Over the course of four days in September, 1666, a fire sparked in a bakery turned four-fifths of central London to dust. Wandering the streets around his home three days after the Great Fire subsided, the diarist John Evelyn describes a city in ruins—its buildings and landmarks “mealted, & reduc'd to cinders by the vehement heats,” its “bielanes & narrower streetes … quite fill'd up with rubbish, nor could one have possibly known where he was, but by the ruines of some church, or hall, that had some remarkable towre or pinacle remaining.” John Dryden echoes Evelyn's sense of disorientation in Annus Mirabilis, his poem dedicated to the people of London and published in 1667; he describes “the Cracks of Falling houses,” the “Shrieks of Subjects” as the Fire “wades the Streets,” threatens the palace, and lays the city's famed financial centers “to waste.” And he describes, too, the desperate attempts by those left homeless by the Fire to make spaces for themselves in the ruins:Those who have [no home] sit round where once it was,And with full Eyes each wonted Room require:Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place,As murder'd Men walk where they did expire.

中文翻译：

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规划现代城市：多塞特花园舞台上的约翰·德莱顿爵士马丁·马尔-奥尔

在 1666 年 9 月的四天里，一家面包店发生了一场大火，将伦敦市中心五分之四的地区化为灰烬。大火平息三天后，在他家周围的街道上徘徊，日记作者约翰·伊夫林描述了一座废墟中的城市——它的建筑物和地标“被酷热烧成灰烬”，它的“街道和狭窄的街道......堆满了垃圾，除非是在某个教堂或大厅的废墟边，那里还剩下一些非凡的塔或尖塔，否则谁也不可能知道他在哪里。” 约翰·德莱登回应了伊芙琳的迷失感奇异年华，他的诗献给伦敦人民，并于 1667 年出版；他将“房屋倒塌的裂缝”、“臣民的尖叫声”描述为大火“席卷街道”，威胁着宫殿，并“浪费”了这座城市著名的金融中心。他还描述了那些在大火中无家可归的人绝望地尝试在废墟中为自己腾出空间：那些[无家可归]的人坐在曾经的地方，拥有完整的眼睛，每个习惯的房间都需要：萦绕在这个地方温暖的灰烬中，就像被谋杀的人一样，他们走到了他们死去的地方。