The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

by Stephen Greenblatt

SILENCING BRUNO PROVED far easier than returning On the Nature of Things to the darkness. The problem was that, once Lucretius’ poem reentered the world, the words of this visionary poet of human experience began to resonate powerfully in the works of Renaissance writers and artists, many of whom thought of themselves as pious Christians. This resonance—the trace of an encounter in painting or in epic romance—was less immediately disturbing to the authorities than it was in the writings of scientists or philosophers. The ecclesiastical thought police were only rarely called to investigate works of art for their heretical implications. But just as Lucretius’ gifts as a poet had helped to diffuse his radical ideas, so too those ideas were transmitted, in ways extremely difficult to control, by artists who were in contact directly or indirectly with Italian humanist circles: