Confronting agony

Almost two millennia ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger wrote a consolation letter to his mother, Helvia, on the occasion of his banishment from Rome. Seneca, who had been sent into exile to Corsica on the charge of having an affair with the niece of the Roman emperor, Claudius, wrote that “a man lifting his head from the very funeral pyre must need some novel vocabulary not drawn from ordinary everyday condolence to comfort his own dear ones. But every great and overpowering grief must take away the capacity to choose words, since it often stifles the voice itself.”