Plague and Literature

This new mode of living has given me more time than usual but still less than I would like for reading. Like many readers and literature-bloggers, I have been thinking about plagues in literature. Slowly, I have collected the following works that describe or are set during a plague. 

If this self-isolation lasts as long as the pundits are saying, we will all have enough time not only to read (or watch) each one of these but also to learn the language in which each was written and then read them in their original form. 

Ancient works

1 Book 2 of Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (chapters 47-54).

  

   Note: Describes the plague that devastated Athens during the second year (430 BC) of the Peloponnesian War; the plague returned twice after this. It is a gripping and horrifying account. By placing his description immediately after the long, scarily nationalistic speech that he puts in the mouth of the Athenian statesman Pericles, Thucydides creates a striking juxtaposition.

I am reading this in Greek with an intrepid and highly-motivated high school student, and I can confidently say that (1) Thucydides is much more challenging and rewarding than I had thought and (2) The English translations I have seen do not do justice, perhaps because in English justice cannot be done, to the difficulty and inconcinnity of Thucydides' Greek.

By the way, if you want to read Thucydides in English, there is simply no better edition out there than this one. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The best edition out there (click on pic for link).

Thucydides' description became the model for these ancient writers when they sat down to write about a plague:

2 Book 6 of Lucretius, The Nature of Things (lines 1138-1286).

   Note: A description of the Athenian plague.

3 Book 7 of Ovid, Metamorphoses (lines 523-581). 

   Note: Describes a plague on the island of Aegina.

4 Book 3 of Vergil, Georgics (lines 478-566).

   Note: Describes a plague that affected horse and cattle.  

Book 2 of Procopius, History of the Wars (chapter 22).

   Note: Describes the famous Plague of Justinian, which was a bubonic plague that struck Europe in the 6th century (and may have continued sporadically for another two centuries). It was likely caused by Yersinia pestis, the very bacterium responsible for the Black Death that ravaged Europe nearly a millennium later. Classical aside: the bubonic plague is so named because the most common symptoms of the disease were swollen lymph nodes, often in or near the groin, and the Greek word for "groin", "gland", or "swollen gland" is βουβών.

Emperor Justinian, "I see your COVID-19 and raise you one Bubonic Plague."

Modern works

The prologue to Boccaccio's Decameron, which is set during the Black Death.

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, an account of what, in 1665, turned out to be the final outbreak of the bubonic plague to strike London.

Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig).

Albert Camus, The Plague (La Peste).

I have now added these to my ever-expanding "To Read" list.

Special mention

And of all the movies one could mention that involve an apocalyptic plague, the best remains Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, set during the Black Death.

Poetry and Sharks

My two youngest sons are currently obsessed with 'sea creatures'; whales, sharks, dolphins, squid, crabs, etc. have grabbed their attention as planets and solar systems did last fall. Daily they create dozens of pictures of these creatures and beg to watch, once more, episode 3 of The Blue Planet.

It's been great fun to learn with them about the ocean and its animals and amazing to see how much information about these topics their young brains easily absorb. 

Like most kids, their favorite animal seems to be the shark. Well, maybe it's the blue whale, but I don't know a poem about a blue whale, whereas I know the following poem about a shark. 

The Maldive Shark

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,

Pale sot of the Maldive sea,

The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,

How alert in attendance be.

From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw

They have nothing of harm to dread,

But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank

Or before his Gorgonian head;

Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth

In white triple tiers of glittering gates,

And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,

An asylum in jaws of the Fates!

They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,

Yet never partake of the treat—

Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,

Pale ravener of horrible meat.

Phlegmatical pale ravener with a Gorgonian head.

Few people, I suppose, think of poetry when they think of Herman Melville, but he wrote a lot of it, and much of it is, like the poem above, very good. (I particularly like the phrase "Gorgonian head"). That his poetry is not well-known can be chalked up, at least partly, to its not being available in a decent edition. Well, that recently changed when the Library of America finally published his complete poems in this lovely edition (click on pic for link):

You know you want to buy it.

With most of the world quarantined at home, there's never been a better time to read Melville's poetry. And this isolation will probably be long enough for a few hardy folks to tackle his Clarel, one of the longest poems in American literature.* But if 18,000 lines of epic poetry about a man's pilgrimage to the Holy Land isn't your thing, you can always reread The Maldive Shark or Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, his collection of poems on America's Civil War.

* What is the longest poem in American literature, you ask? It is, as of this post, the science fiction epic: Space an Odyssey in Rhyme. 

