Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.16

Many grains of frankincense on the same altar: one falls before, another falls after, but it makes no difference.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr Long)

I have heard a few different interpretations on the meaning of these lines, and I am hardly qualified to choose which is the most fitting. Perhaps that is one part of the appeal of the Meditations, a book written to assist the author in his own private thoughts, and which in turn can offer many different ways to assist us in ours.

I had always taken it as indicating how just as some pieces of incense may burn away more quickly, and others may burn away more slowly, so too our lives may be longer, or they may be shorter. This hardly matters, because both the incense and our lives all end in exactly the same way, crumbled into dust. Memento mori.

I was once reading this together with someone, and she read “falls” in terms of where the incense was placed on the altar, in front or in back. This, she suggested, could mean that all the circumstances of position in our lives really won’t make a difference. She then used an image she said her father was quite fond of: At the end of the game, the king and the pawn both go back into the same box.

I am hardly a Greek scholar, so I was uncertain in what ways the original could admit of either reading, but for the purposes of our personal reflections, I saw both as variations on a theme. More or less, here or there, greater or lesser, it ends up all the same.

Her comment sent me on one of my Proustian musings. I remembered a moment in college, when a memorial was held for a student who had died. People were asked to bring some sort of reminder of her life, and a table up front was filled with all sorts of photos, cards, poems, and mementos. I recall a young lady who placed a small stuffed teddy bear on the table, but as more items were added, they covered up the bear. Three times she stood up, went up to the table, and moved the bear to the front.

A friend later said he thought that was rather selfish, but the moment was impressed in my mind, because I think I understood how she felt. Where that bear was placed, front and center, right where she could see it, was perhaps helping her to make sense of something painful. It gave her some comfort at that moment. I assumed no selfishness on her part.

At the same time, it made me think in general about whether where anything was placed, or how long it was there, or how many people could see it, really made any difference in the bigger picture. I have often, for example, felt a tinge of sadness when I see a fine work of art hidden away in a corner, or when I see an ice sculpture melting, or when no one shows up at a brilliant concert, but that does not really detract anything from their beauty at all. What made any of those things worthy had nothing to do with place, time, or recognition.

And this is what happens when you let a young man dedicate himself to philosophy, and when you encourage him to read Marcel Proust.

Written in 8/2005