David X Novak
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Fronto to Marcus as Caesar 145-147 AD

10/31/2014

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A Sample from the Correspondence


Below is a sample of the correspondence between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and his pupil which I have been reading. The collection contains other letters—so far, letters to the mother or father of Marcus—but the bulk has been to/from Marcus Aurelius and the collection’s great interest derives from that. Fronto can be a little windy at times. Not many of the letters are so long as what follows (and some are in a fragmented state), but this is entirely typical and gives you a good sense of the tutor’s charm. Marcus would be about age 25; I don’t have enough sense of biography to know what his many duties would have been at this time. So far this Loeb edition is living up to the review which I quoted previously. Of course the whole collection can be read here—though I am finding the scanning is flawed in parts and the “hard copy” may well serve you best if this interests you.

Fronto to Marcus as Caesar 

145-147 AD

To my Lord. 

The coining of new words, or onomatopoeia, which is allowed to poets to enable them more easily to express their thoughts, is a necessity to me for describing my joy. For customary and habitual words do not satisfy me ; so transported am I with joy that I cannot in ordinary language signify the gladness of my heart at your having written me so many letters in so few days, composed too with such felicity, such friendship, such kindness, such fulness, such ardour, though you were distracted by so much business, so many duties, so many letters to be answered throughout the provinces. But indeed had purposed—for I must not keep anything hidden or dissembled from you—I had purposed, I say, to incur even the reproach of laziness from you by writing to you less often, rather than to trouble you, amid your many engagements, with my letters and tempt you to write, whereas you of your own accord have written to daily. But why do I say daily? It is just here that the need of word-coining comes in. For would be daily, if you had written one letter a day; since however, there are more letters than days, that word daily falls short of the meaning. Nor is there need, my Lord, for you to be vexed with me for actually fearing that my too frequent letters should be a burden to you; for the more you love me, the more chary should I be of adding to your work, and the more forbearing in respect of your occupations. 

What is sweeter to me than your kiss? That sweet fragrance, that delight dwells for me in your neck, on your lips. Yet the last time you were setting out, when your father had already got into the carriage, but you were delayed by the crowd of those who were saying good-bye and kissing you, it was to your advantage that I alone of all did not embrace or kiss you. So too in all other things, I will never set my convenience before your interests, for, if need were, with heaviest toil and service of mine I would purchase your slightest ease. 

Considering therefore, how much labour the writing of letters imposed upon you, I had determined to address you more sparingly, when you wrote daily to me. When I got those letters of yours I was in similar plight to a lover, who sees his darling running towards him along a rough and dangerous pathway. For he rejoices at the loved one's coming at the same time that he fears the danger. Consequently I do not care for the story, which is such a favourite with actors, where a loving girl standing by night in a turret with a lighted taper in her hand, awaits her young lover as he swims the straits. For though I burn with love for you, I would rather be severed utterly from you than let you swim so deep a sea so late at night, for fear the moon should set, the wind dash out your light, the cold benumb your senses there, a wave, a reef, a sea-beast in some way work you harm. This language were more fitting for a lover and better and more sound—not at the peril of another's life to seek to enjoy a pleasure short in duration and fraught with regret. 

Now to turn from fiction to reality, my especial anxiety was lest I should add to your unavoidable labours some superfluous trouble and burden, if besides those letters which your unavoidable duties require you to write daily to very many correspondents, I too should weary you with answering my letters. For I should prefer to sacrifice every advantage of your love, rather than that you should suffer the slightest inconvenience to gratify my pleasure. 
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Why Did I Laugh Tonight?

10/31/2014

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On the Birthday of John Keats

For writers of verse in the English tradition, today is something of a high holy day—a day for solemn reverence, the birthday of John Keats. However, lest solemn turn to somber, which would be antithetical to the gentle spirit and easy humor of "a naughty boy" (as per his own description), it seems more fitting to "seek repose/ Upon an humbler theme" (as Cowper would have it) like to be found in one of his lesser-known masterpieces:


Why did I laugh to-night?  No voice will tell
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell
Then to my human heart I turn at once:
Heart!  Thou and I are here sad and alone;
I say, why did I laugh?  O mortal pain!
O Darkness!  Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.
Why did I laugh?  I know this being's lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;
Yet would I on this very midnight cease,
And all the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser—Death is Life's high meed.


(For a contemporary poem taking laughter as its theme click here.)




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Aurelius Versus St. Anselm

10/28/2014

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Rhetoric and the Cur Deus Homo

The study of rhetoric required the ability to argue on both sides of an issue; according to the translator that was one of the reasons that Marcus Aurelius opted for philosophy over rhetoric, against the wishes of his tutor, Fronto. It may well be I come to that—reading apace—but I am little more than a hundred pages in out of six hundred. (My edition of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, as with Loeb in general, is bilingual, so actually I have read some fifty out of about three hundred.)

