The Swerve, Preface

As it turned out, my mother lived to a month shy of her ninetieth birthday. She was still only in her fifties when I encountered On the Nature of Things for the first time. By then my dread of her dying had become entwined with a painful perception that she had blighted much of her life—and cast a shadow on my own—in the service of her obsessive fear. Lucretius’ words therefore rang out with a terrible clarity: “Death is nothing to us.” To spend your existence in the grip of anxiety about death, he wrote, is mere folly. It is a sure way to let your life slip from you incomplete and unenjoyed. He gave voice as well to a thought I had not yet quite allowed myself, even inwardly, to articulate: to inflict this anxiety on others is manipulative and cruel. (4-5)

Greenblatt immediately lures the reader into his writing by sharing a piece of personal history about his mother. He explains that Lucretius' philosophy about death, and the fear of this inevitable consequence of life, was a complete revelation to him as someone who grew up with a mother who was constantly worrying about her own ending. On the Nature of Things helps Greenblatt realize that "to inflict this anxiety on others is manipulative and cruel," thus making his mother manipulative and cruel because her fear had a strong impact his childhood. By sharing his personal relationship with Lucretian philosophy with us, as the reader, we receive a different perspective on Lucretius' abstract ideas and also feel a stronger connection to Greenblatt, the narrator.

Analysis of Swerve's Preface

"The stuff of the universe, Lucretius proposed, is an infinite number of atoms moving randomly through space, like dust motes in a sunbeam, colliding, hooking together, forming complex structures, breaking apart again, in a ceaseless process of creation and destruction. There is no escape from this process. When you look up at the night sky and, feeling unaccountably moved, marvel at the numberless stars, you are not seeing the handiwork of the gods or a crystalline sphere detached from our transient world. You are seeing the same material world of which you are a part and from whose elements you are made. There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design. All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms it involves a principle of natural selection. That is, species that are suited to survive and to reproduce successfully endure, at least for a time; those that are not so well suited die off quickly. But nothing—from our own species to the planet on which we live to the sun that lights our days—lasts forever. Only the atoms are immortal." 

--Stephen Greenblatt The Swerve

In this paragraph, Greenblatt illustrates the relationship of human and the world clearly by using the image of atom and universe. Greenblatt shows his denial attitude towards the existence of gods. He argues that the life human lives and the things human creates are somehow the same—they are all chosen by the nature. It seems that the greatness of human civilization to him is just a result of a random selection, but is still kind of predetermined by the nature. His objective view of human civilization reminds me about a famous Chinese saying: That which is long divided must unify; that which is long unified must divide. History is always a process that a person or a group of people shows up to keep everything in a right track that is chosen by the nature, and there are some regular rules that we can find. Greenbaltt’s objective attitude towards history and his simple and concise language really arise my interest in reading his book.

Analysis of Greenblatt's Writing

"The stuff of the universe, Lucretius proposed, is an infinite number of atoms moving randomly through space, like dust motes in a sunbeam, colliding, hooking together, forming complex structures, breaking apart again, in a ceaseless process of creation and destruction. There is no escape from this process. When you look up at the night sky and, feeling unaccountably moved, marvel at the numberless stars, you are not seeing the handiwork of the gods or a crystalline sphere detached from our transient world. You are seeing the same material world of which you are a part and from whose elements you are made. There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design. All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms it involves a principle of natural selection. That is, species that are suited to survive and to reproduce successfully endure, at least for a time; those that are not so well suited die off quickly. But nothing—from our own species to the planet on which we live to the sun that lights our days—lasts forever. Only the atoms are immortal." - Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve

Throughout Greenblatt's writing all of his sentences are very straight forward and they lay out his points clearly and concisely. It helps make even the most esoteric of his points easy to understand. The use of the second person also helps the reader connect with the ideas and concepts he is presenting. When dealing with esoteric concept it is very easy for writing to become bogged down with unnecessarily flowery language. Greenblatt is able to avoid that, which helps make his writing much more accessible for his readers. This is not to say that his writing is in anyway juvenile and unsophisticated, but his choice of words is never superfluous. This clear way of delivering complicated ideas will be greatly to his advantage in any sort of long historical analysis because as soon as authors start to become unclear in his writing, he starts to loose readers. If he keeps on with this handling of complex ideas I am very excited to read the rest of his book.

Greenblatt writing analysis

As it turned out, my mother lived to a month shy of her ninetieth birthday. She was still only in her fifties when I encountered On the Nature of Things for the first time. By then my dread of her dying had become entwined with a painful perception that she had blighted much of her life—and cast a shadow on my own—in the service of her obsessive fear. Lucretius' words therefore rang out with a terrible clarity: "Death is nothing to us." To spend your existence in the grip of anxiety about death, he wrote, is mere folly. It is a sure way to let your life slip from you incomplete and unenjoyed. He gave voice as well to a thought I had not yet quite allowed myself, even inwardly, to articulate: to inflict this anxiety on others is manipulative and cruel.

