Talk:Cupio dissolvi

OR, synthesis
This phrase simply cannot be applied to such things as sibyls in Petronius, who couldn't possibly have read Paul's letters. The link from "I wish to be dissolved" (to be with Christ) to "I wish to die" is a matter of original research. Drmies (talk) 17:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, again bringing Kurt Cobain into this article is simply ludicrous. Drmies (talk) 17:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * My sources say something completely different, sorry. «This "common meaning" is not an OR, because it is stated by all the sources that I proposed»: do you remember? --Mauro Lanari (talk) 17:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You do not cite any reliable sources. Off to the noticeboard for reliable sources we go. In the meantime, it would be appreciated if you could refrain from turning Wikipedia articles into a mockery. Drmies (talk) 17:10, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Discussion at Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Drmies (talk) 17:21, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Cite one source, ONE SOURCE, that proves a connection between Kurt Cobain and Paul's letter. And explain how Petronius, a non-Christian author who dies in 66AD, is connected to the locution found in the Epistle to the Philippians, composed 50-60 A.D at its earliest. Drmies (talk) 17:25, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The link to Petronius is specifically via Atwood's use of the phrase cupio dissolvi: the discussion, if it does indeed warrant inclusion, has to be centered around Atwood's essay, not Petronius. As it is currently presented, this bit is misleading on one hand, and nonsense on the other, as Drmies has pointed out. davidiad.: 17:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you Davidiad. I am not convinced of what that references says anyway--from the snippet, I can't figure out if this is Atwood speaking or the author of the essays on Atwood. The connection with Eliot is tenuous in the first place: a search for "cupio dissolvi" "waste land" eliot delivers very little, and while it is possible to connect Eliot with the phrase, that doesn't mean much yet, certainly not with these snippets. It certainly seems unlikely that Eliot meant to put those words in the Sibyl's mouth ("The cupio dissolvi is what the decrepit Cumaean Sibyl wishes for herself", according to our editor). "Tradition and Topoi in Medieval literature", the only hit in JSTOR for T.S. Eliot and the locution, does not combine the two at all (Eliot is only mentioned because Curtius wrote on him). And even if this is what Eliot intended, it's his interpretation of the Sibyl's words, which hardly warrants an entire section on Petronius in an article on a phrase that Petronius could not have uttered as coming from Paul. (There is one interesting things: most of the hits for Eliot and the phrase are Italian, but none of them lead anywhere that I can follow.) Drmies (talk) 18:13, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The term cupio dissolvi is in fact only used in that one instance from the snippet view. Atwood is there discussing another work of her own, a propos of which she brings up the epigraph to The Waste Land. Our locution is just a toss off phrase within her transition, and thus using Atwood to introduce Eliot is at best a very curious case of WP:UNDUE, at worst, some creeky synthesis and OR.  I'm removing the section and would appreciate it if it be discussed on this talk page before the passage finds its way back into the article. davidiad.: 18:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Do you have the presumption to teach Latin to the people who taught it to you? "Idiot editors" (cit.). Over time, however, the original meaning of cupio dissolvi has gradually transformed, [...] and later adapted to more secular and profane meanings and uses, expressing, depending on the case, rejection of existence, desire to exhaustion, masochistic will self-destruct, and the like.
 * "Cite one source, ONE SOURCE, that proves a connection between Kurt Cobain and Paul's letter": in sensu lato, "in today's broader sense" of the locution cupio dissolvi, your question is meaningless. --Mauro Lanari (talk) 20:09, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * As I thought--original research. (And that site is obviously not a reliable source.) What's next--will you list every individual suicide in this article? Drmies (talk) 20:12, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The most important Italian encyclopedia is not a reliable source: wow. OR: are you interested in cinema? Do you know this one? I do not care all suicides, but only of those who have called at least one of their works with the current meaning/translation of cupio dissolvi. --Mauro Lanari (talk) 20:26, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I know that some reverting has already gone on here, but I can't in good conscience let "Philosophical and psychological meaning" and "Music" sections stand. In the former, the statement that would need to be sourced showing a connection between this phrase and the death drive is: "Therefore the phrase indicates a nihilistic will to death ... a concept opposed to the Schopenhauerian doctrine of the Wille zum Leben ("Will to Live"). In psychoanalysis it is considered equivalent to the death drive that Freud formulated in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), together with the "Nirvana principle"."

The only citation that isn't a simple translation of the phrase gives: "In short, in the Freudian perspective, India equals mysticism, and mysticism equals a sort of cupio dissolvi in Totality, very near to a form of psychic regression to the Pleasure Principle, where the Reality Principle and psychic differentiation are lost."

This bit, which is the end of an interviewer's question, is, like the Atwood reference, just a passing nod to our locution ("a sort of cupio dissolvi") and certainly not enough to support the synthesis that the paragraph constructs.

As for the Music section, the only reference that makes anything approaching an connection between Kurt Cobain and cupio dissolvi cites a discussion of Cobain in which the phrase does not occur; more than 30 pages later the locution is used twice, again casually and incidentally: the only occurrences of cupio dissolvi in the document.

For sources to be used in support of these discussions, they need to be reliable and actually make some substantive connection between the locution and the point being made. Passing use of a locution—that is, a saying, something that will be uttered quite commonly—cannot support an encyclopedic treatment of what would be a complex topic. davidiad.: 20:31, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Good call; I was just about to do the same thing for the music section at least, for the same reasons (as I said in the RSN thread). Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 20:35, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you all. To recap/reiterate, I have no objection to at least passing mention of the content of this. Mauro Lanari's venom is misapplied: I never commented on that source. But, and here is the rub, this shift in meaning does not mean that everything self-destructive has to have a place in this article, unless the phrase/locution/trope is explicitly mentioned. No Kurt Cobain, no Eliot. Drmies (talk) 22:52, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * See here. Bye. --Mauro Lanari (talk) 01:32, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Source error?
The article says (first sentence) that "Cupio dissolvi" is used in the Vulgate translation of Philippians. But the Latin quotation from Philippians, below, doesn't include the phrase, and so far as I can find, this phrase doesn't occur in the Vulgate. So who first wrote "cupio dissolvi"? Andrew Dalby 20:31, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You're right. ✅. --82.84.17.194 (talk) 12:13, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Hamlet?
I can't be the first person to notice the similarity between this phrase and Hamlet's lament in Act I, scene ii:

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

If this phrase was commonly quoted by people such as Thomas More and John Donne, then it makes sense (to me, at least) that Shakespeare might have intentionally drawn on it as well. A quick search didn't turn up anything, so I didn't add it to the article as I have no supporting texts. Any Shakespeare scholars in the house? 174.82.224.91 (talk) 04:28, 7 November 2022 (UTC)