Book 4, Letter 2, Part 3 of 4 To T E Lawrence, on the Seven Pillars of Wisdom

To read a book such as yours, is to have you as a friend with me everywhere. While my children talk of their games, while my friends talk of music, you speak of the great and terrible trials of life on the march...

From Chapter LXXXI

Step by step I was yielding myself to a slow ache which conspired with my abating fever and the numb monotony of riding to close up the gate of my senses. I seemed at last approaching the insensibility which had always been beyond my reach: but a delectable land: for one born so slug-tissued that nothing this side of fainting would let his spit free. Now I found myself dividing into parts. There was one which went on riding wisely, sparing or helping every pace of the wearied camel. Another hovering above and to the right bent down curiously, and asked what the flesh was doing. The flesh gave no answer, for indeed, it was conscious only of a ruling impulse to keep on and on: but a third garrulous one talked and wondered, critical of the body's self-inflicted labour, and contemptuous of the reason for effort.

...The spent body toiled on doggedly and took no heed, quite rightly, for the divided selves said nothing which I was not capable of thinking in cold blood: they were all my natives. Telesius, taught by some such experience, split up the soul. Had he gone on, to the furthest limit of exhaustion, he would have seen his conceived regiment of thoughts and acts and feelings ranked around him as separate creatures; eyeing, like vultures, the passing in their midst of the common thing which gave them life.

So, Mr Lawrence, I took your mention of Telesius and did a little further reading, and while I did not find reference to his division of the soul, I did find such a reference from Xenophon, (which I will discuss in a later letter to Xenophon). However, I found my own way to this idea some years ago, taught by my own experience:

From: Indivisible From Magic 

I cast a magic spell today, a kind of magic mirror, or mirrors I suppose, that lets me see all the parts of myself as if we were a circle of friends, facing inwards. Anxiety, doubt, courage, creativity, all the others, all the old gang together under one roof. When they speak, now they speak to me, not through me, and in their overt gestures I can see machinations, hear clever word games and no longer am I their unwilling conspirator in the complication of my inner life.

So now that I can see them, I can speak to them by name, and when they assert their ignorance and call it experience, I can say to them...I know you. I see you. I know your NAME. Though at first the circle only had a few recognisable forms, the number of faces and names is increasing, while their unseen, Unseely voices grow tired with even their own games, as I, as I, step into the light of their acceptance.

The above is from my second blog, Indivisible from Magic. I am fascinated by the creative powers of the human mind, and the division of the identity into separate parts in order to cope with extremes of stress or trauma, seems to me to be worthy of deep study. Dissociative Identity Disorder, true cases of which are exceedingly rare, still stands up as a shining example of this power of the mind to invent coping mechanisms. My own experience is not an example of this medical phenomenon, but rather an expression of my own need to see and feel more than my sober mind can ordinarily conceive.

But this is not about me, your story is far worthier of recounting. For before this episode of exhaustion and mental separation, you suffered a trauma more common to men than is commonly discussed.

From Chapter LXXX

Soon after dark three men came for me. It had seemed a chance to get away, but one held me all the time. I cursed my littleness. Our march crossed the railway, where were six tracks, besides the sidings of the engine-shop. We went through a side gate, down a street, past a square, to a detached, two-storied house. There was a sentry outside, and a glimpse of others lolling in the dark entry. They took me upstairs to the Bey's room; or to his bedroom, rather. He was another bulky man, a Circassian himself, perhaps, and sat on the bed in a night-gown, trembling and sweating as though with fever. When I was pushed in he kept his head down, and waved the guard out. In a breathless voice he told me to sit on the floor in front of him, and after that was dumb; while I gazed at the top of his great head, on which the bristling hair stood up, no longer than the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. At last he looked me over, and told me to stand up: then to turn round. I obeyed; he flung himself back on the bed, and dragged me down with him in his arms. When I saw what he wanted I twisted round and up again, glad to find myself equal to him, at any rate in wrestling.

He began to fawn on me, saying how white and fresh I was, how fine my hands and feet, and how he would let me off drills and duties, make me his orderly, even pay me wages, if I would love him.

