[Stoicism] - Dịch Seneca (99): Đôi dòng về nỗi đau mất mát người thân!

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. 

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 99

From Seneca to Lucilius
Greetings
1 Enclosed is the letter I wrote to Marullus after he lost his infant
son and I had word that he was taking it hard. In it I did not take
the usual approach: I thought that I ought not to handle him gently,
since he merited reproach rather than consolation.* For when
a person has trouble dealing with some great affl iction, one should
make concessions for a little while, until grief expends itself or at
least exhausts its initial force; but those who take it upon themselves
to grieve should be reprimanded at the outset and should learn that
even tears can sometimes be ridiculous.
2 Do you expect solace? Here is chastisement. Are you so soft
in bearing the death of your son? What would you be doing if
you had lost a friend? Th e son who died was an uncertain hope,
a tiny creature; only a little time died with him. 3 We go looking
for reasons to grieve; we wish to complain of our lot even when it is unfair to do so, as if we were never to have just cause to
complain. And yet, in truth, you had always seemed to me brave
enough to handle even substantial misfortunes, let alone those
illusory troubles at which people groan for the sake of custom. If
you had suff ered the greatest loss of all—that is, if you had lost
a friend—even then your endeavor should have been to rejoice
in having had a friend rather than grieve over having lost one.
4 But most people do not consider what great blessings they
have received, what great joys they have experienced. Th is is one
of the reasons why your grief is bad: not only is it pointless, but
it is ungrateful too. Was it wasted eff ort, then, to have had such
a friend? So many years together, so much that you had in common,
such companionship in your shared pursuits; is that all for
nothing? Do you bury the friendship along with the friend? And
why do you mourn the loss if you have gained nothing by what
you had? Believe me: the people we have loved remain with us in
large part even after chance has taken them away. Th e time that
is past is ours; nothing is more secure than what has already been.
5 Our hopes for the future make us ungrateful for what we have
already received, forgetting that even if that hoped-for future ever
comes, it too will swiftly become the past. He who takes pleasure
only in the present moment puts too tight a restriction on his
enjoyment of life. Both the future and the past have pleasure to
give, the one in expectation, the other in memory; but the future
is contingent and may never be, while the past cannot fail to have
been. What madness it is, then, to allow the most secure of all
your possessions to slip from your grasp! Let us fi nd contentment
in what we have already drawn from the well—provided
our minds are not leaky sieves that let everything drain right
through them.*
6 Th ere are countless examples of people who have lost children
in the fl ourishing time of youth and have come directly
from the funeral into the Senate or some other public place and
fulfi lled their responsibilities immediately and without tears. And
they were right: fi rst of all, because there is no point in grieving
if nothing is to be gained by it; second, because it is unreasonable
to complain about what has happened to one person when the
same end awaits us all; third, because it is foolish to object to a loss when so little separates us from what we have lost. We should
be all the more level-headed, because we ourselves are following
the departed. 7 Consider how rapidly time speeds along; think
how short the distance is that we traverse so quickly; look what
a great assembly of humankind is headed in the same direction,
with only short intervals between us, even when they seem long.
Th e one you think of as lost has only gone on ahead. What could
be more absurd than to weep for one who has traveled on along
a road you too must take? 8 Does anyone weep over an event that
he knew all along was going to happen? Or did he not realize that
a human being is mortal? If he didn’t, he was deceiving himself.
Anyone who complains that a person has died is complaining
that that person was human. We all live under the same condition:
he who is born must eventually die. Th ere are intervals
between us, but the ending makes equals of us all.
9 What comes between our fi rst day and our last is variable
and uncertain. If you measure it by our troubles, it is long even
for a child; if by its rapidity, it is too short even for the old. Everything
is dangerous and deceptive and more changeable than the
weather; everything tumbles about and passes at fortune’s behest
into its opposite; and in all this tumult of human aff airs there is
nothing we can be sure of except death alone. Yet everyone complains
of this, the one thing in which there is no deceit.
10 “But he died when he was only a boy.” I am not saying at
this point that the person whose life ends quickly is better off .
Instead, let us consider the person who has reached old age. How
small an advantage he has over the infant! Just imagine the vast
extent of time: embrace the universe in thought, and then compare
that immeasurable span with what we call a human life, and
you will see how small a thing it is that we yearn for and wish to
