Of the Nature of Things

Front matter

T. LUCRETIUS CARUS

OF THE NATURE OF THINGS

A METRICAL TRANSLATION BY WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD Professor of English in the University of Wisconsin

Preface

PREFACE

The Latin text is that of Carlo Guissani (Torino, 1896-8). The Latinist should find no difficulty, however, in comparing the English with the Latin text of other editors, as Munro, Bailey, and Merrill; even though the Italian scholar modifies the familiar sequence of some paragraphs and lines. The temptation to adopt some special reading of word or phrase suggested by other scholars (as recently in Merrill's Criticism of the Text of Lucretius, Part I., Books I.-III., University of California, January 1916) has been for practical expediency consistently resisted.

The English, in its attempt to render the exact ideas in their details and in their relationships with the various arguments, is obligated, in the first instance, to Guissani's exhaustive, subtle, and well-pondered Italian commentary (including its citations from practically all preceding Lucretian scholars). But three years after completion, the whole translation was collated with the painstakingly literal prose translations of Munro and Bailey (the latter published some time after this translation was under way); and the first book had the benefit of the close scrutiny and manuscript comment of Merrill, while some scattered passages were improved by the verbal counsels of friends, the professors of Latin at the University of Wisconsin. But in the last resort the translator was morally compelled to trust to his own judgment. He is aware that in some few renderings he departs from the opinions of men whose opinions he is the first to respect. If footnotes were in place, footnotes could readily be prepared in defence of all such departures—to prove, at least, that no word of the English text had been set down without conscientious meditation. It was discovered, with mingled pleasure and chagrin, that the present translator's verse sometimes had hit on the exact word or phrase of Munro's or Bailey's prose; with the result that in the final revision the author deliberately incorporated a few very apposite turns of expression from each. This seemed but in keeping with the ideal: to make, by whatever means, the translation as accurate as possible.

As accurate as possible: but the philosophic student of Lucretius will not construe this to mean the mechanical and pedantic accuracy of grammar and syntax. A friend who translated a volume for the Loeb Classical Series complained of a reviewer who took him to task for rendering vela as "sail": the reviewer had informed him that vela means "sails." It may be premised that there are many grosser violations of class-room parsing than "sail" for "sails" in the "exercise" that follows. There are not only singulars for plurals and vice versa: sometimes a subordinate clause is made co-ordinate and vice versa; sometimes an adjective is shifted from subject to predicate (i.e., from cause to effect) and vice versa; sometimes, indeed, a passive construction is made active and vice versa; and sometimes a whole sentence is entirely reworked. The fact is, of course, that English idiom has its laws of accuracy too, especially if it is to support accuracy of thought for English readers. If current critical theory demanded of translators of Hauptmann, Ibsen, and Nietzsche the sort of thing it seems to be demanding of the Loeb translators of the classics, Hauptmann, Ibsen, and Nietzsche would have still fewer readers in England and America and a still more distorted reputation than is their luck at present. The ideal seems to be that of the final examination paper; and this is but a recrudescence of "the idol of the book," of which mankind has heard so often before. It would be a triple shame if the worship of this idol drew our eyes away from the throbbing reality of the great living Roman, chief poet on the Tiber's side, and still among the chief by all the rivers of earth.

Moreover, however contrary to received opinion, certain considerations have persuaded the present translator that, for this very accuracy of meaning, verse is preferable to prose: (1) verse permits a wider and more apposite choice of syntactical constructions than the more conventional idioms of prose; (2) verse gives to the many repetitions of ideas, words, phrases, and clauses, which in a prose translation often seem mere jejune verbosity, their proper relevancy and copiousness—the abbondanza Lucretiana noted by Guissani; (3) verse, by its very cadences, by its metrical emphases, possesses, for driving home the central meanings and for distinguishing the nicer contrasts and other relations of the ideas, an instrument scarcely available in the pedestrian rhythms of prose.