Gibbon and Julian

One of the things I most enjoy about reading Gibbon is discovering authors I had forgotten, ignorantly dismissed, or (more often) never known. Today I encountered two such while reading Ch. 22, which concerns the rise of Julian the Apostate and his conflict with Constantius.

These last several chapters have sent me back to Ammianus Marcellinus, the last great ancient historian. In graduate school I remember reading or being told that 1) as a Greek, Latin was his second language, 2) he is important and 2) his Latin is difficult ("eine Qual seiner Leser" was the memorable verdict of one German scholastic). 

Reading him now I find his Latin challenging but no more so than Tacitus'; at times it is even artful. As an example I point to the passage wherein Julian's troops proclaim him Augustus (i.e. equal to the reigning emperor Constantius). Julian has artfully arranged that Constantius' arrogant letter to him be read aloud to the assembled troops:

Replicatoque volumine edicti, quod missum est, et legi ab exordio coepto, cum ventum fuisset ad locum id continentem, quod gesta omnia Constantius inprobans Caesaris potestatem sufficere Iuliano censebat, exclamabatur undique vocum terribilium sonu: "Auguste Iuliane." (20.9.6-7)

Which passages the Loeb translates:

"And after unrolling the scroll of the edict which had been sent, he began to read it from the beginning. And when he had come to the place where Constantius, rejecting all that had been done, declared that the power of Caesar (i.e. subordinate to Augustus) was enough for Julian, on all sides terrifying shouts arose: "Julianus Augustus!"

Not bad for a non-native speaker of Latin.

The second work to which Gibbon today introduced me is the Architrenius of John de Hauteville. (The title means "The Arch-Weeper" or maybe "Prince of Tears"). It is a lengthy satirical poem from the 12th century, in which, according to the blurb from Harvard UP, de Hauteville "uses his stylistic virtuosity and the many resources of Latin poetry to condemn a secular world where wealth and preferment were all-consuming." Now there's a work of timeless topicality.

But Gibbon's use of the poem deserves quotation. The proclamation of Julian as Augustus occurred at  a "palace" at Paris (ancient Lutetiae) in 360 AD, but the exact location is uncertain. Gibbon tries to shed light on the matter by opting for the palace of the baths, which in his day was where the halls of a university stood (and where, I believe, at least part of the Sorbonne still stands). Then, in an apparent attempt to summarize and juxtapose the various uses to which that space has been put in the intervening centuries, Gibbon cites some lines from the Architrenius* that he essentially summarizes in this excellent sentence, so characteristic of his prose and his famous use of footnotes:

"By the injuries of time and the Normans, this ancient palace was reduced, in the twelfth century, to a maze of ruins, whose dark recesses were the scenes of licentious love."

*Here are the lines, as quoted by Gibbon:

Explicat aula sinus montemque amplectitur alis;
Multiplici latebra scelerum tersura ruborem.
----pereuntis saepe pudoris
celatura nefas, venerisque accommoda furtis.

Sounds like a fun place. Of course, this poem is now on my "to read" list. Gratias tibi, Mr. Gibbon.

Gibbon and Constantine

"A subject which may be examined with impartiality, but cannot be viewed with indifference." Thus Gibbon on the growth of Christianity under Constantine, a topic to which he devotes much of Vol. 2 of his magnum opus. 

Constantine, from Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine; now at Capitoline Museum in Rome.

It is a fascinating subject, and one about which I am largely ignorant, although I think I now have a bit better grasp of it. So far, these four things have struck me from Gibbon's treatment:

1 Constantine's superb political cunning, in the best (or at least not in the worst) sense of that term. The official recognition of Christianity was but one of his significant achievements.

2 The appeal of the ancient sources. Gibbon's narrative never fails to send me back to the relevant ancient writers with a renewed interest in the ancient world. I know very little about this period of antiquity, so to read Eusebius's Life of Constantine (I'm using the version in the clickable pic below) or Ammianus Marcellinus' Roman History is like discovering a new world.

Fascinating.

3 The numerous sects of early Christianity that were branded as heretical and whose followers were  accordingly treated without mercy. Gibbon does his best to treat these sects seriously and with justice, although at times he seems a bit exasperated by the minuteness of the theological points upon which they refused to yield. 

4 How little things have changed since the 4th century AD. Politics is still a treacherous and deceitful game. And the narcissism of small differences still drives much human behavior. As they say, Plus ça change...


To do this story justice without overwhelming the reader with details and in language that engages and entertains is just one of Gibbon's many impressive accomplishments.

BYOT (bring your own Trinity) Party at Nicaea (325 AD) 

Gibbon and Christianity

Reading for a second time The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has been enlightening and entertaining experience. As I tell anyone who will listen (and many who would probably rather not), Gibbon's prose style is second to none: he is a master of irony and insight and has a facility with English few authors can equal.

