Reading #TheSwerve by #stephengreenblatt and realizing how much the main character Poggio’s mourning for the loss of classical #culturalheritage in #earlymodern 15th century Italy resembles my own mourning for the loss of the Swedish catholic cultural heritage that was crushed by #gustavvasa and the iconoclastic #reformation.

Referring to Lucretius and De Rerum Natura

“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.”

~ Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve

#philosophy #epicureanism #Lucretius #StephenGreenblatt #death