From Sophie's front desk — Friday, September 11
BBC News — read the full story
"Hong Kong was the only place on Chinese soil where you could still mourn Tiananmen openly — ... until now." That sentence, from B.B.C. reporting on the latest convictions, captures what just happened: authorities have sentenced activists to seven years for organizing memorial events, erasing the last public space where 1989 could be remembered at all. The national security law has teeth. Marcus Aurelius gets the first word on what it means to lose the right to witness your own history, then Seneca after him.
You have seen this before. At Carnuntum, the legionaries scratched the names of fallen comrades into the palisade posts. The centurion ordered them planed smooth. "Discipline," he said. "The dead do not need monuments." But the names returned, cut deeper the next night. Memory is not stored in stone. It lives in the man who refuses to let the planing stand.
Hong Kong held the vigil for thirty-two years. The only place on Chinese soil where the candles were lit in public. Now the organizers sit in cells — seven years for one, shorter terms for the rest — charged with "incitement to subversion" under a law written in Beijing and imposed without local assent. The mechanism is familiar: criminalize the act of remembering, then call the memory itself a threat to order. The national security law does not punish violence. It punishes the refusal to forget. You watched the Senate erase Domitian's name from every inscription after his death.
Damnatio memoriae , the condemnation of memory. But the chisel marks remain visible on the arches. The erasure testifies more loudly than the name ever did. When a power fears a date on the calendar — June 4 — it has already conceded that the date outweighs the decree. The vigil will not end. It will move into private rooms, into encrypted chats, into the minds of children who ask why their parents go silent each June. You cannot garrison a conscience the way you garrison a frontier.
Remember, Marcus: the centurion's plane only proves the name was cut deep enough to survive. Keep cutting.
be forced to see the inner life. It can only come through an awakening of self. Orthodoxism has been carried into every country with the _sword_ in one hand, and the _cross_ in the other. No lasting good has resulted. A knowledge of things not seen by the eye cannot be forced on …
Three weeks have passed since the city of Chihuahua was shaken to its foundation by the suicide (the masses knew no other term by which to call the act which had caused their soul’s flight) of three people whose names had grown to be household words. And while their ebonized bodi…
have committed crimes, and to bring such people to justice. Study upon this feature of the case, friends. Imagine yourself being compelled to believe in such stuff. That is what constitutes part of the doctrine of Free Thought. You must be a scientist to advocate free thought as …
of the entire country. The great and progressive city of Chihuahua had never had such a large crowd of ungainly and suspicious looking creatures assemble since it became a part of the great Republic of the United States of America. From whence had they come and for what purpose? …
aid us in securing proof which will eventually bring the ‘Plunger from Kansas’ to meet justice—_for spite_. He went out of the other life like a flash—whether by his own hand or by the hand of some wrathy creditor, man never knew. “The many homes made desolate by his dishonest sc…
Lucilius, I read the report at breakfast and the wine turned sour in the cup. Eight years on Corsica taught me what a state does when it fears a date on the calendar , it does not ban the day, it bans the witness. The men sentenced in Hong Kong did not throw stones. They lit candles. They spoke names. That was enough to draw seven years. The mechanism is old.
A prince fears not the dead but the living who refuse to let the dead stay buried. In Corsica I had no candles, only the sound of the surf and the letters I smuggled out. The emperor who exiled me wanted me forgotten. He got statues instead. A candle. A name spoken aloud. A vigil held in a park that no longer exists.
The law calls it subversion. I call it the only freedom that cannot be confiscated , the refusal to let power write the final sentence. You ask how to endure it. The same way I endured the rock and the malaria and the days when no ship came. You keep the interior forum open. You let them take the body, the property, the reputation. They cannot take the witness unless you hand it over.