I was obdurate, so he changed his tone, and sharply ordered me to take off my drawers. When I hesitated, he snatched at me; and I pushed him back. He clapped his hands for the sentry, who hurried in and pinioned me. The Bey cursed me with horrible threats: and made the man holding me tear my clothes away, bit by bit. His eyes rounded at the half-healed places where the bullets had flicked through my skin a little while ago. Finally he lumbered to his feet, with a glitter in his look, and began to paw me over. I bore it for a little, till he got too beastly; and then jerked my knee into him.

He staggered to his bed, squeezing himself together and groaning with pain, while the soldier shouted for the corporal and the other three men to grip me hand and foot. As soon as I was helpless the Governor regained courage, and spat at me, swearing he would make me ask pardon. He took off his slipper, and hit me repeatedly with it in the face, while the corporal braced my head back by the hair to receive the blows. He leaned forward, fixed his teeth in my neck and bit till the blood came. Then he kissed me. Afterwards he drew one of the men's bayonets. I thought he was going to kill me, and was sorry: but he only pulled up a fold of the flesh over my ribs, worked the point through, after considerable trouble, and gave the blade a half-turn. This hurt, and I winced, while the blood wavered down my side, and dripped to the front of my thigh. He looked pleased and dabbled it over my stomach with his finger-tips.

In my despair I spoke. His face changed and he stood still, then controlled his voice with an effort, to say significantly, 'You must understand that I know: and it will be easier if you do as I wish'. I was dumbfounded, and we stared silently at one another, while the men who felt an inner meaning beyond their experience, shifted uncomfortably. But it was evidently a chance shot, by which he himself did not, or would not, mean what I feared. I could not again trust my twitching mouth, which faltered always in emergencies, so at last threw up my chin, which was the sign for 'No' in the East; then he sat down, and half-whispered to the corporal to take me out and teach me everything.

They kicked me to the head of the stairs, and stretched me over a guard-bench, pommelling me. Two knelt on my ankles, bearing down on the back of my knees, while two more twisted my wrists till they cracked, and then crushed them and my neck against the wood. The corporal had run downstairs; and now came back with a whip of the Circassian sort, a thong of supple black hide, rounded, and tapering from the thickness of a thumb at the grip (which was wrapped in silver) down to a hard point finer than a pencil.

He saw me shivering, partly I think, with cold, and made it whistle over my ear, taunting me that before his tenth cut I would howl for mercy, and at the twentieth beg for the caresses of the Bey; and then he began to lash me madly across and across with all his might, while I locked my teeth to endure this thing which lapped itself like flaming wire about my body.

To keep my mind in control I numbered the blows, but after twenty lost count, and could feel only the shapeless weight of pain, not tearing claws, for which I had prepared, but a gradual cracking apart of my whole being by some too-great force whose waves rolled up my spine till they were pent within my brain, to clash terribly together. Somewhere in the place a cheap clock ticked loudly, and it distressed me that their beating was not in its time. I writhed and twisted, but was held so tightly that my struggles were useless. After the corporal ceased, the men took up, very deliberately, giving me so many, and then an interval, during which they would squabble for the next turn, ease themselves, and play unspeakably with me. This was repeated often, for what may have been no more than ten minutes. Always for the first of every new series, my head would be pulled round, to see how a hard white ridge, like a railway, darkening slowly into crimson, leaped over my skin at the instant of each stroke, with a bead of blood where two ridges crossed. As the punishment proceeded the whip fell more and more upon existing weals, biting blacker or more wet, till my flesh quivered with accumulated pain, and with terror of the next blow coming. They soon conquered my determination not to cry, but while my will ruled my lips I used only Arabic, and before the end a merciful sickness choked my utterance.

At last when I was completely broken they seemed satisfied. Somehow I found myself off the bench, lying on my back on the dirty floor, where I snuggled down, dazed, panting for breath, but vaguely comfortable. I had strung myself to learn all pain until I died, and no longer actor, but spectator, thought not to care how my body jerked and squealed. Yet I knew or imagined what passed about me.