It is not my custom to take notes or make markings—alas—in part out of respect for the book; needless to say, though the prose (or more specifically, Fronto’s) lags occasionally, there have been many remarkable passages. (This is pleasure reading for me, otherwise I might have a notebook beside to make jottings.)

Evidently, the young Marcus was assigned to do just such an exercise with an argument against sleep. His letter begins:
Hear now a very few points in favour of wakefulness against sleep: and yet methinks I am guilty of collusion, in that I side with sleep night and day without sleeping: I desert him not, nor is he likely to desert me, such cronies are we. But my hope is that he may be huffed at my indictment of him and leave me for a little space, and give me a chance at last of burning some midnight oil. Now for subtle arguments: of which my first indeed shall be this, in regard to which, if you say that I have taken up an easier theme in accusing sleep than you who have praised it—for who, say you, cannot easily bring an indictment against sleep?—I will counter thus: what is easy to indict is hard to praise; what is hard to praise can serve no useful purpose.
This is not the mature Marcus of the Meditations, but the soul is there. After several pages of (literary) arguments, he closes thusly:
Enough of this trifling which I have indulged in more from love of you than from my own faith in it. Now after soundly abusing sleep, I am off to sleep: for I have spun all this out for you in the evening. I hope sleep will not pay me out.
In the Meditations, without striking a discordant note, he argues over and over again in favor of rationality.

In the dollar bin, I found a collection of Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), “one of the originators of medieval scholastic philosophy.” A long introduction exhorts the reader to bend over backward to read St. Anselm in a favorable light, and to not take him at his weakest points. It is always hard to comply when one doth protest so much—the book is not likely something that I will enjoy cover-to-cover (even as the Correspondence is turning out to be), but I have already read enough to justify my purchase price. This from a chapter of Cur Deus Homo (XXI, with the heading “How it is impossible for the devil to be reconciled”):
If you carefully consider the scheme of human salvation, you will perceive the reconciliation of the devil, of which you made inquiry, to be impossible. For, as man could not be reconciled but by the death of the God-man, by whose holiness the loss occasioned by man’s sin should be made up; so fallen angels cannot be saved but by the death of a God-angel who by his holiness may repair the evil occasioned by the sins of his companions. And as man must not be restored by a man of a different race, though of the same nature, so no angel ought to be saved by any other angel, though all were of the same nature, for they are not like men, all of the same race. For all angels were not sprung from one, as all men were. And there is another objection to their restoration, viz , that, as they fell with none to plot their fall, so they must rise with none to aid them; but this is impossible. But otherwise they cannot be restored to their original dignity. For, had they not sinned, they would have been confirmed in virtue without any foreign aid, simply by the power given to them from the first. And, therefore, if any one thinks that the redemption of our Lord ought to be extended even to the fallen angels, he is convinced by reason, for by reason he has been deceived. And I do not say this as if to deny that the virtue of his death far exceeds all the sins of men and angels, but because infallible reason rejects the reconciliation of the fallen angels.
If Marcus Aurelius strikes the ear as thoroughly modern, St. Anselm seems almost bogged down in superstition, even anti-rational (this despite the format of his argument). Obviously I am not making an argument here in favor of “atheism”, for neither was Marcus Aurelius an atheist. Yet why does his thought seem so much more precise and pronounced than St. Anselm’s?

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Online Poetry Forums: an Aurelian View

10/26/2014

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In an online forum, discussing a poem which described an odious pair of academics, I wrote, "This... is clever and well-turned, but noxious without offering redemption, which for me makes it the kind of poem which will not bear multiple readings."

To this, a commenter, replied, "'Noxious without redemption'? What does that mean? It's just a clever versicle, and nothing wrong with that."

My response, with a paraphrase of the poem to the effect, Look at these lousy people, reiterated: "My point was—a poem of this sort—one doesn't return to, no matter how well done. Maybe Matthew Prior's 'An Epitaph' but I can't think of other examples, and I certainly wouldn't turn to his ahead of many another poem in my Norton."

My respondent's word, "versicle," struck me as inappropriate. I had to look it up, and Merriam-Webster has, as its primary definition, "a short verse or sentence (as from a psalm) said or sung by a leader in public worship and followed by a response from the people". As a secondary definition it gave, "a little verse", which struck me as obvious, but a little abstruse. The poem in question consisted of three quatrains, something I would normally refer to as "a poem" (or "a short poem").

The versicle's defender, let me mention, is a successful academic, who frequently likes to introduce into a conversation the fact that he authored a book which has been used as a textbook. Perhaps in academia "versicle" is commonly used as a term for "a small poem" even though it is not common among us lay people.

