Edward Bulwer-Lytton found an opportunity to capitalize on his interest in the past and wrote the historical fiction The Last Days of Pompeii. While he had looked to the past for novel plots before, his choice of ancient Italy as a setting offered more of a challenge.
In the preface to the first edition, he wrote of the problem in framing a society on the page of a culture to which his own era had “no household and familiar associations.” He had ample materials from which to choose, but felt the burden to select historical materials of great interest to his readers. He fell upon the idea of writing about a natural disaster, feeling that anyone could relate to the stress and challenge to the human condition of such an occurrence. Thus, he selected as a specific setting the ancient city of Pompeii, just prior to and during the eruption of Vesuvius. The event was familiar enough to readers to pique the interest required to follow various characters through their reactions to the event.
Critics find most interesting Bulwer-Lytton’s villain, Arbaces, the priest of Isis. When the reader first meets Arbaces, he approaches a group of young men who all salute him but make a sign against his “fatal gift of the evil eye.”
As for the author, he enjoyed developing all his characters, placing them within the struggles inherent to a first-century Christian group fighting for a place among the pagan religions. In his preface he describes his characters as “natural offspring” of the era he shapes. He confesses to readers that the “first art” of any poet “is to breathe the breath of life into his creatures,” after which he must make them authentic to their age.
He drew on the rituals associated with the worship of Isis to shape false oracles and “heathens,” including the Egyptian Arbaces, the “base” Calenus, and the “fervent Apaecides.” But of all the characters, he seems to most favor the blind girl, Nydia. Her benefactor, Glaucous, pities his servant, thinking, “Thine is a hard doom! Thou seest not the earth, nor the sun, nor the ocean, nor the stars.” However, Nydia will ironically become the most fortunate of the group of characters.
She grew from a conversation Bulwer-Lytton had with a man at Naples known for his knowledge regarding the history of his area and also of human nature. He remarked to Bulwer-Lytton that a blind person would have an easier time of escape during an eruption, due to the complete and utter darkness described as part of its aftermath. A blind person would not find that situation disconcerting.
Bulwer-Lytton explains his careful avoidance of the use of any type of cold and stilted dialect, choosing instead to feature common Romans speaking in the expected vernacular. He closes with hopes that, despite any imperfections related to verisimilitude, his novel will truthfully represent “human passions” and “the human heart.”
He succeeded as he described Nydia’s jealous love of Glaucous as “what a man of imagination, youth, fortune, and talents readily becomes when you deprive him of the inspiration of glory.” Glaucous naturally cannot return a slave’s affection and desires instead the lovely Jone. Unfortunately, the dangerous Arbaces also longs to possess Jone, producing love intrigues on multiple levels.
Regarded as Bulwer-Lytton’s best work, the novel was praised by contemporaries and later critics as an impressive attempt at reconstructing classical times. It remains readily available in print and electronic form, as well as in a 1913 silent Italian movie version and a 1984 television miniseries.
Bibliography
Christensen, Allan Conrad. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Fiction of New Regions. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976.
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