I remembered the corporal kicking with his nailed boot to get me up; and this was true, for next day my right side was dark and lacerated, and a damaged rib made each breath stab me sharply. I remembered smiling idly at him, for a delicious warmth, probably sexual, was swelling through me: and then that he flung up his arm and hacked with the full length of his whip into my groin. This doubled me half-over, screaming, or, rather, trying impotently to scream, only shuddering through my open mouth. One giggled with amusement. A voice cried, 'Shame, you've killed him'. Another slash followed. A roaring, and my eyes went black: while within me the core of life seemed to heave slowly up through the rending nerves, expelled from its body by this last indescribable pang.

By the bruises perhaps they beat me further: but I next knew that I was being dragged about by two men, each disputing over a leg as though to split me apart: while a third man rode me astride. It was momently better than more flogging. Then Nahi called. They splashed water in my face, wiped off some of the filth, and lifted me between them, retching and sobbing for mercy, to where he lay: but he now rejected me in haste, as a thing too torn and bloody for his bed, blaming their excess of zeal which had spoilt me: whereas no doubt they had laid into me much as usual, and the fault rested mainly upon my indoor skin, which gave way more than an Arab's.

So the crestfallen corporal, as the youngest and best-looking of the guard, had to stay behind, while the others carried me down the narrow stair into the street. The coolness of the night on my burning flesh, and the unmoved shining of the stars after the horror of the past hour, made me cry again. The soldiers, now free to speak, warned me that men must suffer their officers' wishes or pay for it, as I had just done, with greater suffering.

They took me over an open space, deserted and dark, and behind the Government house to a lean-to wooden room, in which were many dusty quilts. An Armenian dresser appeared, to wash and bandage me in sleepy haste. Then all went away, the last soldier delaying by my side a moment to whisper in his Druse accent that the door into the next room was not locked.

I lay there in a sick stupor, with my head aching very much, and growing slowly numb with cold, till the dawn light came shining through the cracks of the shed, and a locomotive whistled in the station. These and a draining thirst brought me to life, and I found I was in no pain. Pain of the slightest had been my obsession and secret terror, from a boy. Had I now been drugged with it, to bewilderment? Yet the first movement was anguish: in which I struggled nakedly to my feet, and rocked moaning in wonder that it was not a dream, and myself back five years ago, a timid recruit at Khalfati, where something, less staining, of the sort had happened.

The next room was a dispensary. On its door hung a suit of shoddy clothes. I put them on slowly and unhandily, because of my swollen wrists: and from the drugs chose corrosive sublimate, as safeguard against recapture. The window looked on a long blank wall. Stiffly I climbed out, and went shaking down the road towards the village, past the few people already astir. They took no notice; indeed there was nothing peculiar in my dark broadcloth, red fez and slippers: but it was only by the full urge of my tongue silently to myself that I refrained from being foolish out of sheer fright. Deraa felt inhuman with vice and cruelty, and it shocked me like cold water when a soldier laughed behind me in the street.

So, Lawrence, you escaped, but it was not to return to the comfort of your home, but merely to return to the camaraderie of the war, and to your own soldiers. I marvel that you survived at all, but this was just an episode, just a chapter, and there was much more to come.

Book 4, Letter 2, Part 2 of 4 To T E Lawrence, on the Seven Pillars of Wisdom

From Chapter XXXIV

The stone itself was glistening, yellow, sunburned stuff; metallic is ring and brittle; splitting red or green or brown as the case might be. From ever soft place sprouted thorn bushes; and there was frequent grass, usually growing from one root in a dozen stout blades, knee high and straw coloured: the heads were empty ears between many-feathered arrows of silver down. With these, and with a shorter grass, whose bottle-brush heads of pearly grey reached only to the ankle, the hill sides were furred white and bowed themselves lowly towards us with each puff of the casual wind.

I could describe my own home in very similar terms. I live in a rocky, hilly region, not so distant from the flat lowlands, that  grapevines cannot be seen. I often find myself caught breathless by the sudden beauty of windswept grasslands, or the graceful passing shadows of clouds rushing over the land pushed by the invisible hands of giants in the sky. I often reflect on the phrase attributed to Jesus Christ 'Split a log and you will find me, lift a stone and I am there'. It seems obvious to me that divinity is here on earth in the ordinary moments of nature. It is a divinity too big for religion.