Recently reading Marcus Aurelius, however, the thought naturally in my mind is, "No, there is nothing wrong with that, but there is not anything especially right either." The rational mind should be actively pursuing something higher than mere cleverness. We expect as much from poetry—from a Stoical world view, I would say the intention counts for more than the accomplishment.

Another academic piped in, that the poem was "spot on. I've returned to it a number of times over the years." She touted its virtues (perhaps accurately).

For me, to that, the Aurelian response would be, "Too bad that you boast of your deficiencies like that. The directing mind should devote itself to superior pursuits, and return to those." However, Aurelius assures us that we are not responsible for the thinking of another person, but only for our own. (Actually, he assured himself, but we overhear him.) In human society, people must think in a variety of ways: it is for oneself to cleave to what his directing mind tells him is correct.

There is an old joke, widespread on the internet, about a "super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis." The ostensible humor derives from a pun on the phrase "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" sung by Julie Andrews in the Disney movie "Mary Poppins".

A poetic acquaintance assembled a versicle—or a small poem of four quatrains in the ballad format—which sets up and then culminates in this very pun. "Nothing wrong with that," my commenter might say, "It's just a clever versicle." Yes it is, and he is right. It requires a certain giftedness to recognize that "super calloused fragile mystic/ hexed by halitosis" might be fitted perfectly to the ballad frame. One expects gifted people to perform such an exercise from time to time; though it is not, in Aurelian terms, a laudable aim for such a gift, and certainly not something to be returned to.

The poem about those horrible academics paradoxically criticizes and appeals to a literary academic mindset, but offers little of use or value to those outside that sphere. Marcus Cornelius Fronto wrote to his pupil:
In all arts, I take it, total inexperience and ignorance are preferable to a semi-experience and a half-knowledge. For he who is conscious that he knows nothing of an art aims at less, and consequently comes less to grief: in fact, diffidence excludes presumption. But when anyone parades a superficial knowledge as mastery of a subject, through false confidence he makes manifold slips.
There lies the root of much of the contention in online forums, particularly those frequented by academics. Punditry parades "superficial knowledge as mastery". "False confidence" contends with "false confidence." It is a frivolous and unwise indulgence: Time will soon bury even those that mourn us.
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Fronto and Aurelius in Correspondence

10/26/2014

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Plus Some Thoughts About Archaisms in Writing


My reading of Marcus Aurelius has given way to reading of his instructor, Fronto —actually The Correspondence of  Marcus Cornelius Fronto with Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Lucius Verus, Antoninus Pius,  and Various Friends. Translation by C.R. Haines. (The whole thing is available online, here.)

Thinking about Momigliano, and his preoccupation with the historian’s task of “establishing fact” (about which I have posted previously)—and which he considered a hallmark of the liberal mind—I was intrigued to come upon some corroboration in Haines’ biographical sketch of the orator:
There are several passages in this work where Fronto tries his hand at descriptive narrative, and two in which he essays the role of historian. But his view of history, and how it should be written, was thoroughly mistaken. His eyes are not on the facts, but on the best way to show his rhetorical skill in commonplace or panegyric. His efforts therefore in this direction are useless as history and of no account as literature.
Plato’s ideal was to have philosophers be kings. I’m not sure where I picked up the following quote, but at least for a span, as epitomized in the figure of Marcus Aurelius, emperors were philosophers. As Gibbon wrote:
The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of severer and more laborious kind [than that of his predecessor]. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent. His meditations, composed in the tumult of the camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy, in a more public manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty of sage, or the dignity of an emperor. But his life was the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno. He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that Avidius Cassius, who excited a rebellion in Syria, had disappointed him, by a voluntary death, of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend; and he justified the sincerity of that sentiment, by moderating the zeal of the senate against the adherents of the traitor. War he detested, as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when the necessity of a just defense called upon him to take up arms, he readily exposed his person to eight winter campaigns, on the frozen banks of the Danube, the severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of his constitution. His memory was revered by a grateful posterity, and above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of Marcus Antoninus among those of their household gods.

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.
It was with this quote from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that I wanted to finish my previous post, but at the last minute I couldn’t find where I had seen it. As I say, I have moved ahead. Stumbling through reviews at Amazon, I found this by Ryan C. Holiday, which inspired me to take a look at the correspondence:
This book is proof that Marcus Aurelius is one of history's most overlooked philosophers. He has been completely taken for granted. Putting aside the relative quality of the writing in this book, the notion that the correspondence between a great philosopher and his mentor would survive is unbelievably exciting. Yet this book is buried away, to be read only by hard core fanatics and those that troll the bibliographies of translations of Meditations.