But there is a still higher accuracy: the accuracy of the imagination, at once interpretative and creative—in the last analysis the activity which conditions, supports, and directs all accuracy in understanding and in reproducing the master's work. Without feeling and communicating the intellectual energy of Lucretius, his varied passion, his large utterance, the translator is without all instruments to hold the reader's mind awake and alert to the things the master says; attention will flag and both thought and poetry (to sunder, for the moment, what the gods have joined together) will grow vague, fragmentary, intermittent. For this reason the ingenious and brilliant literalness, the meticulous impeccability, of Munro's and of Bailey's translations is so hard to follow, and so inadequate except as a handbook (as such, quite priceless!) for the student with the Latin text before him: the very absence of imaginative fervour ruins the effect—the movement, the élan—of the ideas as ideas, because ruining their effect as poetry.

This higher accuracy in a translator's work may be compared to an actor's relation to his "Part." The actor attempts to conceive the totality of content and purpose and to conceive it by imaginative Einfuehlung, self-identification, assisted (it may well be) by analysis and calculation of the spiritual data already primarily realised as data by the imagination. His creative interpretation on the stage presents his Idea (i.e., himself as the "Part") by the employment of the gesture, look, gait, pause, intonation, tempo, which is either an instinctive unfoldment from within or a studied calculation from within. Or both: always a dramatic process―if the achievement be acting and not mere technique and stage-tricks. Hence one actor makes us "understand Shakespeare," and another obscures or distorts Shakespeare, in the measure that he has entered into Shakespeare's spirit, or rather in the measure that Shakespeare's spirit has entered into him. This is elementary and familiar, of course. But translation as a dramatic process, as first self-identification and then creative interpretation from within, as Idea (i.e., the translator as the "Part") presented by the imaginative employment of imaginatively intelligible and illuminat- ing symbols, is a conception which, if equally elementary, seems not to be equally familiar. Yet there seems no gainsaying. And unless it be a dramatic process, it too becomes mere technique (i.e., external scholarship) and stage-tricks (i.e., external, non-organic devices of style).

And with this higher accuracy, most of all, is pedantry futile and beside the mark. Two brief illustrations will serve. The translator reads, let us say, a certain word in his text (i.e., the Part he is learning to perform); this word has for his imagination connotations in the Latin text and in the Latin context (context of linguistic material, not necessarily of thought) which its best "equivalent" in English has not. His imagination prompts to the insertion of a word or phrase which in the literal sense is "not in the Latin"—but it does the work for the imagination of the English reader. Thus, to call it "padding" is to miss the point altogether. Again, the translator, or to be specific, the translator of Lucretius, is struck with the curious mixture of archaic and colloquial expressions, with the frequent rhymes, and with that insistent alliteration which the more delicate art of the next generation was to subdue to a quiet allusiveness. Is he mechanically to contrive an "equivalent" archaism, colloquialism, rhyme, or alliteration (down to the very alliterating letter!) for each separate case, or will he catch the ensemble effect and re-create it, as well as his medium, the foreign tongue and the foreign prosody, permits?

These notions about translating came to the author of this version, as conscious and formulated maxims, only long after the work was practically finished, and only by deduction from his experience in translating. How far they were vitally operative as unconscious principles in the work itself he cannot say. And how far (whatever the mental processes of the transaction) he has wrought successfully, he cannot say, either.

It is not always easy to know just what Lucretius meant: however perennial his poetic and philosophic insight and power, his system is in some of its premisses outworn and in some of its details obscured; and, dying, too, before he had wrought it out to finished expression, he apparently left a broken and disordered text, which in all the extant MSS. has doubtless become still more problematic. It is not always easy to know just what Lucretius meant; but the present translator has tried to render it fairly easy for one to gather what he, the translator, thinks Lucretius meant.

He has loved Lucretius for many years, and the mighty spirit of the Roman has helped him to sustain many burdens of life. He can but hope that he has not altogether failed to communicate him to English and American readers ignorant of Latin. Lucretius is indeed a Voice for these supreme times.

WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD.

University of Wisconsin,

Department of English,

June 3, 1916.