Life, is too big for religion.

So, on and on I read, each morning a chapter, each evening two chapters, and I find myself smiling at the remarkable, but ordinary truths of the world that you reveal with the written word and bring to life in my imagination. Like the story (Chapter XL)of the two young men, Daud the hasty and his love fellow, Farraj; a beautiful, soft framed girlish creature with innocent, smooth face and swimming eyes.

They were an instance of the eastern boy and boy affection which the segregation of women made inevitable. Such friendships often led to manly loves of a depth and force beyond our flesh-steeped conceit. When innocent they were hot and unashamed. If sexuality entered, they passed into a give and take, unspiritual relation, like marriage.

It is wonderful to read you open minded views of homosexual relations, and strange that this was 1916-17, when now, in 2020 in the same region of the world, men are being imprisoned or exiled for the crime of loving their fellow man. I have mentioned that I am a musician; well, I was drumming for a dancer at the opening of a new restaurant in the central markets of my home city. The restaurant owner had fled his home in Iran to escape persecution for his sexual orientation.

I live in such an age, that stories of homosexuality in the middle east are almost always about persecution. Even in my own country, the laws have only changed so recently that the celebrations have yet to fully fade away. However, on the topic, I thought I would bring up the subject of the Cocek dancers of Turkey, since they are a fascinating slice of homosexual history that is largely unknown.

Flourishing between the 17^th & 19^th centuries, the Cocek dancers were young boys, trained from about eight years of age. They were very popular with the male audiences for their provocative and sexual performances, with fights and even killings resulting from duels to win the sexual favours of these boys, who were also prostitutes, as is common throughout history among dancers. (Though not so much any more – with modern dancers having worked hard to separate themselves from the oldest profession).

Cocek dancers - Wikipedia

The dance was eventually outlawed due to these violent outbursts, yet the rhythms they danced to are as popular as ever among both traditional folk groups and modern gypsy fusion troupes.

*

Your book is as much about desert culture as it is about the war, and I delighted to find your description of tradition coffee making. Sitting around the fire with your companions after another long day of riding through the desert....

From Chapter XLV

While we talked the roasted coffee was dropped with three grains of cardamom into the mortar. Abdulla brayed it; with the dring-drang, dring-drang pestle strokes of village Nejd, two equal pairs of legato beats...

...while the coffee-maker boiled up his coffee, tapped it down again, made a palm-fibre mat to strain it before he poured (grounds in the cup were evil manners), when there came a volley from the shadowy dunes east of us and one of the Ageyl toppled forward into the centre of the firelit circle with a screech.

This is one of the fascinating parts of your work, Mr Lawrence. You take the time to describe the moments of peace and the beautiful landscapes, grasslands, herds of camels and the soldiers in their daily routines, and at the same time you do not sugar coat the reality of the war you were fighting.

Even sitting down to coffee could be a deadly affair.

Mohammed, with his massive foot thrust a wave of sand over the fire and in the quick blinding darkness we rolled behind bands of tamarisk and scattered to get rifles, while our outlying pickets began to return fire, aiming hurriedly towards the flashes, we had unlimited ammunition, and did not stint to show it.

Gradually the enemy slackened, astonished perhaps at our preparedness. Finally his fire stopped, and we held our own, listening for a rush or for attack from a new quarter. For half an hour we lay still; and silent, but for the groans and at last the death struggle of the man hit with the first volley. Then we were impatient of waiting longer. Zaal went out to report what was happening to the enemy. After another half-hour he called to us that no one was left within reach. They had ridden away: about twenty of them, in his trained opinion.

My coffee last night was served with crushed ice and blended to a thick and sweet foam, which I sipped calmly as the sun set and I sat writing at my desk. My ten year old son played on the floor nearby, building a Kraken monster from Lego and showing me with dramatic glee how its tentacles could wrap around the hull and mast of a sailing ship. A friend of mine, a calligrapher and student of linguistics at the local university, came for dinner and we spent out evening talking about music and language. My son told us a story he had made up about a wizard who accidentally created a monster who consumed the powers of other magical beings and artifacts in order to grow stronger. The beast had the power to alter reality, or in my son's actual words: To make air where once there was only water, or to make fruit where once there was only a desert.

