Latest (ongoing, running-in-the-background) project: digest "De Rerum Natura"

[capri0mni]

Last Sunday morning, I heard a radio interview with Stephen Greenblatt about his 2012 book: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (about the rediscovery, and influence, of Lucretius' six-book poem De rerum natura {on the nature of things}[written 1st C. B.C.E, rediscovered and copied 15th C. C.E.])

Lucretius' purpose was to introduce and popularize Epicurean philosophy, of which I know a smattering, and like, and want to know more fluently, so I can do like Lucretius, and wax artistic about it in a way that makes sense.

At first, I thought I'd buy Greenblatt's book. But then I realized that I'd probably get more satisfaction if I aimed a little closer to the source material before taking on a meta-discussion about it. My Latin was always marginal, my peak fluency is 35 years behind me, and Lucretius' verse is famous for being both beautiful and difficult. So I've downloaded a PDF of an 1880 English translation in prose, for free (Public Domain FTW!).

Wikipedia article on "De Rerum Natura"

So... You know: this is a warning that, when not talking about my own poetry, I'll probably talking a lot about this, here.

Comments

OOH, linky??

[dialecticdreamer]

That way, we're reading the same VERSION and can discuss it more confidently!

Re: OOH, linky??

[capri0mni]

Right! (duh)

http://archive.org/details/onnatureofthings00lucruoft

(I downloaded the pdf...)

Re: OOH, linky??

[dialecticdreamer]

OOH, thank you! I love OLD books in .pdf form because sometimes there are handwritten comments... it adds rather than detracts, even though i break out in metaphorical HIVES at the thought of writing in books myself!