A Zig-Zag Line of a Hundred Tacks
By: J. Basques
Tags: Philosophy, Updates, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Translation

See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Although I maintain my love of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, I am repurposing this publication for a new, long-term project.

For the past few months and continuing on for, oh, the next decade or so, my friend and long-time collaborator and I have been undertaking a modern translation of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

First, let me introduce you to Aaron Prim: I met him as a guitarist, but he is a true multi-instrumentalist Renaissance man. He is like a cross between Mark Twain and a Leatherman tool. Multi-lingual, adept at cooking, gardening, woodworking, masonry, and really more than I could list here without you calling BS on me. Above all, he is a standup man, father, husband and one of my closest friends.

Here is our modus operandi:

We take a week per paragraph. Individually digesting the text and taking notes. Aaron and I meet each Sunday to discuss the prior week’s passage. Once we reach consensus, our interpretation is documented.

You might be saying, “but wait, the versions of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in English already are translations.”

Quite right! Which is why our primary source material is the original ancient Greek text. From there, we are able to parse out the intended meaning of each and every word, while referencing the public domain translations by George Long and C.R. Haines.

We are learning that so much is lost in translation.

Scholarly translations may be word perfect, but often the interpretations lack the essence and voice of Marcus Aurelius.

First of all, the title as we know it is misleading. Modern readers see “Meditations” and visualize the act of sitting in silence, whereas these passages are more in line with “contemplations.”

In fact, we’ll take it a step further: let’s just think of this as “Notes to Self by Marcus Aurelius.”

This captures the spirit. Marcus is reflecting and, more often than not, giving himself a pep talk. I, for one, always imagine him as having it all figured out and passing his wisdom down to rubes like us. He is, after all, an emperor… he should know a thing or two. In reality, he likely had a bad day or screwed something up and is going over it to learn from it.

So, in this, we miss a lot of context. In fact, we can only imagine how much we are completely misinterpreting. Let’s remember that this was essentially his private diary, and not intended for anyone else to read (which is probably ethically questionable on our part; then again, good Stoic that he is, if asked his opinion on the matter would likely reply, “what do I care? I’m dead.)

Our aim is to regularly share our interpretations. I hope that those of you who have considered, studied and examined the text can shed light on perspectives we might have missed. We will be happy to make amendments in order to capture the richest possible interpretation.

Lastly, we chose to start on Book 2. If that bothers you, follow the guidance of the man himself, “Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away.”

We look forward to sharing our interpretations with you.

~J. Basques & Aaron Prim