I am aware in
reading your letters, that despite the huge quantity preserved by
Tiro, there must have been twice that number or more omitted from his
selection. This is visible to me, in that the first mention of your
grief relating to the death of your daughter, is in a letter to
Atticus in which you ask him to send notice of your ill-health to the
Augural college, making excuses for your non-attendance at meetings.
Making no direct mention of her death you only say ...yet that
passionate unrest haunts and never quits me, not, on my word, that I
encourage it, I rather fight against it : still it is there. (DXLIV
– Cicero to Atticus).
As grateful as I am
to have so much of your writing Cicero, I often find myself wishing
that Tiro had kept everything, every single little scrap upon which
your thoughts had found solid shape on paper or clay or wax. There
is so much unsaid...
DXLV
Cicero to Atticus
...You wish me some relaxation of my
mourning : you are kind, as usual, but you can bear me witness that I
have not been wanting to myself. For not a word has been written by
anyone on the subject of abating grief which I did not read at your
house. But my sorrow is too much for any consolation. Nay, I have
done what certainly no one ever did before me – tried to console
myself by writing a book, which I will send to you as soon as my
amanuenses have made copies of it. I assure you that there is no
more efficacious consolation. I write all day long, not that I do
any good, but for a while I experience a kind of check, or if not
quite that – for the violence of my grief is overpowering – yet I
get some relaxation, and I try with all my might to recover
composure, not of heart, yet, if possible, of countenance. When
doing that I sometimes feel myself to be doing wrong, sometimes that
I shall be doing wrong if I don't. Solitude does me some good, but
it would have done me more good, if after all you had been here : and
that is my only reason for quitting this place, for it does well in
such miserable circumstances. And even this suggests another cause
of sorrow. For you will not able to be to me now what you once were
: everything you used to like about me is gone...
DXLVI
Cicero to Atticus
...In this lonely place I have no
one with whom to converse, and plunging into a dense and wild wood
early in the day, I don't leave it till evening. Next to you I have
no greater friend than solitude. In it my one and only conversation
is with books. Even that is interrupted by tears, which I fight
against as long as I can. But as yet I am not equal to it...
It is difficult to
read the ongoing struggles of your grief, yet in my quest to truly
understand you, I press on...
DLXXIII
Cicero to Servius
Sulpicius Rufus
But now, after such a crushing blow
as this, the wounds which seemed to have healed break out afresh.
For there is no republic now to offer me a refuge and consolation but
its good fortunes when I leave my home in sorrow, as there once was a
home to receive me when I returned saddened by the state of public
affairs. Hence I absent myself from both home and forum, because
home can no longer console the sorrow which public affairs cause me,
nor public affairs that which I suffer at home.
Yet Cicero, you
were not crushed utterly by your grief, and applying yourself to
literary pursuits, you spent your days and nights writing. You wrote
your own book of consolations for grief, which has unfortunately been
lost to time, but the letters you wrote give us a clear enough
picture of what you might have said. However, it is in a letter from
your friend Rufus that I find perhaps the clearest picture of what
specific philosophy you might have applied to your wounds.
DLIV
Servius Suplicius
Rufus to Cicero
Is it on her account, pray, that you
sorrow? How many times have you recurred to the thought that in
times like these theirs is far from being the worst fate to whom it
has been granted to exchange life for a painless death? Now what was
there at such an epoch that could greatly tempt her to live?
...Do we mannikins feel rebellious
if one of us perishes or is killed – we whose life ought to be
still shorter – when the corpses of so many towns lie in helpless
ruin? Will you please restrain yourself and recollect that you are
born a mortal man? … If she had not died now, she would yet have
had to die a few years hence, for she was mortal born. You too,
withdraw soul and thought from such things, and rather remember those
which become the part you have played in life : that she lived as
long as life had anything to give her ; that her life outlasted that
of the Republic ; that she lived to see you – her own father –
praetor, consul and augur; that she married young men of the highest
rank ; that she had enjoyed nearly every possible blessing ; that,
when the Republic fell, she departed from life. What fault have you
or she to find with fortune on this score?
In fine, do not forget that you are
Cicero, and a man accustomed to instruct and advise others ; and do
not imitate bad physicians, who in the diseases of others profess to
understand the art of healing, but are unable to prescribe for
themselves. Rather suggest to yourself and bring home to your own
mind the very maxims which you are accustomed to impress upon others.
There is no sorrow beyond the power of time at length to diminish
and soften...
...We have seen you on many
occasions bear good fortune with a noble dignity which greatly
enhanced your your fame : now is the time for you to convince us that
you are able to bear bad fortune equally well, and that it does not
appear to you to be a heavier burden that you ought to think it. I
would not have this be the only one of all the virtues that you do
not possess.
Cicero, we all
grieve. We grieve for things we have lost, for things we strive
towards but fail to achieve, and for the dreams which we know will
never come to pass. There is a Persian saying that grief and love
are the same feeling. This is expressed nowhere better than in
Persian music, yet this idea would seem to paint the world with tears
and make sadness drown out even the happiest of moments. Everything
we gain, we will loose in the end.
So it is that I
will end this letter with a piece of advice which you gave to your
friend Aulus Manlius Torquatus (DLXXIV):
...no one may make a private
grievance of what affects all alike.
I had intended to
write to you about the monument you planned to house your daughter's
remains. I had expected to speak on your gradual moving out of grief
and into anger that marks the rise of your final gesture of
greatness, but I find that today I cannot. I am grieved too much
myself for the loss of my own country, and the madness that descends
upon our politics and the tyranny that slides in to replace the
considered debates of true democracy. I live in the age of the
information wars and now, unable to discern truth from lies in the
public sphere, I rest my mind upon the firmer soil of ancient wisdom.
Your wisdom.
I reflect that no
one may make a private grief of what affects all alike. I must rise
above my own dour and pessimistic disposition and strive, ever
hopeful, towards the goals I have set for myself. I am consoled
every day by the marvellous and loving wisdom of my family. I must
not let my confusion and doubt overwhelm the truth that is self
evident in their kind actions and supportive words.
So Cicero, I
understand your struggle to stay positive. Now that you have
divorced your wife, now that your daughter is dead, now that your son
is away studying in Greece, you must find within yourself the
strength to fight Marc Antony...
I am eager to read,
eager to learn, eager to feel my passions stirred by the fire of your
words.
Thank you Cicero,
with admiration and
respect.
Morgan.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete