Dialogues and Essays - ISBN:0199552401

Dialogues and Essays

Date: 15 April 2011, 15:41

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What a sycophant and poseur! I have no doubt, after reading about half of these dialogues and essays, that Seneca was the model for Polonius, and for every other mouther of platitudes in the European Renaissance. That was, you may know, the period of history when Seneca's reputation stood highest. I imagine all those Humanists, whose livelihood depended on cosiness with one egomaniacal condottiere or another, found a brotherhood in Seneca that blinded them to the man's essential shallowness. The silly syllogisms of a "stoic" who believed in "providence" couldn't have been convincing on their own terms to a mind like Machiavelli's or Pico della Mirandola's.
Nevertheless, it seems utterly arrogant to "rate" an ancient Roman philosopher - a link in the chain of intellectual history - so I'm awarding 5 stars to the translator John Davie and the editor Tobias Reinhardt for their excellent academic presentation.
I chose to read Seneca largely because of the problem of interpreting his role in the 17th C opera "L'Incoronazione di Poppea" by Claudio Monteverdi. In that opera, Seneca argues with his pupil/master Nero, and is ordered to commit suicide for his pains. The portrayal, like everything in Poppea, is ambiguous. The soldiers and servants deride Seneca as a greedy opportunist and hypocrite, while his followers cling to him like a messiah. Mercury brings him a message of appreciation from the Gods, and promises him a ringside seat at Olympus. If his stoicism is insincere, it doesn't show in the scene where the messenger from Nero tells him his fate, or in the lead-up to his off-stage suicide. The music at that point supports a heroic conception of the man, and requires utmost gravity in performance. Of course, suicide was a sin that no good Catholic of 1642 could condone, but who ever suspected that Monteverdi was a good Catholic?
It was his suicide , in the long run, that made Seneca's fame. "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it."

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