It all started with a painting.
On August 24, 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius exploded near present-day Naples, Italy. Tons of molten ash, pumice, and sulfuric gas were released, and the resulting debris buried the nearby cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae for more than 1700 years. Although Pliny the Younger’s letters are the definitive source for descriptions of the eruption, being the only surviving eyewitness account, an unlikely culprit is responsible for launching a thousand adaptations.
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, wrote the novel The Last Days of Pompeii about 100 years after the city had been rediscovered. It was the ninth of his 29 novels, published in 1834 when he was 31 years old. [Side note: Bulwer-Lytton is the source of the sentence, “It was a dark and stormy night,” which since 1983 has been honored in the annual bad-writing contest that bears his name.] Last Days tells stories of culture clash, class divisions, emerging religious tensions, and star-crossed love that are all rendered moot by the volcanic explosion, in the overwrought language of 19th-century England.
Over the years the novel has inspired an opera, a concert suite, a sculpture, a play, two television miniseries, and no fewer than 45 short and full-length feature films. In fact, one of the earliest narrative films in existence, released in 1900, was an adaptation of this book. Clearly, the winning combination of looming tragedy and spectacular pyrotechnics has had a major impact on the performing arts. But where did Bulwer-Lytton get his inspiration?
The year 1833 wasn’t a good year for the baron. He was having problems in his marriage, and the second-honeymoon tour of Italy that was meant to improve relations (and yield research for the book he was writing at the time) wasn’t working. Then they went to Milan.
Earlier that same year, a brilliant young Russian painter, Karl Bryullov, had debuted in Rome a painting he’d been working on for the past 3 years. The Last Day (singular) of Pompeii was a monumental work both physically—measuring a massive 15 feet by 21 feet—and culturally—it launched an entire new school of painting in Russia—and it took the world by, well, storm. Using Raphael’s The School of Athens as a model, Last Day blended Classical forms with the Romantic theme of Nature’s power over men both good and bad. Its triumphant release tour stopped in Milan on its way to Russia, and the rest is history.
After seeing the painting, Bulwer-Lytton immediately dropped his current work in progress and set out for Naples. He and his wife spent the winter there, with Bulwer-Lytton visiting the ruins and furiously writing, and his wife having an affair. Upon their return to England early the next year, he had a bestseller, and she had a separation agreement. The book’s runaway success was aided by a timely eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that same year.
As for Bryullov, he returned to St. Petersburg to great acclaim and eventually became a professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts. His later works continued his tendency to blend Neoclassical and Romantic elements, but they didn’t gain as wide a following as had Last Day. He eventually returned to Italy for health reasons, dying at the age of 52 near Rome. He is still regarded as a key figure in the evolution of Russian art.
So a Russian painter inspired an English writer to write the first blockbuster disaster novel, but they both owe a debt to Pliny the Younger. There you have it.
Related Content- The Last Days of Pompeii (Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii) (1926)
- The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)
- The Last Days of Pompeii (Los últimos días de Pompeyo) (1940)
- The Last Days of Pompeii (1984)
- The Last Days of Pompeii (Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei) (1913)
- The Last Days of Pompeii (Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei) (1959)
- The Last Days of Pompeii (Jone ovvero gli ultimi giorni di Pompei) (1913)
- Pompeii (2014)
- Pompeii: The Last Day (2003)
- Sins of Pompeii (Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei) (1950)