The Loeb translation is worth having and worth reading through. One can watch Marcus grow, be admonished, be encouraged and be taught. Perhaps it is time to combine Volume I and II together as the extra pages of Latin seem to be particularly outdated in 2009. Other than that, this book is a both a helpful tool for understanding one of the best Stoics works of all time and watching a noble man become the figure that towers over all of us.
I was just such a troll and the review is very on point. I have read the introductory matter, but not yet begun the letters themselves. (It is not my objective to peruse the entirety, but only so much as it suits my fancy of the moment.)

Back to the biographical sketch by C.R. Haines, the poet in me found some of the discussion of language relevant—online forums are always thrashing through the notion of archaisms in modern poetry, and Ezra Pound's dictum to "make it new". That was a question even then. It moves into some generalized discussion of word choice—Cicero is given a wrist slap here—and leaves off with some biography on Marcus Aurelius’s choice against rhetoric in favor of philosophical studies. It is a long excerpt, taken from the online source: I have tried to clean up the scanning errors, but some may have slipped through, and all footnotes are eliminated, for which you must refer to the source. Here (without quotation marks) beginneth the excerpt:

******

Fronto's ideals in oratory were high. The most difficult test of an orator seemed to him to be that he should please without sacrificing the true principles of eloquence. Smooth phrases for tickling the ears of the hearers must not be such as are offensive to good taste, a feebleness in form being preferable to a coarseness of thought. In spite of his insistence on style and the choice of words, Fronto knows well enough and affirms that noble thoughts are the essential thing in oratory, for the want of which no verbal dexterity or artistic taste will compensate. It was his efficiency in "high thought's invention" that forced Fronto to concentrate his attention on the form and eke out the matter with the manner. Needless to say he has at his fingers' ends all the tropes and figures and devices of the art of rhetoric, and his knowledge of the Roman language and literature was profound.

It has too hastily been assumed that he slighted the great writers of the best age, except Cicero and Sallust, and totally ignored the silver age authors except Lucan and Seneca. But he constantly imitates Terence, recognizes the literary eminence of Caesar and quotes him with approval, calls Lucretius sublime, quotes him, and ranks him with his prime favourites, quotes Horace, whom he calls memorabilis, more than once, shows an intimate knowledge of Vergil, and borrows from Livy. He also shows some acquaintance with Quintilian, Tacitus and Juvenal.

Fronto has been repeatedly called a pedant, but he was a true lover of his own language and guarded it jealously from unauthorized innovations and ignorant solecisms. His aim seemed to have been to shake the national speech out of the groove into which the excessive and pedantic purism of Cicero, Caesar and their followers had confined it. To do this effectually it was necessary to call in the aid of the great writers of an earlier age, such as Plautus and Ennius and Cato. But this sort of archaism was nothing novel. Thucydides was a thorough archaist, and so was Vergil, and Sallust was eminently one. As the cramping effects of the Ciceronian tradition tended more and more to squeeze the life out of the language, the ingrained feeling that “the old is better” gradually spread among the leaders of literary thought. An immense impetus was given to this tendency by the versatile litterateur Hadrian, who openly preferred Ennius to Vergil and Cato to Cicero.

But Fronto, fond as he was of old words and ancient locutions, insisted that such must be not only old but more expressive and appropriate than modern ones, or they must not be preferred. He himself confesses that he used only ordinary and commonplace words. No one in his opinion has a right to invent expressions — he calls such words counterfeit coin. He availed himself of old and established words, that were genuine Latin and had all the charm of novelty without being unintelligible, drawing largely on the vocabulary and idiom of Plautus, Ennius ,Cato, and Gracchus, and interspersing his familiar letters with quotations from Naevius, Accius, Pacuvius, and Laberius. But this was not an affected or repellent archaism, such as Seneca and Lucian mock at. Fronto’s attitude somewhat resembled that of Rossetti, who declares that “he has been reading early English ballads in search of stunning old words.” It is of such words that Fronto is thinking when he speaks of words that must be hunted out with toil and care and watchfulness and by the treasuring up of old poems in the memory. He explains that he has in mind the “inevitable” word, for which, if withdrawn, no substitute equally good could be found. Some old words would certainly have no modern equivalent, as for instance in English the word “hansel.” “The best words in the best places” would be Fronto's definition of oratory, as it was Coleridge’s of poetry.

