June
15th, 2018 CE
Dear
Cicero,
Did
you see it? The invisible giant that waltzed across the grasslands
and rocky hills?
The
great sodden belly of the cloud shaped beast scraped the earth and
for the first time this year in my home-town, it finally rained. I
stood watching as the trees, whipped by the invisible hands of
elementals, made crazy shapes against the steel grey,
end-of-the-world clouds. The streets were nearly deserted and in the
eerie pre-storm light, I stood with my father and watched the sky
come undone.
I
visited Kerri the book seller today and ordered more of your books.
An hour flew by in pleasant conversation on writing, book printing,
and the exquisite library at the Flinders University. The world is
awash with your name, novels, movies, biographies, all your essays
and speeches, and treasure among treasures, there are your letters.
The value of your ideas have not diminished, but seems increased
greatly.
Today
I would like to talk to you about exile.
Firstly,
I found a collection of all the letters you wrote during your exile.
It seems I am not the only one interested in this as a phase of your
life and the development of your writing. Today I read a letter you
wrote to your brother Quintus, and line after line I felt myself
drawn into the intense weight of your feelings. When I reached the
end of the letter I saw the date. Today's date. June 15th
58 BCE.
Two
thousand and seventy six years ago.
I
look up from my book and stare mutely at the future.
*
* *
A
few days have passed, the rains have reached me here in the
borderlands. Icy winds and lashing rain restore to the earth the
life lain dormant all summer. Cattle roam the fields surrounding the
eastern lake and there is no small pleasure in watching the young
calves frolic and chase each other, while the heifers, sleepy
overworked parents plod methodically from clump to clump, chewing
down to the soil the fresh green blades of grass.
I
have mentioned before that exile is no longer a punishment in my era,
however I have discovered that its equivalent is still present in the
fascinating case of Julian Assange. Like you, he is an influential
public figure, like you he is a champion of liberty and justice, like
you he is violently hated by his enemies. Assange, born in
Australia, currently lives in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and
has an Ecuadorian citizenship. He is unable to leave the embassy
because he will be arrested and extradited to America to face
charges. He has been labelled a terrorist and a cyber criminal,
there have been public calls for his assassination. His family have
had to change their names and now live in hiding.
Dante
described
the pain of exile in The
Divine Comedy:
-
-
“… You
will leave everything you love most:
-
this
is the arrow that the bow of exile
-
shoots
first. You will know how salty
-
another's
bread tastes and how hard it
-
is
to ascend and descend
-
another's
stairs …"
-
-
Paradiso
XVII: 55-60
I
was asked recently to perform at a local storytelling event, on the
theme of Belonging. I immediately thought of you, Cicero. Your
sense of loyalty to Rome is something I have commented on previously.
You have a national pride and passion for Rome that I do not feel
for my own country. Certainly I appreciate my country, all its
benefits could not be listed in a single letter, yet I do not feel
the fire of patriotism that you felt for Rome. A fire which burned
you terribly when you were forced to leave.
So
I have been thinking about belonging, and a person's sense of home
and what the experience of exile really means. In my mind, I always
imagined exile as being a wonderful reprieve from the alternative of
execution, but your letters reveal a very different story. With your
houses burned or put up for sale and your wife and children forced to
find shelter among friends, your exile marked the point at which your
greatest skill no longer had the power to save or protect anyone,
least of all yourself, and Rome, that glorious republic which you
admired and championed all your days, was brought low and made a
slave by the hands of tyrants. You were forced to flee, pursued
across the sea by bounty hunters and forced to live in seclusion,
separated from your brother, your wife and your son and daughter.
The
grief you express in your letters to Quintus and Atticus is
overwhelming, you were suicidal, half starved and driven wild by your
precarious situation. I am surprised that you made as many clear
decisions as you did and managed to avoid capture and murder long
enough to return to have yourself exonerated and some of your
property returned to you. How thrilling to have experienced the loss
of all you love, only to have it returned again. I wonder what it
was like for you when you saw your wife again, or your children? As
if your neck had been pulled from the hangman's noose, you must have
felt...well...I am sure it is in your letters...I must read on...
