Resurrecting Pompeii by Estelle Lazer Read Free Book Online Page B

victims, have been interpreted. Bulwer-Lytton did not envisage his novel to be seen as mere entertainment; he considered that it should also have an instructive component. In the preface to the first edition, he stated that it was important to integrate scholarship with creativity. 77 The book had some of the hallmarks of scholarship, like the use of footnotes. His attitude to his work is reflected in a footnote about the form of the eruption 78 where he stated that accuracy was not sacrificed for the sake of romance.
    Bulwer-Lytton studied classics at school in Ealing and completed his education at Cambridge University. Throughout his life he was respected as both a scholar and a writer. The Last Days of Pompeii demonstrates a combination of these skills. It was based on thorough research, much of his information being obtained from detailed inspections of the remains along with discussions with William Gell and the Italian archaeologist Antonio Bonucci. Most critics acknowledge that, for the most part, it reflected what was considered historically and archaeologically accurate in the first half of the nineteenth century, even though his characters and their story were the product of his imagination. 79 He attempted to synthesize the available knowledge and present it in a form where it could be easily understood. Perhaps this is one of the more dangerous aspects of this book in terms of its relationship to Campanian scholarship. Because of its perceived accuracy in some areas, the boundaries between fantasy and reality have become confused and there has been a tendency to assume the romance has some veracity.
    The effect of this novel on the perception of the site was almost immediate. William Gell, for example, wrote in a letter to the Society of Dilettanti in March 1835 that, after reading the book, he mentally peopled the site with the characters from the novel and could not look at the House of the Tragic Poet as belonging to anyone else than Glaucus, the protagonist of The Last Days of Pompeii . 80 Nearly thirty years later, a description of some of the first casts that were made was prefaced by the suggestion that they would have provided the basis for an excellent scenario by the talented author of The Last Days of Pompeii (see Chapter 10). 81
    The continued impact of this work is observable in the tendency to ‘reflesh’ the skeletons of victims and describe their last moments. There are numerous examples of the direct influence of this novel on twentieth- and twentyfirst century Campanian scholarship, though just a few will suffice to illustrate its impact.
    Corti described the impact of the eruption on Pompeii as his own version of The Last Days of Pompeii . 82 He embellished skeletal and other evidence to provide a narrative of the event. Not surprisingly, his account also included many of the legendary skeletal finds, as well as those from the Villa of Diomedes.
    Ciprotti, in an article tellingly titled ‘ Der letzte Tag von Pompeji ’, stated that the only way to reconstruct the individual tragedies of how the victims met their fate was to use their remains as a guide. Like Bulwer-Lytton, he used the technique of reconstruction from the body and its context. He considered that the value of the skeletons, and more importantly the casts, was that they could be used to increase knowledge of the ‘horrific drama of the eruption’. He stated that the bodies demonstrated ‘universal scenes of horror and madness’ as well as individual scenes of heroism, selfishness and plunder. Ciprotti consciously included the bodies from the so-called Villa of Diomedes in the series of vignettes of the demise of particular victims because of their connection with nineteenth-century literature. Despite the fact that this was published as a scholarly work, the interpretations given to groups of casts and skeletons are essentially romantic and sentimental. Examples include: the interpretation of a skeleton found with cases of