The charm, the sweetness, the melancholy, the elevation of The Meditations are his own. The moral doctrines are those of the popular philosophy of the time, Stoicism, as systematically
expounded by the Greek slave (later freed) Epictetus (ca. 55-ca. 135). Its ethical content is roughly summed up in Epictetus's two commandments: Endure and Abstain. Stoicism passed through many modifications, but in general it preached a quiet and unmoved acceptance of circumstance. It assumed a beneficent order of Nature. Humanity^ whole duty was to discover how it might live in harmony with this order, and then to do so. Stress was laid on tranquillity of mind (many of our modern inspirational nostrums are merely cheapenings of Stoicism); on service to one's fellows; and on a cosmopolitan, all-embracing social sense that is a precursor of the fully devel- oped Christian idea of the brotherhood of man. Stoicism^ watchwords are Duty, Imperturbability, Will. Its tendency is puritanical, ascetic, quietistic, sometimes even escapist. Though a philosophy peculiarly suited to a time of troubles, its influence has never ceased during almost the whole of two thousand years. It seems to call out to people irrespective of their time and place—see, for example, Thoreau [80].
We find it at its most appealing in the Meditations. This is an easy book to read. We seem to be eavesdropping on the soliloquy of a man almost painfully attached to virtue, with a firm sense of his responsibility, less to his empire than to the Stoic ideal of the perfect man, untouched by passion, generous by nature rather than by calculation, impervious to both ill and good fortune. Says Marcus, in one of the saddest sentences of a book shadowed throughout by melancholy, "Even in a palace life may be lived well."
Through the years the Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius, as it has been called, has been read by vast numbers of ordinary men and women. They have thought of it not as a classic but as a wellspring of consolation and inspiration. It is one of the few books that seem to have helped men and women directly and immediately to live better, to bear with greater dignity and for- titude the burden of being merely human. Aristotle [13] we study. Marcus Aurelius we take to our hearts.
C.F.
PART TWO
SAINT AUGUSTINE
354-430
The Confessions
Autobiography would seem to be the easiest of ali literary forms, for what could be simpler than to talk of one's own life? Yet though this Plan abounds in great poems and novйis, great autobiographies are fewer. Of ali the autobiographies ever written, perhaps the most powerful and influential in the Western tradition is the Confessions of Saint Augustine.
Compared with Marcus Aurelius [21], Augustine reveals a deeper, if less attractive, mind. The profundity of Augustine's intellect can be felt only by those willing to spend some time in the vast and obscure forest of his works, particularly his master- piece, The City of God. But its intensity, its obsession with God, and its tortured concern with sin and salvation can be felt by any- one who reads at least the first nine books of the Confessions.
This Roman citizen, born in North Бfrica, who became the bishop of Hippo, is probably the most effective defender the Church has had in its long history. Yet, as he tells us, he came to Catholicism only in his thirty-second year, after he had tasted the delights of the flesh (including thirteen years with a mistress who bore him a son). His plea to God is familiar: "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." The great change occurred after he had also dabbled in the heresy of Manichaeism and had sampled the classical doctrines of Platonism [12] and Skepticism and Neoplatonism. Readers of the Confessions will note the many influences, especially that of his revered mother Monica, that led him at last to his true vocation. His conversion in the garden, as described in the twelfth chapter of Book VIII, marks one of the pivotal moments in the history of Christianity as well as a crucial instance of the mystical experience.
There is a great deal of theology and Christian apologetics and biblical exegesis in the Confessions, notably in the last four books, dealing with memory, time, the nature of temptation, and the proper expounding of the Scriptures. But the power of the book is exerted even on the nonbeliever. The Confessions was originally written to bring men to the truth. For us it is rather a masterpiece of self-revelation, the first unsparing account of how a real man was led, step by step, from the City of Man to the City of God. To the psychologist, to the student of what William James [95] called the varieties of religious experience, it is endlessly interesting. But beyond this, it grips us because we cannot shut our ears to the terrible humanness of Augustine's voice. He is trying desperately to tell us the truth, about the events not only of his externai life, but of his soul. The Confessions is the classic spiritual autobiography. In ali our literature there is nothing quite like it.
C.F.
23
KАLIDАSA
ca. 400
The Cloud Messenger and Sakuntala
Kгlidгsa is sometimes described as "the Shakespeare of нndia"; certainly he is universally regarded as the most accomplished stylist in the Sanskrit language in ali of Indian literature. It may seem odd, then, that almost nothing is known about him. One must remember, however, that a fundamental precept of the Brahmanic religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism, is that the world and everything in it is purely illusory; under those circumstances, in traditional нndia, it apparently did not strike people as important to devise a system of numbering years consecutively to keep track of things like people's life- times. Kгlidгsa perhaps lived around our year 400, perhaps a century later.
Tradition holds that he was of humble origins, and achieved fame and an appointment at a minor royal court entirely through his brilliance as a writer. He is said to have been a pro- lific writer as well, but only a few of his works survive—three or four long poems, and three plays. This Plan recommends that you read his two most celebrated works.
The Cloud Messenger (Meghadŭta) is a poetic monologue in 210 stanzas; if one were to place it approximately in a genre of European verse, one could call it a pastorale. The conceit of the poem is that a young nobleman in the guise of a yaksa (a minor nature deity) for some unspecified offense has been exiled to a remote mountain. He misses his beautiful young bride, and imagines that she is pining for him as well at their palace in the Himalayan foothill city of Alaka. Seeing a passing cloud on the mountaintop, he asks it to float to Alaka and deliver a message of love and comfort to his wife. This gives the poet, in the voice of the young yaksa, a chance to describe the rivers and mountains, towns and cities that the cloud will pass on its way to deliver the message; the poem is a sort of travelogue in the form of a love letter. The tone of the poem, and the highly formal structure of the verse itself, is elevated and refined; the fanciful mission entrusted to the cloud messenger seems paradoxically ali the more passionate for that air of elegant restraint.
Sakuntala and the Ring ofRecognition, usually called simply Sakuntala, is a play that one might classify as a heroic romance. Like so much of Indian theater, its plot is derived from one of the many subplots of the Mahabharata [16]. Briefly, it concerns a kmg's love for a beautiful maiden, Sakuntala, daughter of a nymph and a sage-king. She has been raised in the forest, in total innocence, by an ascetic priest. One day, while out hunt- ing, King Dusyanta spies Sakuntala, and immediately falls in love with her; they become lovers, and she becomes pregnant by him. But duty calls, and he must return to his capital; before he does, he gives her a ring by which he will always recognize her. Later she traveis to his court, but loses the ring along the way; when she arrives, he thinks she looks vaguely familiar, but he can't place her. Eventually, after many difficulties, the ring is recovered and the lovers reunited, to the satisfaction of ali.