I didn't intend to allow so much time to pass between finishing Stephen Greenblatt's book The Swerve and writing this short review, but I got caught up in the holidays, which came and went, as well as in another book high on my “to read” list. Many of the details have begun to fade, but maybe that fading is a good thing, something akin to a literary natural selection or survival of the fittest – maybe these persistent details are significant precisely because of their more indelible characteristics. Or maybe I'm just focusing on things which have significance only for me.

I immediately rated the book rather highly – four stars. I'll stick with that rating, but thinking about the book since finishing it I now get the feeling Mr. Greenblatt has hyped the significance of the rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini of Lucretius' On the Nature of Things. Don't get me wrong – I love Lucretius' work, and I enjoyed reading about its rediscovery and about Poggio. But a “swerve” that made the world modern? I'm not so sure. That said, what I am finding most indelible from the book are several aspects of Poggio's life.

First there is his work as a scriptor wherein he records the words of others. His success as a scriptor eventually led him to become apostolic secretary to Pope John XXIII, a Pope for whom he seemed to hold little, if any, respect.

Then there is his affinity for the ancients over those of his day. On several occasions he espouses the supremacy of ancient times. Of course given what he saw around him – the fall of Pope John XXIII and the execution of John Hus, for instance – I'd be hard-pressed to argue with him.

This affinity leads him to search out lost works of the ancients, whereupon he quickly and beautifully copies them to make them more widely available. His handwriting was in fact very beautiful, machine-like in its precision, artistic in its flow, a tribute in itself to the works he was copying. But again he is copying the words of others.

The most indelible detail of Poggio's life is how he had 12 children with his girlfriend before marrying someone else – someone well-connected – and completely abandoning his girlfriend and children. His marriage seems to have been a somewhat happy one as he remained married and had five children with his wife. However, that life choice is as about as indelible a detail as I think I'll ever read.

So, much of Poggio's life was spent giving life to other people's words, other people's works of art, other people's era. Consequently, it seems very fitting to me that his tribute statue was eventually removed from its original location and ended up serving as an unnamed, unknown stand-in for one of the apostles in a larger sculptural piece. In the end – and weeks on from finishing the book - these incidents leave me wondering more on the nature of Poggio than On the Nature of Things, its rediscovery, and even its impact and significance.

Now I'll get back to my “To Read” selection – an excellent biography about yet another long-dead author unparalleled in our time. Perhaps I'll be able to do some quote-harvesting from his work so as to appear clever on FaceBook! But first I'll check out the latest news on the deteriorating condition of the ruins at Pompeii, my favorite city in the world