The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity by Johanna Hanink

Abstract

204 PHOENIX with the image of the mountain itself. As Williams argues at the beginning of Chapter Six, Etna’s role may be compared with the status of the lighthouse in Virginia Woolf’s novel (221–222). Even as it looms over the entirety of the work, the symbol varies in its meaning for different characters. For Pietro, the volcano is violent, sublime, and poetic, “a self-projection” (223) that strengthens his identification with wild spaces outside the Venetian cursus. Pietro’s Etna contrasts sharply both with the more rationalist profile of the volcano of Bembo père and with the tidy, ordered space of Bernardo’s villa. This reading of Pietro’s volcanic self-fashioning is persuasive. Hence it comes as a slight surprise, when, in the final sentence of the chapter, Williams asks: “does he not in a sense violate the Etnean topography by injecting his own dream into what is, simply, there?” (268). The query seems to back away from the book’s otherwise robust recognition of the plasticity of Etna’s topography, and of how Pietro’s self-projection imposes itself, not on some opaque, pre-representational terrain that is simply “there,” but on the dense matrix of prior representations Williams has hitherto deftly unpacked. The complaint is a minor one, however, given that the book’s study of Pietro’s “fusing of philology and topography” (264) and the framing of both within the broader Venetian spatial turn are so rich and compelling. Similar praise is due to the closing discussion of collecting practices (Chapter Seven), as exemplified by the memory-legacy of the Bembo collection and Pietro’s residence at Padua, which, as Williams suggests, might be seen as an architectural portrait of its owner (272). The Bembo collection can be read as a visual corollary for the De Aetna’s storehouse of textual memories and naturalist knowledge, its implicit self-portraiture, the antiquarian travel it represents, and the aesthetic refinement of its typeface. In a broader perspective, Williams considers both collecting practices and (post-)classical literary texts in terms of the increased possibilities for print dissemination and the expanding horizons of travel and communication in early modernity (292). Williams’s monograph encompasses spatiality, the materiality of books, and interactions between the textual and the visual within a holistic vision that is at once scrupulously rigorous on the level of scholarly detail and audacious in scope of inquiry. Instances of individual argumentation are meticulously laid out with diplomatic transparency in a chiselled prose whose stylistic qualities cohere nicely with the elegant Bembo font appropriately selected for the book’s publication. Williams’s study offers a striking example of what can be done by classicists in the field of Renaissance studies, where philological training and familiarity with sub-fields such as codicology, combined with an up-to-date critical vocabulary and conceptual framing, hold strong potential for powerful new insights . Pietro Bembo on Etna: The Ascent of a Venetian Humanist makes an indispensable contribution to our understanding of Venetian humanism, while paving the way for future explorations of Renaissance literature at the intersection of classical antiquity, print technology, and transformations in spatiality and visual culture. Memorial University Luke Roman The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity. Par Johanna Hanink. Cambridge, Mass. et Londres : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2017. Pp. 337. L'ouvrage de Johanna Hanink pose la question de la dette collective de l’Occident à la Grèce ancienne. En retraçant 2500 ans d’évolution, l’auteure s’interroge sur l’impact BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 205 qu’eut la Grèce sur la constitution des idéaux démocratiques, philosophiques ou artistiques au sein de nos sociétés européennes ou nord-américaines. D’entrée de jeu, The Classical Debt met en évidence la place de choix de l’imagerie issue de l’Antiquité dans nos modes de représentation occidentaux. Le scandale et l’effroi causés par les destructions d’antiquités par le groupe armé État Islamique, la polémique sur une éventuelle rétrocession des frises du Parthénon par le Royaume-Uni, le souvenir d...