It is a prevalent but mistaken idea that Fronto disparages or underrates Cicero. He may personally prefer Cato or Sallust, but he recognizes the pre-eminence of Cicero’s genius. It is quite possible that if we had the works of the older witers, we also should prefer their simple dignity and natural vigour even to the incomparable finish and opulence of Tully. However that may be, Fronto credits Cicero with almost every conceivable excellence except the due search for the precise word. He calls him the greatest mouthpiece of the Roman language, the head and source of Roman eloquence, master on all occasions of the most beautiful language, and deficient only in unlooked for words. He candidly confesses his own inferiority. Of his letters he says “nothing can be more perfect.” He calls them lullianae and remissiores, and seems to envy their careless ease. But in practice he disavows the structure of the Ciceronian sentence and the arrangement of its words. He breaks up the flowing periods of Ciceronian prose and introduces new and abrupter rhythms. For older cadences he substitutes cadences of his own, though he occasionally prides himself on imitating the Tullian mannerisms. Where he affects the staccato style, and the historic present, as in Arion, the result is as unpleasing as it is in modern English. In some cases, for forensic speeches, he recommends a deliberate roughness and studied negligence at the end of sentences; but in epideictic displays everything must be neatly and smoothly finished off. Circumlocution and inversions he utterly condemns. Next to the choice of words their natural and perspicuous arrangement counts most with him. This makes his work easy reading. Such difficulties as we find are chiefly due to the mutilated condition of the text in our copy. We have often not only to interpret but to divine what was written.

It has been supposed that Fronto set himself purposely to renovate and remodel the language by recalling old words and obsolete idioms, and by transferring into the literary language colloquialisms from the common speech. But the novella elocutio of which he speaks seems rather to mean a fresher, more vivacious diction, and a more individual form of expression: in fact originality of style. The patina of antiquity which he wished to give his work need not necessarily be thought to disfigure it; and his minute accuracy in the use of words is surely more deserving of praise than of blame. He prided himself on distinguishing the nice shades of meaning in allied words, and insisted that his pupil should be exact in his use of words, knowing well that clearness of thought is dependent on definiteness of expression. The extracts from Aulus Gellius given at the end of the book show us the care with which Fronto distinguished the meaning of words, of which there is further evidence in the De Differentiis Vocabulorum, if that work is his, as it may well be. It was possibly written for the use of his pupils, that they might not misuse words apparently synonymous, such as the various terms for sight and perception. In this connexion it may be noted that Fronto set great store by the careful use of synonjmas, and they abound in his correspondence, but are seldom so colourless as, for instance, our “tied and bound,” “let and hinder,” “many a time and oft” or so run to death as “by leaps and bounds” or “in any shape or form.”

Eloquence was to Fronto the only thing that mattered in the universe. It was the real sovereign of the human race. Philosophy he disliked and even despised, though he admitted that it inspired great thoughts, which it was for eloquence to clothe. Philosophy and rhetoric contended for the soul of Marcus in the persons of the austere Rusticus, the domestic chaplain of Marcus in the Stoic creeds and the courtly Fronto. But the result was a foregone conclusion. Marcus before he was twelve had already made his choice;  and though he tried loyally to please his master and learn all the tricks of rhetoric, yet his heart was always far from the wind-flowers of eloquence. He aroused his master’s ire by asserting that, when he had said something more than usually brilliant, he felt pleased, and therefore shunned eloquence. Fronto pertinently rejoined, “You feel pleasure, when eloquent; then, chastise yourself, why chastise eloquence?” Again when Marcus in his ultra-conscientiousness avows a distaste for the obliquities and insincerities of oratory, Fronto is clearly nettled, and counters smartly with a reference to the irony of Socrates.

In spite of all Fronto’s efforts Marcus in his twenty-fourth year finally declared his decision. He could no longer consent to argue on both sides of a question, as the art of oratory would have him do. There is no doubt that his master was bitterly disappointed, as he honestly believed he could make a consummate orator of Marcus.

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Readings in Stoicism

10/20/2014

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A Conglomeration of Disparate Thoughts

Last night, between wakefulness and sleep, a condition (or state) I have known once or twice, I found myself composing poems.

Neither pen and paper, nor a keypad was near, and because I was dead tired—too tired to get out of bed and grasp something—I let them flit away irretrievably back into the ether from which they came. Some of it was obviously drivel; but other, I’m not so sure. It felt like I may have had something.

As a young man, and living alone, I would not let a jot pass; however, as an older one, and something of a figurehead in a very complicated household, I have other priorities. One always risks a ruckus—which I can handle—but as I say, I was tired.

Eventually, I did get up; and wrote down the first stanza of three I had meticulously worked out. I retained the third, but the second was lost, so I wrote no more. By then I was agitated enough to not be able to sleep. This last poem would have been drivel—probably—but others, earlier in the cycle, would have been better. Alas, it all was lost. Even that single stanza I crumpled up and tossed.

It was not always this way. Not so much from a standpoint of believing everything my pen produced to be a treasure, as from the secure knowledge that time will winnow, I have sought to preserve the fruits of my labor—drivel or no. Besides, one might find there an idea worth going back to.