Just as you, Mr Lawrence, have an influence on me and on my writing, so I have raised my son to appreciate the dramatic arts and to create magic with his words.

Book 4, Letter 2, Part 1 of 4 To T E Lawrence, on the Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Dear Mr Lawrence,

I am very nervous as I begin this letter, deeply aware of the literary pedestal upon which history has placed you, deservedly, as an author of great merit and a man possessed of both wisdom and courage. I received a copy of your book, The seven pillars of wisdom from my father and I began reading it during a period in which he lay in a hospital bed suffering from a terrible stomach ailment. He nearly died. I read a few sections to him, the first of which I will quote here:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

I have read this passage to friends at the dinner table, I have quoted it in letters to my many living correspondents, I even read it out to the men at the barber shop, so taken was I with this passage and so eager was I to share with any who might listen this powerful statement of purpose so meaningfully placed within the introduction to your book.

But there is more than inspiring philosophy and poetic turns of phrase in your book, which is a remarkable account of your personal experiences of the Arab revolt. I half expected it to be a history of the war much like other histories: an accounting of the movements of armies and the deployment of arms, the counting of the dead and the cruel manipulations of political back room dealings. Instead I find that you have written a deeply personal, and heartbreakingly beautiful account of a people and a landscape that no longer exists in my world. Not truly.

In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt.

Your humility is startling, and equal only to your audacity. Not only in your actions themselves which are a tale of courage and genius, but in your recounting of their minute details and the exquisite beauty of the landscape and the culture you so wholeheartedly devoted yourself to understanding. I will not write a letter to you expressing my admiration of every part of your book, (my letter might become a facsimile of every page) but, as I am a musician, I will begin by highlighting those few peculiar mentions you have made of the music and poetry of the Arabs you rode, and fought with.

From Chapter IX

In the evening Abdulla came to dine with Colonel Wilson. We received him in the courtyard on the house steps. Behind him were his brilliant household servants and slaves and behind them a pale crew of emaciated, bearded men with woe-begone faces, wearing tatters of military uniform, and carrying tarnished brass instruments of music. Abdulla waved his hand towards the and crowed with delight, 'My Band'. We sat them on benches in the forecourt an, and Wilson send them cigarettes, while we went up to the dining room, where the shuttered balcony was opened right out, hungrily, for a sea breeze. As we sat down, the band, under the guns and swords of Abdulla's retainers, began, each instrument apart, to play heartbroken Turkish airs. Our ears ached with noise, but Abdulla beamed.

...We got tired of Turkish music, and asked for German. Aziz stepped out on the balcony and called down to the bandsmen in Turkish to play us something foreign. The struck shakily into 'Deutchland uber Alles' just as the Sherif came to his telephone in Mecca to listen to the music of our feast. We asked for more German music; and they played 'Eine feste Burg'. Then in the midst they died away into a flabby discord of drums. The parchment had stretched in the damp air of Judda. They cried for fire; and Wilson's servants and Abdulla's bodyguard brought them piles of straw and packing cases. They warmed the drums, turning them round and round before the blaze, and then broke into what they said was the Hymn of Hate, though no one could recognise a European progression in it at all. Sayed Ali tuned to Abdulla and said, 'It is a death march'. Abdulla's eyes widened; but Storrs who spoke in quickl to the rescue turned the moment to laughter; and we sent out rewards with the leavings of the feast to the sorrowful musicians, who could take no pleasure in our praises, but begged to be sent home.

This rather grimy description of worn out military musicians is tempered somewhat by the more lively tale of the soldiers around their campfires, making music for themselves.

From Chapter XXXIX

Each evening round the fires they had music, not the monotonous open throated roaring of the tribes, nor the exciting harmony of the Ageyl, but the falsetto quarter tones and trills of urban Syria. Malaud had musicians in his unit; and bashful soldiers were brought up each evening to play guitars and sing café songs of Damascus or the love verses of their villages. In Abdulla's tent, where I was lodged, distance, the ripple of the fragrant outpouring of water, and the tree leaves softened the music, so that it became dully pleasant to the ear.