I have just finished volume I, which ends with two chapters on the rise of Christianity. They are perhaps his most famous chapters and provoked the most heated response immediately upon publication. Several of his first readers were so upset by Gibbon's treatment of the early church that they attacked it in print. Gibbon, in turn, responded with A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a work in which he at great length and with much success defends his book and reputation and attacks his critics.

"Our curiosity is naturally prompted to inquire by what means the Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of the earth."

But back to Christianity. What I have always found perplexing is how this religion grew so quickly into the dominant doctrine of the Roman Empire. According to Gibbon, Christianity owed its rapid and pervasive growth to the following factors, which are best given in his own words:

1 The inflexible and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses.

2 The doctrine of a future life, improved by ever additional circumstances which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth.

3 The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church.

4 The pure and austere morals of the Christians. 

5 The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire.

I am not familiar with the relevant scholarship in the 240 years since Gibbon penned those remarks, but I would venture that few would now subscribe to these or only these causes. Nevertheless, Gibbon remains worth reading on this important and interesting topic, for he makes the past, with all its personalities, beliefs, and forces, come alive in a way that few writers and fewer historians can match. 

Top 10 Novels

I am a sucker for 'best of' lists and for good prose, and I recently came across a writer who provided both.

W. Somerset Maugham is an author that I avoided for years and for no good reason. I suppose I was turned off by the title of his most famous work, Of Human Bondage, which implied an abundance of depression and misery. This winter, however, I came across an admiring mention of Maugham by Lawrence Block (an author whose works I love), so I decided to give him a shot. A novel, a memoir, and a few short stories later, I'm kicking myself for waiting so long.

I first read The Razor's Edge, which I knew only as the basis of the movie that gave Bill Murray his first non-comedic role.

Ambulance driver turned Buddhist monk; later he will bust ghosts.

Well, the book turned out to be great. Maugham writes with deceptive clarity and elegance: he reads quickly, but is not simple or trite. He is a master craftsman, and master craftsmen make their art look easy. As Block points out in one of his excellent books about writing, Maugham is especially good at manipulating and shifting the point of view from which he tells a story.

As has often been the case with writers I discover late, I had no idea how much Maugham wrote and in how many different genres. I have so far made it through several of his short stories and one of his memoirs, but he also wrote many plays, which was this genre that brought him his first taste of wealth and fame and allowed him eventually to live at the Villa Mauresque on the coast of France:

What the ability to write well can get you.

Like all good writers, Maugham read a lot, and his opinions and observations on the works of others makes for engrossing reading. His most sustained attempt in this genre is The Art of Fiction: An Introduction to Ten Novels and Their Authors, which contains, essentially, his thoughts on what he regards as the ten best novels. And those ten are:

Fielding, Tom Jones

Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Stendhal, The Red and the Black

Balzac, Le Père Goriot

Dickens, David Copperfield

Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Melville, Moby-Dick

Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Tolstoy, War and Peace

Maugham admits that he just as easily could have listed the following ten novels as the best of all time:

Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

James, The Ambassadors

Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma

Sterne, Tristram Shandy

Thackeray, Vanity Fair

Eliot, Middlemarch 

Lesage, Gil Blas

Austen, Persuasion

Balzac, Cousin Bette

One could certainly come up with another list just as good as these, but Maugham's twenty books are by any estimation a formidable and respectable lot. I willingly admit that I have read only seven of them. It would be a fun project to read all twenty. 

Lyrics and Music

"Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it. They carry it with them every step that they take. 'Till someday they just cut it loose; cut it loose or let it drag them down."

No one could ever accuse me of being a fan of Bruce Springsteen. I like a few of his songs and admire the energy and effort he gives his work, but much of his stuff misses, just slightly, the target for me. One song that doesn't is Darkness on The Edge of Town, from which the above lyric comes. It may be the best thing he's written.

Springsteen, headed for a spot out 'neath Abram's Bridge.

Now, as is often the case, the lyrics without the music are banal, stripped of what gives them their power. And so the above lines, on their own, fall flat. To feel their full and true effect, one must hear them as their writer meant you to hear them: set to music and preferably in concert, since live music is decidedly superior and, in this case, the venue where conventional wisdom says Springsteen shines. I like this version.

I have often wondered: many Latin and Greek poems were originally set to music now lost or imperfectly known; how much of their intended effect are we thereby missing? Scholars continue to make valiant attempts to understand and reproduce ancient music. Here is how some ancient music, from Greek tragedies, may have sounded.