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A review by thecrookedspine
Meditations: The Annotated Edition by Marcus Aurelius
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
2.0
I liked the actual translation of this book - it was easy to read and had a clear and consistent voice to it. I also appreciate that the translator is clearly extremely educated in things Hellenic and Roman, which made some of his commentary possible and deepened a few of my understandings.
But here’s my chunky beef: I’d say that I found about 1/3 of the footnotes relevant and justified (see below for the other 2/3rds) and about half of that third taught me something - the first time he said it. But there’s as much footnote as book, so that’s a lot of “the rest of it” to wade through. I frequently felt like I was trying to listen to someone speak while someone else interjected, frequently with their own derogatory views of the original speaker or the thoughts that person was expressing (Marcus is a grumpy old man/This is a ridiculous framing of an argument and Marcus is wrong, etc…). And for that reason alone, frankly I regret reading this version as my first read through.
For the other 2/3rds of of footnotes, I found them irrelevant or unjustified for these reasons: They were excessively repetitive (to be fair he explains that this is mostly intentional for people who choose to pick up and put down the book rather than read straight through as I did), drawing the reader into repeat showings of things which weren’t worth seeing the first time. As an example, I’m cobbling these specifics together, but I promise it’s representational: Marcus would say, Why bother about death, it’s just the shedding of a carcass, or something like that, and then there would be a footnote to this saying, Marcus talks a lot about this. Thanks translator guy? Then that footnote gets repeated in fifty variations every time Marcus talks about death, which, spoiler, is constantly.
There were also footnotes where I felt the translator was really going a little too far, like one where he says something about how Marcus thinks people are horrible in very strong terms that Marcus himself never says in the book. Clearly the translator is inferring this from the difficulty Marcus had in dealing with people, but I really felt it had no place, considering he’s meant to translate the words that did come out of Marcus’ mouth, not put words into them.
Still, I gave this 2 stars because it’s clear that one only sees the tip of the iceberg of work that goes into a book like this, and I’m aware of how much education was required for this book to be made possible. But I feel this translator failed to respect the relationship the reader themselves is trying to forge with Marcus Aurelius and his thoughts, and stepped outside of translation and into interpretation, which I see as a grave error. In the end I did learn some things that were interesting, but none of them were pivotal to understanding The Meditations, so I would say that if you don’t want to deal with these footnotes you don’t have to.
And yes, The Meditations themselves are worth reading if you’re interested in general philosophy, history, self-improvement, or especially in stoicism. They are a private journal, and so are repetitive, and occasionally opaque as to their reference but this is fairly rare. It’s not a hard read and it’s worth the time.
But here’s my chunky beef: I’d say that I found about 1/3 of the footnotes relevant and justified (see below for the other 2/3rds) and about half of that third taught me something - the first time he said it. But there’s as much footnote as book, so that’s a lot of “the rest of it” to wade through. I frequently felt like I was trying to listen to someone speak while someone else interjected, frequently with their own derogatory views of the original speaker or the thoughts that person was expressing (Marcus is a grumpy old man/This is a ridiculous framing of an argument and Marcus is wrong, etc…). And for that reason alone, frankly I regret reading this version as my first read through.
For the other 2/3rds of of footnotes, I found them irrelevant or unjustified for these reasons: They were excessively repetitive (to be fair he explains that this is mostly intentional for people who choose to pick up and put down the book rather than read straight through as I did), drawing the reader into repeat showings of things which weren’t worth seeing the first time. As an example, I’m cobbling these specifics together, but I promise it’s representational: Marcus would say, Why bother about death, it’s just the shedding of a carcass, or something like that, and then there would be a footnote to this saying, Marcus talks a lot about this. Thanks translator guy? Then that footnote gets repeated in fifty variations every time Marcus talks about death, which, spoiler, is constantly.
There were also footnotes where I felt the translator was really going a little too far, like one where he says something about how Marcus thinks people are horrible in very strong terms that Marcus himself never says in the book. Clearly the translator is inferring this from the difficulty Marcus had in dealing with people, but I really felt it had no place, considering he’s meant to translate the words that did come out of Marcus’ mouth, not put words into them.
Still, I gave this 2 stars because it’s clear that one only sees the tip of the iceberg of work that goes into a book like this, and I’m aware of how much education was required for this book to be made possible. But I feel this translator failed to respect the relationship the reader themselves is trying to forge with Marcus Aurelius and his thoughts, and stepped outside of translation and into interpretation, which I see as a grave error. In the end I did learn some things that were interesting, but none of them were pivotal to understanding The Meditations, so I would say that if you don’t want to deal with these footnotes you don’t have to.
And yes, The Meditations themselves are worth reading if you’re interested in general philosophy, history, self-improvement, or especially in stoicism. They are a private journal, and so are repetitive, and occasionally opaque as to their reference but this is fairly rare. It’s not a hard read and it’s worth the time.