Cicero II

We’re Cicero’s army. Cicero’s ragtag. Cicero’s band of … what?

We’re Cicero’s philosophers. We’re the people of Cicero.

Even though Cicero seems kinda brain-damaged. Even though Cicero’s not what she was …

 

Didn’t Cicero once say she was going to invent a new god? A new mythology? Didn’t she confide her theogonic ambitions to us? Her desire to consecrate and enact a new myth? Wasn’t it about engaging the Ungrund? About seething energies? About a blind, increate formlessness?

 

Didn’t Cicero once talk of the Urgrund? The Unground? The origin of all gods, and where gods are dissolved? Mythology’s all about god slaying and god making, isn’t that what she’s said?

 

That was what Cicero dreamt up when she as in the deepest and longest of academic meetings. When she was practically buried in academic meetings. When she nearly lost her mind in academic meetings.

 

A deeper crucifixion than the crucifixion. Beyond Jesus …

 

Didn’t Cicero speak of a headless deity without reason, without consciousness? Didn’t she speak of the decapitated Medusa, of Dionysus torn apart? Didn’t she speak of the exiled Typhon? Of the fallen Lucifer?

 

The sacrificial escalation of death: wasn’t that what Cicero was all about. Seen it in its horror and magnificence. Without hope of salvation, redemption or transcendence …

 

Cicero, starting some weird philosophy cult. Cicero and her cadre of very intense philosophy MA students. What’s she doing to them? Where is it heading? Inevitably to suicide. Inevitably to death. Of course! Cicero’s death-mad. Death-fascinated.

 

Cicero’s cadre.

MA students are impressionable. They were flattered. They liked the attention. Of course they did! They wanted to be part of something. Who wouldn’t? Cicero’s enthusiasm was contagious. Cicero was exciting, back then. Cicero was wild …

And when Cicero was in her cups. When Cicero went extreme. When Cicero was in the grip of an enthusiasm … What could they do but follow her?

 

Cicero was a rollercoaster, back then. She was up and down.

She spoke with her eyes closed, like an ecstatic. She spoke from the mysterium. Delivering secrets. Secrets of the end.

 

Cicero, founding an apocalyptic cult. A Gnostic cult.

 

Cicero’s a woman for the moment – the apocalyptic moment. When everything comes to a head. But she’s also a woman for the endless – for the never-beginning and the never-ending.

 

Cicero’s lectures to the postgraduates. And you know what postgraduates are like. How impressionable they are. How thought can infect them like a contagion. How they rise and fall with their lecturer’s enthusiasms.

And these Newcastle postgraduates … They’re fresh, raw. They haven’t seen it all before. They aren’t jaded.

Didn’t we know the dangers of putting Cicero in front of such a class? That cults would form …

A woman who sees things the way Cicero does. Who’s as unstable as Cicero. As half mad. As possessed by … what? The truth? The end?

 

Haven’t we, too, been caught up by Cicero’s enthusiasms? Haven’t we, too, found ourselves half mad, like her, madly drunk, like her. Reading this or that wild text. Forgotten texts.

Reading philosophy as prophecy. Reading apocalyptic theology. Reading the Gnostics, and Gnostic-influenced philosophers.

Hasn’t it seemed to us that Cicero had the Knowledge. The gnosis. The great Secret of all things? Hasn’t it seemed that way, whether or not Cicero had the Knowledge. Whether or not she possessed the gnosis.

 

Cicero’s threats to leave it all. The exodus. To make her departure. To live a simple life at the coast, she said. But how will she afford it?

Rumours of an inheritance. Rumours of a lottery win.

 

Fears that this will just be the path of Cicero’s destruction. Of Cicero’s ruin.

 

Philosophy’s the path Cicero’s chosen for her destruction. Who’s ever been in doubt of that?

 

That she doesn’t doubt herself, as we doubt ourselves. That she’s free of self-questioning, as we are never free of self-questioning. That she doesn’t second guess herself, as we always second guess ourselves. That she has no very British fear of pretension, as we are always fearful of being pretentious. That she is unapologetic about her belonging to the traditions of old Europe, as we can never take ourselves seriously as heirs and heriesses of the tradition of old Europe.

 

Rumours that Cicero is burnt out. That she flew too close to the philosophical sun. Rumours that Cicero’s a shell of herself. That she’s not the woman she was.

 

Didn’t Cicero talked of freedom hubs, of water culture, of hydroponics? Of getting off the grid? Of growing her own?

Didn’t Cicero buy up tins and tins of mackerel? Tomatoes? Whole sacks of pinto beans?

 

Cicero’s ready. She lives in constant preparation, constant readiness.

She’s vigilant. She’s watching. She’s keeping an eye out. A weather eye …

 

Who knows what’s happening inside Cicero’s head. Inside Cicero’s breast. Who knows about Cicero’s spiritual convulsions? About Cicero’s spiritual disturbance? About Cicero’s spiritual depths?

 

Who knows what’s happening in Cicero’s heart? Who knows what Cicero does all day?

 

We’re not qualified to understand her. We’d have to have the spiritual depths ourselves to understand her spiritual depths. And we don’t. We couldn’t do.

 

Cicero recruited us. Cicero plucked us from our provincial universities. Cicero summoned us here. Cicero scouted the conferences for the up and coming – and the right kind of up and coming: the desperate. The spiritually intense. The put upon. The cornered.

Cicero sought us out: the prospectless. The defeated – spiritually. The lower class. The bordering on resentful. The embittered. The skint. The all but down and out. Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university.

We were the desperate – which she knew. Because she thought she could shape something from our desperation. Were the bitter – she knew that, too. Because she thought she could make something of our bitterness.

 

We are Cicero’s people. What’s she done to us? What has she made us into? Are we mad, like her? Have we been turned mad by her?

 

Did she see us as we were? Did she see herself in us? As junior version of her?

Did she take herself to be founding a philosophical school? Did she want to leave a legacy? Did she want to make sure there’d be others like her in the academy?

 

Did she see signs of brilliance in us? Might we be brilliant after all? Brilliant in our stupidity. Brilliant in our mediocrity.

 

Perhaps we’re brilliant inside. Very deeply inside. So deeply we don’t know about it. So deeply we show no signs of it, and never will.

 

Cicero’s faith in us – is it entirely misplaced? Is she entirely deluded? Why did she recruit us – us? Why did she bring us to her adopted city?

She was already a philosopher gone rogue. A theologian gone dark. Did she want fellow rogues? Was that what she was looking for?

 

What was Cicero looking for?

Did she think she might bring us on? That we had potential. Potential!? God knows!

Have we disappointed her? Are we disappointing her now?

 

What plans she must have had for the dept. What hopes she must have had. Her teaching. Her research.

 

Did she see the future in us? Did she place her faith in us? In us!? Surely not. Wouldn’t that be a terrible judgement upon her.

Was it a blindspot in her sight? Had she just got us wrong? Or is she right about us, too? Does she something in us that we don’t see? Some … knowledge. Some capacity for gnosis.

That, if it were trained. If we followed her example. If we were brought on in the right way. If we engaged in a process of spiritual discipleship …

 

Has Cicero been teaching us all along, in her own way. Indirectly. Discreetly.

Has she been showing us a path? Shaping us?

 

She lifted us up. She brought us here. She made this possible – for us. For our kind.