PoemTO THE MASTER

If to have paced within thy House of Thought Among thy Mountains, from its windowed wings Surveying dominions of the Law-of-Things As into cloud, and star, and tempest wrought, And trees, and gods, and cities,—if to have caught Thy splendour, and thy pathos, and thy song (Thy hand upon my shoulder, Master, long From room to aery room) avail me aught,

Then not without some scope of thy old truth, Then not without some ring of thy old worth, My sturdy voice of still unconquered youth Hath in an unknown tongue reported thee Unto a Continent of thy dear Earth … To thee unknown, beyond an unknown sea.

Madison, Wisconsin,

Summer of 1912.

Book I

BOOK I

SUMMARY

Proem (1–145).

The nature of things in general (146–634).

General principles concerning the existence of things (146–482).

Substance is eternal; that is, there exist primordial bodies of things (146–328); because nothing is born from nothing (164–214), nothing is dissolved into nothing (215–264), and the invisible character of these primordial bodies does not disprove their existence (265–328). There exists also a void, that is, not only the space occupied by things, but also a space absolutely empty (329–417). Nothing exists per se except body and void; all else is but accident of that which exists per se (418–482).

The primordial bodies are absolutely solid, indestructible, indivisible (483–634).

Complementary to I. Confutation of Heraclitus (635–704), of Empedocles (705–829), of Anaxagoras (830–920). The infinity of the universe (921–1109).

OF THE NATURE OF THINGS

BOOK I

Proem—1-145

Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men, Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars Makest to teem the many-voyagèd main And fruitful lands—for all of living things Through thee alone are evermore conceived, Through thee are risen to visit the great sun— Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on, Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away, For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers, For thee the waters of the unvexèd deep Smile, and the hollows of the sérene sky Glow with diffusèd radiance for thee! For soon as comes the springtime face of day, And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred, First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee, Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine, And leap the wild herds round the happy fields Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain, Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead, And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams, Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains, Kindling the lure of love in every breast, Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,

Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou alone Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught Is risen to reach the shining shores of light, Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born, Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse Which I presume on Nature to compose For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be Peerless in every grace at every hour― Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest O'er sea and land the savage works of war, For thou alone hast power with public peace To aid mortality; since he who rules The savage works of battle, puissant Mars, How often to thy bosom flings his strength O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love— And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown, Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee, Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined Fill with thy holy body, round, above! Pour from those lips soft syllables to win Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace! For in a season troublous to the state Neither may I attend this task of mine With thought untroubled, nor mid such events The illustrious scion of the Memmian house Neglect the civic cause. Whilst human kind Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed Before all eyes beneath Religion—who

Would show her head along the region skies, Glowering on mortals with her hideous face— A Greek it was who first opposing dared Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand, Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest His dauntless heart to be the first to rend The crossbars at the gates of Nature old. And thus his will and hardy wisdom won; And forward thus he fared afar, beyond The flaming ramparts of the world, until He wandered the unmeasurable All. Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports What things can rise to being, what cannot, And by what law to each its scope prescribed, Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time. Wherefore religion now is under foot, And us his victory now exalts to heaven. I know how hard it is in Latian verse To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks, Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing; Yet worth of thine and the expected joy Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through, Seeking with what of words and what of song I may at last most gloriously uncloud For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view The core of being at the centre hid. And for the rest, summon to judgments true, Unbusied ears and singleness of mind Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged For thee with eager service, thou disdain Before thou comprehendest: since for thee

I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky, And the primordial germs of things unfold, Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies And fosters all, and whither she resolves Each in the end when each is overthrown. This ultimate stock we have devised to name Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things, Or primal bodies, as primal to the world. I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare An impious road to realms of thought profane ; But 'tis that same religion oftener far Hath bred the foul impieties of men: As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs, Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors, Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen, With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain. She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek, And at the altar marked her grieving sire, The priests beside him who concealed the knife, And all the folk in tears at sight of her. With a dumb terror and a sinking knee She dropped; nor might avail her now that first 'Twas she who gave the king a father's name. They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl On to the altar—hither led not now With solemn rites and hymeneal choir, But sinless woman, sinfully foredone, A parent felled her on her bridal day, Making his child a sacrificial beast To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy: Such are the crimes to which religion leads. And there shall come the time when even thou, Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now

Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life, And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears. I own with reason: for, if men but knew Some fixèd end to ills, they would be strong By some device unconquered to withstand Religions and the menacings of seers. But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs, Since men must dread eternal pains in death. For what the soul may be they do not know, Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth, And whether, snatched by death, it die with us, Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves Of Orcus, or by some divine decree Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang, Who first from lovely Helicon brought down A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves, Renowned forever among the Italian clans. Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be, Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare, But only phantom figures, strangely wan, And tells how once from out those regions rose Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears And with his words unfolded Nature's source. Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp The purport of the skies—the law behind The wandering courses of the sun and moon; To scan the powers that speed all life below; But most to see with reasonable eyes Of what the mind, of what the soul is made, And what it is so terrible that breaks On us asleep, or waking in disease, Until we seem to mark and hear at hand Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.

Substance is Eternal—146-328

This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature's aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium: Nothing from nothing ever yet was born. Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working there. Meantime, when once we know from nothing still Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly what we seek those elements: From which alone all things created are, And how accomplished by no tool of Gods. Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind. Might take its origin from any thing, No fixèd seed required. Men from the sea Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed, And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky; The hornèd cattle, the herds and all the wild Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste; Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees, But each might grow from any stock or limb By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not For each its procreant atoms, could things have Each its unalterable mother old? But, since produced from fixèd seeds are all, Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies. And all from all cannot become, because In each resides a secret power its own. Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands

At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn, The vines that mellow when the autumn lures, If not because the fixèd seeds of things At their own season must together stream, And new creations only be revealed When the due times arrive and pregnant earth Safely may give unto the shores of light Her tender progenies? But if from naught Were their becoming, they would spring abroad Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months, With no primordial germs, to be preserved From procreant unions at an adverse hour. Nor on the mingling of the living seeds Would space be needed for the growth of things Were life an increment of nothing: then The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man, And from the turf would leap a branching tree— Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each Slowly increases from its lawful seed, And through that increase shall conserve its kind. Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed From out their proper matter. Thus it comes That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains, Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, And whatsoever lives, if shut from food, Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more. Thus easier 'tis to hold that many things Have primal bodies in common (as we see The single letters common to many words) Than aught exists without its origins. Moreover, why should Nature not prepare Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot, Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands, Or conquer Time with length of days, if not Because for all begotten things abides

The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled And to the labour of our hands return Their more abounding crops; there are indeed Within the earth primordial germs of things, Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth. Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours, Spontaneous generations, fairer forms. Confess then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air. Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves Into their primal bodies again, and naught Perishes ever to annihilation. For, were aught mortal in its every part, Before our eyes it might be snatched away Unto destruction; since no force were needed To sunder its members and undo its bands. Whereas, of truth, because all things exist, With seed imperishable, Nature allows Destruction nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time, That wastes with eld the works along the world, Destroy entire, consuming matter all, Whence then may Venus back to light of life Restore the generations kind by kind? Or how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth Foster and plenish with her ancient food, Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each? Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea, Or inland rivers, far and wide away,

Keep the unfathomable ocean full? And out of what does Ether feed the stars? For lapsèd years and infinite age must else Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away: But be it the Long Ago contained those germs, By which this sum of things recruited lives, Those same infallibly can never die, Nor nothing to nothing evermore return. And, too, the selfsame power might end alike All things, were they not still together held By matter eternal, shackled through its parts, Now more, now less. A touch might be enough To cause destruction. For the slightest force Would loose the weft of things wherein no part Were of imperishable stock. But now Because the fastenings of primordial parts Are put together diversly and stuff Is everlasting, things abide the same Unhurt and sure, until some power comes on Strong to destroy the warp and woof of each: Nothing returns to naught; but all return At their collapse to primal forms of stuff. Lo, the rains perish which Ether-father throws Down to the bosom of Earth-mother; but then Upsprings the shining grain, and boughs are green Amid the trees, and trees themselves wax big And lade themselves with fruits; and hence in turn The race of man and all the wild are fed; Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls; And leafy woodlands echo with new birds; Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk Along the joyous pastures whilst the drops Of white ooze trickle from distended bags; Hence the young scamper on their weakling joints Along the tender herbs, fresh hearts afrisk

With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems Perishes utterly, since Nature ever Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught To come to birth but through some other's death.

