I stumbled onto this review of the Hays translation of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius with Ryan Holiday. Meditations is one of those books that i placed on my lifetime reading list fifty years ago that i have yet to properly tackle. I think it just made it to the top and it should be on yours as well.
We have so little of the writings of the great pagan thinkers that every gem is a gift. Their translation is an even greater gift when well accomplished. I learned that when i tackled Doris Lessing's translation of the Divine Comedia of Dante one canto per day back in 1971.
Thus an insightful translation of the meditations is a must.
I am optimistic that it will become possible to recover all those lost masterpieces through either direct channeling of the writer involved which must be tricky at best and alternately by clipping a page in time local to a known copy.
All good.
Meditations: Interview with Gregory Hays
I think I might have written about Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on this site a few times so I can probably skip most of the introduction. It is the greatest book ever written.
As I’ve said before, if you’re going to read it, you absolutely have to
go with the Gregory Hays translation. A couple weeks back I dropped
Greg an email about asking him a few questions. With my reading list and
books over the years, I’ve moved quite a few copies, so for those of
you that have read it–and if you’ve touched any of the other versions,
you know how special it is–here are some words from the translator.
Your translation of Meditations is more accessible than other
earlier translations. Did you set out to do that on purpose or is this
how Aurelius intended it?
I think different translations reflect different aspects of the
original, like looking at a sculpture from various angles (you can’t see
all sides at the same time). I was deliberately trying to move away
from the rather stodgy feel of some earlier translations, which I think
make Marcus sound too much like a sage. I wanted to reflect the fact
that this is a text compiled for his own use, not with any expectation
of other readers. He’s writing memorandum for himself, not handing down
wisdom-with-a-capital-W.
What source did you derive your translation from? I assume the Vatican didn’t allow you to peek at their copy.
Actually the Vatican is quite generous about allowing scholarly
access (they’ve been very helpful with my current project). But you’re
right that with the Meditations I wasn’t working directly from original
manuscripts. I used several modern editions of the Greek text, of which
the most recent is by the German scholar Joachim Dalfen. There’s an old
but still very helpful commentary on the Greek text by A.S.L.
Farquharson. I also consulted other translations for specific passages.
There are a number of cases where the text has become confused in the
process of copying and different scholars and translators have
reconstructed the original in different (sometimes very different) ways.
We tend to see the same themes and metaphors popping up over
and over again–time is like a river; this will only affect you if you
let it, and so on. Do you think this is an attempt at emphasis through
repetition or is there a subtleness that the depth of Greek (or Latin)
allows and English does not?
I think the repetitions give us clues to the things that Marcus found
especially difficult or troublesome. The way he keeps coming back to
certain images or points suggests that he found them helpful, but also
that he needed reinforcement on those points. Things like not giving in
to anger, not being afraid of death–those are things that he seems to
have really struggled with.
You’re working on a translation of the works of Fulgentius?
He’s more of an obscure historical figure, what are you trying to
accomplish in bringing his voice to a wider audience? Why him?
Well, he’s a very different sort of writer–he’s several centuries
later than Marcus Aurelius, writing in a much more ornate style (and In
Latin, not Greek), and much more literary, even comic and playful. And
it’s a very different sort of project, much more technical and meant
mainly for academic readers; I doubt it will sell more than a few
hundred copies, mostly to academic libraries. He’s not someone whose
work is likely to resonate with people in the same way that the
Meditations seems to do, but I think he’s fascinating from a historical
point of view: he’s really someone who’s on the cusp between classical
culture and the Christian middle ages and he reflects aspects of both.
Stoics like Seneca disregarded a lot of their teachings on
restraint when they came to power. Marcus had more than any of them, why
was he so different? And Commodus, his son, appears as such a strange
contrast.
I think Marcus was a person of unusual integrity and he was also
lucky in having good role models, people like Antoninus Pius, his
predecessor as emperor. (This is something he alludes to himself, of
course, in Book 1.) But I think what also comes through in the
Meditations is that even for him it wasn’t easy. Not being a tyrant was
something he had to work at one day at a time, and writing down these
injunctions for himself was part of that effort.
Lastly, what passage is your favorite?
I don’t know if I have a single favorite. I like some of the briefer
entries, like the image of human beings as lumps of incense burning on
an altar (4.15): “one crumbles now, one later, but it makes no
difference.” I think he’s also very good on transience, as in 5.23:
Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone–those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the ‘what’ is in constant flux, the ‘why’ has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us–a chasm whose depths we cannot see.”
That feels very Buddhist to me.
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