Greenblatt in this paragraph, humanizes himself and creates an atmosphere in which the reader may even feel sympathy for him. In doing so, he connects himself with his work, but risks the reader believing his work is subjective. He articulates the significance of On the Nature of Things by explaining its appeal. Its significance makes sense. After years of hearing about his mother’s fear of death and then finding a work that clearly articulates the point “Death is nothing to us” is empowering. This piece of literature unchained him from the ends that all mortals are bound.

Greenblatt's Writing

As it turned out, my mother lived to a month shy of her ninetieth birthday. She was still only in her fifties when I encountered On the Nature of Things for the first time. By then my dread of her dying had become entwined with a painful perception that she had blighted much of her life—and cast a shadow on my own—in the service of her obsessive fear. Lucretius' words therefore rang out with a terrible clarity: "Death is nothing to us." To spend your existence in the grip of anxiety about death, he wrote, is mere folly. It is a sure way to let your life slip from you incomplete and unenjoyed. He gave voice as well to a thought I had not yet quite allowed myself, even inwardly, to articulate: to inflict this anxiety on others is manipulative and cruel.

Greenblatt orders his paragraphs and sentences with care to make them the most effective.  In the previous paragraphs, Greenblatt addresses his mother's fear of death.   It is not until this paragraph that he connects her fear back to On the Nature of Things.  Up until this point, reader is thinking 'where is this all going?' but he brings us back to the main subject with almost a conclusion paragraph on his mother.  He starts off the paragraph with a shocking sentence.  He points out that his mother did indeed live for a very long time, but then he addresses the tragedy of her long life.  She hardly lived a life because she spent so much of it worrying about the end.  He writes with almost sad frustration over the fact that she worried about death for so long and pushed that worry onto him for so long.  He captures a lot of emotion with this paragraph by connecting his interpretation of the book back to his life.

Swerve: Preface

"As it turned out, my mother lived to a month shy of her ninetieth birthday. She was still only in her fifties when I encountered On the Nature of Things for the first time. By then my dread of her dying had become entwined with a painful perception that she had blighted much of her life—and cast a shadow on my own—in the service of her obsessive fear. Lucretius' words therefore rang out with a terrible clarity: "Death is nothing to us." To spend your existence in the grip of anxiety about death, he wrote, is mere folly. It is a sure way to let your life slip from you incomplete and unenjoyed. He gave voice as well to a thought I had not yet quite allowed myself, even inwardly, to articulate: to inflict this anxiety on others is manipulative and cruel."

          This short excerpt is from Stephen Greenblatt preface in his book, "Swerve." His writing style is smart, because he opens up about his personal history, allowing the reader to both relate to him, and trust his writing. When Greenblatt refers to his mother as being afraid of dying every day, he does not exactly mean that she lived life to the fullest, like every day would be her last. Instead, she had her son and live in fear with herself for his entire childhood. During this preface, Stephen Greenblatt is not trying to make the reader connect with his writing, he is trying to make the reader connect with his own connections, like when he mentions the line by Lucretius, "death is nothing to us." His mother had them live their lives in fear of death, which Lucretius states as, "mere folly," and that "it is a sure way to let your life slip from you incomplete and unenjoyed." This is essentially the way that Greenblatt feels about his life, and looking back on it, both he and his mother realize that living their lives in fear was a mistake, and that "death is nothing."

Analysis of Greenblatt's Preface in "The Swerve"

"I marveled—I continue to marvel—that these perceptions were fully articulated in a work written more than two thousand years ago. The line between this work and modernity is not direct: nothing is ever so simple. There were innumerable forgettings, disappearances, recoveries, dismissals, distortions, challenges, transformations, and renewed forgettings. And yet the vital connection is there. Hidden behind the worldview I recognize as my own is an ancient poem, a poem once lost, apparently irrevocably, and then found."

In this paragraph, from the preface of The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, the author shows his writing style and his ideas. I disagree with the way he writes, and the whole point of his story. He says himself that the connection between his book and what is has to do with modern day is not clear. However, what is the point of writing a story in which the readers have to put their trust into what the author wants you think, and now what your naturally led to believe? He wants to tie together things that never were connected in the first place, such as transformations and forgettings. So far, it seems as if he is telling us that these things he's writing about are connected, however he offers no explanation as to the actual connection that he finds. The bridge between the facts he states and the truth we see on the other side is incomplete. Then, he declares the view in his book as the "worldview", and how a lost poem was found. How do we, as readers, learn to trust some guy who has pulled out a never seen before poem and then launch off to a giant conclusion about the history of the world? I find it preposterous. For these reasons, I disagree with Greenblatt's style of writing and how he expects us to believe in a meaningless document.

