Lucretius and Sappho: The Poetic Discourse

Nice Title. I will write more about Lucretius here, mainly because I take the point that Sappho was simply to be read for it's beauty without an analysis of it's time and structure and it's place in our debate between Reason and Passion. To me, fragment 31 stands out as the signpost for why we read her today: a dismissal of politics and mythology as things that stand for love in her world. She then celebrates, oddly, not a love she shares with someone, but her sadness at not being able to see her friend who is gone. The heartbreak in the poem is so poignant, small and so human.

Some say an army on horseback,
some say on foot, and some say ships
are the most beautiful things
on this black earth,
but i say
it is whatever you love.

It's easy to show this. Just look
at Helen, beautiful herself
beyond everything human,
and she left
her perfect husband and went
sailing off to Troy
without a thought for her child
or her dear parents, led astray

lightly

reminding me of Anactoria,
who is gone
and whose lovely walk
and bright
shimmering face
I would rather see
than all the chariots
and armed men in Lydia

but it cannot be

humans
pray to share

unexpectedly


Simple images like "this black earth" and "bright..... shimmering face" compose a picture of ourselves so powerful and undeniable that it's hard to imagine arguing with it. Hard to imagine denying it as an expression of it's, and our time.

I suppose that that is what I liked most about the poetry, and the answer to the big question, for me: "Why do We Read This Book?". I think we read it for the same reason we read any poetry: to understand our selves as human beings. It gave me an insight into just how human they were in those times. No different, no less complex than we are today. We like to imagine that technology is the great divide between our times and all others, but it hasn't changed our essential human needs, desires, and means of relating to the world and each other.

It still comes down to guns and butter.

And so now comes Lucretius. A poem about the foundation of our universe and our race. Swinging for the fences, he is. However, his main goal can be simplified, if possible, to the notion that he wishes to remove man from his fear of death which he feels drives us to evil (ambition, envy), and that we can rid ourselves of it by "observing Nature's laws and looking at her face" 1-91.

I suppose for the purposes of a "book report", I should go through my notes first. It's interesting in one sense, coming back to the work a week or two after we've moved on. My impressions have shifted now that we're reading Christian philosophy. So I won't stick to my notes too long.

But I did start with the Big Question: Why Are We Reading This?. And I wrote that little is known about Lucretius except that he was Roman and wrote this one poem. He most likely wrote other things, but they are lost, and that is most likely because he seemed to make very little impression on his immediate culture and time. He didn't organize his philosophy, it is from the Epicurans; nor did he imagine his science, much of it coming from the ancient Atomists, although he did add the notion of the" swerve". He didn't invent the didactic poem, although he seems to have perfected it's use in Roman literature along with Homer. So why do we read it?

Like Sappho, I think the answer lies in the undeniable humanity expressed in the form he chooses. By humanity, I mean the indivisible combination of Passion and Reason that describes us best. (Isn't this the point of this whole thing?)

Even though he rails against religious superstition and calls fervently for man to adopt a philosophical life, he does so with intense passion, vibrant imagery, logic, humour, and moreover, he does it all in rhyme. He tries to dismiss his use of the poetic form (1-932) as a necessary panacea to get people to swallow a bitter medicine, but I don't believe that a cold, passionless mind could sustain the exercise with nearly the success that Lucretius does.

It feels as though Lucretius, bound by the demands of his age - a culture of superstition and fear, an insecure warlike State, early, often violent death, a rigid hierarchical society - was trying to create an expression of his inner humanity. His belief system writ large. It feels like a way of extending himself to a larger world in hopes of finding an audience, and of moving them the way he was moved in his life. He wanted to be free, and free his fellow man as well:

"The mind seeks explanation. Since the universe extends forever out beyond those ramparts at which our world ends, the mind forever yearns to peer into infinity, to project beyond and outside itself, and there to soar free." (II, 1045)

I think I'd like to leave it at that. I will post notes from the class discussion which cover the questions asked and answered. More and more we're seeing the discussion on Reason and Passion lead us to their intrinsic need for each other in order that we may understand ourselves and our world. The Christians are bringing in a new idea, the idea of Faith, or Grace. But, and I'm reading Nussbaum now too, although I doubt I'll even get close to finishing it, but the need for both emotion and reason to help us make sense of ourselves is the point.

Perhaps passion, in the age of Plato, was a dangerous thing. Maybe it led to murder, mayhem and superstitious ritual. We have television and football now, which are regulated forms of stupidity, but without regulation, would football be a blood sport? The Greek plays we've read point to deeply violent, tragic results of passion. Perhaps it was in this climate that Plato's call for reason comes. After all, as Lucretius says, "Nothing comes from Nothing". Context is King.

Two ideas that I loved from "Nature of Things":

The idea that "Motion has impetus in thought". II-250-270

And the discussion of animals having feelings too.

The latter is an idea that comes well before it's time. Indeed, it seems that philosophers went well out of their way to deny animals any feelings, only recently to have the idea come back in the past couple of hundred (more or less?) years. Does admitting this notion change or challenge our ideas, as propagated by the biblical texts, of man's dominion over animal. There's a lovely equality of the species, at least on a level of our common experience of being living creatures on the same planet, subject to pain, suffering, birth, death, and possibly even love and grief, even of only at a primitive level.

The former idea shocked me, in a way, with the notion of having "Freewill", as he calls it, being an entirely physical construct, rather than something granted by God, or by intellectual choice. Choice is about the origin of motion: thought precedes action, action creates reaction which is emotion. I suppose as an actor and acting teacher I'm somewhat more interested in these ideas, which is why I'm trying to read Nussbaum. But I'm fascinated with the notion of the role of emotion in our decision making, and thought processes. Do we ever ask ourselves what emotion is? Why does the Cow seem to mourn her calf? When do emotions rise? Nussbaum believes they arise in/from the narrative form. As an actor, I understand that to be true. You can't create emotion from nothing, it comes in reaction to a story. Context which translates into action. Response which informs decision. Passion and Reason as a necessary combination of events that lead us through our lives.

I think this is why I'm so attracted to Lucretius, Mencius, and even Seneca, who I've yet to address, but will later. There's a sensuality, if that's the word, to their writing, perhaps because of the forms they choose - poetry, letter, story - a narrative that leads me through ideas in a way that I relate to emotionally as well as intellectually. Perhaps not each in perfect balance, but that's the advantage of time: I can thread them together for new meanings.

Also, these three books seem so relevant to our time today. This idea came up in the discussions of Lucretius as well as Seneca. Are we in a modern Epicurean/Stoic age? I still can't articulate why yet, but I think the answer is "yes". We are very much concerned with our relationship to nature. We are very suspicious of superstition/Religion. We have left our focus on the public sphere. In fact, politicians now tailor their messages to appeal to us in our private spheres: home, family, taxes/income, private good over public service as exemplified by the re-hashing of Adam Smith and the so-called 'free market" or trickle down effect of the economy. If we leave you alone to do as you think best in private, it will be better for the public good than if we try to orchestrate the public good itself. Most of all, live for today. Borrow and spend, don't save. Learn to cook and eat well, get therapy, be happy, and it will benefit society indirectly. Advertising directs us to feel good about living for ourselves.

Nothing comes from Nothing.

But like the recent collapse of the financial markets, are we setting ourselves up for another kind of fall? Are we in danger of living in complacent, only semi-functioning social structures that do not grow and support change? Are we in danger of a new kind of tyranny because of our ambivalence? 8 years of Bush would seem to say so. But maybe the strange Nobel prize for Obama says we don't want to.