War at a Distance by Favret Mary A.;

Author:Favret, Mary A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Whereas his Latin terms need “no translation,” international weather is an office of translation and exchange: their sunshine, our storms; our sunshine, their rain.

Beneath these assurances, however, lurk hints of a troubled climate. In reading the rain during wartime, Howard, a devout Quaker and ardent campaigner for the relief of war victims, also intimated a new geopolitical map for Britain at the start of the nineteenth century. His account alights uncannily on the hot spots: the most contested region of the recent Napoleonic wars, and the nearby colony of Ireland where, in 1798, rebellion had been violently quelled. One might say his account of the weather both condenses and evaporates the subject of war. Alert to messages from abroad, georgic weather has its receptors tuned to distant warfare.

It might seem that weather simply communicates weather. But when the scientists borrowed Virgil’s authority, they borrowed a semantic and affective supplement as well, for the poet’s own discussion of weather forecasting places itself within the climate of war. In verse that would reverberate for disciples of natural theology and prognostication, the Georgies assures mankind that “[I]f you mark the scorching sun and mark / The moon’s successive phases, then tomorrow / Never will catch you by surprise.” 38 Yet the Georgies has something more to communicate about the climate of the first century BCE. “[T]he Sun will give you signs,” but of what?

Who dares call Sun a liar? He it is

Who often warns of dark revolts afoot,

Conspiracy and cancerous growth of war. (I: 463–66)

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