A Review: Pompeiana by William Gell

3/5 stars.
A few years ago I went to an exhibit in Cincinnati of artifacts from Pompeii. I've known the basics of Pompeii, as I assume most people do, my whole life; Roman city, buried in volcanic ash, found centuries later, the forms of dying people preserved where they fell. Seeing the exhibit, though, gave me a new sense of the value of the site to our understanding of the early Roman imperial period. Pots and statues, graffiti as aggressive advertising, the bread, olives and figs they ate: all of it preserved for us to study or gawk at, depending on our skills and interests. Of course, the paster casts of the hollows where people fell were arresting. Literal moments frozen in time. It was amidst all this archaeological wonder I found one sign which mentioned the first book written in English about Pompeii was Pompeiana from 1817. I resolved to read this book. Thanks to the wonderful people who digitize old books, it wasn't that hard to find online.

I have the impression, based on I don't recall what, the book was going to be a tour guide of the city. I expected it to describe both the city and the methods by which fancy English gentlefolk on the Grand Tour would get to and around the town. I wanted to read about Sergio who has the best and most reliable mules in the area and about Momma Caglione who prepares the finest meals. There was none of that sort of tourist stuff. It was just about what a person will see in city. I suppose I should have guessed that from the full title: Pompeiana; the Topography, Edifices and Ornaments of Pompeii.

The book is actually rather short. It goes over the known and supposed history of Vesuvius' eruptions. Then the major parts of the city as known at that time. I read the second edition from 1824, which says it has been updated in include some recent excavations. Even so, there wasn't much of the city known at the time. The amphitheater in the east was known but the middle of the city was still buried. Gell instead covers the buildings on the western edge of the town. The tombs and large houses on the main road outside the Herculaneum Gate, a few of the crossroads, a few of the temples; these things he discusses in detail giving count of rooms, supposed uses and any curious artifacts found in each. The frescoes and mosaics one would see in each building are also listed and described. What I liked best about the book was the numerous plates throughout. About every house and building described is also figured by good quality lithographs and many are given a numbered plan as well. The over-all impression of the book is to put the reader “there” in a very literal way.

The book serves as a time capsule because it shows things in Pompeii as they looked in the early Nineteenth Century. Gell laments the exposure to the elements which had already at that time damaged the colors of frescoes and the stucco covering some of the buildings. I expect this tension between uncovering and discovery of the ruins and the further damage the ruins are thereby exposed to will continue to be a major theme of the other books I read about Pompeii. Pompeiana tells everything which was known about a particular house at that time. I expect to see in the other books I read both a long shadow from this work and how understandings changed over the next two centuries.

NaNoWriMo Victory!

For the third time in the nine years I've attempted it, I have won National Novel Writing Month. With the health set backs I had early in the month I wasn't sure I was going to make it but I managed 2,000 words a day or more for almost two weeks right I the middle of the month. That but me back on track. I traveled out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday, but unlike other years, this time I had a laptop so I managed to get some work done every day of the trip. Another big help. So, I did it! I said I felt like a had a win in me and I did. Good news!

But is the draft I've slipshod smashed together any good? Maybe. I must admit when I was writing the end I wasn't happy. The diary format limits my ability to actually describe the climax of the story. I was never convinced by the stupidly long letters and diary entries which give all the details in Stoker's Dracula so I wanted to keep my pretended entries shorter. I decided, perhaps wrongly, to make the final events occur after the last entry. Rasmus talks about what he thinks will happen when signs off never to make a follow-up report. That got me to the end of my word count, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. If I return to this in February or so to revise it, that will have to revisited. There are some other problems with the plot. I'm not sure I like the direction I ended up taking with more and more people getting involved in Rasmus' project. He becomes the administrator and star surgeon of a hospital. Would he really go from quiet, private academic to that kind of leader? Maybe, but I would have to develop that more in revision. Lastly, I read about one paragraph of background information so to have things accurate to 1640s Prague will take a lot of work.

Is there nothing good about it? Well... I still like the idea. I could try another project with the same format. I think I am most proud of the character of Penemue, the fallen angel. In a way this is that being's diary as well and most of the things it tells Rasmus about sitting before The Throne in the days before the rebellion and watching the first human civilizations and how the exiled angels built a city inside the chasm they were thrown in can be assumed to be true. Though it is using these stories to corrupt Rasmus they are really how this particular angel feels. It joined the rebellion and ended cast out of Heaven, but it still remembers its days of glory fondly and truthfully talks about how bad Lucifer is. I have, in Penemue's parts of the diary, sketched out mechanics of heaven, the progress of the rebellion of Lucifer, the conditions of the thrown-down angels' imprisonment. All of this can be improved upon and turned into another found document it its own right or used as the basis for some other project involving angels.

Here's a section written by Penemue:

Simply stated, yes, that high angel to the depths fallen you have named was the leader of the defeated forces. I mention not that name lest the one to whom it belongs visit some vengeance on me even now. Little all your human wisdom has drawn so far from the aether about that contest. It happened not before the world was made as you suppose. It happened afterwards when humanity had already begun to fill the earth and make names and kingdoms for themselves. That was when certain of my kind first mingled among you. Wives they took to them after the fashion of the tribal rulers they emulated. At first those great men who were born of those unsanctioned unions were famous and their tales were long and filled with great glory, great woe and, above all, great deeds. Little remnant of those tales remains, if any, even in the learning of the very wise for it was long ago. So this is what provoked the war. The faction named later the rebels wished to continue the relations between man and angel as they had been. To shape further the fledgling kingdoms after the full potential of the human minds and limbs they had found, always driving those simple kingdoms on to new greatness. Even as I told you about Eden so it happened in those early civilizations. Though founded upon the original principles of Creation, such strong pushing by the angels and such rapid advancement by the men was not the design of the Enthroned and a ban was issued which in turn provoked the rebellion. On both sides it was for mankind we fought. Any history you read which does not run in this manner is not founded upon the events of those days, but upon later speculation and guesses.

Thus to your next theme. Indeed is the Almighty named rightly. Indeed that loyal host was victorious. So why sit I here confined instead of in my former place before the Throne? I have often wondered this myself, be assured. I know not an answer and I have but few thoughts as consolation. Since my rescue could surely be affected that it is not must also be a part of that sacred will which is not revealed even to the angels. Maybe I am here to work upon this epo I have here composed. Maybe when it conveys all that was done and felt in that lost contest I will be welcomed home to deliver my labor and hear it read before the captains of those days as I intend it to be heard. Maybe I am here to learn something of confinement the better to be sent on a future mission by my master. This last it perhaps slight comfort to you who are of different nature than I, but it is possible I am no longer needed or even considered by the one who made me. I was made to serve and if I am no longer of use what obligation has the maker to the useless tool? Every right there might be to set me aside. I know not the state of heaven since I marched forth. This I can accept. Your question shakes me not.

My final, verified count was 50,161 words.