Atomic Poetics: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura

Gwendolyn M. Gruber (University of Iowa)

Atoms are like letters, Lucretius explains in Book 2 of De Rerum Natura.  The finite number of various atomic shapes combine to create all the different things in the universe, just as the letters of the alphabet can be recombined in a variety of ways to create different words (2.688-699, 2.1012-1022).  This analogy can also be applied to Lucretius’ poetic endeavor.  Just as the atoms join to make objects, Lucretius puts letters together to create words, and words together to create poetry.  Just as combinations of atoms join to make large things, including the universe, Lucretius connects words and verses to produce a grand epic.  In writing De Rerum Natura, Lucretius mimics the activity of the atoms and the poem’s structure can be viewed as a metaphor for Epicurean atomic theory. 

The operation of atoms as an analogy to Lucretius’ composition can be seen on the small-scale, i.e., words and verses, and this analogy can be extrapolated to the macroscopic view of the poem as a whole.  As a poet working in dactylic hexameters, Lucretius is particularly attuned to word choice in his composition.  Just as the atoms are limited by a finite number of different shapes (2.478-521), the poet is limited by the strictures of the epic meter.  The arrangement of words in hexametric line requires attention to individual letters (long and short vowels) and placement of words in order to adhere to metrical rules.  Further, Lucretius is not merely wedging the atomic theory in to meter, but he does it with skill, employing traditional devices such as chiasmus and alliteration.  In addition, Lucretius’ is dealing with a lack of vocabulary choices to express his subject (as he laments in 1.832).  This constraint forces him into several strategies of attentive word choice: he draws on, for example, archaic compound adjectives (frugiferens), neologisms (filatim), Greek translations (homoeomeria), and multiple terms for one concept for optimum clarity (semina, primordia, corpora prima, genitalia corpora rebus, for “atoms”).  Lucretius is a poet fastening words together into lines just as atoms combine to create physical objects.

On the grand-scale, the words of the poem combine to create the didactic epic, just as atoms join to create the universe.  The topics of the poem function as the atoms do; atoms build into greater and greater objects until a universe is created, and Lucretius follows this example, beginning at the microscopic world of the atoms and ending with the vastness of Nature.  In Books 1 and 2, Lucretius examines how individual atoms move and join with one another, and in Books 3 and 4, he discusses the function of atoms in human perception and existence.  Finally, in Books 5 and 6, he shows how the atoms work on the cosmic scale, providing atomic explanations for the forces of Nature, such as thunder (6.92-159).   Lucretius’ poetic structure imitates the workings of the atoms, working from the individual words to the grandness of an epic poem.        

Epicurus infamously asserted that only the wise man can discuss poetry truthfully, but this wise man would never actually compose poetry (D. L. 10.121 = fr. 539 Us.).  Ironically, Lucretius’ poem is the most complete and most detailed extant document of Epicurean tenets. The examination of atomic processes as an analogy for Lucretius’ poetic undertaking is one way to defend his sincerity as a dedicated Epicurean atomist, in light of Epicurus’ criticism of the poetic arts.