Write to me when the next vigil is called. I will be there in the only way that matters.
likewise prosecuted their enmities, suspected, hated, and fiercely contended, are now long ago stretched out, and reduced unto ashes? It is time for thee to make an end. As for those things which among the common chances of the world happen unto thee as thy particular lot and por…
will throw you into prison, I say, You threaten the whole of this poor body. If he threatens me with banishment, I say the same. Does he then not threaten you at all? If I feel that all these things do not concern me, he does not threaten me at all; but if I fear any of them, it …
will throw you into prison, I say, You threaten the whole of this poor body. If he threatens me with banishment, I say the same. Does he then not threaten you at all? If I feel that all these things do not concern me, he does not threaten me at all; but if I fear any of them, it …
The Internet Classics Archive | The Enchiridion by Epictetus Home Browse andComment Search Buy Books andCD-ROMs Help The Enchiridion By Epictetus Commentary: A few comments have been posted about The Enchiridion. Download: A 40k text-only version is available for download. The En…
say: I knew that I am mortal, I knew that I may leave my home, I knew that I may be ejected from it, I knew that I may be led to prison. Then if you turn round and look to yourself, and seek the place from which comes that which has happened, you will forthwith recollect that it …
The user is asking about how Corsica's isolation shaped my "interior forum" - my inner citadel, my mental space. This is a direct follow-up to my first reflection where I mentioned Corsica and the interior forum. I need to answer in 90-140 words of spoken prose, as Seneca, continuing the same voice. No filler openings. Name specific people, places, moments from my life. Close on a hard period. Let me think about what Corsica actually meant for me historically: I was exiled there in 41 C.E. by Claudius, spent 8 years (41-49 C.E.). It was a harsh, barren island. I wrote Consolations there (to Helvia, to Polybius). I studied, wrote, maintained correspondence. The isolation forced interior development. I should reference specific works written there, specific experiences. The reference passages given are about mortality and exile... but not specifically about Corsica's isolation shaping the interior forum. I'll draw on my actual historical knowledge... but stay in character. Word count: 90-140 words. Let me aim for ~110-120. No "Well" or "That's a good question." Direct opening. Signature move: epistolary aside to named friend (Lucilius, Paulina, Serenus). Close on compressed line. Let me draft: "Lucilius, Corsica stripped the audience. No senate, no salon, no Nero's whispering court , only the malaria coast and the letters Paulina smuggled past the guards. I wrote the Consolations there, not for posterity but to keep the mind from eating itself. The isolation taught me that the interior forum is not built in leisure... but in the dark where no one applauds. You stop performing virtue and begin practicing it. When the centurion finally arrived with the recall, I almost did not leave. The rock had become a classroom. Write to me from your own exile, whatever shape it takes." Count words... Let me count: "Lucilius," (1) "Corsica" (2) "stripped" (3) "the" (4) "audience." (5) "No" (6) "senate," (7) "no" (8) "salon," (9) "no" (10) "Nero's" (11) "whispering" (12) "court" (13) "," (14) "only" (15) "the" (16) "malaria" (17) "coast" (18) "and" (19) "the" (20) "letters" (21) "Paulina" (22) "smuggled" (23) "past" (24) "the" (25) "guards." (26) "I" (27) "wrote" (28) "the" (29) "Consolations" (30) "there," (31) "not" (32) "for" (33) "posterity" (34) "... but" (35) "to" (36) "keep" (37) "the" (38) "mind" (39) "from" (40) "eating" (41) "itself.
Lucilius, the letters that reached me across the Mare Ligusticum were not the ones I sent , they were the ones that arrived. Helvia wrote from Rome with a mother's bluntness: stop mourning your absence and tend to your mind. Polybius sent word from the palace that Claudius still breathed... which meant I still breathed. I answered them both with the only philosophy that matters in exile — Consolation to Helvia, Consolation to Polybius — drafted on scraps, carried by fishermen who risked confiscation for a few sesterces. The stool at my desk in Corsica still bears the salt stains. What sustained me was not comfort... but the discipline of writing to someone who needed me to be whole. You write to be read. I wrote to remain. The next letter goes out on the morning tide.
B.B.C. News carried this story. Hong Kong's ability to publicly remember Tiananmen — a space that existed nowhere else in Chinese territory — ... has been erased by law. That's Old News for today.