“You will consider losing any of the people you love the worst evil , even though it is as inappropriate as crying because the leaves of the charming trees that decorate your home have fallen. Treat everything that pleases you like those growing plants: while they live, use them, since different plants wilt and die on different days. Just as the the fall of some leaves is a minor affair because they grow back again, so it is with those come you love and you believe are your life’s happiness–they can be replaced even though they are not reborn.
‘New friends won’t be the same!” one objects. Nope, and you won’t be the same either. Every day, every hour changes you. What time takes is easier to see in others, it is hidden in yourself because it doesn’t happen obviously. Others disappear, but we are stolen from ourselves secretly. You will not consider these problems or find any treatment for the wounds. But you will raise up reasons for anxiety by hoping some days, despairing others. If you are smart, you will mix these two. Don’t hope without despairing or despair without hope.”
Gravissimum iudicabis malum, aliquem ex his, quos amabis, amittere, cum interim hoc tam ineptum erit quam flere, quod arboribus amoenis et domum tuam ornantibus decidant folia. Quicquid te delectat, aeque vide ut flores virides; dum virent, utere; alium alio die casus excutiet. Sed quemadmodum frondium iactura facilis est, quia renascuntur, sic istorum, quos amas quosque oblectamenta vitae putas esse, damnum, quia reparantur, etiam si non renascuntur.
“Sed non erunt idem.” Ne tu quidem idem eris. Omnis dies, omnis hora te mutat; sed in aliis rapina facilius apparet, hic latet, quia non ex aperto fiet. Alii auferuntur, at ipsi nobis furto subducimur. Horum nihil cogitabis nec remedia vulneribus oppones, sed ipse tibi seres sollicitudinum causas alia sperando, alia desperando. Si sapis, alterum alteri misce: nec speraveris sine desperatione nec desperaveris sine spe.
“If you want a private passage at hand to soothe your heart, the knowledge of the world around you will give you some solace at death, the world you leave and the kind of people your soul will no longer be associated with…..”
“Hope is indeed a comfort in danger: it may harm people who use it from abundance it does not destroy them. But for those who risk everything on one chance—since hope is expensive by nature—they will only know her nature when they suffer…”
This last bit reminds me of Thetis’ words to Achilles (24.128-132)
“My child, how long will you consume your heart
Grieving and mourning, thinking little of food
Or of sleep? It is good too to join a woman in love—
For you will not live with me long, but already
Death and strong fate loom around you.”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) – Young Woman Contemplating Two Embracing Children (1861)
Some Proverbs from Arsenius, Paroemiographer
“Only words [reason] is medicine for grief”
Λόγος μέν ἐστι φάρμακον λύπης μόνος.
“Conversation [ or ‘reason’] is the doctor for suffering in the soul”
Λόγος ἰατρὸς τοῦ κατὰ ψυχὴν πάθους.
Euripides, fr. 1079
“Mortals have no other medicine for pain
Like the advice of a good man, a friend
Who has experience with this sickness.
A man who troubles then calms his thoughts with drinking,
Finds immediate pleasure, but laments twice as much later on.”
“These things will happen: for the favor needs
No long speeches. I will assail the salted Aigaian sea.
The cliffs of Mykonos and the Delian reefs,
The reefs of Skyros and Lemnos and the Kaphêrian peaks
Will bear the bodies of many dying corpses.
So go to Olympos and grab your father’s
Lightning bolts from his hand and keep a careful watch
For the time when the Greek army leaves in ease.
It is a fool who tries to sack mortals’ cities,
Their shrines and tombs, the sacred places of the dead.
Eventually he gives himself to a desert when he dies.”
Electra’s mother, and her mother’s lover, killed her father, Agamemnon. Her brother, Orestes, is in exile. She misses her father, and her relationship with her mother and stepfather isn’t good. As you’d imagine, Electra has the blues.
The question, though, is whether in Sophocles’ depiction of Electra’s grieving has tipped into pathology; whether melancholia has replaced mourning.
Based on Freud’s discussion of pathological grief in his essay “Mourning and Melancholia,” Electra might well need therapy:
Freud:
“The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, abrogation of interest in the outside world, loss of capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of self-regarding feelings”
Electra in soliloquy (103-106):
I will not put an end to this bleak lament and weeping
While I gaze on the stars’ radiant twinklings
Or on the day.
Electra to Chorus (821-22):
It would be a kindness if someone killed me
And a pain if I were to live.
I have no appetite for life.
Freud:
“The inhibition of the melancholic [a loss of interest in life] seems puzzling because we cannot see what it is that absorbs him [or her] so entirely.”
Chorus to Electra (121-123):
O child, child of a miserable mother–
Electra, what unrelenting lamentation
Destroys you unendingly?
Freud:
“They [melancholics] give a great deal of trouble, perpetually taking offense and behaving as if they had been treated with great injustice.”
Clytemnestra to Electra (519-522):
Now that Aegisthus is away, you show me no respect.
To top it off, time and again you’ve told lots of people
Things about me–that I’m brash, I rule unjustly,
I mistreat you and the things that are yours.
