It was a inimitable club indeed, the VGE. A collection of exemplary executives matched perhaps only by the plenipotentiary run produced at the founding of America. (This back when America was a Republic. Heutzutage, its heads of state are chosen by corporate fiat. But I digress.) So it was with great excitement I learned Aurelius had written a guide to living. Meditations. A sort of Chicken Soup for the Roman Soul. Tuesdays with Moricus. A classic in the tradition of Plato, Cicero, and Neo, the cover blurb promised. A touchstone of Stoic philosophy.
Alas, Meditations is also a classic in the tradition of Hans Christian Andersen.
For the emperor has no prose.
Philosophers have a bad habit of cloaking themselves in a cloak of impenetrableness, and Aurelius is no exception. While he never reaches the cryptic hatefulness of Kant or Kierkegaard, his Meditations is painful enough. The writing is just supremely weird.
I give you a right-paw-to-Jupiter real actual passage:
It is the part of a man endowed with a good understanding faculty, to consider what they themselves are in very deed, from whose bare conceits and voices, honour and credit do proceed: as also what it is to die, and how if a man shall consider this by itself alone, to die, and separate from it in his mind all those things which with it usually represent themselves unto us, he can conceive of it no otherwise, than as of a work of nature, and he that fears any work of nature, is a very child. Now death, it is not only a work of nature, but also conducing to nature. (Book II, Verse X)I believe Marcus is here reflecting upon his own mortality. Although it could be Roman Mad Libs. Either the translator of my edition was drunk, or Meditations is one of the greatest practical jokes in history. Aurelius is to exposition what Escher is to composition. He makes Joyce read like Hemingway. And he goes on like this, page after page. Upon finishing, all I could think was this is what Phineas Gage must have felt like after the accident. No wonder the empire collapsed.
Adding to my bewilderment is the praise heaped on Meditations. Everyone from Voltaire to Bill Clinton has gushed about the book. Somewhere at this very moment, a soccer mom is quoting it on Facebook. Only with the publication of Going Rogue some 2000 years later would a wider chasm between hype and reality be generated by a prose work.
It tasks us, Meditations does. Its golden expectation and leaden experience. We must seek to understand this enigma.
Aurelius was apparently a Stoic philosopher of some renown, although I suspect the Academy doesn't reject your application when the Legions are on your payroll. "Porch-ism" is what Stoicism translates as, referring to Zeno teaching at the Stoa Poikile or "painted porch" (which to me conjures an image of Appalachian Tori Amos suckling a pig on the cover of Boys for Pele). In less-literal/more-helpful terms, a Stoic attempts to live harmoniously with the world, claiming indifference to pain and pleasure alike. If you've ever been to a Lutheran potluck or a Vulcan wedding, you've seen Stoicism.
he Stoics might claim my finding Meditations obtuse is an indicator of me being insufficiently versed in Stoicism. I claim that is a lazy excuse. (I'm also finding it difficult to take seriously a school of thought whose most famous paradox can be resolved by simple application of geometric series.) Aurelius is not addressing semiotics or epistemology in Meditations. It's reputation is that of a pithy life guide. Such topics do not require -- nor are they well served by -- impenetrable presentation. It would be like tuning in to Sesame Street only to discover Bert and Ernie discussing algebraic topology.
Perhaps Meditations can only be comprehended in its original tongue, like Shakespeare in Klingon. There have been no fewer than eight major English translations, beginning with Meric Casaubon's effort in 1634. Presumably before then the text was rendered from the original Greek into Latin, the lingua franca of the Western Empire. Translation has the potential to twist prose, and has done no small harm in the past. The word "virgin" is substituted for "young woman" or "raisin of exceptional clarity" and all manner of mischief follows. Even rote replication provided ample opportunity for the accumulation of errors back in the day -- prior to Gutenberg, books were copied by hand. Meditations may record a game of Telephone writ large. Marcus writes "eat your veggies" and the message appearing on the page centuries later reads: "Dacia barbarians aqueduct."
Yet, other great works of antiquity similarly transmuted remain lucid. The New Testament passed from Greek and even a heathen like LabKitty will acknowledge the beauty of the Gospels as they read in the King James. Did the scriptorium fear an emperor's wrath less than Yahweh? I wonder if Meditations wasn't assigned to a junior monk. You know, the surly one with something to prove. Think: Liszt doing eight octave dive bombs for an hour while the parlor patrons sit politely and wonder if the buffet is getting cold.
Marcus writes "one plus one is two" and the message appearing on the page centuries later reads:
Verily, when facing the combination of unity with another of likewise form, look not into the hearts of other men but only thyne own countenance which is not to say countenance but the primacy thereof, in which we may bring into combination that unity with another of likewise form, thusly giving us not the individuality paired unities together but rather a duality, in both shape and purpose, as my grandfather who was wise and kind as is known to all in Sicily.Nunc scripsi totum pro Christo da mihi potum, indeed.
VERDICT
The preface in my edition describes Meditations as a collection of private reflections. Perhaps Marcus would be horrified to learn some snarky Internet bastard was reading his diary two millennia post mortem. Virgil wanted the Aeneid destroyed upon his death and it was intended for public consumption from page one. (If you were tormented by the Aeneid in high school you can thank the Emperor Augustus, who violated Virgil's wIll and spared the poem.) As everyone from Jeanne d'Arc to Anthony Weiner has discovered, once your oeuvre becomes public knowledge, the reception often changes for the worse. How might any of us fare if Random House got their hooks into our most intimate prose?<
Years from now, probably after I forget to send in the domain name re-up fee, future scholars may one day discover LabKitty.com buried under the ruins of our once-great civilization. They, too, may be flummoxed by the labyrinthian lexicography, Byzantine grammar, and bizarre topic selection. Here was a good heart, they surmise, kind and true, set upon by the insults of everyday life yet rejecting the mean, the petty, the commonplace. Speculation of course, as the writing itself is nigh impenetrable. What would they conclude? Who can say. They may simply lament LabKitty, like Aurelius, should have meditated on hiring an editor.
If philosophers would just express themselves using differential equations like grown-ups, philosophy books would be a much easier read.
Grade: Ω
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Cover image of Meditations appears under fair use according to United States copyright law as it serves to illustrate an article discussing the original work and does not in a reasonable person's mind constitute an infringement of the owner's rights to receive compensation for the copyrighted work.
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