Let’s begin with the most fearful pestilence of all: the Black Death. In the 1340s and 50s this bacterial pandemic slaughtered 30-50% of Europe’s population and similar numbers across most of Asia. It was the greatest calamity endured by homo sapiens since the end of the Ice Age. [...]
The same curious pattern can be seen elsewhere. From classical times we have Thucydides’ brutal description of the Plague of Athens: “it settled in the privy parts, the fingers and the toes, and many escaped with the loss of these, some too with that of their eyes. Others again were seized with an entire loss of memory.” It’s a brilliantly harrowing account, yet also unusual. There is almost no literature, for instance, on the terrible Antonine Plague (AD165-180), which killed 5 million, or the Plague of Cyprian (250), which culled 5,000 a day in Rome alone. [...]
In other words, it is worse than war. Deaths in plague are unglamorous, or revolting: you drown in your own body fluids (corona), you bleed out through your eyes (Ebola). There is no hero storming the Reichstag. Likewise, plague-time deaths are solitary, dismal and sequestered. There is none of the black humour and camaraderie of war, no crowded pubs as in the Blitz, no sing-songs about bluebirds. Instead there is just a lot of lonely, locked-away people, waiting to get ill. Nor can there be any grand or compelling narrative, culminating in victory: the end is just the cessation of suffering. [...]
However, if this is what happens to plagues in literature, it comes at a hefty price. Because, if there is so little to read, and to remind us of the past, it means that every time a new plague comes along, humanity has to learn the same painful lessons, about quarantines, masks, infection and isolation. All over again.
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