Letter 139: If there is such a sting of persuasion in your letters — if even without your living presence and charm, the images...

To Herculian. If there is such a sting of persuasion in your letters — if even without your living presence and charm, the images of your character cast such a spell over those who read them — to converse with you face to face must be utterly irresistible. For my part, I am held captive. Your letters have done this to me. Every time one arrives, I read it and reread it, and each reading deepens the wound of missing you. Yet I would not trade that wound for any painless contentment. [The letter continues with an eloquent meditation on friendship, distance, and the philosophical love that transcends physical separation — themes drawn from Plato's Phaedrus but filled with Synesius's own lived experience of loss and longing.]

Letter 139: Longing for a Lost Friend [1] To Herculian If there is such a sting of persuasion in letters, if even without your living sympathy and charm the images of your character cast such a spell over those who read, to converse with you face to face would be irresistible indeed. For my part, as long as I was in your company, you charmed me by the sweet siren of your voice. Nevertheless, I should not be ashamed to tell you the truth that a pleasure still sweeter would be our second meeting, for the perception of a present good cannot compare with that of an absent good, to him who has once made trial. Moreover, the continuity of the enjoyment steals away the sensation of joy, but he who has been separated even a little while from pleasures, retains a proportionately poignant memory of those things which he actually lacks. [2] May you come to me, friend who are so dear to me! Let us take up again our discourses on philosophy, and build up something worthy of our beginnings, that from perfect things a perfect beauty may be manifest, not one that is marred. But if we are fated to remain deprived of each other's company, which God forbid, the loss will certainly be mine alone, for where you are, education flourishes, amongst a multitude of men, and there will be with you many like Synesius and many better than he. [3] My city is dear to me because it is my city, but it has become, I know not how, insensible to philosophy. It is therefore not without apprehension that I feel myself alone and without help in the absence of one with whom to share my philosophic frenzy. But even if we should admit that there are some such, How could I forget Odysseus equal unto the Gods! note [ Homer , Odyssey 1.65.] [4] Leaving your sacred soul, against what other pieces of wood could I rub myself, and bring forth a luminous child of reason? Who will be so able by every contrivance powerfully to call forth a hidden spark which loves to conceal itself, to ignite it, and reveal a brilliant flame? United or separated, may God always be with us! If God is present, there is a path in every pathless place. [5] Farewell; philosophize, and raise the divine within you to the first-born divine. For it is a beautiful thing that my whole letter should say from me to your honoured self what Plotinus , the story goes, said to those present as he released his soul from its body. note [A reference to Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 2.]