I
will paraphrase segments from three of your letters so that I may
make reference to them afterwards. The first to your wife and
children, the second to your brother Quintus, and the third to you
lifelong best friend, Atticus.
LXI
(F XIV, 4)
TO
HIS WIFE TERENTIA, AND HIS CHILDREN TULLIOLA, AND YOUNG CICERO
“Yes,
I do write to you less often than I might, because, though I am
always wretched, yet when I write to you or read a letter from you, I
am in such floods of tears that I cannot endure it. Oh, that I had
clung less to life! I should at least never have known real sorrow,
or not much of it, in my life. Yet if fortune has reserved for me any
hope of recovering at any time any position again, I was not utterly
wrong to do so: if these miseries are to be permanent, I only wish,
my dear, to see you as soon as possible and to die in your arms,
since neither gods, whom you have worshipped with such pure devotion,
nor men, whom I have ever served, have made us any return.
Should
I refrain from asking you? Am I to be without you, then? I think the
best course is this : if there is any hope of my restoration, stay to
promote it and push the thing on: but if, as I fear, it proves
hopeless, pray come to me by any means in your power. Be sure of
this, that if I have you I shall not think myself wholly lost. But
what is to become of my darling Tullia? You must see to that now: I
can think of nothing. But certainly, however things turn out, we must
do everything to promote that poor little girl's married happiness
and reputation. Again, what is my boy Cicero to do? Let him, at any
rate, be ever in my bosom and in my arms. I can't write more. A fit
of weeping hinders me. I don't know how you have got on; whether you
are left in possession of anything, or have been, as I fear, entirely
plundered.
Our
life is over: we have had our day: it is not any fault of ours that
has ruined us, but our virtue. I have made no false step, except in
not losing my life when I lost my honours. But since our children
preferred my living, let us bear every-thing else, however
intolerable. And yet I, who encourage you, cannot encourage myself.”
LXV
(Q FR I, 3)
TO
HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (ON HIS WAY TO ROME)THESSALONICA,
15 JUNE
“...(How
could you think that I did...)...Not wish to see you? The truth is
rather that I was unwilling to be seen by you. For you would not have
seen your brother - not the brother you had left, not the brother you
knew, not him to whom you had with mutual tears bidden farewell as he
followed you on your departure for your province: not a trace even or
faint image of him, but rather what I may call the likeness of a
living corpse.”
...How
many tears do you suppose these very words have Cost me? As many as I
know they will cost you to read them! Can I ever refrain from
thinking of you or ever think of you without tears? For when I miss
you, is it only a brother that I miss? Rather it is a brother of
almost my own age in the charm of his companionship, a son in his
consideration for my wishes, a father in the wisdom of his advice!
What pleasure did I ever have without you, or you without me? And
what must my case be when at the same time I miss a daughter: How
affectionate! how modest! how clever! The express image of my face,
of my speech, of my very soul! Or again a son, the prettiest boy, the
very joy of my heart? Cruel inhuman monster that I am, I dismissed
him from my arms better schooled in the world than I could have
wished: for the poor child began to understand what was going on. So,
too, your own son, your own image, whom my little Cicero loved as a
brother, and was now beginning to respect as an elder brother! Need I
mention also how I refused to allow my unhappy wife—the truest of
helpmates—to accompany me, that there might be some one to protect
the wrecks of the calamity which had fallen on us both, and guard our
common children?
