[Stoicism] - Dịch Seneca (104): Bàn về những chuyến đi, và về Socrates

Lời tựa:
                      
Như đã giới thiệu trong series, Seneca thực sự là nguồn cảm hứng Stoicism của mình. Đọc Seneca không chỉ là về triết học mà còn là một trải nghiệm nghệ thuật, khi những bài học, triết lý quan trọng được phản ánh qua những hình ảnh quen thuộc, bình dị và đời thường, thể hiện cái tinh tế trong quan sát của một thiên tài với sự từng trải của cuộc đời.
                
Với hy vọng giới thiệu Stoicism đến với các bạn trẻ Việt Nam, xin gửi tới các bạn bản dịch những bức thư quan trọng nhất trong cuốn "Moral Letters to Lucilius", tác phẩm đã làm nên tên tuổi của Seneca và là một trong bộ ba cuốn sách nền tảng của Stoicism.

Những bức thư đạo đức là tuyển tập các bức thư của triết gia Seneca về Chủ nghĩa Khắc Kỷ, nhằm trang bị cho con người hành trang để đối mặt và mỉm cười trước sóng gió của cuộc đời, đạt được sự bình thản trong tâm trí. Cuốn sách không chỉ về triết học, mà còn về trải nghiệm nghệ thuật, khi những bài học, triết lý quan trọng được phản ánh qua những hình ảnh quen thuộc, bình dị và đời thường, thể hiện cái tinh tế trong quan sát của một thiên tài.
                                                        
Do không phải anh dịch thuật, nên bản dịch này hoàn toàn tập trung vào việc truyền tải thông điệp và hy vọng có thể giúp bạn cảm thấy dễ dàng hơn trong việc tiếp cận với bản tiếng Anh, để có thể thấy cái hay cái đẹp trong việc sử dụng ngôn từ của Seneca (dù thực ra bản tiếng Anh cũng chỉ là một bản dịch). Một anh bạn người Ý của mình đã chia sẻ Seneca được đưa vào chương trình giảng dạy tại Ý như một bậc thầy về việc sử dụng ngôn từ. Vì vậy, xin cam đoan tất cả những gì khiến bạn cảm thấy trúc trắc từ bản dịch là bởi khả năng hạn chế của mình, và rất mong nhận được đóng góp của các cao nhân để bản dịch được hoàn thiện hơn. 

Lưu ý: vì một số lý do như nội dung không còn quá sát và cần thiết với thời hiện tại, mình sẽ không dịch 4 bức số 58, 85, 92, và 95 nhé. Nếu bạn nào muốn tìm hiểu thêm thì bản tiếng Anh có sẵn trên Wiki, hay có thể nhắn cho mình mình sẽ gửi bản pdf sách.

Bức thư số 104

trốn chạy khỏi những thị trấn Argive

và tìm vào đúng giữa lòng quân địch (trích thơ Virgil)

Cái chết và sự khổ đau: tạo thành hình dạng của nỗi sợ (trích thơ Virgil)

Ta thường gặp những người nghĩ rằng thứ mà họ không thể làm thì chắc chắn là không thể, và họ cho rằng những thứ Stoicism truyền dạy là vượt trên khả năng của con người. Bản thân tôi có cái nhìn cao hơn rất nhiều với con người: tất cả đều có khả năng thực hiện những hành động như thế, chỉ là họ không đủ dũng khí mà thôi. Có ai từng thực sự nỗ lực mà vẫn phải thừa nhận rằng những hành động hay nhiệm vụ ấy là vượt trên khả năng của anh ta? Chẳng phải người ta thường lại thấy những thứ ấy dễ dàng hơn rất nhiều khi thực sự bắt tay vào thực hiện hay sao? Không phải sự khó khăn làm mất đi lòng tin trong ta, mà chính sự thiếu tự tin của ta khiến mọi thứ trở nên khó khăn.

