Letters From a Stoic (3 page)
Read Letters From a Stoic Online
Authors: Seneca
*
Style, with Seneca, is of considerable importance.
Notwithstanding his own condemnation
42
of people who give less attention to what they have to say than to
how
they will say it, he is a signal example of a writer to whom form mattered as much as content.
In writers like him (in what has commonly been called the Silver Age of Latin literature), constant striving after terseness and originality of expression gave rise to an arresting and not easily digested style.
There were reasons for the development of this ‘pointed’ style.
With the passing of the Republic and succession of a series of suspicious emperors there had been a diminution both in the range of subject-matter which was safe and in the practical value of a training in rhetoric for a career in public life.
The leisured Roman (now increasingly over-leisured) turned his training to literary rather than political ends; and the means to the prime new end of stylistic brilliance were those of rhetoric.
All this was encouraged by the fashion of giving public readings of one’s work, in which success almost came to be measured by the ability of each and every sentence to win applause.
Carried over, too, from the schools of rhetoric was a liking for sometimes daringly poetic words, especially from Virgil, and artificial forms of expression more typical of verse than prose.
Going with the overriding aim of pithiness or epigrammatic brevity (contrasting so greatly with the style of Cicero a century before) was an indulgence in colloquialisms.
Seneca’s use of popular turns of phrase and everyday expressions (a practice rare in Roman authors not writing for the comic stage or on technical subjects) and deliberate cultivation of the easy, conversational manner are somehow reconciled with elements of style, even in the Letters, which to us seem highly
wrought and polished.
The exploitation of such figures as antithesis, alliteration, homeoteleuta and all manner of other plays upon words, paradox and oxymoron, apposition and asyndeton, the use of cases and prepositions in uncommon connotations, all contribute to the twin aims of brevity and sparkle.
The result may read more naturally in Latin than it ever could in English, but is none the less apt to leave the reader ‘dazzled and fatigued’.
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All the wealth and ingenuity of epigram and illustration does not prevent us from feeling that the sentences often simply ‘repeat the same thought, clothed in constantly different guises, over and over again’, as Fronto complained in the century following.
And this reluctance, as it appears, to say what one has to say and then have done with it instead of continuing the restless manufacture of yet bolder, more hard-hitting or more finished sentences or proverbs, sometimes arouses the impatience of more modern readers.
There is Macaulay’s celebrated statement in a letter to a friend: ‘I cannot bear Seneca… His works are made up of mottoes.
There is hardly a sentence which might not be quoted; but to read him straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.’ Quintilian
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considered that Seneca, whom by and large he respected and admired, weakened the force of his teaching by his manner of writing, and others have wondered whether his style is not unworthy of his subject.
It is interesting to hear Quintilian speaking of his struggle to win his students away from such models as Seneca (who, he said, ‘practically alone among authors was to be found on the shelves of every young man at that time’).
As an academician who stood for orthodoxy and a return to the older or Ciceronian manner, he could not bring himself to give the seal of his approval to an author whose writing showed, in his opinion, ‘a degree of corruption all the more dangerous
through the very attractiveness of the faults in which it abounds’, and who had actually voiced the heresy: ‘There are no fixed rules of style.’
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*
While scholars and schoolmasters in the century following continued to condemn
46
Seneca, early Christians were taking to this kindred spirit among pagan writers, so many of whose ideas and attitudes they felt able to adopt or share.
Anthologies were made of him and he was frequently quoted by such writers as Jerome, Lactantius and Augustine.
Tertullian called him
saepe noster
, ‘often one of us’.
The extant set of letters purporting to be correspondence between Seneca and St Paul (probably composed by a Christian, but apparently believed genuine until quite modern times) led Jerome to include him in his so called Catalogue of Saints, and no doubt helps to explain his reputation in the middle ages, much as the supposed prophecy of the birth of the Messiah in Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue helped to make the latter’s name in Christendom.
