Make It News
Martial on Vesuvius: "And the gods wish they'd never had such power."
Whenever anyone, faute de mieux, refers to this little venture as a “newsletter,” inwardly I balk. Yes, “literature is news that stays news,” but I want to stay away from news, mostly out of self-preservation and a superstitious hope that, if I’m uninterested in the times, the times will consent to be uninteresting. Unfortunately, sometimes news comes for us all; there is no avoiding it in Los Angeles at the moment. This was the view from my desk Wednesday morning:
Admittedly, it’s not one of the more terrible pictures to come out of LA. So far where I am in mid-city (Miracle Mile, if that means anything to you) the fire has not crept closer than three and a half miles—that was the Sunset fire in Hollywood, which is no longer active. The air this morning is even blue, though there is a sickly orange miasma over the Hollywood hills to the north. The streets are emptier than usual, and the sky, when the sun is out, has a pallid tangerine sheen, which feels ominously, maybe poisonously, cheerful. I’m staying inside.
I haven’t had to evacuate and doubt I will. I also don’t own anything I would be truly devastated to lose. Still, it’s hard to imagine what this city will be like afterwards, what it will be like teaching students who have lost their homes, where everyone will live, what they will do. What about the kids whose schools have burned down, where will they go? No doubt the atmosphere of recrimination, plenty of it justified, will be as poisonous as any contaminants the fires leave behind. One hopes the city’s better angels will prevail, and that we’ll remember Horace’s injunction to make light from smoke, not smoke from fire: Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem.
Thankfully, the present tragedy does not rival the old Neapolitan one which destroyed the House of the Papyri in Herculaneum, after which the Getty Villa, which seems to have survived so far, is modeled. Still, when my classes read about the fate of poor Caecilius and his family in a few weeks, I know it will feel much too close to home. So does this epigram of Martial:
4.44
Hic est pampineis uiridis modo Vesbius umbris,
presserat hic madidos nobilis uua lacus:
haec iuga quam Nysae colles plus Bacchus amauit;
hoc nuper Satyri monte dedere choros;
haec Veneris sedes, Lacedaemone gratior illi; 5
hic locus Herculeo nomine clarus erat.
Cuncta iacent flammis et tristi mersa fauilla:
nec superi uellent hoc licuisse sibi.
Here is Vesuvius, verdant below
a weft of noble vines not long ago,
whose pressed grapes made the wine vats overflow,
which, more than Nysa, Bacchus’ love held dear,
whose Satyrs lately hosted dances here.
Venus preferred this height to Lacedaemon;
Hercules graced it with his name and numen.
Now all lies plunged in flame and cinder-shower,
and the gods wish they’d never had such power.
