Lucretius "The De Rerum Natura of Lucretius is the first great work of poetry in which knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to a perception of all that is infinitely minute, light and mobile. Lucretius set out to write the poem of physical matter, but he warns us at the outset that this matter is made up of invisible particles. He is the poet of physical concreteness, viewed in its permanent and immutable substance, but the first thing he tells us is that emptiness is just as concrete as solid bodies. Lucretius' chief concern is to prevent the weight of matter from crushing us. Even while laying down the rigorous mechanical laws that determine every event, he feels the need to allow atoms to make unpredictable deviations from the straight line, thereby ensuring freedom both to atoms and to human beings. The poetry of the invisible, of infinite unexpected possibilities - even the poetry of nothingness - issues from a poet who had no doubts whatever about the physical reality of the world." (Lightness, 8-9). Nunc quae mobilitas sit reddita materiai corporibus, paucis licet hinc cognoscere, Memmi. primum aurora novo cum spargit lumine terras et variae volucres nemora avia pervolitantes aëra per tenerum liquidis loca vocibus opplent, quam subito soleat sol ortus tempore tali convestire sua perfundens omnia luce, omnibus in promptu manifestumque esse videmus. at vapor is, quem sol mittit, lumenque serenum non per inane meat vacuum; quo tardius ire cogitur, aërias quasi dum diverberat undas; the minuscule shells, all similar but each one different, that waves gently cast up on the bibula harena, the 'imbibing sand' (II. 369-378): Postremo quodvis frumentum non tamen omne quidque suo genere inter se simile esse videbis, quin intercurrat quaedam distantia formis. concharumque genus parili ratione videmus pingere telluris gremium, qua mollibus undis litoris incurvi bibulam pavit aequor harenam. quare etiam atque etiam simili ratione necessest, natura quoniam constant neque facta manu sunt unius ad certam formam primordia rerum, dissimili inter se quaedam volitare figura; or the spiderwebs that wrap themselves around us without our noticing them as we walk along (III. 381-390): nam neque pulveris inter dum sentimus adhaesum corpore nec membris incussam sidere cretam, nec nebulam noctu neque arani tenvia fila obvia sentimus, quando obretimur euntes, nec supera caput eiusdem cecidisse vietam vestem nec plumas avium papposque volantis, qui nimia levitate cadunt plerumque gravatim, nec repentis itum cuiusvis cumque animantis sentimus nec priva pedum vestigia quaeque, corpore quae in nostro culices et cetera ponunt. Ovid Montale Kundera Lucretius Boccaccio Cavalcanti Dante Valery Dickinson James Cervantes Shakespeare Cyrano de Bergerac Swift Voltaire Munchausen Leopardi Kafka Moon Magic Gravity Folktales DNA (The Writing Genome)