Fair Game

A flash of orange out my writing window. It faces SSW with a view along the ridgetop. B coming over for a visit, I see that he carries a book, and I have one for him, a Sargent tome with a great many of the watercolors we had discussed the last time he dropped by. The book he has for me is about Poggio's discovery of a copy of a copy of Lucretius in some monastery in Germany. "The Swerve". Poggio is a cool dude, I've run into him before. He had beautiful handwriting, and with several of his peers is responsible for what we read today. The letter form. B was wearing orange because it's the hunting season and it's best to wear orange and clang two cans together; I sing off-key and loudly, whatever indicates you're not fair game. I know, I know, how revealed you feel, but believe me, it's best to not get shot.The 'swerve' of the title is the Renaissance and the rediscovery of Lucretius (specifically, "On The Nature Of Things") began what we think of as modernity. Poggio found the codex in 1417, when books had to be physically copied, but at least paper was available at last, most of the books of the time were on vellum or parchment, copied from papyrus originals. A fascinating period, which, because of my life-long passion for printing (and paper) I've read a great deal about. More books were produced between 1450 and 1500 than in the entire history of writing and copying, then doubled again in the ten years after that. Issues of literacy and church control (of what was believed) became the subject of courtyard debates. I say courtyard, because you couldn't have the debates in public because the Inquisition would burn you at the stake. Alas, poor Bruno; Galileo under house arrest; Hypatia dead in Alexandria long since. A wonderful book. I give up the afternoon and evening to it and by the time I went to bed I had reference books spread on every flat surface. Then, this morning, I jumped right back into it. I hadn't realized the key role Lucretius played in early modern philosophy. I dig out my copy, the Stallings translation, a Penguin edition; I also have an earlier, Copley, translation that I don't like as well. I can chip at the edges myself, but Lucretius is difficult to translate. He's just bloodly difficult. He wrote very beautiful work that doesn't quite make sense. But he does mention atoms by name. He has fun with the language (this is the most difficult thing to translate) and he makes his point. That you should enjoy your life, because after that, you were merely dust, which it also happens, I know way to much about. Recycling at that level. Where bedrock becomes dust. So it's a perfect book for me right now.