Only Cicero, perhaps, among classical authors was better known in medieval times, and until Aristotle was rediscovered by Western Europe, Seneca’s main ‘scientific’ work, the
Naturales Quaestiones
, was the undisputed authority on the subjects with which it dealt.
Dante, Chaucer and Petrarch were great admirers and quoters of his writings.
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Printing spread his influence, the first printed version of the
Epistulae
being published in or about 1475 at Rome, Paris and Strasbourg.
Erasmus
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was the first person to produce a critical edition (in 1515) and Calvin’s first work was an edition in 1532 of the
De Clementia
, an essay originally written to
encourage clemency in Nero, and incidentally inspiring much of the ‘quality of mercy’ speech in the Merchant of Venice.
Montaigne
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was the first, and the most conspicuously indebted, borrower from Seneca among the great modern literary figures.
Pasquier’s admiration for Montaigne prompted him to say: ‘As for his essays, which I call masterpieces, there is no book in my possession which I have so greatly cherished.
I always find something in it to please me.
It is a French Seneca.’
Appreciations of Seneca as a moralist may be quoted from many sources.
John of Salisbury is supposed to have said: ‘If Quintilian will excuse my saying so, there are very few if any writers on conduct among non-Christians whose words and ideas can be more readily applied to all kinds of practical things.’ Emerson urged: ‘Make your own Bible.
Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.’ He is placed in even more exalted company by Baudelaire in his essay
De l’Essence du Rire
, in which he seems at one point to be ascribing modern civilized manners to
‘la venue de Jésus, Platon et Sénèque aidant’
.
In letters to Peter Gilles we find Erasmus writing (in the words of Froude) ‘in fraternal good humour, advising him to be regular at his work, to keep a journal, to remember that life was short, to study Plato and Seneca, love his wife, and disregard the world’s opinion’.
Queen Elizabeth I ‘did much admire Seneca’s wholesome advisings’, says her godson, Sir John Harington, who ‘saw much of her translating thereof’.
50
Although great literary figures have usually been fondest of the letters, it was his plays which, with all their faults, had the greatest effect on European literature.
‘If you seek Seneca’s memorial, look round on the tragic stage of England, France and Italy.’
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The late Elizabethan age and early seventeenth century
were the high-water mark of Seneca’s influence, as a writer well known and imitated among lyric poets and essayists as well as dramatists.
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His popularity lasted for some time in France, where his admirers included Descartes, Corneille, La Fontaine, Poussin, Rousseau, Diderot, Balzac and Sainte-Beuve, but disappeared almost altogether in England.
The enthusiasm of, for example, De Quincey (‘A nobler master of thinking Paganism has not to shew, nor, when the cant of criticism has done its worst, a more brilliant master of composition’) is exceptional, and Seneca, at the present time, may be called a forgotten author.
Translations, and the aims and methods (when they are venturesome enough to profess them) of individual translators, are seldom hard to criticize.
But however far men of letters may find themselves from agreement on the principles of translation from a classical author, the intelligent reader can no longer be satisfied with either a literal rendering – on the painful model of the old-fashioned school crib – or an inspired paraphrase – however attractive the result has sometimes been when poet has rendered poet.
Somewhere between these two kinds of offering lies the ideal translation, the aim of which I should define as the exact reproduction of the original without omission or addition, capturing its sound (form, style) as well as its sense (content, meaning).
Reproduction of the style presents, except with ordinary conversational or colloquial prose, formidable problems.
The practitioner feels that the attempt is one which should be made, even, in the case of poetry, with so difficult a feature of it as its metrical patterns.
Yet the result must never be English so unnatural or contrived (unless the original itself clearly set out to obtain such effects) that the reader cannot
stomach it.
And this consideration has tempered my feeling that the brevity or rhetoric or other elements of Seneca’s manner should each be closely imitated.
It is hardly possible, for instance, to reproduce the compression of such a sentence as
Habere eripitur, habuisse numquam
or
Magis quis veneris quam quo interest
.
