THE VOLCANO LOVER by Susan Sontag

This article examines Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover: A Romance (1992) as a historiographic metafiction in which Mount Vesuvius functions simultaneously as scientific object, sublime spectacle, erotic metaphor, and political symbol. Through the figure of Sir William Hamilton—British ambassador, volcanologist, collector, and “volcano lover”—Sontag explores the intersections of desire, aesthetics, revolution, and catastrophe in eighteenth-century Naples. The article investigates how Sontag transforms the volcano into a central metaphor for uncontrollable forces, linking geological eruptions with emotional passions, imperial ambitions, and revolutionary upheavals. Vesuvius is represented as a living, gendered, and theatrical body whose eruptions fascinate spectators while exposing the fragility of human attempts to possess, classify, or domesticate nature. Hamilton’s scientific fascination with volcanic phenomena is therefore inseparable from an aesthetic and erotic impulse that turns disaster into spectacle and collection into a form of symbolic appropriation. The article explores the novel’s reflection on the sublime, its dialogue with Romantic aesthetics, and its fusion of geological and historical temporality. By comparing volcanic eruptions with the French Revolution, Sontag suggests that both natural and political catastrophes destabilize established orders while generating new cultural meanings. Ultimately, The Volcano Lover presents Vesuvius as an enduring emblem of destruction and renewal, showing how catastrophe can simultaneously produce terror, beauty, historical consciousness, and resilience.