Miguel's Swerve Paragraph 9/27

Such was, in my case, the poem’s personal point of entry, the immediate source of its powerover me. But that power was not only a consequence of my peculiar life history. On the Nature ofThings struck me as an astonishingly convincing account of the way things actually are. To be sure, Ieasily grasped that many features of this ancient account now seem absurd. What else would weexpect? How accurate will our account of the universe seem two thousand years from now? Lucretius
believed that the sun circled around the earth, and he argued that the sun’s heat and size could hardly be much greater than are perceived by our senses. He thought that worms were spontaneously generated from the wet soil, explained lightning as seeds of fire expelled from hollow clouds, and pictured the earth as a menopausal mother exhausted by the effort of so much breeding. But at the core of the poem lay key principles of a modern understanding of the world.

In this paragraph, Greenblatt masterfully displays his thesis and his instantly earns the attention of his readers. He spends much of his paragraph showing why The Nature of Things is inaccurate, wrong, but then rebuts all that with one last powerful sentence. Also, he manages to explain a fairly complicated and sophisticated idea in an interesting and readable way. The absurd examples of Lucretius's misinformation provide humor and offset the very serious tone of the last paragraph about the author's  depressed mother. What otherwise could have been a very dull and drab segment of writing instead seems lively and upbeat, and encourages the reader to keep going. The last sentence pulls off a cliffhanger affect; the boldness and generalness of it creates a demand for evidence and a desire to keep reading. Greenblatt engineers an interesting, humorous paragraph that keeps the reader engaged and excited to read on. 

Greenblatt Preface

The stuff of the universe, Lucretius proposed, is an infinite number of atoms moving randomly through space, like dust motes in a sunbeam, colliding, hooking together, forming complex structures, breaking apart again, in a ceaseless process of creation and destruction. There is no escape from this process. When you look up at the night sky and, feeling unaccountably moved, marvel at the numberless stars, you are not seeing the handiwork of the gods or a crystalline sphere detached from our transient world. You are seeing the same material world of which you are a part and from whose elements you are made. There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design. All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms it involves a principle of natural selection. That is, species that are suited to survive and to reproduce successfully endure, at least for a time; those that are not so well suited die off quickly. But nothing—from our own species to the planet on which we live to the sun that lights our days—lasts forever. Only the atoms are immortal.

Greenblatt's writing is incredibly interesting and grabs your attention very well. The use of imagery early in this paragraph enables the reader to visualize the concept and see those infinite numbers of atoms colliding with each other in a never-ending process of destruction and creation, like the particles of dust you can see flying around in a beam of light.
The second unique part of this paragraph is the complete denial of a god or gods and any intelligent design at all. When you look into the sky, you are not seeing something magical or something created by a god. By coming out and flatly saying "There is no divine architect," Greenblatt surprises the reader and you become immersed in what he has to say. He follows Lucretius' beliefs and argues for things like evolution and natural selection, while dismissing intelligent design and religion. It is a fact of life that death must follow; even those who adapt quickly and are "suited to survive" eventually will die, just like the ones who do not adapt well. Absolutely nothing is immortal, except for the atoms of the universe. Everything will someday cease to exist. Therefore, we should not be afraid of death or be intimidated by death. Dying is just as important as life. I enjoy Greenblatt's writing in that it is able to so quickly take its reader's attention by coming out with big claims as if they were mere facts. The writing flows very well and it's a great paragraph to read.

The Ups and Downs of the Neolithic Revolution

 The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the Agricultural Revolution, began around 10,000 B.C.E., and was essential to the creation civilization, as we know it today.  Agriculture allowed humans to stay in one territory and develop expanding communities.  Paleolithic hunter-gatherer tribes before then could only be comprised of twenty to thirty people.  In Paleolithic tribes, everyone had more or less equal status and equal influence, since everyone performed the same tasks and contributed evenly.  While this method of government works well in small groups, it could not support the societies as large as those that formed in the Neolithic Age.  With the different jobs agriculture also brought, came social hierarchy, allowing for the governing of larger populations. Men, being typically physically stronger than women, rose to a higher social status, as they were the ones who would plow most frequently.  Although agriculture was the primary, source of food, it was not the only.  Another great advancement, domestication, provided meat without needing to roam in search of large animals that were hunted to near extinction.  Also, because they were able to settle down in one area, Neolithic cultures also developed a greater connection with their environment, so more complex belief systems and traditions, like complicated burials, were created.   

Without agriculture we would not be able have the complex societies we have today, however, this more modern life also had its downsides.  Because grains became a large staple in the Neolithic diet, average health decreased.  Working in fields was, and still is, extremely strenuous, so many people had hunched backs from stooping and bad joints from duress.  The larger communities also saw corrupt leaders who took advantage of their power over the masses.  This problem is one that we still struggle with today, and is arguably the most harmful aspect of society.  This downside however, is an unavoidable part of large civilizations, so with prosperity, will always come other obstacles .