Now, however, with decades of experience under my belt, I am more inclined to think in terms of completed works or books and less of individual poems. My last book compiled  individual scattershot poems, but I might as easily have let the winds carry them. It was assembled more to give myself a sense of accomplishment in a fallow period than anything else.

No disrespect is intended to the Muse, but I tend to value the arc of a larger work more than a poem suitable for printing on a single page. Also, I get tired (or ill) more frequently now than as a young man, so a loss of focus cannot be helped.

Since I could not sleep, I mused upon several things. One of those was the reading I had been doing during the day. I’ve been at Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in the Penguin edition—nearing completion now but I started midstream, so I will have to go back. I’ve already captured his gist, but because I find it worthwhile, I hope I press on with it. I attempted—years ago—to read The Meditations once before, in the G.M.A. Grube edition, but the translation didn’t “gel” with me, and I am much happier with Martin Hammond at Penguin.

Hammond is accused—in reviews at Amazon—of being too readable. One reviewer points out that Hammond’s continual use of the word “sin,” not indigenous to Aurelius, gives the book a decidedly Christian slant, which is wrong. I was glad for the warning, but I will not “switch out” my edition just yet. Readable is what I want; but more than that, Hammond seems a lot more clear than Grube—whether due from greater (or less) accuracy or (conversely) interpretation is something I’m not qualified to judge. It’s not that I have “small Latin and less Greek”; I have almost no Latin and absolutely no Greek. When reliant upon translation, it does not hurt to have more than one at hand, and—if I could find it—I have a third at my disposal as well.

Coming on the heels of reading about the destruction of the Temple—Momigliano on Josephus or Wills on Paul—it is a pleasure to come back to Stoicism. Stoic thought was once claimed as a forerunner to that of Christ; which notion has lately been disabused (I believe). Still, it is pleasant to grow more aware of what kind of thought was current in the day. Following up on my reading of Wills (see two days previous), James Bond Stockdale has a relevant comment about Paul: “Saint Paul, a Hellenized Jew brought up in Tarsus, a Stoic town in Asia Minor, always used the Greek word pneuma, or breath, for ‘soul’”, reflecting a “Stoic conception of a celestial pneuma [which] is said to be the great-grandfather of the Christian Holy Ghost.” (Stockdale’s scholarship is not entirely secure—but his essay was a great find after mention in a review on Aurelius.)

My introduction to Stoic thought was wealthy Seneca—I wish I could boast of having read more than I have—but the world intrudes. Count me a fan—however, because of the connection to Nero (and the wealth), an air of disrespectability or tawdriness clings to the biographical figure, however majestic Seneca’s prose (and I speak nothing of his plays or the Gourdification). Nothing of the sort attaches to Marcus Aurelius—or if it does, only so much as inevitable for a man in his position. He was emperor—which explains partly his appeal to President Bill Clinton.

Five years ago (or so) I found myself incapable of penetrating Aurelius (in the Grube translation), but a serendipitous acquisition of Epictetus helped me out through a “rough patch.” It’s always a rough patch for a poet, or nearly so, but this was a difficult time for a variety of reasons, and Epictetus helped me orient myself amidst adversity.

Chief among my complaints was—I wanted to study, but was obstructed due to both health and housing issues (problems in their own right) and Epictetus dealt with this head on: “You say you want to study,” he said (in my paraphrase of the lesson I received), “but the reason for all that studying is its application in the arena of life. It is like an athlete performing exercise in the stadium: the goal is not to keep warming up but to get onto the field and play the game.”

My reading was thorough, but I retain only in patches, so I am probably due to “revisit” Epictetus—which I have in the Everyman edition (Robin Hard translation). The philosophy—as Stockdale indicates—was immediately practical and applicable. Here is Stockdale distinguishing the biographical Epictetus from Aurelius:
Epictetus was born a slave in about AD 50 and grew up in Asia Minor speaking the Greek language of his slave mother. At the age of fifteen or so, he was loaded off to Rome in chains in a slave caravan. He was treated savagely for months while en route. He went on the Rome auction block as a permanent cripple, his knee having been shattered and left untreated....
Grube writes:
Under the despotic emperors who exacted a sullen obedience from the Senate, Stoicism had been the religion of the opposition; indeed, it was the Stoic temper which made that opposition dangerous. Many chose to die as Stoics rather than live as slaves. For if one’s duty was done, then, as the Stoics put it, “The door is open.” It is highly significant that the philosophy of the opposition in the first century became that of the Antonine emperors in the second. It is also significant that of the two great Stoics of the second century one was an emperor, and the other, Epictetus, a liberated slave, whom the emperor [Aurelius] quotes with respect.
Grube’s introductory essay contextualizes Aurelius and the Stoic movement very clearly in history;  but some of his discussion of the philosophy’s “flaws” do not ring true—which perhaps explains my distaste for his translation. My forte is not philosophy—but I am striving.

