Re-Approaching Therapy in the De Rerum Natura: Identification with Poetic Imagery as Psychoanalytic Repetition

Joseph R. Danielewicz (Ohio State University)

Attempts to articulate the relationship between the poetry and philosophy of the De Rerum Natura have always had a mysterious fixation on the personality of Lucretius, as if understanding the place of each could only be achieved by divining the nature of the man. This peculiar approach is shared famously by Jerome, Melchior de Polignac, and Cyril Bailey. Sedley’s “Epicurean fundamentalist” who, head-bowed merely poetically expresses the original arguments, uncaring or unaware of the philosophical debates of his own day, is heir to this tradition. Most take Lucretius’ own remarks about his project at face value: mental anxiety and the fear of death from which it comes can be alleviated once a person understands the impersonal processes of the universe and his place in that system. naturae species ratioque will shatter the mind’s ignorance and terror. Lucretius claims that, though healing takes place because of the philosophy, its bitterness requires that he rim this cup of medicine with the honey of poetry so as to beguile his infantile readers(4.11ff). However, the presence of poetry is best explained not as a didactic necessity subordinate to the rational structure, nor simply as the only way this poet knew how to communicate philosophy.

Lucretius is clearly trying to shape the values his readers hold and show them a new way to live without lust, greed, ambitions which are never satisfied, and indeed all of life’s frustrations. This paper will present a new and more coherent theory which explains how the poem “works” and the function of the poetry in it. This is more readily seen if one moves away from this obsession with the author and considers his Roman audience.

Romans had a strong tradition of both communicating and learning values by appealing to a tradition of exempla – not an orderly presentation of facts, but an ideas and images with which they could identify and imitate. Charles Segal in his book Lucretius on Death and Anxiety (1989) is aware of how the images of human suffering in the DRN help the reader accept his place as a bundle of atoms which are themselves forever being pulled apart. However, it is the imagery throughout the whole text which fulfills this function.

The persuasive ‘power’ of poetry and appeals to identification via the exemplary tradition point the way, but do not sufficiently describe the mechanism of therapy in the DRN. As Lucretius illustrates a metaphysical fact in a familiar, ‘poetic’ image – such as a ring worn with age, a child spinning in play, cicadas shedding skin, laundry hanging out to dry – the reader does not merely assent to the philosophical proof because of the effectiveness of the image; rather he repeats and relives his life in new terms, not only re-structuring how he understands the world but experiencing it anew. This is the medicine. Upon reflection, it should be no surprise that psychoanalysis – itself a therapeutic process, influenced by Epicureanism, which ministers to anxieties of the mind – best describes how the reader is actually healed. Wherever the reader believes his mental conflicts come from (and regardless as to where they actually come from), Lucretius provides them with countless opportunities to relive past experiences but with a new understanding of the (Lacanian) Real. By demonstrating that all Others – people, institutions, places, and processes – are part of this single, all-encompassing Real, Natura, Lucretius gives everyone access to a horror and divina voluptas which their lives were missing. This paper takes us beyond the mere reconciliation of philosophy and poetry; it provides a new, more helpful way of understanding the therapeutic function of the text – one based not on the personality of Lucretius, but the social and mental needs of his audience.