Trước con trai Atreus và Priam, vậy mà Achilles dám phẫn nộ với cả hai (trích thơ Virgil)

Một khi ta loại bỏ được sợi dây đang chằng quanh cổ mình, ta có thể đối mặt với những thử thách ấy một cách mạnh mẽ và kiên tâm. Để làm được như vậy, ta cần bắt đầu bằng việc từ bỏ mọi hưởng thụ tiện nghi; chúng làm ta trở nên yếu ớt và nhu nhược với rất nhiều đòi hỏi, và chúng khiến ta phụ thuộc vào số mệnh. Tiếp đó, ta cần phải từ bỏ của cải: vì của cải là văn kiện chứng minh sự nô lệ của con người. Ta nên từ bỏ toàn bộ vàng bạc và mọi thứ làm thành gánh nặng cho những ngôi nhà. Tự do thực sự không đến một cách miễn phí. Nếu bạn mong muốn đạt được nó, bạn phải coi thường tất cả mọi thứ khác.

From Seneca to Lucilius
Greetings
1 I have run away to my villa at Nomentum.* Why, do you think?
To escape the city? No, I wanted to avoid a fever that was creeping
up and had already cast its hold on me. My doctor was saying that
it had started with a rapid and irregular pulse. So I gave orders for
my carriage to be made ready at once. I insisted on leaving in spite
of my dear Paulina’s attempts to stop me. All I could say was what
my mentor Gallio had said when he was on the point of starting to
have a fever in Greece.* He immediately boarded a ship, and kept
insisting that his sickness was due to the location and not to his body.
2 I told this to Paulina.* She is very anxious about my health. In fact,
realizing that her soul is completely bound up with mine, I am beginning,
in my concern for her, to be concerned about myself. Getting
on in years has made me more resolute in facing lots of things, but
here I am losing the benefi t of age. I have come to think that within
this old man there’s a young person who needs indulgence. Since I
can’t prevail on her to show more courage in loving me, she prevails
on me to love myself more carefully.
3 One has to give in, you see, to honorable feelings. Th ere are
times when, to honor a family member, one has to summon back
one’s dying breath, however painfully, and actually hold it in one’s
mouth. A good man should live not as long as it pleases him but
as long as he ought to. Th e person who does not think enough of
his wife or his friend to prolong his life—who insists on dying—is
thoroughly self-indulgent. When the interest of loved ones demands
it, the mind should require even this of itself: even if one not only
wants to die but has actually begun to do so, one should interrupt the
process and give oneself over to their needs. 4 Returning to life for
another’s sake is the mark of a lofty spirit, as great men have often
done. But, in addition, I think it is supremely kind to be especially
careful of your old age if you are aware that such behavior is pleasing,
useful, and desirable to any of your loved ones, highly enjoyable
though it is at that time to be more relaxed about one’s survival and more daring in one’s manner of living. 5 Besides, such self-care brings
with it great joy and rewards, for what can be more delightful than
being so dear to your wife that you consequently become dearer to
yourself? And so my Paulina succeeds in burdening me not only with
her fears but also with my own.
6 I suppose you are curious to know how my travel project has
worked out. As soon as I got away from the city’s heavy atmosphere
and the smell that smoking kitchens make when they discharge their
accumulation of noxious fumes and dust, I felt an immediate change
in my health. Can you imagine how much my strength increased
once I reached my vineyards? Like an animal let out to pasture, I really
attacked my food. Th e result is that I am fully myself again now,
without a trace of physical unsteadiness and mental weakness. I’m
beginning to concentrate completely on my studies.
7 For that, location is of no avail unless the mind makes time for
itself, keeping a place of retreat even amid busy moments. On the
contrary, if you’re always choosing remote spots in a quest for leisure,
you’ll fi nd something to distract you everywhere. We are told that
Socrates gave the following response to someone who complained
that travel had done him no good: “It serves you right—you’ve been
traveling with yourself!”* 8 How well some people would be doing if
