The splendid Penzance Literary Festival has chosen this topic as the inspiration for this year’s event. I have taken out my larger dictionaries and looked a little at its usage and etymology. The latter is not difficult as it derives directly from Latin and basically means something like the capacity to jump back.
The term resilience was introduced into the English language in the early 17th Century from the Latin verb resilire, meaning to rebound or recoil (Concise Oxford Dictionary, Tenth Edition).
resilience (n.) … 1620s, “act of rebounding or springing back,” often of immaterial things, from Latin resiliens, present participle of resilire “to rebound,
From Ovid we read “saepein gelidos resilire lacus, sed nunc quoque turpes” which Loeb gives as meaning in Metamorphoses Book VI as Often they sit upon the sedgy bank and often leap back into the cool lake. This comes from a rather beautifully poetic passage at https://www.loebclassics.com/view/ovid-metamorphoses/1916/pb_LCL042.315.xml
We get the English expressions ‘Salient’ and ‘To sally forth’ from the Latin verb Salio -to jump. In Cassell’s Latin Dictionary we learn of the Salii who were apparently a college of priests who jumped and leapt about worshipping Mars in a procession accompanied by singers and armed dancers. Instituted bt Numa Pompilius apparently.
Returning to the concept of Resilience we can distinguish its meaning from something like Endurance or Durability; it is more springy, elastic and perhaps energetic. Principally, of course, the concern around the concept relates to the inner resources for coping with Covid and the restrictions consequent upon it. It is the psychology of resilience which makes it a concept current in the zeitgeist. Without much prompting Google asks –
What are the 5 skills of resilience?
Five Key Stress Resilience Skills
- Self-awareness.
- Attention – flexibility & stability of focus.
- Letting go (1) – physical.
- Letting go (2) – mental.
- Accessing & sustaining positive emotion.
Additionally it further questions-
What are the 7 C’s of resilience?
Dr Ginsburg, child paediatrician and human development expert, proposes that there are 7 integral and interrelated components that make up being resilient – competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping and control.
Also from the Mayo Clinic-https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311
Whilst thinking about this topic, I came across these lines from a poem entitled Women Running, based upon Picasso’s painting entitled Deux femmes courant sur la plage which seem apposite and uplifting-
That arm laid across the horizon,
the racing legs, an unstoppable quartet, pull
me from my skin and I become one of them,
believe I’m agile enough to run a mile,
believe I’m young again, believe age
has been stamped out. No wonder, I worship
at the altar of energy, not the energy
huge with hate which revels in tearing apart,
in crushing to dust but the momentum
which carries blood to the brain, these women
across the plage, lovers as they couple
and tugs at the future till it breaks into bloom.
Myra Schneider
penwithlit 