Lucretius and Progress Author(s): Charles Rowan Beye Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Jan., 1963), pp. 160-169 Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3294955 Accessed: 23/10/2008 14:22 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=camws. 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The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical Journal. http://www.jstor.org LUCRETIUS AND PROGRESS LUCRETIUS' ACCOUNT of man's existence putable and has been disputed.7 It can (5.925-1457, or, if you will, 5.805- be argued that there is very explicit 1457) appears to be a formal exposi- evidence in the poem that for Lucretius tion of the Epicurean conception of poetry has the power to lighten the ob- progress,1 which is essentially optimis- scurity of the subject (4.8-9); that he tic. However, the poetic setting for this has a marked predilection for very con- doctrine seems rather to evoke the pes- crete and immediately perceptible simistic mood of Hesiod's description of evidence, leading him to concrete de- the Ages of Man (Erga 109-201). True scription, for which he conceives poetry enough, Epicurean notions of the physi- to be a superior medium. One can, how- cal world projected its eventual decay,2 ever, I think, distinguish another and so that a hint of the moribund in a very real motive for Lucretius. The statement of man's progress is not out proem to the fourth book (also at of place,3 although progress must al- 1.926ff.) is his statement of poetic pur- ways take its definition from temporal pose, so to speak. Here he dwells upon assumptions.4 Lucretius' description a quality of poetry that antiquity had has its ramifications in the special at- noticed since first the Muses remarked titudes and images that he has de- upon it to Hesiod in the Theogony, and veloped in earlier books,5 and when that is its capacity for falseness. The these conflict with the implications of lucida carmina partake of the musaeum the formal doctrine a critic may be led lepor (8-9), and it is these suaviloquen- to judgments such as Patin's famous tia carmina (20-21) that deceive any phrase "anti-Lucrece chez Lucrece" or resisting yet thinking person into ac- Logre's diagnosis6 of a pathological cepting the doctrine. I use the word state of anxiety. But the confusions and thinking purposely; no one else could conflicts which appear are the inevita- have been intended as able to work ble consequence of giving a poetic treat- through the philosophy which Lucretius ment to a subject that calls for prose. is expounding. Yet, curiously enough, it The objective outlines of the thesis is for such a one that Lucretius feels im- which the rational mind controls grow pelled to find some Siren charm. We obscured and distorted in the imagistic do gain the impression that the lucida freight of the poem, for this springs carmina may, after all, be glittering, but from a personal, direct and irrational not necessarily conducive to lucidity. conscious. To my mind, Lucretius subconscious- Why, then, did Lucretius choose poet- ly recognized the pseudos in poetry ry as his medium? The matter is dis- and chose poetry because he could let LUCRETIUS AND PROGRESS 161 himself be confused by it. Rationally, In the earlier books Lucretius devel- he admired the Epicurean doctrine; ops a portrait of man and his environ- irrationally, he could not accept it. He ment for which the fifth book is final was, however, consciously determined summation. Among the features of this to introduce it to a Roman audience. portrait there stand out his images of Vergil's triumph in the Georgics was to life and death. They are conceived dilute the informational element of his spatially and in shades. Life is that subject to such a degree that it would which is ordered, known, tangible, and not impinge upon his poetry. Lucretius, bounded off. The poet speaks of the of course, does not do this, and the very coasts of light (passim), the boundary pronounced tone of protestation in the of life (3.592), the threshold of life De rerum natura is testimony to the (3.681), the chain of life (3.599) or the continual tension between the doctrine road of life (2.10). Death as well, we and his poetic sensibilities. may assume, is an area set off, although In the discussion which follows I conceived only in terms of its entrance, should be hard put to define at any point never its spatial totality (i.e., the gate how conscious Lucretius was of the of death 1.1112; 3.67; 5.373-375; the logically irreconcilable things he was threshold of death 2.960). One gains the saying. The very subject matter of the impression that life is a finite, known atomic world, of the natural world with entity; death remains mysterious, sim- its night and day, suggest images that ply that which is outside this entity. can be easily and naturally extended to The images of light continually at- their archetypal associations, associa- tached to life, as in the frequent ex- tions that are quite beyond the initial pression "shores of light" and others, intent of the poet. This may be called create a new dimension;10 death, con- slipshod poetry, but the mannered and versely, is dark, although because it is compulsive craftsmanship of today's usually implied rather than described, poetic image-makers is a new thing. the aura of mystery remains. Twice Furthermore, the poem is long. By the (3.39; 2.580) it is so stated as being dark. time Lucretius has reached this point Instinctively one attaches to light the in the fifth book he has amply played sensation of knowledge and the certain, with the potentials of these ideas so and Lucretius has introduced this asso- that innumerable associations are now ciation more than once, together with ready in the reader's mind.' its counterpart, that ignorance and un- Lucretius managed to bring off a certainty are dark (1.144-5; 1.1115-7; poem that supposedly comforts persons 2.15; 2.54; 2.55-61 et passim). Fear is shot through with incurable and un- also darkness (2.59 et passim) and yielding fear; yet this poem mirrors black (4.173). again and again the fears of the in- The relationship that the poet sets tended reader. Lucretius, it seems, was up between light and understanding is holding a dialogue with his unconscious, a theme recurring in small ways. For not writing for an external audience. instance, at 5.1102-1107 it partially pro- Perhaps part of the continual excite- vides the means of the transition. ... ment that a reading of the De rerum cibum coquere ac flammae mollire va- natura engenders stems from coming pore/ sol docuit juxtaposed to .. suddenly upon this nervous, private dia- victum . ./ commutare . monstra- logue, and trying to assign the lines to bant . igni/ ingenio qui praestabant. its participants. There are many points of agreement; 162 CHARLES ROWAN BEYE the words to which I refer are itali- tively good - and knowledge-- doctri- cized. The relationship, imagistic and nally good -prevail. It is bounded, and otherwise, which Lucretius is trying to from it mortals pass through a gate to develop between life-light-self-under- the dark, unsure, unsettled, moving un- standing, as well as that between their known that is death. This corresponds opposites, is evoked in the simile of the very nearly to the repeated scientific injured eye at 3.408ff. And even as the definition of death (1.670-1 et passim), poet has set up a relationship between although the latter is without these emo- life and light, introducing the intuitive tional overtones. The conception of life sensation of certainty and knowledge as an unstable breath invests the image into that, so he formally acknowledges of the bounded, lighted area that is life the importance of understanding for with an underlying insecurity, makes of life. The mind is the keeper of life death a constant threat, which only a (3.396); as the seat of the emotions it slightly greater shock will summon per- is also the personality of the individual manently for man. So that despite the (3.136-160; 3.396-407). Death is the total emphasis upon the necessity for a neu- loss of identity (3.830-69).