they could get away from themselves! Th eir pressures and anxieties
and failings and terrors are all due to themselves. What good is it
to cross the sea and move to a new city? If you want to escape from
your troubles, what you need is not to be in a diff erent place but to
be a diff erent person. Imagine you have come to Athens or Rhodes.
Choose any city you like. Does the character of the place make any
diff erence? You’ll be taking your own character with you. 9 You’ll still
regard wealth as a good, and be tortured by what you falsely and most
unhappily believe to be your poverty. No matter how much you own,
the mere fact that someone has more will make you think that your
resources are insuffi cient by exactly the amount that his are greater.
You will go on regarding public offi ce as a good, and be upset when
one fellow is elected consul and another even reelected. You will be
jealous whenever you read someone’s name a number of times in the
offi cial records. Your craze for success will still be so great that you
think no one is behind you if anyone is ahead of you.
10 You’ll go on regarding death as the worst of all things, even though the worst thing about death is what precedes it—the fear.
You’ll be terrifi ed by mere apprehensions as well as by real dangers,
constantly troubled by phantoms. How will it help you
to have eluded
so many Argive towns, and steered your fl ight
right through the enemy’s midst?*
Peace itself will supply you with fears. Once your mind has yielded
to alarm, your confi dence will not hold even in situations that are
safe: having acquired the habit of thoughtless anxiety, it lacks the
capacity to secure its own safety. It does not shun danger but rather
takes fl ight, even though we are more exposed to dangers when we
don’t face them.
11 You’ll continue to regard the loss of anyone you love as a most
grievous blow, though all the while this will be as silly as weeping
because leaves are falling from the lovely trees that adorn your home.
Look on everything that pleases you the same way as you look at
verdant leaves:° enjoy them while they last. One or another of them
will fall as the days pass, but their loss is easy to bear, because leaves
grow again. It’s no diff erent with the loss of those you love and think
of as your life’s delight. Th ey can be replaced, even though they are
not reborn.
12 “But they will not be the same.” Even you yourself will not be
the same. Every day changes you, and every hour; but when other
people are snatched away the change is quite obvious, whereas in
your own case this escapes notice, because it is not happening on
the outside. Other people are taken from us, but at the same time
we are being stolen imperceptibly from ourselves. You will not be
conscious of these changes, nor will you be able to remedy the affl ictions,
but you will nonetheless make trouble for yourself by hoping
for some things and despairing of others. Wisdom lies in combining
the two: you should neither hope without doubting nor doubt
without hoping.
13 What has travel as such been able to do for anyone? It doesn’t
control pleasures, curb desires, check outbursts of temper, or mitigate
love’s wild assaults: in a word, it removes no troubles from the
mind. It does not bestow judgment or shake off error; all it does
is provide a change of scene to hold our attention for a moment, as some new trinket might entertain a child. 14 Apart from that,
travel exacerbates the instability of a mind that is already unhealthy.
Indeed, the very movement of the carriage makes us more restless
and irritable. Th e result is that people who had been passionate to
visit some spot are even more eager to leave it, just like birds that
fl y from one perch to another and are gone more swiftly than they
arrived. 15 Travel will acquaint you with other races, it will show you
mountains of strange shape, unfamiliar plains, and valleys watered by
inexhaustible streams. It will enable you to observe the peculiarities
of certain rivers—how the Nile rises in its summer fl ood, how the
Tigris vanishes and then reappears in full force after traveling some
distance underground, or how the Meander repeatedly winds around