And now, since I have taught that things cannot Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born, To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words, Because our eyes no primal germs perceive; For mark those bodies which, though known to be In this our world, are yet invisible: The winds infuriate lash our face and frame, Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds, Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains With mighty trees, or scour the mountain tops With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave With uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds, 'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky, Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain; And forth they flow and pile destruction round, Even as the water's soft and supple bulk Becoming a river of abounding floods, Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees; Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream, Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers, Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone, Hurling away whatever would oppose. Even so must move the blasts of all the winds,

Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood, Hither or thither, drive things on before And hurl to ground with still renewed assault, Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize And bear in cones of whirlwind down the world: The winds are sightless bodies and naught else— Since both in works and ways they rival well The mighty rivers, the visible in form. Then too we know the varied smells of things Yet never to our nostrils see them come; With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold, Nor are we wont men's voices to behold. Yet these must be corporeal at the base, Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is Save body, having property of touch. And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist, The same, spread out before the sun, will dry; Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in, Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know, That moisture is dispersed about in bits Too small for eyes to see. Another case: A ring upon the finger thins away Along the under side, with years and suns; The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone; The hookèd ploughshare, though of iron, wastes Amid the fields insidiously. We view The rock-paved highways worn by many feet; And at the gates the brazen statues show Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch Of wayfarers innumerable who greet. We see how wearing-down hath minished these, But just what motes depart at any time, The envious nature of vision bars our sight. Lastly whatever days and nature add Little by little, constraining things to grow

In due proportion, no gaze however keen Of these our eyes hath watched and known. Nor more Can we observe what's lost at any time, When things wax old with eld and foul decay, Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags. Thus nature ever by unseen bodies works.

The Void—329-417

But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked About by body: there's in things a void— Which to have known will serve thee many a turn, Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt, Forever searching in the sum of all, And losing faith in these pronouncements mine. There's place intangible, a void and room. For were it not, things could in nowise move; Since body's property to block and check Would work on all and at all times the same. Thus naught could evermore push forth and go, Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place. But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven, By divers causes and in divers modes, Before our eyes we mark how much may move, Which, finding not a void, would fail deprived Of stir and motion; nay, would then have been Nowise begot at all, since matter, then, Had staid at rest, its parts together crammed. Then too, however solid objects seem, They yet are formed of matter mixed with void: In rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps, And beady drops stand out like plenteous tears; And food finds way through every frame that lives; The trees increase and yield the season's fruit Because their food throughout the whole is poured, Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;

And voices pass the solid walls and fly Reverberant through shut doorways of a house; And stiffening frost seeps inward to our bones. Which but for voids for bodies to go through 'Tis clear could happen in nowise at all. Again, why see we among objects some Of heavier weight, but of no bulkier size? Indeed, if in a ball of wool there be As much of body as in lump of lead, The two should weigh alike, since body tends To load things downward, while the void abides, By contrary nature, the imponderable. Therefore, an object just as large but lighter Declares infallibly its more of void; Even as the heavier more of matter shows, And how much less of vacant room inside. That which we're seeking with sagacious quest Exists, infallibly, commixed with things— The void, the invisible inane. Right here I am compelled a question to expound, Forestalling something certain folk suppose, Lest it avail to lead thee off from truth: Waters (they say) before the shining breed Of the swift scaly creatures somehow give, And straightway open sudden liquid paths, Because the fishes leave behind them room To which at once the yielding billows stream. Thus things among themselves can yet be moved, And change their place, however full the Sum― Received opinion, wholly false forsooth. For where can scaly creatures forward dart, Save where the waters give them room? Again, Where can the billows yield a way, so long As ever the fish are powerless to go?