I wrote two days ago that Garry Wills provided a vigorous defense of Paul. Why Paul, you may ask. Here is Wills’ first paragraph—the hook that induced me to pick up and read his book:
Many people think that Judas was the supreme betrayer of Jesus. But others say Paul has a better right to that title. Judas gave Jesus’ body over to death. Paul, it is claimed, buried his spirit. He substituted his own high-flown but also dark theology for the simple teachings of the itinerant preacher from Galilee. Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend William Short that Paul was the “first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.” Bernard Shaw said the same thing in the preface to his play Androcles and the Lion: “There has never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of the limitations of Paul’s soul upon the soul of Jesus.” This represented a triumph over the four evangelists (“good news bearers”) by what Nietzsche called Paul in The Antichrist— “the Dysangelist” (Bad News Bearer), a man with “a genius for hatred.” Shaw told a correspondent in 1928 that “it would have been better for the world if Paul had never been born.”
His defense does not seem entirely successful—as one writing from strictly within the (Christian) tradition and primarily for diehard believers as himself (I am sure he would object to this gross mischaracterization or at least exaggeration—but for me it is shorthand as my train (of thought) moves in another direction). You will find none of that—none of the objections raised—with the Stoics (even as you will not find them in Jesus).

While I have read a little about the Stoics from a historical perspective, it is not till now, with the reading of Marcus Aurelius, that I am beginning to grasp the connections between Stoicism’s most well-known exponents—the connectivity in their thought. A book by F.H. Sandbach was edited by M.I. Finley, but it made almost no impression on me at the time I read it—possibly because my experience with the original texts (even in translation) was so scant and slim.

Regardless, even without philosophy, I must have absorbed something, because, reading Aurelius, it occurred to me, that the poem I posted in yesterday’s entry (but written earlier, and also found here) is nothing if not an application—poorly done or otherwise—of Stoic ideals to present-day concerns. I cannot vouch for its value—but if the poem has value, I expect, it will rather be because of that, and for readers of the present day who have little familiarity with Stoicism; but that its value will diminish with time. The Pillars of Stoicism—I expect—will remain strong, in light of which (or in the shadow of which, more aptly), a twenty-line poem which does little besides recycle that philosophy, will grow less and less relevent.

Mary Beard reviewed several new books out about Seneca in a recent New York Review of Books, under the intriguing title of “How Stoical Was Seneca?” A good question. She writes:
Seneca’s career might most generously be described as “checkered.” Born to a family of Roman settlers in Spain around 4 BC, he came to Rome, along with his elder brother Novatus, where both of them made their way up the social and political hierarchy of the city. Novatus really did have contact with Saint Paul [as opposed “to some flagrantly apocryphal correspondence between the philosopher and... Paul”]: his main modern claim to fame derives from his walk-on part in the Acts of the Apostles, when as Roman governor of Achaea he refused to prosecute Paul as the Jews demanded (probably more a sign of his distrust of the Jews than any fondness for Christians).

Seneca himself spent most of his life in the dangerous penumbra of the imperial court, combining the preaching of hard-line Stoic philosophy (renowned for its commitment to unadulterated virtue) with dynastic wheeling and dealing and a taste for the high life.
Beard asks, as per the title, “How could the true Stoic philosopher, who wrote so strenuously of the importance of virtue in politics, square his conscience with the role he had chosen to play at Nero’s right hand?” Moreover, how did he reconcile his philosophy with his abundant wealth? Beard suggests an answer: hypocrisy, and (probably) what was required by the times.
This was a world embedded in doublethink and doublespeak. Nero entertained his mother lavishly, gave kisses, and said fond farewells on the very evening he planned to kill her. The Senate voted to give divine honors to Nero’s dead baby daughter, although most of them knew it to be ridiculous.... And when the young Britannicus keeled over at the emperor’s dinner party, poisoned on Nero’s orders, it was only his sister, Octavia, who reacted “correctly” —she just went on eating. It was left to the hopelessly naive, untrained in the conventions of autocracy, to give the “natural” response and ask if the poor boy was alright.
Beard here reminds me of Finley describing another notorious ruler (from his introduction to Josephus):
Herod was a remarkable figure, thoroughly ruthless and odious. The mere fact that in the conditions of the age he could hold the throne from 40 to his death in 4 BC is proof enough, all the more so when it is remembered that he supported the losing side in the Roman civil war twice—first Cassius, one of Caesar’s assassins, then Marc Antony. His murders and executions cannot be counted. They included all surviving male Hasmoneans; his uncle Joseph (who was also his sister Salome’s husband); his second wife, the Hasmonean Mariamme I, and her mother; his two sons by her, Alexander and Aristobulus; another of Salome’s husbands, named Costobor; and, five days before his own death, his eldest son, Antipater.
“His wealth, however, can be counted”, Finley continues, and goes on to enumerate. Disparate places, disparate times, but not so disparate—not even so distant from ours, perhaps, when you discount the added accumulations of veneer.