prolong. And how much of that is taken up with tears and anxieties!
11 How much with wishing for death before it comes! How
much with illness! How much with fear! How much belongs to
helpless infancy or to useless old age! Why, half of it is spent in
sleep. Add our suff erings, griefs, and dangers, and you will realize
that even in the longest life we have only a little time to live.
12 Is a person really worse off just because it is granted to
him to die sooner? Who will concede that? His journey was over before fatigue set in. Life in itself is neither good nor bad; it is
only the setting for good and bad. So he lost nothing but dice
that were weighted against him. He might have turned out to be
temperate and intelligent; he might have been shaped in a good
way by your care; but the likelier expectation is that he would
have turned out like most other people.* 13 Look: self-indulgence
has taken young men from the noblest households and cast them
out into the dust. Th eir own lust and that of others have involved
them in immoral conduct. Not a day goes by for them without
drunkenness or some egregious off ense. It is evident that there
was greater potential for fear than for hope.
So you ought not to go out of your way for reasons to grieve;
and neither should you aggravate minor misfortunes by getting
upset over them. 14 I am not urging you to strive for the heights:
I do not have such a low opinion of you as to think you need
summon all your courage against this event. What you feel is not
grief but only a biting: it is you who are making it into grief.* A
great lot of good philosophy has done you, if your strength of
mind consists in missing a boy who was better known to his wet
nurse than to his father!
15 What’s this? Am I now advocating harshness? Do I want
your countenance to be frozen even at the funeral ceremony—do
I forbid you even to experience a contraction of mind? Not at
all. Th at is inhumanity, not virtue: looking on the bodies of your
loved ones with the same expression as beheld them in life, failing
to be moved at the fi rst moment when your family is wrenched
apart.* But suppose I did forbid it: some things are independent
of our command. Tears fall even when we try to suppress them,
and shedding them is a relief to the mind.
16 What is it, then? Let’s allow them to fall, but not summon
them up. Let what fl ows be what emotion forces from us, not
what is required to imitate others. Let’s not add anything to our
genuine mourning, increasing it to follow someone else’s example.
Th e show of grief demands more of us than grief itself requires.
How often do you fi nd someone who is sad on his own account?
Th e sobs are louder when someone is looking. When people
are by themselves, they make not a sound; then, when someone
comes in, they burst afresh into paroxysms of grief. It is then that they strike themselves on the head (which they could have
done more easily with no one grabbing their wrists); then that
they invoke death on their own heads; then that they roll off the
couch onto the fl oor. Without a spectator, grief comes to an end.
17 In this as in other matters we are beset with the vice of shaping
our own conduct to the example of others, paying regard not to
necessity but to custom. We depart from nature, giving ourselves
over to the common crowd, which is never a good example and
is hugely inconsistent in this as in everything else. When they see
someone bearing his grief courageously, they call him unloving
and a brute; when they see someone collapsed prostrate over the
body, they say he is womanish and weak. All such things ought
to be brought back to the standard of reason. 18 But nothing is
more foolish than seeking a reputation for sorrow, giving one’s
approval to tears.
Th e wise man too sheds tears, I believe, sometimes when he
allows them to fl ow and sometimes when they well up of their
own accord.* I will explain the diff erence. When we are fi rst assailed
by the news of an untimely death, when we are holding
the body that is soon to pass directly from our embrace into the
fl ames, tears are squeezed out of us by a necessity of nature: just
as the breath, when struck by grief ’s blow, shakes the entire body,
so does it press upon and expel the moisture in the vicinity of the
eyes. 19 Th ese tears are shed due to internal pressure and involuntarily.
Th ere are others, though, to which we give egress when
we revisit the memory of those we have lost and fi nd an element
of sweetness in our sorrow—when we think of their pleasant conversation,
their cheerful company, their devoted service. At that
time, the eyes release their tears, just as in joy. Th ese we indulge;
the others conquer us. 20 So you need not hold back your tears
because another person is standing near, or sitting at your side;
nor should you make yourself cry because of them: neither tears
nor the lack of tears is ever as shameful as when tears are feigned.
Let them come of their own accord.
One can be tranquil and composed even in the midst of tears.
Th e wise have often shed tears without detriment to their moral
standing and with such restraint as to maintain both dignity and
humanity. 21 I repeat: one can be obedient to nature and still maintain one’s decorum. I have seen people who command respect
even at the funeral of a family member, when love showed
on their faces without any false semblance of grieving, and all that