Freud:
“…like mourning, melancholia is the reaction to a real loss of a loved object. . . The loss of a love-object constitutes an excellent opportunity for the ambivalence in love-relationships to make itself felt and come to the fore.”
Electra to Chorus on the subject of Orestes (164-172):
I waited for him without fail, childless,
Forever suffering through life, unmarried,
Wet with tears and doomed to endless misfortunes.
But he forgets what he suffered and what he learnt.
Isn’t that why no message arrives without dashing my hopes?
He’s always longing,
Longing, but does not think to appear.
“They say either the Fates’ thread or some god’s rage
raged terribly at me, Parmonis, and violently
Rushed me out of bed unwillingly
when I was longing for my sweet husband Epitunkhanos.
If there is any memory for the dead, well, I led a blameless life—
Abandoning only my husband, a man I beg to stop
Torturing his heart with terrible grief and the terrible struggle.
For this is nothing more—since nothing wakes the dead—
Than wearing down the soul of those who still live. For there is nothing else.”
“These things will happen: for the favor needs
No long speeches. I will assail the salted Aigaian sea.
The cliffs of Mykonos and the Delian reefs,
The reefs of Skyros and Lemnos and the Kaphêrian peaks
Will bear the bodies of many dying corpses.
So go to Olympos and grab your father’s
Lightning bolts from his hand and keep a careful watch
For the time when the Greek army leaves in ease.
It is fool who tries to sack mortals’ cities,
Their shrines and tombs, the sacred places of the dead.
Eventually he gives himself to a desert when he dies.”
“They say either the Fates’ thread or some god’s rage
raged terribly at me, Parmonis, and violently
Rushed me out of bed unwillingly
when I was longing for my sweet husband Epitunkhanos.
If there is any memory for the dead, well, I led a blameless life—
Abandoning only my husband, a man I beg to stop
Torturing his heart with terrible grief and the terrible struggle.
For this is nothing more—since nothing wakes the dead—
Than wearing down the soul of those who still live. For there is nothing else.”
Of late, the number of events that send us reeling and looking for comfort, solace, and, too often, just distraction seem to be increasing and intensifying. I will leave it for future generations to debate whether or not this is objectively true-the feeling of being under siege is enough to require some type of response.
I was in my first semester of graduate school in lower Manhattan on September 11th, 2001. I am uncomfortable claiming any sort of trauma as my own since many others lost loved ones and many more saw their worlds overturned. Nevertheless, the first weeks after were surreal. I can say without a doubt that when I decided to stop reading for my classes and just read-the Iliad from opening to close in Greek—I found some solace and comfort in a ragged world.
I still turn to Classical texts for context and understanding. The comfort they bring, however, is not a warm one. A twitter friend today asked for some classical topoi on solace in a time of suffering and I am embarrassed at the poverty of my offerings when I can rattle off words for excrement and flatulence with no effort. Here are some meager words for a mean world. I will happily post better ones when they are offered.
From the Suda
“Pharmakon [medicine]: conversation, consoling, it comes from pherein [bringing] akos [relief/cure]. But it is also said to come from flowers.”
“If you want a private passage at hand to soothe your heart, the knowledge of the world around you will give you some solace at death, the world you leave and the kind of people your soul will no longer be associated with…..”
“Hope is indeed a comfort in danger: it may harm people who use it from abundance it does not destroy them. But for those who risk everything on one chance—since hope is expensive by nature—they will only know her nature when they suffer…”
This last bit reminds me of Thetis’ words to Achilles (24.128-132)
“My child, how long will you consume your heart
Grieving and mourning, thinking little of food
Or of sleep? It is good too to join a woman in love—
For you will not live with me long, but already
Death and strong fate loom around you.”
Whether we accomplish a little or a lot–as Achilles complains in book 9–we still will die. The modern horror of mass killings is especially disorienting and terrifying because it seems to strip us of agency over what happens between birth and death. And though it may be hard to remember it, the words Athenaeus attributes to the epitaph of Ashurbanipal are still not untrue:
“Know well that you are mortal: fill your heart
By delighting in the feasts: nothing is useful to you when you’re dead.
I am ash, though I ruled great Ninevah as king.
I keep whatever I ate, the insults I made, and the joy
I took from sex. My wealth and many blessings are gone.
[This is wise advice for life: I will never forget it.
Let anyone who wants to accumulate limitless gold.]
Terracotta Funeral Plague, Metropolitan Museum of Art
From an Earlier post:
Some Proverbs from Arsenius, Paroemiographer
“Only words [reason] is medicine for grief”
Λόγος μέν ἐστι φάρμακον λύπης μόνος.
“Conversation [ or ‘reason’] is the doctor for suffering in the soul”
Λόγος ἰατρὸς τοῦ κατὰ ψυχὴν πάθους.
Euripides, fr. 1079
“Mortals have no other medicine for pain
Like the advice of a good man, a friend
Who has experience with this sickness.
A man who troubles then calms his thoughts with drinking,
Finds immediate pleasure, but laments twice as much later on.”
