Seneca 1

[calbert at hslboxmaster.com]

“But, Calbert, we’ve now endured your unconvincing amateur 
musings on Eliot, not to mention that dreadful homophonic pun 
on quay and likely, homophobic, on Greek armadas..........and 
now we are about to be assaulted by “Seneca for Dolts”, and he 
was a Roman, anyway......”

Indulge me for just a minute......

>From Seneca - The Tragedies Vol I,  David Slavitt & Palmer 
Bovie Editors


The Senecan strategy is not merely an artistic but a philosophic 
one, the commentary of a man of intimate knowledge of the 
imperial experience about the ways in which we may withstand 
life’s outrages and disasters. What T. S. Eliot alluded to in his 
slightly prissy was, in his essay of 1927 on “Seneca in 
Elizabethan Translation”, was “the influence of Seneca upon the 
“thought” of the Elizabethans, or more exactly, upon their 
attitude toward life so far as it can be formulated in words.” He 
went on to elaborate his meaning, suggesting that “Seneca’s 
influence upon dramatic form, upon versification and language 
(apparently S’s plays were not amenable to the existing 
“fourteener” structure of dramatic dialogue, and Kyd applied 
free verse to the problem, cfa) , upon sensibility, and upon 
thought, must in the end be all estimated together.” And he 
arrived, finally at an elegant formulation in which he asserted 
grandly and simply that “when an Elizabethan hero or villain dies 
(and the form not only allows for such, but for the most part, 
demands the demise often of both pro and antago - nist, cfa) he 
usually dies in the odor of Seneca.”......

There are two questions that the tragedies of Seneca generally 
pose, often but not always explicitly. They ask, first, whether 
there is any divine justice. Are there any gods, or more 
particularly, does their mere existence matter to us if they do not 
occupy themselves with rewarding virtue and punishing 
wickedness? And then, as a corollary question, Seneca’s plays 
test our assumptions about the limits of the cruelty men and 
women can visit upon one another. Or worse, he asks whether 
there are any such limits.

Once these two questions have been posed and answered 
resoundingly in the negative, the curtain comes down (or actually 
in a Roman theater, goes up).....

Intro. pgs viii-ix

Bear in mind that Seneca had a front seat at an ”apocalypse” - 
serving as tutor to both Caligula and Nero, and having a 
presence at the court of Claudius. He dodged several death 
sentences only to wind up killing himself.

There is a clear connection between the imagery of Eliot and 
Seneca, as illustrated by the following lines from TROADES - 
Trojan Women.....

Hecuba (Widow of Priam): 
Whoever believes in wealth, power, the state,
those fragile toys of man’s contrivance, whoever
puts his trust in such things and does not fear
the whimsical gods, let him look upon me, 
and this, behind me - all that remains of Troy.....
...........We believed ourselves to be safe.
Nothing is safe or sure but ruin itself.....
In houses where men and women laughed and whispered,
there are only TONGUES OF FLAME still jeering now....

and later


“only the dead and utterly mad
are safe from these assaults”

“Blood cries out for blood - the wounds
of Hector’s body are all mouths
calling for a mother’s care, 
the blood demanding repayment in blood.”

Later Agamemnon:

Do the ruins of Troy make you happy? Strong?
Invincible? A creature of destiny. Think
how weak and paltry a thing is man, and quake 
that grandeur, wealth, and strength can be overthrown
and turned to the sorry rubble we behold.
I have been guilty of pride, but I was wrong.
Let us learn from Priam the difficult lesson,
that crowns can topple, and skulls beneath are fragile
as those of any men. Ten years, ten seconds,
a thousand ships, or none, and what we believed
to be real, solid, evaporates, is smoke
in the acrid air......
You ask
for another innocent victim, a grisly rite
where murder masquerades as a kind of marriage...”

The action of Trojan Women concerns itself with the aftermath 
of the Greek victory at Troy....The Greek fleet is unable to head 
for home due to a lack of favorable winds, and are stuck in the 
harbor of the burning city.....A priest is consulted, who explains 
that the gods want a sacrifice of an innocent - no, wait, make 
that TWO innocents, in order to blow good breeze. The 
innocents chosen are Polyxena (explained as a mute part), the 
daughter of Hecuba and Priam, and just coincidentally, the 
recently desenheredadoed Astayanax, son of Andromache and 
Hector.....WHen Ulysses is sent to fetch the boy from his 
mother, Andromache, cleverly, determines to hide the whelp 
(rather brilliantly, in Hector’s tomb) and claim him 
dead.....Ulysses, being no dope, smells the rat, and profanes the 
dead man’s tomb.....which instigates the following response from 
the Mom:

“AN amazon
or mad Maenad, I’ll tear your eyes out with my nails!”

Now, those who have been reading carefully will recognize 
Maenad from this:

Out in a bloody rain to feed our fields
Amid the Maenad roar of nitre’s song
and Sulfur’s cantus firmus

Couriers Tragedy

This is the speech of Pasquale referring to the effort to atomize 
the good prince over the Faggian landscape....

Note: Maenads are the “priests of Bacchus”

Nitre and sulfur are components of gun powder

Cantus Firmus - the melody which remains firm to its original 
shape while the parts abound it are varying with counterpoint. 
Simple unadorned melody of ancient hymns, plain song......

(now, MalignD.....you’ve gotta admit, this is pretty funny)
 
and we have only just begun......

love,
cfa