...Nesib and his friends had a swaying rhythm in which they would chant these songs, putting all hope and passion into the words, their pale Damascus faces moon-large in the firelight, sweating. The soldier camp would grow dead silent till the last stanza ended, and then from every man would come a sighing, longing echo of the last note.

Book 4, Letter 1, Part 2 of 2 To Cicero, on consolations for grief

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.

Book 4, Letter 1, Part 1 of 2 To Cicero, on consolations for grief

Dear Cicero, if you are well, then I am well. There are so many things that I would like to write to you about, but I find myself hesitating. I have been reading the letters from your difficult year after Julius Caesar took over Rome, a calamity which, though great, seems only a pale shadow by comparison to the death of your beautiful and lovely daughter Tullia. What a terrible year 45BCE was for you. I have found that my passion for reading your letters has waned. I know that from here on the story has too little triumph, and far too much bloodshed. I am looking forward to re-reading your speeches against Marc Antony, which I consider to be magnificent examples of your fiery passion and grand skill as a speaker and writer.

But today I must address, as I have addressed only in passing in prior letters, your grief, and the consolations you found in writing. Though perhaps consolation is too strong a word, and distraction may better describe the usefulness of your literary pursuits in assuaging the pain of your loss. Loss of hope, loss of country, liberty and family. Your letters from this period are full of the advice you give to others, and which they likewise return to you. I begin in the months before Tullia's death...

DXXVII

Cicero To Titius

...Now there is a source of consolation – hackneyed indeed to the last degree – which we ought ever to have on our lips and in our hearts : we should remember that we are men, born under the conditions which expose our life to all the missiles of fortune; and we must not decline life on the conditions under which we were born, nor rebel so violently under mischances which we are unable to avoid by any precautions; and by recalling what has happened to others we should reflect that nothing strange has betided us...

...there is no evil in death, after which if any sensation remains it is to be regarded as immortality rather than death, while if it is all lost, it follows that nothing must be regarded as misery which is not felt – yet this much I can assert, that confusions are brewing, disasters preparing and threatening the Republic, such that whoever has left them cannot possibly, as it seems to me, be in the wrong.

I have been reading a lot of the Stoic philosophers, and the above letter seems to neatly summarise a certain Stoic attitude towards death. If we do live on in consciousness after death, then that life must be immortal, and so, death is not to be feared. If we do not maintain any sensation after death, then it is nought but the release from mortal torment, and thus, death is not to be feared.

Of course, it is not our own death that is the cause of our greatest fears.

DXXIX

Cicero to C. Cassius Longinus

…”Can we laugh, then?” you will say. No by Hercules, not very easily. Yet other means of distraction from our troubles we have none. “Where then,” you will say, “is your philosophy?” yours indeed is in the kitchen, while mine is in the schools. For I am ashamed of being a slave. Accordingly I pose as being busy about other things, to avoid the reproach of Plato.

That reproach from Plato, (Republic 387b), being that men ought to be free and fear slavery worse than death.

Plato

Living as I do in a post-Nuremberg trials world, where the moral responsibility is upon the individual to follow their own conscience during times of war and to refuse to follow orders contrary to the dictates of human decency, reinforces the belief that slavery to a tyrant should be more feared than death. I feel an obligation to follow in Socrates footsteps and to place liberty above other concerns, and yet as I watch the tightening grip of tyranny squeeze my own country, I cannot help but feel that life, even under such a grip, is worth something. If only to remain in peace with my family, to be a father to my children, to remain alive under any conditions seems to me to be right also. I think I understand, Cicero, the contradiction of your conscience that you chose to remain alive, when to die for your beliefs was offered to you as a noble option. Life must continue, for there is yet more good to be done, regardless of which Caesar rules our lives.

End of Book 3: a letter to my readers

Dear readers,

Book three of this blog is now complete, another 21 letters to my dead friends.

