[Stoicism] - Dịch Seneca (86): Vài suy nghĩ khi ghé qua ngôi nhà của Scipio, một con người vĩ đại!

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.    
                                                        
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. 

Bức thư số 86

Chậm phát triển, nhưng sẽ mang lại bóng mát cho lớp con cháu ta (trích thơ Virgil)

Mùa xuân gieo hạt đậu, và cả ngươi nữa, những mầm cỏ linh lăng

Được chào đón bởi những luống cày đất nở vụn,

Trong khi những cây kê đến độ cần được chăm bón (trích thơ Virgil)

From Seneca to Lucilius
Greetings
1 I write this to you from lodgings right inside the villa of Scipio
Africanus, having already paid my respects to the great man’s shade and to the altar, which I suspect is also his tomb. His spirit has surely
returned to heaven, from which it came. I believe that, not because
he led great armies (for even Cambyses had those, and he was insane
and took advantage of his insanity), but because of his exceptional
self-control and his patriotism, which in my view was even more
admirable after he left his homeland than while he was defending it.*
It had to be one or the other: Scipio at Rome, or Rome at liberty.
2 “I want nothing,” he said, “that will detract from our laws and customs.
Let all our citizens be equal under the law. O my homeland,
make use of the service I have done you, but do so in my absence. I am
the reason that you are free; I will also be the proof of it: I will depart,
if I have grown greater than is in your interests.” 3 How can I not
admire the greatness of spirit with which he withdrew into voluntary
exile and so removed the burden from the state? Th ings had reached a
point where either freedom had to do Scipio a wrong, or Scipio had to
do freedom a wrong. Neither would have been permissible; so he gave
way to the laws and betook himself to Liternum, making the state his
debtor not only for Hannibal’s exile but for his own.*
4 I have seen the villa built of squared masonry, the wall enclosing
the grove, also the turrets rising in front, guarding the entrance on
either side; the cistern below buildings and lawns, capacious enough
even for the needs of an army; and the cramped bathing quarters.
Th ese last were dimly lit, as the old ones generally were, for our ancestors
thought a bathhouse couldn’t be hot unless it was dark. 5 So
I took great pleasure in pondering the habits of Scipio—and our
habits. In this little nook, the famous “terror of Carthage,”* the man
who saved Rome from a second capture, would wash his body, worn
out from working in the fi elds. For he took his exercise in the form
of hard labor, tilling the soil himself as they did in olden times. Th is
shabby roof was over his head; this cheap tile fl oor was under his feet.
But nowadays who could stand to bathe in such a style? 6 A man
now thinks himself a shoddy pauper unless his walls gleam with large
and costly mirrors, unless his Alexandrian marble has a contrasting
inlay of Numidian and a mosaic border all around of many colors
laid out like a painting, unless the chamber has a glass ceiling, unless
Th asian dolomite—once a rare sight even in temples—rims the pools
where we plunge our limbs drained by their heavy sweating, unless
the water pours from spigots made of silver. 7 And those are just the plebeian fi xtures! What shall I say of the bathhouses of freedmen?
How many statues there are; how many columns that don’t support
anything but are put there only for decoration and for the sake of the
expense! How many fountains babbling from tier to tier! We have
reached such a pitch of luxury that we don’t even want to walk unless
we tread upon precious stones!
8 In Scipio’s bathhouse the windows are tiny, mere slits cut into
the stone wall so as to admit light without making the building less
defensible. But nowadays they refer to bath buildings as “moth holes”
if they are not designed to take in the sunshine at all hours of the
day through large windows, if one cannot get a suntan there along
with one’s bath, if one does not have a view from one’s tub of the
contryside and of the sea. For that reason, baths that drew admiring
crowds at the time of their dedication are despised as outmoded the
moment self-indulgence devises some new means of outdoing itself.
9 In the old days, there were only a few bathhouses, and they had no
kind of décor: why decorate a building when the admission is only
a farthing and the purpose is utility, not amusement? Th ere were no
water jets below the surface, no constant supply of fresh water as if
from a hot spring, and no one cared whether the water that washed
away dirt and grime was crystal clear. 10 And yet, in all truth, how
delightful it is to enter those dark bathhouses with their plain stucco,
when you know that the aedile who felt the water temperature with
his own hand and adjusted it for you was Cato, or Fabius Maximus,
or one of the Cornelii!* For aediles from the noblest families used to
make it their business to enter the public establishments and ensure
cleanliness and a serviceable and healthy temperature—not the temperature
you fi nd now, which is more like a furnace. It’s so hot that a
slave convicted of some crime should be sentenced to be bathed alive!
As far as I can tell, there’s no diff erence these days between going for
a hot bath and entering a burning building!
11 “How uncouth of Scipio,” some people now say, “not to have
broad panes of mica to let light into his steam room, not to brown
in the sun before simmering in the tub! What a hopeless case! He
didn’t know how to live! His bathwater had not been fi ltered; it was
often murky, and if there had been a lot of rain, it was almost like
mud!” Nor did he mind that sort of bath, for he came there to wash
off sweat from his body, not perfumed oil.

