Reading the classics

A challenge that needed to be explained…

Recently, Ryan Holiday asked those of us participating in a facilitated reading of Meditations which quote was our favorite. I have several, but I must explain why. Having been a teacher for many years, I want to explain the background to be certain you understand. So, this will be longer than what I posted in the discussion area of our April endeavor.

My son and his husband invited my husband and I to drive down to Bastrop for breakfast several years ago. They explained that there was a bookstore across the street from the restaurant and that was actually the goal. Excellent pancakes were the draw for my pancake loving husband and bookstores are a dangerous place for me.

We had a large and delicious breakfast at I think Maxine’s (it has been a few years since we did this.). We then crossed the street to the delightful books store. The walls are decorated with old books, spines to the back, glued together as a mantel over the fireplace, as display table props, and just for fun. My son had a book in mind as did his husband. They steered me toward the history selection and recommended The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. While roaming around, I saw a new translation of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. My previous exposure to this classic was either random quotes or an ancient copy rescued from an overzealous sorter of donated books. The translation was literal and difficult to read. My son encouraged me to get the paperback and read it. It is the version by Gregory Hays that Holiday recommends. (You can pick it up from the Painted Porch for a reasonable price and fast shipping.)

Reading Swerve lead me to want to read the actual poem Greenblatt is writing about. I had never heard of it. So, I ordered David R. Slavin’s translation of DeRum Natura: The Nature of Things. I chose that one because Slavin’s a respected and published poet. It is a very long poem but one that shook the intellectual world of the 1400’s as Greenblatt recounts in his book. It was written around 50 to 55 BCE and was known among the Romans according to Greenblatt. The fact that it has survived makes for a fascinating story. What I was not prepared for was the emphasis on change.

I am writing a series of space opera science fiction books where the idea of change and adjusting to change in a society are the main theme. To read something over two thousand years old that addressed my theme was surprising and encouraging.

As I read more philosophers, also with the encouragement of Holiday, I discovered that my conclusions had antecedents I did not anticipate. While the vision of the world as constantly changing is not universally accepted in classically surviving philosophy, it is understood and discussed. I found it in Seneca’s letters and several times in the Meditations. I can offer only a few here.

That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen. The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception. (Meditations 4.3ii)

Constant awareness that everything is born from change. (Meditations 4.36)

Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. (Meditations 6.15)

As I have written before, the rocks that support my house were once a beach and the sand worn from them that settles in the creek below the house will help refresh the beach down on the Gulf. Spring should convince us of that. The new leaves on the cedar elms and the live oaks display so many shades of green and new life. The only constant in the universe is change.