Four years ago I started reading some of the great “classic” political and philosophical works. I finished The Prince and moved on to Meditations (both really threw off my “date written” graph, which is the main reason I mention it). Unfortunately, then life got in the way, and Meditations was much more… “boring” than the previous works I had finished. With my workload intensifying I wasn’t in the right state of mind to read a journal of stoic philosophy, so it went away, and when my workload went down I read “more exciting” books, but this one stayed in my mind, and in my “to-read” pile. Three and a half years later I finally resolved to “really finish” it, and, even though it took me a month, I did (now I just need to get back to On The Road and Europe Central {they don’t have anything to do with this either, really}). Now, does my resistance to finishing it mean that it’s a bad book? Or is it something worth getting through?
There are no high quality versions of my cover.
I actually started by reading the introduction this time, but not getting through all of it. It gets a bit boring (as introductions tend) but I think the first few pages are a very good… well, “introduction” to what the text is about (The translator’s note is also good reading, and might be a bit better of an introduction in my version: the Penguin Classics from 1977). And after that I caught up to my bookmark, still there on page 2/3 (36/37), which shows you how devoted I was to it starting out. I didn’t exactly pick up the pace on this reading, either. The book is dense and difficult to read, for a number of reasons. The first and most obvious is that it was never meant to be a book that someone read. The fact that the text was originally a series of journals titled “to Myself” (in Greek) demonstrates this. There are few transitional phrases or sentences and the ideas themselves don’t always follow a nice logical order; everything is dense and clunky, like how you would write down ideas in a notebook. Its only attempt at explaining the philosophy it is about is for the benefit of the author, who was supposed to be its only reader. It flows like a book of introspective quotes about life that is curated well enough to make you stop and think about most of them, and this delays the reading. It’s hard to focus on the next paragraph when the previous is still working its way though your mind, and you’re still analyzing whether you agree with it, or how it relates to your life/perspective, or whether it’s changed your mind. It feels like you need to remember every word for future reference.
And of course there’s also a bit of a language “barrier”, since the book was written close to 2,000 years ago in Greek, at a time when English hadn’t even developed as a language, there are going to be some places where words’ meanings have changed or are difficult to translate. But there are many universal feelings that can still be conveyed; when Aurelius mentions a desire to retire by the beach, or stay underneath warm blankets in the morning (both poor decisions in his mind) you might, as I, be struck by the idea that people have been having these same thoughts for two thousand years. That amount of time can be dehumanizing, and being able to look and see that they weren’t “that” different from us is a useful tool. (Interestingly, I interpreted this as humans battling the same unproductive urges for millennia, but my brother viewed it more as a legitimization of those feelings) Still there are other linguistic oddities that need to be explained, my favorite being “a better thrower down”, which is a saying that I absolutely must now shoehorn into my English usage. And the original context for “cynic” and “stoic” might take some getting used to. (In the text of my copy the translator mentions a joke from the time “How do you tell a stoic from a cynic? … He wears a shirt”, which would still work in modern contexts if you add “Boom! Ancient Greek philosopher joke!” or something to that effect).
I find the whole thing hard to do justice to. I have read some people’s opinions who think the book is an angsty diary that was only kept because it happened to belong to an emperor. And there certainly is some of that there; this book is easily proof that people from all walks of life can find reason to be unhappy. And its cosmic talk about how the body replaces itself (which, when paired with the idea of a spherical earth might mean that Aurelius had more scientific knowledge than some people today), or one’s “soul” won’t endure forever might be seen as the worst parts of a teenager’s stilted nihilism. Still, there is an optimism in it, and it feels wise at the very least in the way a student who has not reached enlightenment but can parrot the master is wise (and Marcus claims to be no master). I suppose the best I could really do at this point is to show you a few quotes from the text, as I’m not going to be getting better at explaining it.
“You can not reprimand chance, or impeach providence.”
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”
“The Pride that swells beneath a garb of humility is of all things the most intolerable.”
“Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted your further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage.”
“Living and dying… riches and poverty… are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade.”
“Treat with respect the power you have to form an opinion.”
“Take no enterprise in hand at haphazard.”
“Life is opinion.”
“What is no good for the hive is no good for the bee.”
“If the crew took to vilifying their steersmen; or the patients their doctor, is there any other they would listen to instead; and how would such another be able to ensure the safety of the sailors or the health of the sick.”
“When men are inhuman, take care to not feel towards them as they do towards other humans.”
“Soon you will have forgotten he world, and soon will the world have forgotten you.”
It’s a difficult book to read, and I wouldn’t recommend you necessarily read it like any other book. Meditations is a good bedside book, or rather a good “wherever you put books that you’ll occasionally pick up and read a few paragraphs from” book. It’s interesting and insightful but dense and clunky. It isn’t exactly a master’s work on stoic or proto-Christian philosophy, but it is an interesting distillation that can deepen your understanding as a reader. It’s not a book for everyone, and knowing what it is and what it isn’t when first starting will likely be important to how enjoyable one finds the book (fortunately they go out of their way to provide this context in many prefaces). It’s not a book to be read lightly, or without care, but when finished, it’s one that is nice to have bouncing around in your head.