12 What do you suppose some people will say about that? “I don’t
envy Scipio: he really did live in exile if he had that sort of bath!”
As a matter of fact, he didn’t even have that sort every day: accounts
of life in old Rome indicate that they washed their arms and legs
daily—the parts soiled by work, naturally—but their whole bodies
only on market day.* At that someone will say, “Obviously they must
have been very dirty! What do you suppose they smelled like?” Like
military service; like work; like men. Now that fancy bathhouses have
been invented, people are much fi lthier.
13 When Horace set out to describe a notorious dandy, what did
he say? “Bucillus smells of lozenges.”* Nowadays you would speak
of Bucillus as if he smelled of the goat—he’d take the place of Gargonius,
whom Horace contrasted with Bucillus. It’s not enough to
put on perfume: you are supposed to reapply it two or three times a
day so that it won’t evaporate from your skin. And they actually take
pride in that smell as if it were their own!
14 If all this seems excessively severe, blame it on the villa. Th ere I
learned a lesson from Aegialus,* the hardworking head of household
(for he now owns the farm): that even the most ancient tree can
be transplanted. Th is is something we need to learn in our old age,
for every one of us plants his olive grove for those who come after.
For that matter, I’ve seen such a grove produce acceptable fruit in
abundance in its third or fourth season.° 15 You too will enjoy the
covering of the tree that
grows later to make shade for your descendants,*
as our poet Virgil says—although Virgil was aiming to produce not
an accurate description but an attractive one. What he wanted was
not to teach farmers but to delight his readers. 16 To give just one
example, here’s something I couldn’t help noticing today:
In spring the beans are planted, and you too
go in the crumbling furrows, rich lucerne,
and at that time of year is millet tended.*
Should these crops be sown at the same time and both of them in
spring? You be the judge: I’m writing to you in June, already getting
toward July, and I’ve just seen them harvesting beans and sowing
millet on the same day.

17 Let me get back to that olive grove. I have seen it done by
two methods. With the large trees, Aegialus cut back the limbs to
one foot and transplanted the trunks with the taproot, trimming
the roots and leaving just the central portion to which they were all
attached. He coated this with manure, lowered it into the hole, and
then instead of just fi lling it in with dirt he trampled and compressed
it. 18 He says nothing else works as well as this—“compaction,” he
calls it. Presumably it keeps out the cold and wind; also, the tree
doesn’t move as much, and because of that, new roots are able to
get started and to grasp the soil. For while they are still slender and
not yet established, even a slight movement would surely dislodge
them. He also scrapes the taproot before replanting, for he says that
new roots emerge from all the exposed wood. Th e trunk should not
stand more than three or four feet above the ground. In this way, it
will sprout new foliage from near the ground, and there will not be
a large portion of it that is dry and withered, as there is on old trees.
19 Th e other method of planting is like this: he took strong branches
whose bark was still tender (such as you fi nd on younger trees) and
set them in the soil in the same manner. Th ese are a bit slower in
growing; but since they have come up as if from a scion, they have
nothing gnarly or ill-favored about them.
20 Still another thing I have observed is a grapevine being moved
away from its elm at an advanced age.* In this case, one should gather
up even the root hairs if possible, and then entrench a generous
amount of the vine so that roots will sprout right from the stock. I
have seen some that were planted not only in February but even at
the end of March, and they are now gripping and embracing elms
that were not originally their own. 21 Aegialus adds that all those
trees that are large-boled, if I may use that expression, should be
nurtured with water from the cistern. If that is benefi cial to them,
we are not dependent on the rain.
I don’t intend to teach you anything more, for fear that I might
turn you into a competitor, just as Aegialus did with me.

Farewell.

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