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Vincent
Hunink review of: Carmelo Salemme, Lucano: la storia verso la rovina, Napoli 2002 Text published in: Mnemosyne 57, 2004, 107-8; Recent
years have brought to light a regrettable breach in studies on Lucan. On the one
hand, there is the influential Anglo-American school with its various postmodern
approaches (Henderson, Masters, Bartsch), on the other hand one may observe
continental traditions which firmly reject such radical ideas and defend a more
conventional, philological approach. The wide rift between both currents of
thought recently became manifest in Emanuele Narducci's provocative essay
'Deconstructing Lucan, ovvero le nozze (coi fichi secchi) di Ermete Trismegisto
e di Filologia' (in: P. Esposito, L. Nicastri, (edd.), Interpretare Lucano. Miscellanea
di Studi. Napoli, 1999), which amounts to a declaration of war upon the
Anglo-American school. Carmelo
Salemme has now published a small volume of five studies on Lucan (four of them
published between 1999 and 2001 as separate articles), which is bound to please
only the continental group of scholars. The works of the Anglo-American
academics are hardly ever cited, let alone discussed. This is a pity, since for
one thing, these studies have opened up the exiting prospect of Lucan as a
playful, inventive, and provocative poet, who is fond of extravagant pathos,
puns, and intertextual play. Hardly anything of this is to be found in the
present volume, which confronts readers with a rather customary picture of Lucan
as a weighty thinker, pondering important questions of Fate, History, and the
End of the World. The titles of the essays may speak for themselves: 'Mundi
ruina e funus', 'Onde e macerie', 'Il senso della storia', 'Le
ragioni della storia', 'La storia verso la rovina'. The
essays have relatively few new insights to offer. The central importance of
concepts such as ruina and funus to the poet's imagery has been
observed before (among others by Salemme himself, in an article dating from
1976: BStudL. 6,1976,302-20), as is the case for Caesar's all
encompassing furor. Much space is devoted to quotations in Latin and
Italian and to paraphrases of Lucan's text. Furthermore, the problem to be
discussed is not always expressed in clear terms. For instance, the third essay
is concerned with the poet's problem of how to interpret history in the context
of contemporary experiences, but then goes on to discuss various episodes that
seem to be of little immediate relevance to the theme (the Amyclas scene in book
five, and characters such as Julia and Cornelia, Appius, Cato and others). In
all respects, we are confronted with a Lucan who is, above all, extremely
thoughtful and pensive about everything he weaves into his poem. According to S.
the basic tone of the poem is tragic ('atmosfera profondamente tragica', p.87),
and he strongly opposes any suggestion that the Bellum Civile could be
'nihilistic', since it contains passages celebrating the staunchly Republican
figure of Cato. More than a few scholars, however, have felt difficulties in
accepting this excessively strict Cato as an authentic model and ideal, rather
than as, at least partly, a caricature of Stoic wisdom as such. But for S. there
can be no room for doubt here, and W.R. Johnson's influential Momentary
monsters (1987), which first attempted to put Lucan's Cato into perspective,
is dismissed in a short footnote (p.87-88). Surely, if the Anglo-American
challenge is to be met with, something more is needed. Another
example may illustrate S.'s exclusively serious approach. In 4,393-4 Lucan
echoes Virgil's famous felix qui rerum potuit cognoscere causas (G.
2,490) in the words felix qui potuit mundi nutante ruina / quo iaceat iam
scire loco. According to S. the Lucanean lines are 'versi solenni,
definitivi' (p.17), whereas they could also be considered a funny mimic of the
famous line. No
doubt, Lucan has performed the poetical task he set himself with much attention,
talent, and craftsmanship. But we must not forget that he was not a veteran
soldier or an experienced politician who bitterly and personally regretted the
loss of Republican freedom, but a brilliant young artist moving in the highest
circles (including the imperial court), and a poet thoroughly trained in the
rhetoricians' schools. Anglo-American and North-European scholars seem more
readily inclined to accept such a paradoxical and playful Lucan than their
colleagues from Mediterranean countries. S.'s
book on Lucan, then, will appeal above all to Italian scholars and their
supporters. To the other camp, it will be merely another example of the sort of
conventional studies it opposes. Meanwhile, what seems to be necessary is studies from either side in the debate that discuss in detail the methods, examples, and conclusions of the other side, instead of merely neglecting or dismissing them. Only in this manner, real progress in Lucanean studies may be expected.
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