...In
any case I shall continue to live as long as you shall need me, in
view of any danger you may have to undergo: longer than that I cannot
go on in this kind of life. For there is neither wisdom nor
philosophy with sufficient strength to sustain such a weight of
grief. I know that there has been a time for dying, more honourable
and more advantageous; and this is not the only one of my many
omissions, which, if I should choose to bewail, I should merely be
increasing your sorrow and emphasising my own stupidity. But one
thing I am not bound to do, and it is in fact impossible - remain in
a life so wretched and so dishonoured any longer than your
necessities, or some well-grounded hope, shall demand. For I, who was
lately supremely blessed in brother, children, wife, wealth, and in
the very nature of that wealth, while in position, influence,
reputation, and popularity, I was inferior to none, however
distinguished—I cannot, I repeat, go on longer lamenting over
myself and those dear to me in a life of such humiliation as this,
and in a state of such utter ruin.
...As
to my daughter and yours and my young Cicero, why should I recommend
them to you, my dear brother? Rather I grieve that their orphan state
will cause you no less sorrow than it does me. Yet as long as you are
uncondemned they will not be fatherless. The rest, by my hopes of
restoration and the privilege of dying in my fatherland, my tears
will not allow me to write! Terentia also I would ask you to protect,
and to write me word on every subject. Be as brave as the nature of
the case admits.”
LXXII
(A III, 15)
“...Moreover,
lapse of time not only does not soften this grief, it even enhances
it. For other sorrows are softened by age, this one cannot but be
daily increased both by my sense of present misery and the
recollection of my past life. For it is not only property or friends
that I miss, but myself. For what am I? But I will not allow myself
either to wring your soul with my complaints, or to place my hands
too often on my wounds.”
*
* *
“What
you own, ends up owning you.”
Charles Palahniuk
What
of that which belongs to us without ownership? Our families, our
homes, our nations? Do we not end up belonging to them, and is it
not the rending of this bond that is the cause of all our grief and
torment? Would that we could numb ourselves to this bond of love
that is the air in our lungs in times of peace and happiness, but
which turns to ash and ice and breathless desperation when we are
exiled from it.
I
have often said that the price of love is pain, and it is a fair
price.
What
do you think Cicero? When you met your end, did the balance of your
heart weigh no more than a feather? Did the love you knew in life
match the weight of the suffering you felt when it was torn from you?
Did that emptiness inside you refill with the loving glow of your
family when you were returned, or did you suffer poisoning in exile,
and return a bitter, wounded, fearful man. As one who has been
stabbed in the back, did you ever after keep glancing over your
shoulder?
When
one lives in fear of having all one's love's taken away from him, it
cannot be said that he loves at all, nor enjoys any benefit from the
possession of those good things. How long after your return from
exile did you continue to wake in the night sweating, still fearful
of the assassins knife? How long until you forgave yourself for
fleeing, abandoning your family and running in fear to save your own
life, and in doing so, make others suffer terribly? How long until
you could really feel the love and warmth and comfort of Belonging?
Some
historians see in your letters evidence of cowardice, or vacillation
or weakness of spirit, and a lack of the kind of determination you
displayed in public life. They accuse you of unmanliness, of weeping
overmuch in your self pitying sorrow. I would accuse them of an
insensitivity born of self ignorance. Had they who accuse you of
cowardice, to face the pains you felt, they would likely be undone by
them, as you were. Or as Antony Trollope puts it in his biography of
your life, written in 1881:
“Let
those who rebuke the unmanliness of Cicero's wailings remember what
were his sufferings......Everything was to be taken from him: all
that he had—his houses, his books, his pleasant gardens, his busts
and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves, and possessions lordly as
are those of our dukes and earls. He was driven out from Italy and so
driven that no place of delight could be open to him. Sicily, where
he had friends, Athens, where he might have lived, were closed
against him. He had to look where to live, and did live for a while
on money borrowed from his friends. All the cherished occupations of
his life were over for him—the law courts, the Forum, the Senate,
and the crowded meetings of Roman citizens hanging on his words. The
circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and children,
so that he was alone. All this was assured to him for life, as far as
Roman law could assure it.”