(a theme that poets love to embellish) and often loops back nearly
into its own channel before fl owing on—yet it will not improve you,
either in body or in mind.
16 We need to spend our time on study and on the authorities of
wisdom in order to learn what has already been investigated and to
investigate what has not yet been discovered. Th is is the way for the
mind to be emancipated from its miserable enslavement and claimed
for freedom. But as long as you are ignorant of what to avoid and
what to pursue, and remain ignorant of the just, the unjust, the honorable,
and the dishonorable, you will not really be traveling but only
wandering. 17 Your rushing around will bring you no benefi t, since
you are traveling in company with your emotions, and your troubles
follow along. Indeed, I wish they were following you, because then
they would be further away! As it is, you are not staying ahead of
them but carrying them on your back: wherever you go, you are burdened
with the same burning discomforts.
A sick person does not need a place; he needs medical treatment.
18 If someone has broken a leg or dislocated a joint, he doesn’t get
on a carriage or a ship; he calls a doctor to set the fracture or relocate
the limb. Do you get the point? When the mind has been broken and
sprained in so many places, do you think it can be restored by changing
places? Your trouble is too grave to be cured by moving around.
19 Travel does not make one a doctor or an orator. One does not learn
a skill from one’s location. Do you suppose that wisdom, the greatest
of all skills, can be assembled on a journey? Believe me, there is
no journey that could deposit you beyond desires, beyond outbursts of temper, beyond your fears. If that were so, the human race would
have headed there in droves. So long as you carry around the reasons
for your troubles, wandering all over the world, those troubles will
continue to harass and torment you. 20 Are you puzzled that running
away is not helping you? What you are running from is with you.
You need to correct your fl aws, unload your burdens, and keep your
desires within a healthy limit. Expel all iniquity from your mind.
If you want to have pleasant travels, look to the company you keep.
Greed will cling to you as long as the people you spend time with are
greedy or mean. Conceit will stick to you as long as you spend your
time with arrogant types. You will not rid yourself of cruelty if you
make a torturer a close friend, and the company of adulterers will
only infl ame your lusts. 21 If you really want to be rid of your vices,
you must stay away from the patterns of those vices. If a miser, or
seducer, or sadist, or cheat were close to you, they would do you a lot
of harm—but in fact, these are already inside you! Make a conversion
to better models. Live with either of the Catos, or with Laelius,
or Tubero; or, if you prefer to cohabit with Greeks, spend your time
with Socrates or Zeno.* Th e former will teach you, if it is necessary,
how to die; the latter, how to die before it is necessary. 22 Live with
Chrysippus or Posidonius. Th ey will educate you in the knowledge of
things human and divine; they will tell you to work not so much at
speaking charmingly and captivating an audience with your words but
at toughening your mind and hardening it in the face of challenges.
Th ere is only one haven for this stormy and turbulent life of ours:
to rise above future events, to stand fi rm, ready to receive the blows of
fortune head-on, out in the open and unfl inching. 23 Nature brought
us forth to be resolute. It made some creatures fi erce, others cunning,
and others timid, but its gift to us was a proud and lofty spirit that
seeks where it may live most honorably rather than most safely; a
spirit that closely resembles that of the universe, which it follows and
strives to match, as far as that is permissible to the steps of mortal
beings.* Th is spirit advances itself, it is confi dent of being praised
and highly regarded. 24 It is master of everything and superior to
everything. Consequently, it should not submit to anything or fi nd
anything heavy enough to weigh a man down:
Death and distress: shapes fearsome in appearance.*

