book had an impact on Western Civilization, it was “On the Nature of Things” by Lucretius. During ancient times, there were a number of schools that existed in Athens along with those founded by Plato and Aristotle. There were Stoics and Cynics. However the epicureans and their materialist view of life and emphasis on simple pleasure were a group apart.Lucretius was a Roman who lived in the last days of the Roman republic whose work was know for influencing both Virgil and Horace (who appeared about a generation after). The epicureans, with their emphasis on earthly pleasure and denunciation of the creaky metaphysics of Plato, were a group apart from many philosophers. They also tended to regard the world as a collection of atoms and space, which was in a constant state of flux, of creation and destruction, quite at odds with Aristotle’s notion of substances being permanent.Lucretius also urged man to give up the fears that lead to his tendency to create gods and religions as means of addressing them. Lucretius believed that this fear could be dismissed if man understood that the world was a series of atoms and natural phenomenon. In a sense it was about expectations. Grandiose expectations fueled great fears fueled great irrationalities. In Aristotle all things may have had their purpose and role in an orderly universe, Lucretius felt matter was capable of all manner of random activity. The gods were too distant to notice or care about the concerns of man.While the ideas of the epicureans were held in disdain by other schools, in those days in which there was not an authority to condemn ideas, this disdain was limited to polemical tracts, many of which were lost.The destruction of classical civilization was part of the cultural agenda of the Middle Ages. If it did not reinforce Christian dogma it was dangerous and so texts were allowed to disintegrate. Hundreds of works are no more and remained unknown by most of Western Europe for almost 1000 years.The rediscovery of Aristotle who was very important in the development of Islamic civilization, served as spur the search for other books. Far from being only a high-minded pursuit, many of these books were supposed to have magical properties. Given the choice between a book on Egyptian magic or Plato’s Symposium, a Florentine merchant opted for the former.The rediscovery of Lucretius by Poggio Bracciolini, a papal bureaucrat searching for manuscripts of ancient texts in 1417 allowed for the ideas of materialism to live anew. Over time, as Greenblatt demonstrates, this rediscovery would cause a shift in the intellectual firmament and enrich the civilization of the west. The return of Lucretius would provide the background for Botticelli’s “Primavera” (this is a pictorial take on the opening line of “On the Nature of Things”). Many elements of Lucretius found their way into the works of Shakespeare, the materialist view, which stood in opposition to Aristotle’s orderly universe, would also promote the scientific enquiries ranging from Copernicus, Newton and Galileo.

⭐This is a superb book in the practical aspects of how to live that is liberating. The core philosophy of Epicurus and Lucretius from 2,000 years ago may summed up in a sentence: “If you can hold on to and repeat to yourself the simplest fact of existence – atoms and void and nothing else your life will change.” No more fear of Jove’s wrath or of disease or of death. “You will be freed from a terrible affliction.”Christianity stifled this philosophy for centuries. In the Middle Ages the consequences of mentioning this belief led to many being burned alive. I suppose the modern equivalent is the one star review for a book that was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2012.

⭐Very well written, interesting and entertaining account of how a single powerful and counter-cultural idea changed the world, twice. I read it alongside Deidre McCloskey’s Borgeois Equality, as light relief, and it is a good complement; they are both about the freedom to think. (I was pleased that she mentions Greenblatt, in passing, about halfway through.)If you’re interested in the history of ideas – or the battle for ideas – this is a fascinating account of one of them.The Epicurean idea that we emerge into existence from atoms, and then disappear entirely, so just get on with existing while you can, (if I can paraphrase!) doesn’t really tell us much about exactly how we should get on with it, but it is an idea that resonates with anyone who likes thinking about that question. Far from promoting selfishness it has lead to many thinkers coming up with generally constructive ideas about how to live virtuously. For example it influenced the thinking behind the American Declaration of Independence.So all in all a thought provoking and entertaining read.

⭐A book about a poem written over 2,000 years ago by a minor Greek philosopher and discovered by a fifteenth century papal secretary does not sound riveting reading to me. But a Pulitzer Prize winning book recommended by Richard Wrangham – Booker Prize shortlisted author. And the poem on which the book is based influenced the American Declaration of Independence – Thomas Jefferson owned five copies of the poem in Latin plus translations in French, Italian and English. And at least half a dozen heretics were burned at the stake for promulgating its ideas. Maybe worth reading?Lucretius, with his poem On the Nature of Things written in 200BC, caused the world to swerve in a new direction in the fifteenth century. The agent of change was not a revolution or a dramatic catastrophe. It was Poggio Bracciolini – a short, genial avid book hunter who discovered the manuscript and ordered it to be copied many times.Greenblatt maintains that this epicurean treatise helped move European thought from the repressive Christian Middle Ages to the Renaissance and its appreciation of science, painting, music, architecture, literature and pleasure; that it suffused Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific and technological explorations, Galileo’s vivid dialogues on astronomy, Francis Bacon’s research projects, Machiavelli’s analysis of political strategy and Robert Burton’s account of mental illness.The book at once reads like a thriller but at the same time makes one feel very humble. Ambitious thought leaders played for high stakes in promoting an epicurean and scientific approach to life. Christians found Epicureanism a noxious threat. If you grant Epicurus his claim the soul is mortal, the whole fabric of Christian morality unravels. The Inquisition would dispute his claim.It is one book about an ancient poem worth reading.

⭐I first read Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura when the Penguin Classics edition was published. I have dipped into it a number of times since. From my first acquaintance with it I was struck by its incredible insight though inaccurate ‘modernity’ that revealed the poet’s exceptional imagination working simply on his intuition. The poem is unlike anything else in Roman Literature. Until I read this account of its amazing discovery, I was unaware of the consequences for many as it became more and more challenging to the struggle to maintain the Roman Catholic doctrine, protected so firmly by the Inquisition.I was equally unaware of its significance to Renaissance thought.As if that was not interesting enough, the series of excursions into the world of corrupt popes, sincere but misguided theologians and unforgiving clerics who pursued those who dared to support its views right to the funeral pyre. The shameful church history is simply written in this account of how ‘the new philosophy calls all in doubt’.The book also explores Epicureanism as a background to it central theme.On first reading what I say so far, you may well feel that this book is another atheistic attack on Christianity. As a practising Catholic, I do not find this to be the case. It is a revelation of the unwillingness of the Christian Church to recognise the impact of science. It is also a sharp prompt for the reader to consider exactly what you believe, what you doubt and what you know now to be untrue.I may have given the impression that it is a much repeated study of church history not worthy of your time. I assure you its implications go much wider. Religion, religious intolerance, conflict over religious practice dictate peace and conflict in our world today. Atheists are not content to dismiss belief, they set out to ridicule it. A thoughtful reader can draw much to think about within the compass of the twenty-first century. This is not a book to ignore. LOOK INSIDE and buy it if you are prepared to read with genuine concern about the way the religious and secular worlds clash. It is a very good read. My Kindle was hardly out of my hand.

⭐One of the best books that I have read for a very long time. It will also make you want to save every library that we still have left, as the written word is so powerful and when the internet goes down we won’t have any .

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