Two
years did you dwell in exile. Two years caught on the crashing tides
of fortune, broken again and again upon the cruel rocks of hope. How
long did it take you to restore your heart to gladness? Well, it is
with a gladness of my own that I read from Trollope again, the
following reassurance as to your happiness:
“His
conduct and his words after his return from exile betray exultation
rather than despondency.”
Exaltation.
That
is the feeling of fresh air in our lungs when we are buoyed and bound
by the love of that to which we belong. That is what I will speak
about at the gathering of storytellers. You Cicero, were a man
infused with the exaltation of pride and joy and loyalty and all the
bonds of love that strengthen us. The pain you express in your
letters is equal to the love which was taken from you. Your words do
not infer cowardice, they point directly to the overwhelming power of
the love you were courageous enough to feel.
So,
thank you Cicero, again, and again, and again.
Morgan.
*
PS. I will leave you with this poem from Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim, poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. These days most people just call him Rumi the poet.
Sit
with your friends; don’t go back to sleep
Don’t
sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.
Life’s
water flows from darkness.
Search
the darkness don’t run from it.
Night
travellers are full of light,
and you are, too.
*
PPS...(A
few days later)...I
performed at the storytelling event, and I read out the section of
your August 17th
letter to Atticus. Standing on the auditorium floor, looking up into
the faces of the audience spread before me, with my cloak wrapped
around my shoulders and draped over my left arm, I thought of you as
I spoke, lifting my voice and hearing it ring throughout the theatre.
I thought of the rhythm of your speech in the Philipics, I felt your
confidence in me and my oration on Exile and Belonging was perhaps
the best I have ever delivered. My voice was strong and steady and
deep. You were there with me Cicero, I could feel you standing two
thousand years behind me and only a few feet away.
Thank
you.
*
* *
July
13th, 2018
Dear
Eurydice,
I
want to apologise. I was really upset last week, (I'm still upset,
but I'm trying to breathe through it). I don't really want to incite
vigilante violence. I don't really want to fan the flames of
mistrust between the genders. I'm just desperate and ashamed and
frightened and I really, sincerely just want to get to the bottom of
this problem that sets men and women against each other. Is the
problem really about the violence of men against women? If that were
the case then why are men killing other men even more than they kill
women? Why are men committing suicide far more often than women?
The Australian Bureau of Statistics paints a pretty grim picture and
those numbers confuse me and frighten me, and every day new
information is shared online that confuses and frightens me even
more. Men killing their children and then themselves...god I don't
want to think about it, I don't even really want to be writing about
it but the words build up inside me and I have to let them out.
Thank
you for listening.
A
friend who read my last letter to you suggested that continuing to
write about revenge was a downward spiral, and that I should instead
write about how I am doing my best to raise my own sons to be kind
and mindful and compassionate and considerate. But I ask, when have
the good deeds and kind words of polite gentlemen ever done a single
thing to prevent violence against women? When has reason and
dialogue ever won out over aggression? Does anyone really expect
that if the good men of the world tell the bad men of the world to
stop being violent, that anything will come of it? I'm
oversimplifying the issue terribly, it's just that...well, you know,
what power do words have?
Is
the pen really mightier than the sword?
I'm
trying Eurydice, I really am, to find peace in this world beset by
confusion and terror. I remind myself that there is also beauty and
that my efforts to create it, and protect it and enshrine it are of
value. I tell myself that I will raise my sons to be stronger than
their ancestors, to be stronger than their weak brethren who resort
to violence to maintain their harmful power over others. Right now
as I write to you, my youngest son plays with one of his Lego
creations, a
dimensional lava
spider-scorpion
as he calls it. My son is gentle and kind and has always displayed a
remarkable sensitivity regarding the feelings of others. He has
always been able to put himself in another's shoes and to feel what
they might feel, to experience compassion and empathy with his whole
body. It is this trait, I hope, that signals a future for mankind.
A future for us all.
Thank
you Eurydice.
Morgan.