Not in the least fearsome, if one can fully face them and break
through the darkness. Many things that seem terrifying at night
turn out to be amusing in the daylight. “Death and distress: shapes
fearsome in appearance”: our poet Virgil put it very well when he
called them terrible not in fact but “in appearance,” meaning that
they seem terrible, but are not. 25 I repeat: what is as dreadful about
these things as is commonly attributed to them? I beg you, Lucilius,
to tell me: Why fear hard work, when one is a man? Why fear death,
when one is a human being? I frequently encounter people who
think that what they themselves cannot do is impossible, and who
say that our Stoic theories are beyond the capacities of human nature.
26 I myself have a much higher opinion of human beings: they are
actually capable of doing these things, but they are unwilling. Has
anyone who really made the eff ort ever found the task beyond him?
Hasn’t it always been found easier in the doing? It is not the diffi culty
of things that saps our confi dence, but our lack of confi dence that
creates the diffi culty.
27 If you need a model, take Socrates, a very patient old man.*
He suff ered all kinds of hardships, but he was overwhelmed neither
by poverty (which his domestic troubles made more onerous) nor by
the physical work he had to endure, including military service. He
was hard pressed at home, whether we think of his ill-mannered wife
with her shrewish tongue or his ineducable children, resembling their
mother rather than their father. Outside the home,° he lived either in
war or under tyranny or in a freedom that was more cruel than war
and tyrants.* 28 Th e war lasted for twenty-seven years. After it ended,
the state was subjected to the harm caused by the Th irty Tyrants,
many of whom were personally hostile to Socrates. Finally, he was
charged with the most serious off enses. He was accused of undermining
religion and corrupting the youth by inciting them against
the gods, their fathers, and the state. After this came prison and the
hemlock. All this had so little eff ect on Socrates’ mind that it did
not even alter his facial expression.* What remarkable and unique
distinction! Right up to the end, no one ever saw Socrates any more
or less cheerful than usual. Amid the extreme changes of fortune, he
was always unchanged.
29 Would you like a second model? Take the younger Cato,
against whom fortune’s assaults were more violent and more persistent.* At every juncture, and fi nally at his death, Cato showed that
a brave man can both live and die in defi ance of fortune. He spent
his entire life either as a soldier in the civil wars or in the peace° that
was already breeding civil war. You may say that he, just like Socrates,
pledged himself to liberty in the midst of slaves°—unless you happen
to think that Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus were the allies of freedom.
30 No matter how often the political world changed, no one ever
observed any change in Cato. He maintained the same character in
every circumstance, whether elected to offi ce or defeated, as a prosecutor
or in the province;* in his political speeches, in the army, in
death. In sum, at the moment of national crisis, with Caesar on one
side equipped with ten legions in peak condition and the support
of entire foreign nations, and with Pompey on the other, Cato was
ready to stand alone against them all. When one faction was leaning
to Caesar, and the other to Pompey, Cato was the only one who
took the part of the Republic. 31 If you would like to form a mental
image of that time, picture, on one side, the general populace—the
common people, all keyed up for revolution; on the other side, the
highest nobility and equestrians, all that were of the highest rank in
the state; and in between two remnants, the Republic, and Cato. You
will be amazed, I tell you, when you catch sight of
Atreus’s son and Priam, and the scourge of both, Achilles.*
32 Both sides meet with reproof, and both are stripped of their weapons,
when Cato states his view of both: namely, “If Caesar wins, I
will choose death; but if Pompey wins, I will go into exile.” What did
Cato have to fear? He had appointed for himself, whether in defeat
or in victory, outcomes as stern as his enemies could have appointed
at their most hostile. He died, then, by his own decree.
33 You see that human beings are able to endure toil: Cato led
an army on foot through the middle of the African deserts. You see
that they can put up with thirst: Cato dragging the remains of his
ill-equipped and defeated force over arid hills did not moisten his
lips while dressed in full armor, and whenever water was available he
was the last to drink.* You see that one can rise above status and distinction:
Cato played ball on the same day that he lost his election.*
You see that it is possible not to fear those with superior power: Cato challenged Pompey and Caesar at the same time, though no one else
dared to off end the one without gaining the favor of the other. You
see that one can rise above death as well as exile: Cato condemned
himself both to exile and to death, and in between to war.
34 Once we remove our necks from the yoke, we are capable of
facing these troubles with the same degree of fortitude. We must begin
by spurning pleasures; they weaken and emasculate us with their
many demands, and they make us demand much of fortune. Next, we
must spurn wealth: it is the recompense of slavery. We should give
up gold and silver and everything else that weighs down prosperous
houses. Liberty does not come for free. If you value it highly, you
must devalue everything else.

Farewell.

Trần Việt Anh - STK: 0451000364912 (Vietcombank chi nhánh Thành Công, Hà Nội)

Các bài viết khác của tác giả: