Bosphorus

The editor of Stephen MacKenna’s translation of Plotinus uses my title phrase to characterize that experience of reading Plotinus captured better in MacKenna’s than in any other translation. I’ve had Plotinus much on my mind lately. I fell hard for Plotinus as a college freshman. I spent a lot of time reading the Enneads, a lot of time waiting for great doors to be flung open suddenly. I later took a class on Plotinus and Augustine, a class that cemented Plotinus into my philosophical and religious thinking. Several years later, I wrote my dissertation on Plotinus’ philosophical psychology. Teaching ancient philosophy regularly kept the Enneads fresh. But then my teaching duties changed. I began to teach the contemporary (Kant to Positivism) course and began my podvig with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Plotinus was never forgotten but his was not the voice I heard loudest in my head. But then, still later, I began to think hard about Emerson and found myself hearing Plotinus’ voice more loudly again, often chanting in prophetic union with Emerson’s. My dusty copy of MacKenna I dusted; I began to read it anew. And now comes now: suddenly, in embracing Orthodoxy, I find myself once more in the Enneads. Platonism, Neoplatonism and Christian Platonism whirl around me. —I have lately recalled the humorously haunting image MacKenna shares in his journal. He writes that he dreamt of Plotinus—MacKenna called him “Plotty”: “I dreamt Plotty was chasing me through Hell, and him a-roarin’.” I don’t know that Plotinus has been chasing me through Hell; I feel he’s chasing me up an ascending, not down a descending path. But I do feel that he’s a-roarin’.

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