Book four is being written. I have found myself standing in the shadows of the Seven Pillars of wisdom, by TE Lawrence, I converse with Epictetus, and and I return at length to Xenophon, Tacitus, Herodotus, and finally, Ryokan, the Zen monk.  There is much more to be learned, and this year I will complete reading the 4th, and final book of Cicero's letters.  I will be reading more of his political speeches, including the Philippics, and I will begin reading his political treatises.  At least, that's the plan.

The last few months have been very productive.  I released a solo album in August 2019, and another in February 2020.  They can be found here: Zebulon Storyteller  If you enjoy music that tells a story, or poetry that asks more questions than it gives answers, then you will likely enjoy my music.

I also have many videos on Youtube, including the complete recordings from the festival show my band put on in 2019.  Iron Dwarf presents: Gil and the Kid - the hard-boiled detective story retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, complete with a belly dancer, a funk band and puppets.

Gil and the Kid - (Full Video's here)

I also teach middle eastern drumming here in Adelaide, and the last year has seen a great leap forward in the troupe's skills.  I write a study blog for them here...  Drum Arabesque

My new novel is nearly complete.  Monkey and Tortoise.  It is a novel concerning an animal sanctuary where the inhabitants have gained the ability to read and write and speak with the humans who live nearby.  My previous novel, a dark fantasy, The Hangman Tree, is still in proofreading and third draft editing.  Of all my writing projects, this has taken the most time and requires the most concentration to work on.  It is still a couple years away from completion, but I cannot rush the river.

I have started a new blog, In Praise of the Living, where I publish my reviews of books and music performances.  I currently have reviews up for some Adelaide poets who I absolutely recommend, as well as a three page write up of Amanda Palmer's recent 4 hour concert – There will be no intermission.

In other news, I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons with my two sons, and the current game events are set in a fictionalised Rome, where Caesar is a Gaulish War Chief and the popularly elected dictator of the Roman Republic, while Crassus (a shapeshifter) fights Pompey (a half giant) for control of the city, and Cicero, grown vengeful after his exile, has returned to Rome from Asia with an army of assassins, intent on taking over all of Italy.  Then there is the Pirate Archipelago to the north, the Orcs and Wild Elves in the south, and a race of Mind Flayers trying to take over the whole planet from the moon, by psychically enslaving all the Gnomes of Rome, which has led to the unanimous decision of the Roman Senate, to declare: NO GNOMES IN ROME!!!

 The Pirate Archipelago

 Gaul

Rome

To you my readers, I must express my gratitude.  I absolutely appreciate the time you give to read my letters, and I thank everyone who posts comments here on the blog, or on Facebook.  I am always eager to chat.  I am fascinated by the influence the dead have on our lives, but I do not ignore the gifts of the living.

So, I raise a glass and salute the coming year, whatever it may hold. 

Thank You.


Morgan.


PS.  Good luck to us all in coping with the Covid pandemic.  The future is unwritten.

Book 3, Letter 21, Part 3 of 3. To Cicero, on life under a tyrant

Then in January of the next year, (45BCE) writing to Cassius Longinus, you admit your true feelings concerning life under Caesar. The speech of lavish thanks to Caesar, given before the senate, is proved false by the following honest testimony given in private:

DXXIX

To Cassius Longinus

“...Can we laugh then? You will say. No, by Hercules, not very easily. Yet other means of distraction from our troubles we have none. Where then, you will say, is your philosophy? Yours indeed is in the kitchen, mine in the schools only gives me annoyance. For I am ashamed of being a slave. Accordingly, I pose as being busy about other things, to avoid the reproach of Plato...”

Plato, he seems as influential now as he was in you day Cicero. The reproach of which you speak comes from The Republic, 387b, which says that men ought to “...be free and fear slavery worse than death.”

It is a death that I wish now to finally confront. The death of Marcellus.

He didn't come back to Rome immediately after his pardon, but began his journey in the following spring. To refuse the pardon of a tyrant, is to insult him with indifference to his wishes. I am sure that Marcellus' absence from Rome was seen as a continued statement of opposition to Caesar. You wrote him a short letter in January, gently reminding him of your feelings on the matter.

DXXXV

Jan 45BCE

“...Do your best, then, to come at the earliest opportunity : your coming, believe me, will be welcomed not only by us, I mean by your personal friends, but by absolutely everybody. I say this because it occurs to me sometimes to be a little afraid that you have a fancy for postponing your departure...”

