Did Seneca, as a philosopher-statesman, successfully divide his public and intellectual lives or was he the worst sort of hypocrite? This is of course an issue which is as alive today as it was in Seneca’s time. Professor Romm makes it absolutely, emphatically clear that his book is about one particular “Seneca Problem,” the conflict of his wealth, partly gained through usury and imperial favor, and his embrace of political power as the tutor and “friend” of the Emperor Nero, and the severe moralism of the Stoic philosophy he propounded in his voluminous writings. Even if we can’t rest assured of the future of the 42nd Street Library, we can be certain that there are New Yorkers who are keenly interested in the Classics, the Roman Empire, Nero, Stoicism, and poor old Seneca, whose exit from life was such a protracted, painful, and messy affair. The spacious room appointed for the conversation was absolutely full people who hadn’t reserved a place were turned away the question and answer session was lively the signed books looked as if they were selling out.
Both have been fellows of the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, Shapiro wrote his splendid Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, surely the best treatment of the topic ever, while a Fellow, and Romm now follows him with his contribution to the “Seneca Problem.” The event was gratifying to the classicist in me, not to mention the New Yorker and denizen of the Reading Room.
(Opponents of the obscene plan to gut the stacks and set up an Internet café in their place should remain on the watch!) Following an afternoon of research, during which I learned that in mid-nineteenth century Providence, Rhode Island purveyors of “healthy, hungry leeches” and tamed performing grizzly bears had more visibility in the marketplace than calligraphers, I felt drawn to a conversation between James Shapiro, the Columbia Shakespearean, who has written numerous well-received books on and around WS, and James Romm of Bard College, the author of a new book about Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, Dying Every Day – Seneca at the Court of Nero. James Romm, Dying Every Day – Seneca at the Court of Nero, New York, Knopf, 2014 I was seduced into reviewing this book by a very upbeat and encouraging event at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street-an institution from which little encouraging has emerged in recent years. Seneca, from double herm of Socrates and Seneca.
0 kommentar(er)