In this field of style it is never possible to claim that a translation ‘loses nothing’ of the qualities of the original.
For when all is said and done a translation of a literary work must be readable.
To spare the reader the jars which remind him that he is reading a translation, all but the few timeless versions of the classical authors need to be revised or done afresh perhaps every half century.
The same principle incidentally suggests that obscurities (allusions, for example, which only a Latinist would notice or appreciate) may be clarified or removed by slight expansion, and I have adopted this practice very occasionally as an alternative to a distracting reference to a note.
The formal beginning and ending of each letter (
Seneca Lucilio suo salutem
and
Vale
) is omitted.
Colloquialisms (including the forms ‘it’s’, ‘wouldn’t’, etc.
and the everyday habit of ending sentences with prepositions) will be noticed here and there; they have been used only where Seneca’s language is thoroughly colloquial or where he is arguing in the second person with an imaginary interjector.
If an earlier translator has hit on a phrase which one becomes (unwillingly) convinced cannot be bettered, it is surely absurd – the more so if one believes that there is almost always only one best rendering in the language of the translator’s day – to proceed with a poorer or less accurate one merely for the sake of originality.
I am indebted in this way in a number of places to Gummere and Barker, the translators in the Loeb (1917–25) and Clarendon Press (1932) versions respectively.
The translation, originally based on Beltrami’s text (1931), has been brought into line with the Oxford Classical Text (1965) of Mr L.
D.
Reynolds, to whom I am grateful for help on several points of difficulty.
My appreciation is extended also to various friends who may not well recall the help or interest and encouragement at one time or another given by them, and among them to my former tutors Mr T.
C.
W.
Stinton and Mr J.
P.
V.
D.
Balsdon, who have rescued me from a number of heresies in the parts of this work which they have seen.
My thanks are due also to Dr Michael Grant for permission to reprint from
The Annals of Imperial Rome
(Penguin Books, 1956) his translation of Tacitus’ account of Seneca’s death.
It may be asked what criteria have been applied in deciding which letters should be included or omitted.
The first has been their interest – as they set out a philosophy and contribute to a picture of a man and of his times.
The second has been the avoidance of undue repetition of particular themes or topics of a moralist who tends towards repetitiveness.
For similar reasons one or two of the letters have been shortened by the omission of a few passages (at places indicated).
My ultimate defence must be the anthologist’s plea, or confession, that the choice has been a personal one.
It is perhaps hard to resist quoting here (in no way seeking to disarm criticism!) from the preface and postscript to the anthology
Seneca’s Morals by Way of Abstract
published by Sir Roger L’Estrange in 1673:
Some other Man, in my Place, would perchance, make you twenty Apologies, for his want of Skill, and Address, in governing this Affair, but these are
Formal
, and
Pedantique Fooleries
: As if any Man
that first takes himself for a Coxcomb in his own Heart, would afterwards make himself one in Print too.
This
Abstract
, such as it is, you are extremely welcome to; and I am sorry it is no better, both for your sakes and my own: for if it were written up to the Spirit of the
Original
, it would be one of the most valuable Presents that ever any private Man bestow’d upon the Publick:
Books,
and
Dishes
have this Common Fate; there was never
any One,
of
Either
of them, that pleas’d
All Palates.
And, in Truth, it is a
Thing
as little to be
Wish’d for,
as
Expected;
For, an Universal Applause is at least Two Thirds of a Scandal.
So that though I deliver up these Papers to the Press, I invite no Man to the Reading of them: And, whosoever Reads, and Repents; it is his Own Fault.
To Conclude, as I made this Composition Principally for my Self, so it agrees exceedingly Well with My Constitution; and yet, if any Man has a Mind to take part with me, he has Free Leave, and Welcome.
But, let him Carry this Consideration along with him
, that He’s a very Unmannerly Guest, that presses upon another Bodies Table, and then Quarrels with his Dinner.