Presence, Absence and Retreat in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations

Men seek retreats for themselves–in the country, by the sea, in the hills–and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite unphilosophic, when it is open to you, at any time you want, to retreat into yourself. No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than that into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: and by ease I simply mean a well-ordered life. The doctrines you will visit there should be few and fundamental, sufficient at one meeting to wash away all your pain and send you back free of resentment at what you must rejoin (Aurelius 23).

In writing down his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius shares his thoughts–with himself–but the subsequent, unbeknownst-to-him publication of his Meditations opens up the mind of an emperor for readers to examine 1,838 years later, and counting. Thus his writings between 121-180 A.D. serve as the “translator of a full speech which was fully present (present to itself, to its signified, to the other, the very condition of the theme of presence in general), techniques in service of language, spokesman, interpreter of an original speech itself shielded from interpretation” (Derrida 8). In this way, writing served as an interpreter–of himself, to himself. It is a vehicle in which he transports meaning from his past and presents self to his future self. In other words, while he invokes the necessity of presence in the above quote–to rather than seeking an external retreat, seek an internal one, Aurelius necessarily engages with his future self–his intended audience, for whom these meditations are purportedly to serve as a later reference/reminder to relax “into his own mind” in service of a “well-ordered life.”

In balancing absence with presence, Aurelius uses writing as a meditative technique. Now that he has been dead for 1,838 years, it is clear that “there is nothing outside the text” (Derrida 158). We cannot ask him what he meant by visiting “doctrines” “to wash away all your pain and send you back free of resentment” but, rather, must examine his text, embarking on our own interior meditation, or dialogue with our interior self. In this way, Aurelius’ writing as it beckons us to plumb the depths of our own interiority, by his very absence and the text’s presence invites us into that very exercise using his work, his crafted text, as a starting point to (as he would say) organize our own minds. With the exterior language that Aurelius chose to use to articulate/pin down his thoughts–interestingly in Greek, the common language versus Roman–Aurelius’s absence has become, for readers throughout time, a form of the perpetual presence he invokes.

In his meditations on meditation in book 4, he takes this imagery of the interior further: “Remember this retreat into your own little territory within yourself” (24). In order to prompt the journey within, using exterior language, he necessarily invokes an exterior image. The words “territory” and “retreat” form a mental picture; “within” points the reader to where this territory/retreat can be found. “If mind be common to us all,” Aurelius continues (25), “then we have reason also in common–that which makes us rational beings. … From there, then, this common city, we take our very mind, our reason, our law–from where else?”

Aurelius’s stoic meditations are useful and at the same time, if we wish (as post Romantic period products) to view the world not just through language–the narrow chinks in Plato’s allegorical cave (credit: William Blake)–literary methods are a way to enhance language to transport us not simply into the mind, but into the soul. Novels, as of Aurelius’ writing, were not invented yet. But his use of second person “you” narration nonetheless works one of two ways, depending on the reader of his text. In her book Why Do We Care About Literary Characters, Blakey Vermule presents this conundrum well, citing narrative theorist Suzanne King: “Does the use of second person ‘you’ narration enhance the intimacy of the reading experience by drawing the reader and narrator close, or does it emphasize dissonance as it becomes clear that ‘you’ can’t include the reader? … Does the use of a figural reflector … make any difference in readers’ emotional responsiveness to situations…? Does the location of the narrator inside (or outside) the story-world effect readers’ reactions to the content?” (Vermule 249). Vermule refers to “mind reading” as the process by which we cast ourselves into the fictional realms and characters created/imagined by their authors. It is apparent that Aurelius, in writing to himself, the pronoun “you” does/did serve to distance him from himself, and that was his point, in practicing meditation through repetition in writing, reading and rereading what he wrote. His use of “you” has a different, unintended (for him) effect on readers (because he never meant to publish his meditations–that of uniting us as humans. Writing, then, can help us to meditate on Aurelius’ idea that we are “not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.” (17)

Works Cited

Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. Penguin: 2006.

Derrida, Jacques. “Of Grammatology.” Link

Vermueule, Blakey. Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? John Hopkins University Press: 2010.