Philosophiae recentioris versibus traditae libri decem

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Author Stay, Benedetto
Full title Philosophiae recentioris versibus traditae a Benedicto Stay libri decem
Year 1792
Place Rome
Publisher/Printer Pagliarini, Niccolò
Era 18th century
Form/Genre Didactic poem
Discipline/Content Physics, Astronomy/Astrology/Cosmography
Digital copies
Original Philosophiae recentioris versibus traditae libri decem (edition in one volume, Rome 1792) (Google Books)

Single volumes: Vol. 1, Rome 1755; Vol. 2, Rome 1760; Vol. 3, Rome 1792

Digital sourcebook 60293

Single volumes: Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3

Description The Ten Books on Modern Philosophy in Verse by the Dalmatian poet and papal secretary Benedetto Stay constitute one of the longest didactic poems ever written and perhaps the most difficult in terms of content. In about 24,000 hexameters, Stay provides a detailed overview of Newtonian physics and cosmology.

The work was probably begun as early as the 1740s and certainly completed in 1755. The first two volumes were published in 1755 and 1760. Volume one is introduced by a letter from the author's brother Christoph Stay, who initially declares how happy he is that Benedetto is finally "relieved from the hardship of his long labour" (diuturni laboris molestia te esse perfunctum). In volumes one and two, the text is accompanied by copious comments and additional remarks by the Jesuit physicist Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–87). Because Boscovich's commentation of the third and last volume was much delayed and never entirely completed, this volume appeared only in 1792. In the same year, a one-volume edition of the whole poem containing the text only was published as well for the benefit "of those who find it less annoying to run into some difficulty of understanding now and then than to interrupt the reading of the verses so often to consult the commentary, and of those so well-exercised in scientific reasoning that they do not need any explanations in order to understand everything, even the more difficult parts" (p. IV).

In the one-volume edition, which is taken as the point of reference of the present entry, the reader is first alerted to the circumstances of publication (Monitum, pp. III–VI). This is followed by the abovementioned letter by Christoph Stay (pp. VII–XXII), who affirms the possibility and desirability of explaining advanced science in verse, a very detailed table of contents (pp. XXIII–38 [the pagination changes to Arabic numerals at p. 33]) and the Jesuit and papal imprimaturs (p. 39). As an appendix, one finds Christoph Stay's De poesi didascalica dialogus.

The poem itself can roughly be divided into four sections: Books 1–3 (vol. 1 of the original edition) expound the epistemological, kinematic, dynamical and geometric foundations of the subsequent remarks. Books 4–6 (vol. 2) discuss the mechanics of the solar system. The subject of books 7–9 is optics. Book 10 proposes an atomistic theory of matter, which includes Boscovich's theory of the mutual attraction and repulsion of corpuscles (vol. 3).

In terms of style, Stay lets himself be guided by the model of Lucretius. His imitation of the Roman poet not only pertains to the latter's somewhat archaizing language and verse technique, but also to his exceptional stylistic range, which extends from the highly poetic to the drily technical. The whole poetic panoply of didactic epic is paraded in the Modern Philosophy in Verse: inserted epyllia, invocations and prayers, similes and metaphores, recondite epithets, elaborate circumlocutions, emotional appeals to the reader and so on. On the other hand, complex physical issues are elaborated in painstaking detail and with relentless precision, including much versified mathematics. The phenomen of aberration, that is, the apparent 40 arcseconds change of location of the fixed stars over the year due to the motion of the earth and the finite speed of light, is described and interpreted as follows (7.711–17):

Scilicet apparens altis hinc motus in astris / quadraginta aequat prope partes partium earum / senarum decies, in quas pars quaelibet una / dividitur, pars nempe, gradus quam continet unus / in decies senas itidem divisus; an ergo / mille quidem decies non partibus ocius ire / deprendas lumen quam terram?

"For this apparent motion of the stars high above equals about forty parts of those ten times six parts, in which any part is diveded – I mean, a part contained in a degree divided in six times ten parts in like manner: So should you not understand that the light moves ten thousand times faster than the earth?"

In passages such as this one Stay seems to consciously check out how far the limits of scientific poetry can be pushed.

References Haskell 2003, 213–20
Cited in
How to cite this entry Stay, Benedetto: Philosophiae recentioris versibus traditae libri decem, in: Noscemus Wiki, URL: http://wiki.uibk.ac.at/noscemus/Philosophiae_recentioris_versibus_traditae_libri_decem (last revision: 12.05.2021).
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Of interest to MK, IT
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Written by MK