Death of the world? Unamuno, Life 5.23 (cont'd)

How to grapple with life's mystery? Is it really possible to live without questioning it? Unamuno approaches these questions here with poetry, citing authors with some sympathy for Lucretius (whom he has already rejected, but with respect).

      
      Meglio oprando obliar, senza indagarlo,
      Questo enorme mister de l’universo!

«¡Mejor obrando olvidar, sin indagarlo, este enorme misterio del universo!» escribió Carducci en su Idilio maremmano, el mismo Carducci que al final de su oda Sobre el monte Mario nos habló de que la tierra, madre del alma fugitiva, ha de llevar en torno al sol gloria y dolor

      hasta que bajo el ecuador rendida,
      a las llamadas del calor que huye,
      la ajada prole una mujer tan sólo
      tenga y un hombre,

      que erguidos entre trozos de montañas,
      en muertos bosques, lívidos, con ojos
      vítreos te vean sobre inmenso hielo,
      ¡oh sol, ponerte! (‡)

¿Pero es posible trabajar en algo serio y duradero, olvidando el enorme misterio del universo y sin inquirirlo? ¿Es posible contemplarlo todo con alma serena, según la piedad lucreciana, pensando que un día no se ha de reflejar eso todo en conciencia humana alguna?


      Better far to seize our tasks
      Forget the questions, all unasked
      Leave off research as we work
      The mystery of our universe.

So writes Carducci (†) in his Idyll from Maremma, the same Carducci who tells us at the end of his ode On Mount Mario that the earth, mother of our fugitive soul, must carry glory and pain around the sun

      Till at last she sets undone
      Without the heat that hurries on
      Nothing left of all her life
      But wilted man, and worn-out wife.

      Standing on the mountains' bones
      In dead forests gone to stone
      Pallid, with their glassy eyes
      They see the sun set last on ice.

Is it really possible to work on anything serious and enduring while forgetting the grand mystery of the universe—to join in the great dance without investigating it? Is it possible to contemplate this almighty scene with a calm soul, as the piety of Lucretius teaches us to do, thinking that one day no human consciousness will reflect the world we see?


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(‡) The Spanish text here is Unamuno's own translation of the original Italian:

      fin che ristretta sotto l'equatore
      dietro i richiami del calor fuggente
      l'estenuata prole abbia una sola
      femina, un uomo,
     
      che ritti in mezzo a' ruderi de' monti,
      tra i morti boschi, lividi, con gli occhi
      vitrei te veggan su l'immane ghiaccia,
      sole, calare.

(†) Giosuè Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci (1835-1907) was a famous Italian poet, and scholar of antiquity (who taught Greek for a little while in a secondary school at Pistoia). He was born in Tuscany, and the first poem Unamuno cites here (the idyll) takes its title from the Maremma, a reclaimed marsh along the Tyrrhenian Sea that joins Tuscany to Lazio. The ode Unamuno cites is delivered from Mount Mario, a hill on the outskirts of Rome that the ancients called Mons Vaticanus (a title shared with other hills, including the modern Vatican) or Clivus Cinnae (referring to the consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a late republican who was violently opposed to Sulla).