It was but a moment ago that I sat, as a lad, in the school of the philosopher Sotion, but a moment ago that I began to plead in the courts, but a moment ago that I lost the desire to plead, but a moment ago that I lost the ability. Infinitely swift is the flight of time, as those see more clearly who are looking backwards. For when we are intent on the present, we do not notice it, so gentle is the passage of time's headlong flight. 3. Do you ask the reason for this? All past time is in the same place; it all presents the same aspect to us, it lies together. Everything slips into the same abyss. Besides, an event which in its entirety is of brief compass cannot contain long intervals. The time which we spend in living is but a point, nay, even less than a point. But this point of time, infinitesimal as it is, nature has mocked by making it seem outwardly of longer duration; she has taken one portion thereof and made it infancy, another childhood, another youth, another the gradual slope, so to speak, from youth to old age, and old age itself is still another. How many steps for how short a climb! 4. It was but a moment ago that I saw you off on your journey; and yet this "moment ago" makes up a goodly share of our existence, which is so brief, we should reflect, that it will soon come to an end altogether. In other years time did not seem to me to go so swiftly; now, it seems fast beyond belief, perhaps, because I feel that the finish-line is moving closer to me, or it may be that I have begun to take heed and reckon up my losses.--Seneca, Letter 49, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).
This may the first letter in which Seneca suggests the possibility of learning from students. And in his frustration he reminds us who share in this vocation, of the moments of frustration when there is no teaching by student, or teacher. Seneca leaves no doubt that at times it is the student's misdirected gaze that is to blame for such failures.
Seneca's angry, even vain response is comic from one perspective: he blames the student for his bad interests, berates Lucilius for his impoverished intellectual tastes. Has Seneca forgotten that it is our job to cultivate these?
But I don't laugh because I recognize the frustration. The indifferent or bored student is a minor wound compared to the cuts we feel when we encounter the enthusiastic blathering of the talented but misguided ones. These shortchange both of us.
Suddenly, I remember my moments of weakness: the reading group with my PhD students that I stormed out of; my inability to disguise my impatience for another student's infatuation with digital payments. A whole litany of teaching fails appear fresh in my mind elbowing each other aside, crowding in on my awareness. Compressing my life into a flat dimension of inarticulate powerlessness.
Initially, I couldn't write about this long-winded letter with its military tropes; its unapologetic reminder that slaves are mere instruments to the owning class; and Seneca's by now all too familiar diatribes against certain topics of study. Seneca's gift for subtle succinctness has deserted him.
One need not be psycho-analytic that inarticulate powerlessness is the condition of the infant-child. The teacher regresses. On re-reading Seneca's letter, I discern it is more artful than I realized, because the infant-child is not just powerless, "At our birth nature made us teachable;" we start out imperfect, but perfectable [Dociles natura nos edidit, et rationem dedit imperfectam, sed quae perfici posset.]
I recognize that I could only start to write about this letter once I related to it. I dislike myself for this; my scholarly pride likes to think I can write about the unrelatable, too.
There is a moment in childhood when one forgets all the early memories, where the past isn't just flattened but effaced. I wonder if that is a condition of our teachability.
Now, that I am reaching an age where the compression of the past is a familiar fact of life, I also notice that in being past not all moments respect the homogeneity of time. Some stand out like the itchy skin after mosquito bites; I return to them often unbeknownst to me until I recognize i am dwelling on them.
I look at the abstract list of topics Seneca demands his digressing (devia) student to argue (disputa) with him about: "justice, piety, thrift, and that twofold purity, both the purity which abstains from another's person, and that which takes care of one's own self" [de pudicitia utraque, et illa cui alieni corporis abstinentia est, et hac cui sui cura.] Seneca can be a bore.
And just as I wish to be mesmerized by the metaphysical puzzle of the inequity in time's experience, I linger on that two-fold purity. Pudicitia can also be translated as modesty or chastity; both would have sound off. Even so, pudicitia's roots are in shame or being shamed (pudet).
There is a form of shame, a sense of shame, that can if it is treated tenderly lead to abstaining from violating others and, to use modern jargon, self-care. I wonder why I was incapable of learning this before.
Comments