I am re-reading Meditations, but this time I am going to read it from front to back cover instead of skipping from aphorism to aphorism. I made a trip to the tiolet yesterday and found myself absorbed in the reassuring wisdom of Marcus after that long winded and misanthorpic rant. What turned into momentary reading material transformed into an hour bathroom session. It is amazing the sheer breadth of topics covered and how so effectively every topic is addressed with the grace of a sage. This is for the besieged.
Much credit must be given to Gregory Hays who managed to produce the most approachable translation I have yet to encounter, breathing life into a text which is often translated in a formal, Shakespearean tone. Gregory understood that Marcus was writing to himself in a personal journal and would have never used such an academic tone.
In my opinion Marcus would have never used such an elitist tone, it is simply not characteristic of his generous and kind spirit. Hays translation reads warmly as if Marcus is speaking directly to the reader with his hand on your shoulder in a fatherly, wimsical and very intimate manner.
Translating Greek (and Latin) is not a clearcut deal (since the languages don’t make any sense if directly translated word for word) and the translator makes all the difference in the end. It lies on the translator’s shoulders to transmute ancient words into something a english speaker could understand and do so in a stylistic fashion which does not betray the spirit of the original text. So again I would like to thank Gregory Hays for his most skillful, insightful and powerful translation of the journals of Marcus Aurelius.
I yearn for other philosophical meditations penned in the fashion of a therapeutic journal (and hopefully translated by Hays too). The reading experience is much more intimate than that of treatise or discourse. I would die to get my hands on a Socrates meditation but we all know that will never happen. Socrates never wrote anything down, just as Epictetus, Socrates remixed, never did. A man can dream. I feel so close to the wisdom and insights of the Socratic line of philosophers and recall fondly the many teachers that trained me in the Socratic lifestyle before I had even discovered the ramblings of Plato. Truly it is the righteous life.
I return to school tommorow into what will probably wind up being the worst semester yet. Sumerian agathodaimon be gone.