Some say there were 500 Buddhas Before The Buddha -
That the Buddha was just the one
Who chose to make himself known. 500 Jesuses. 500 Platos. 500 Lao Tzus.
And no Buddha
Ever wrote down a single word. Neither did Jesus
(Well, once in the dust.
But no one ever read it.) Neither did Socrates.
Most of what we have of Aristotle
Are mere lecture notes from his students.
All of his dialogues are lost. All of them. Cicero said,
“They were Rivers of Gold
When compared with Plato's Rivers of Silver”.
Imagine it:
500 Giottos placidly painting houses.
500 Beethovens humming happily to themselves.
500 Shakespeares whispering sonnets only into a solitary lover's ear.
If not for the efforts of Heminge and Condell,
It’s unlikely we would have much Shakespeare at all.
If Thomas Thorpe had not disregarded Shakespeare's intentions, There’d be no Sonnets.
What we have of the entirety of Elizabethan Drama
Is about one sixth of the more than 3000 plays.
The litany goes on:
Fires and the desires of the dying
Have nearly consumed much beauty:
If not for Augustus defying Virgil’s deathbed wish,
The Aeneid would’ve been burned.
Gogol burned the second half of Dead Souls.
Lavinia Dickinson elected to not burn her sister’s poems. Kafka burned most of his work during his lifetime
And asked his friend, Max Brod, to burn the rest. Brod betrayed his friend’s last wish.
What remains,
What we have
Are the merest fragments, fractions, scattered remnants,
Of the radiance and luminance of human artifact.
We know only those few
Who have come out of the Wood,
Out of the Wilderness,
Out of the Desert.
More often than not,
What has come down to us,
What we know,
Has made it only by the slightest twists of Fate.
Recently, the story was told
Of the rediscovery of Lucretius' On The Nature of Things.
If Poggio Bracciolini had not been the right person,
In the right place at the right time
And in the graces of rightest of luck,
It could have easily been otherwise.
Without Lucretius,
A critical catalyst for the Renaissance
Would have been absent.
Lucretius -
Student of Epicurus,
Disciple of Democritus.
Lucretius brings me to my point.
I was reading a book on Quantum Theory
Which contained a list of all the lost works of Democritus.
Not a single work of his survives.
All we know of Democritus
Is through fragments, quotations in other’s writings.
(Mostly now, in spirit, through Lucretius.)
To read over that list of what has been lost, is to ache...
Democritus was one of the most influential intellectual figures In the ancient world.
Most now know him best from Natural Philosophy: Everything is made of atoms.
But in his time,
His influence in was profound.
It has been suggested that
If Democritus' works had survived,
His teachings would have eclipsed Plato And reshaped the influence of Christianity.
Regardless, the list of his lost works Is beautiful and sad,
Utterly tantalizing to the imagination. It is its own sort of poem.
Our own Canticle for Leibowitz.
The Lost Works of Democritus
Ethics
Pythagoras
On the Disposition of the Wise Man On the Things in Hades
Tritogenia
On Manliness or On Virtue
The Horn of Amaltheia
On Contentment
Ethical Commentaries
Natural science
The Great World-ordering (may have been written by Leucippus) Cosmography
On the Planets
On Nature
On the Nature of Man or On Flesh (two books) On the Mind
On the Senses
On Flavours
On Colours
On Different Shapes On Changing Shape Buttresses
On Images
On Logic (three books)
Nature
Heavenly Causes
Atmospheric Causes
Terrestrial Causes
Causes Concerned with Fire and Things in Fire Causes Concerned with Sounds
Causes Concerned with Seeds and Plants and Fruits Causes Concerned with Animals (three books) Miscellaneous Causes
On Magnets
Mathematics
On Different Angles or On contact of Circles and Spheres On Geometry
Geometry
Numbers
On Irrational Lines and Solids (two books) Planispheres
On the Great Year or Astronomy (a calendar) Contest of the Waterclock
Description of the Heavens Geography
Description of the Poles Description of Rays of Light
Literature
On the Rhythms and Harmony
On Poetry
On the Beauty of Verses
On Euphonious and Harsh-sounding Letters On Homer
On Song
On Verbs Names
Technical works
Prognosis
On Diet
Medical Judgment
Causes Concerning Appropriate and Inappropriate Occasions On Farming
On Painting
Tactics
Fighting in Armor
Commentaries
On the Sacred Writings of Babylon On Those in Meroe Circumnavigation of the Ocean On History
Chaldaean Account
Phrygian Account
On Fever and Coughing Sicknesses Legal Causes
Problems
