Lucretius on Death and Anxiety. Poetry and Philosophy in De Rerum Natura.

Princeton University Press, Princeton, n.d.(>1990). XII,279p. Original blue cloth with dust wrps. Nice copy. ?The Epicurean arguments against the fear of death deployed by Lucretius are often granted a pellucid force in their own rationalistic terms, but felt to be an inadequate ?consolation mortis? in the face of the emotional reality of the fear of extinction. Segal shows that anxieties about the dissolution of the body and the dissipation of the self into the infinite nothingness of death are in fact obsessively confronted in the ?De rerun natura?, but mostly at levels other than that of the discursive argumentation itself. Pervasive is the old dichotomie between philosophy and poetry, but in the now orthodox version whereby the poet?s powers of empathy and imagistic association are working with rather than against the philosophical message. (?) The chief concept, used chiefly as a heuristic model, is the Freudian notion of displacement (?). The results are very fruitful. (?). The book is most persuasive as an account of Lucretius? imagery rather than of his argumentative and consolatory techniques, and in this it is very impressive indeed. In particular S. ranges most innovatively over the poetry of finitude and infinity; in ch. 4 the constricting and dark fear of the bottomless ocean of non-being is seen in inverse relationship to the liberation afforded by the exhilarating and radiant vision of the infinity of the epicurean universe. (?) In ch. 5 the interchangeability of microcosm and macrocosm provides the basis for an exploration of the imagery of constructing and destroying boundaries of the universe, the city, and the body, culminating in the violation by the plague of the walls of Athens and of the bodily integrity of its inhabitants at the end of the poem. (?) The next two chapters, 6 and 7, continue with the same theme in the form of a detailed examination of Lucretius? handling of ?primary boundary anxiety, the psychological term for anxiety about the invasion or deformation of one?s body. (?) Chapter 8 is a fine discussion of the manipulation of literary models in the list of illustrious dead at 3.1024-44, showing subtly how traditional models of heroism are inverted and replaced.? (PHILIP HARDIE in The Classical Review (New Series), 1992, pp.299-300).