[lit-ideas] The Literary Guide to Suicide (with 3 Plates and 67 illustrations)
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 18:15:28 EST
L. Helm writes of Seneca:
One might want to exit a month early rather than make a spectacle of oneself
if a lot of pain is present.
J. Wager adds:
>Nero ordered Senaca's suicide.
and goes on to qualify it as 'the only option'. Interesting. I was reading
today Tacitus's commentary on the death of Petronius. I was making marginal
notes and was never sure if the man did commit suicide or not.
It took so long!
"Petronius managed to enter Nero's small circle [of intimates]. However,
Tigelinus loathed Petronius and denounced him on the grounds of his friendship
with Flavius Scaevinus."
"A slave was bribed to incriminate Petronius. No defence was heard. Indeed,
most of his household were under arrest."
"Nero happened to be in Campania. Petronius too had reached Cumae; and there
he was arrested."
"Delay, with its hopes and fears, he refused to endure. He severed his own
veins."
"
Then, having them bound up again ..."
----- This is what confused me. I wrote on the margin -- 'committed
suicide', but when I go on reading that he bound up the veins, I thought maybe
he was
saved. This made me think that 'he committed suicide' _is_ a factive, but
"he severed his own veins" is not.
"Then, having them bound up again when the fancy took him, he talked to his
friends. But not seriously, or so as to gain a name for fortitude."
"And he listened to them reciting, not discourses about the immortality of
the soul"
-- a bit too late for that, I would think. Borges also abhorred the idea!
"or philosophy, but light lyrics and frivolous [Sunday] poems."
"Some slaves received presents -- others beatings. He appeared at dinner,
and dozed, so that his death, EVEN IF COMPULSORY, might look natural".
In Grice's sense of 'natural' as opposed to 'non-natural'.
Cf. Dennett's online "Causes of death of philosophers"
Grice: unnatural causes.
-- but they were natural.
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