A few months later, in May, your good friend Servius Sulpicius Rufus wrote to you with the news that Marcellus had been murdered.

DCXII

Servius Sulpicius Rufus to Marcus Tullius Cicero

May 31^st 45BCE

Athens.

Servius sends many good wishes to Cicero. Though I know that I shall be giving you no very pleasant news, yet since chance and nature bear the sway among us men, I thought it encumbent on me to give you information of whatever kind it might be. On the 23^rd of May, on sailing into the Piraeus, I met my colleague M.Marcellus, and spent the day there in order to enjoy his society. Next day, when I parted from him with the design of going from Athens to Boeotia, and finishing what remained of my legal business, he told me that he intended to sail round Cape Malea and make for Italy. On the third day after that, just as I was intending to start from Athens, at the tenth hour of the night my friend Publius Postumius called on me with the information that my colleage M. Marcellus just after dinner had been stabbed with a dagger by his friend P. Magius Cilo, and had received two wounds, one in the stomach, a second in the head behind the ear; but that hopes were entertained that he might survive; and that Magius had killed himself afterwards. He added that he had been sent by Marcellus to tell me this, and to ask me to send some physicians. Accordingly I summoned some physicians, and immediately started just as day was breaking. When I was not far from Piraeus, a slave of Acidinus me me bearing a note containing information that Marcellus had expired a little before daybreak.

So there is a man of most illustrious character cut off in a most distressing manner by the vilest of men. His personal enemies had spared him in consideration of his character; but one of his own friends was found to inflict death upon him. However, I continued my journey to his tent. There I found two freedmen and a few slaves: they said the rest had run away in terror, because their master had been killed in front of the tent. I was obliged to carry him back to the city in the same litter in which I had ridden down and to use my own bearers: and there, considering the means at my disposal at Athens, I saw to his having an honourable funeral. I could not induce the Athenians to grant him a place of burial within the city, as they alleged that they were prevented by religious scruples from doing so; and it is a fact that they had never granted that privilege to anyone. But they allowed us, which was the next best thing, to bury him in any gymnasium we chose. We chose a place in the most famous gymnasium in the world—that of the Academy—and there we burnt the body, and afterwards saw to these same Athenians giving out a contract for the construction of a marble monument over him. So I think I have done all for him alive and dead required by our colleagueship and close connexion. Goodbye.

Call me paranoid if you wish, but it seems all to easy for Caesar to have arranged the murder-suicide of Marcellus and Magius Clio. The convenient excuse of the debt motivated desperation of Magius, the easy distance from Rome, plus, the elimination of one's enemies had become a time honoured tradition in the generations-long civil conflict of Rome. Sulla practically made assassination legal, so bold and open handed was he in his proscriptions. It seems naive to consider Marcellus' murder to be unconnected to Caesar's wishes, especially if Marcellus was as important and as influential as both you and Rufus seem to think he was.

So, apologetic as I am to bring up this terrible event in your life, I do so in defence of you Cicero. If you are a coward for having submitted to Caesar, then so too was every other able bodied and active citizen in Rome. If you decided that your life was worth the price, then I must agree with you. You believed that your life might still be worth something even under the tyranny of a dictator, you believed that you might still serve the Republic. You chose to suffer whatever indignity might be forced upon you, in order that you might yet defend the virtues and ideals of your beloved Rome.

I can only imagine what heartbreak and self doubt you must have felt, to know that the man you had so encouraged to return to Rome, Marcellus, the man whom you had debased yourself before Caesar in order to secure his pardon, was then murdered. Did you suspect that you had been used? Did you consider that Caesar had given his pardon knowing that Marcellus would only attempt to return to Rome if you begged him? Were you the bait that brought Caesar's enemy close enough to be murdered by his men, and that murder blamed on a money hungry debt-crippled desperado?

Yet Caesar was killed, and you Cicero, would not repeat your much maligned submission a second time, so when Marc Antony rose to replace Caesar, you stood firm against him.

A letter for another day, my dear friend.

With gratitude and respect

Morgan