It is almost hard to believe that out of such a world issued the philosophy of the Stoics, or the ethics of Jesus (to say nothing of faith). Perhaps it was necessary. Despite the veneer, none of us really evades life’s “dangerous penumbra”. Stockdale describes how a principle of indifference—to that which lies outside of one’s control—helped him survive tortures in prison (including vast amounts of isolation, considered the worst form of torture), derived from his readings in Epictetus:
“Station in life,” then, can be changed from that of a dignified and competent gentleman of culture to that of a panic-stricken, sobbing, self-loathing wreck in a matter of minutes. So what? To live under the false pretense that you will forever have control of your station in life is to ride for a fall; you’re asking for disappointment....

so also with a long long list of things that some unreflective people assume they’re assured of controlling to the last instance: your body, property, wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, pain, reputation.
The net result—one hopes—of philosophy, should be to help one to sleep better at night. However, sometimes one’s task requires one to lie awake, and contemplate things.

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An Ebola-Induced Panic

10/19/2014

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Recently, a friend posted a series of comments which could only be taken as reflecting an Ebola-induced panic. As yet, no occurrence of the disease has become manifest in Chicago; nor in his city of residence. The threat remains potential.

Much of my poetry comes about (as you would expect) in response to external forces, and the high emotive quality of his writing caused me to retrench, taking solace or refuge in the act of writing a poem. The ensuant poem is not necessarily good or bad, but my only possible response to not only the facts as he presented them (great cause for alarm), but the agitation they stirred. His polemic--if I may call it that—suggested that not enough is being done to forestall or squelch this epidemic. The philosopher in me recognizes that, any just measures being taken, they may not yet suffice, while—however goes the pandemic—each of us must bear with his own personal circumstances as they find us.

Years ago, after writing one of the poems that now finds its home in Embodiment and Release, I told myself, "You will never surpass this." The judgement of that day was correct, though I hope that I may have equalled it. However, decades later, what I find remarkable is that I have lost my capacity to tell. How I could have been so sure and knowing then, I don't know. Nowadays, I respond to something, ink oozes from my pen and a poem is born; but I lack the ability to contextualize it, or guess what it may mean to other people. For this reason, I hesitate to put too much of my spontaneous outpouring up here, and yet, where is the place, if not this?

Here then is the poem.

Be Still, My Soul

Heavenly Father, in the days ahead
I understand, that it may be thy will
O'ermastering mine, that death may see me dead
Before ambitious plans I may fulfill.

Thus goes the life of man. When comes the plague,
Or when comes accident, it alters all:
Vesuvius may bubble; though one beg
He may not the torrential flow forestall.

Praying avails one naught. Some peace of mind
Be had; yet even comes the cataclysm.
Belief may postulate a world designed;
Yet Chance may not be riv'n through exorcism.

Be still, my soul. Lord, let me be at peace,
For, how the world may go, it matters yet
How sits my soul: embodiment, release
Occur by law that cannot be upset.

Lord, I have done my part. Yea, made my plans,
Some brought to execution, well or not,
If chasing fleet, illusion-tinged romance,
Though in the end, no Golden Fleece I got.
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Garry Wills and the Destruction of the Temple

10/18/2014

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What Paul Meant

What Paul Meant by Garry Wills occupied much of my attention this morning. It is a sequel to his book, What Jesus Meant, which I have not read. Wills is a popularizer of religion, and as a book of faith it is not normally the type of thing I would look at; but Wills' scholarship is never without interest. There was a copy in the dollar bin, so, given my recent reading of Momigliano on Josephus, I thought, might as well take the plunge.

With Josephus so recently on the brain, I found this clarifying:
[I]t is often said that Jesus' claim in the Gospels that he is the Temple, replacing the old meeting place between God and man, is an invention that grew up only after the actual destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. But here is Paul saying the same thing almost two decades before the destruction of the physical Temple in Jerusalem. He is in perfect accord with the sayings of Jesus, and proves that this tradition was in circulation among the Brothers well before the Temple was destroyed--and even more clearly before the Gospels were written.
That gives you a feel for the text. Wills returns again and again to the point that Paul's letters are the closest thing we have (in time) to the living Jesus, and he mounts a vigorous defense (of Paul) with that forming the hinge of his argument. Seven letters of Paul, apparently. The critical apparatus is good—or I mean scholarship (there is no index)—but it is more personal testament embellished by historical detail than a treatise in history. As an interpretive effort, it contains an appendix called "Translating Paul" which seems a helpful exposition of nuance.
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