鈥淎rt would get us through it鈥�: Plague and Poetry from Vergil鈥檚 Bees to听Emily St. John Mandel鈥檚听Station Eleven
鈥淎rt would get us through it鈥�:*听Plague and Poetry from Vergil鈥檚 Bees to听Emily St. John Mandel鈥檚听Station Eleven
Friday, January 19, 5:00pm
Eaton Humanities
Free and open to the public
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This event is sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Center for Humanities and the Arts, The Benson Center, and a Graduate and Professional Student Government Grant
The historian Livy gives an account of what may be the first recorded instance of art used as a response to combat epidemic disease in the Roman republic.听听He observes that, in the face of an especially virulent plague (pestilentia, 7.1.7), the Romans imported stage plays (ludi scaenici, 7.2.3) from Etruria, a measure that, while having little impact on the actual disease, left an indelible imprint on the origins and development of Rome鈥檚 literary arts.听The poet听Vergil, Livy鈥檚 near contemporary, intuits a similar connection between art and pestilence in his听Georgics, a poem famous for its depiction of the poet Orpheus, whose loss of Eurydice and own tragic death result in a听尘辞谤产耻蝉听(鈥渄isease鈥�) besetting the beehive of his rival鈥攁nd the author of his death鈥擜ristaeus (G. 4.318,听amissis鈥pibus morboque fameque; cf. 4.397). Song, viewed in ancient Greco-Roman culture as a听pharmakon听(鈥渄rug, remedy鈥�) and means of assuaging grief (Bion, frag. 3; Theocritus 11; cf. Eur.听Med. 190-98; Segal 1989, 10-17), is put under scrutiny in the onset of plague, whether an actual or imagined outbreak. This paper examines why ancient Romans turned to art when experiencing epidemic disease:听听what resources or healing powers did art, especially poetic arts, provide? Both Livy and later St. Augustine (De. Civ. 132) were skeptical of what the newly imported 鈥渟tage plays鈥� offered, but, as the playwright Artaud suggests (1958, 27), theatrical arts powerfully reshape collectives with a force equal to that of epidemic disease and provide a source of cohesion amidst a rapidly disintegrating body politic.听After observing the relationship between art and epidemic disease in relatively confined contexts of ancient Rome, Professor Gardner will turn to the recent flourishing of art as remedy during the COVID 19 pandemic.听She听considers common threads that bind ancient artistic responses to plague to contemporary ones, taking Mary Shelley, Albert Camus and Emily St. John Mandel as instances of the latter: ancient and听modern听responses both operate to forge collective experiences and values, yet social isolation (common during the COVID, but not regular practice in the context of ancient disease) and the global scope of the recent pandemic complicate and enrich the role of art in effecting cohesion and promoting a shared vision of the human condition.
* Mo Willems, as cited in the (April 2023).