was there was stirred by genuine emotion. Th ere is seemliness
even in grief, and that is something the wise person must preserve.
Enough is enough, in tears as in everything else. Excessive
griefs, like excessive joys, belong to the foolish.
22 Accept calmly whatever you must. What has happened
that is unbelievable or new? How many funerals are being arranged
at this very moment! How many grave wrappings are
being purchased! How many people are still grieving after you
have fi nished! Every time you remember that he was a child,
remember also that he was a human being, and hence without
defi nite prospects. Fortune does not necessarily escort us all the
way to old age, but dismisses us when it sees fi t.
23 Speak of him often, however, and celebrate his memory
as much as you can: it will return to you more frequently if it
comes without bitterness, for no one is eager to spend time with
a sad person, let alone with sadness itself. If there were any little
things he used to say, any babyish jokes that gave you pleasure,
repeat them often. Insist boldly that he could have fulfi lled the
expectations that you as a father had conceived for him. 24 Forgetting
one’s own, burying their memory with their bodies, weeping
profusely but remembering them hardly at all, is evidence of
inhumanity. Th at is how birds and beasts of the wild love their
young: their aff ection is agitated and almost rabid; but when the
object of it dies, it too perishes utterly. Such behavior is not appropriate
in a sensible man. Let him cease grieving but persevere
in remembering.
25 I do not by any means approve of what Metrodorus says,
that there is a pleasure that is akin to sorrow, and that in situations
like this one should try to catch hold of that pleasure.* Metrodorus’s
exact words are as follows: “From Metrodorus’s letters
to his sister. ‘For there is a pleasure akin to grief that one ought
to go hunting for in this situation.’” 26 I am not in any doubt
as to what view you will take of these words. For what could be
more shameful than to try to catch pleasure in the very midst of
grief—indeed, through grief—and to go looking for something delightful even amid one’s tears? And these are the people who
reproach us for excessive rigor and complain that our teachings
are harsh, just because we say one should either not admit grief
into the mind or else cast it out quickly. Which, pray tell, is harder
to believe, and which is less human: not to feel grief when one
loses a friend, or to try to snare a pleasure right in the midst of
grief?
27 What we teach is honorable: that after emotion has wrung
some tears from us and is, as it were, off the boil, one should not
give the mind over to grief.* Really, are you serious in saying
that pleasure should be mixed right in with grief? Th at’s how we
comfort children, by giving them a cookie, or quiet a crying baby
with a drink of milk!
Will you not allow pleasure to cease even in the moment
when a son is burning on the pyre, when a friend is breathing his
last? Are we to be titillated even by our mourning? Which is more
honorable: to eliminate grief from the mind, or to let pleasure in
to the very midst of grief? Did I say “let pleasure in”? He actually
tries to snatch pleasure from out of grief itself. 28 He says,
“Th ere is a pleasure akin to grief.” Th at is something we Stoics
are allowed to say; you are not. You acknowledge only one form
of good, namely pleasure, and only one thing that is bad, namely
pain. How can there be any kinship between good and bad? But
suppose there is: is this a fi t moment to dig it out? Do we scrutinize
grief itself to see if there is something sweet and pleasant
about it? 29 Th ere are medical treatments that are benefi cial for
some parts of the body but cannot be used on others because they
are considered ugly and embarrassing. What might be helpful in
one spot becomes shameful merely because of where the wound
is located. Are you not ashamed to use pleasure as a remedy for
grief? Th at laceration needs a more rigorous treatment.
Remind us instead how one who has perished has no awareness
of anything bad; for if he has awareness, he has not perished.*
30 I repeat: one who is no more is not hurt by anything,
for if he is being hurt, he is alive. Which do you think bothers
him: his nonexistence, or some continued existence? But nonexistence
can hardly be a torment to him: how can one be aware
of nothing? Nor can he be tormented by a continued existence, for then he has escaped the worst disadvantage of death, which
is that one ceases to exist.
31 To the person who is weeping and longing for one who was
snatched away in youth, let’s say this as well: young or old, every
life is equally short when compared with that of the universe.
For any possible lifespan is less even than what one would call
a tiny bit. A tiny bit is at least something, but this life of ours is
practically nothing. And yet we share it with all and sundry. What
fools we are!
32 In writing this for you, I did not suppose that you were
looking to me for a belated remedy, for I am sure you have already
said all these things to yourself. My purpose was, rather, to chide
you for having forgotten yourself for a short time, and to encourage
you to be bold against fortune hereafter. You should regard all
its blows not as possibilities but as eventual certainties.

Farewell.

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