Symposium Of Plato: Shelley Translation ebook

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a close friend of eminent writers and poets including: Lord Byron, who wrote She Walks in Beauty and Don Juan ; Thomas Love Peacock, who wrote an essay dedicated to Shelley Memoirs of Shelley ; Leigh Hunt, who wrote the poem Story of Rimini ; and Mary Shelley (his wife), who was the author of Frankenstein.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a major English poet. He is recognized as one of the greatest romantic poets in history. Percy Bysshe Shelley gained fame after his death. He is also the husband of Mary Shelley, who is the author of Frankenstein

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a major English poet. He is also the husband of Mary Shelley, who is the author of Frankenstein. His most notable poems are Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4, 1972. He was born near Sussex. He was the eldest son of Timothy Shelley and Elizabeth Pitford. He had four younger sisters and a brother.

I feel secure that the lovers of Shelley’s poetry (who know how, more than any poet of the present day, every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank me: I consecrate this volume to them.

The life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley exemplify English Romanticism in both its extremes of joyous ecstasy and brooding despair. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Chronicle, Alamy Stock Photo. The life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley exemplify English Romanticism in both its extremes of joyous ecstasy and brooding despair.

Shelley was the heir to rich estates acquired by his grandfather, Bysshe (pronounced. That summer, at Bagni di Lucca, Shelley translated Plato’s Symposium and wrote his own essay On Love. He also completed a modest poem entitled Rosalind and Helen, in which he imagines his destiny in the poet-reformer Lionel, who-imprisoned for radical activity-dies young after his release. Thus far, Shelley’s literary career had been politically oriented.

Items related to Symposium Of Plato: Shelley Translation. In the summer of 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley pulled himself away from a flurry of other projects to devote himself to translating Plato's Symposium. Shelley, Percy Bysshe Symposium Of Plato: Shelley Translation. ISBN 13: 9781587318016. Besides being one of the very great lyric poets of Romanticism, Shelley was an accomplished Hellenist, and had a natural sympathy for Plato's way of seeing the world. The result of his labor was a translation of Plato's principal work on love that is, in both clarity and felicity of expression, unmatched by any contemporary translation.

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In the summer of 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley pulled himself away from a flurry of other projects to devote himself to translating Plato's Symposium. Besides being one of the very great lyric poets of Romanticism, Shelley was an accomplished Hellenist, and had a natural sympathy for Plato's way of seeing the world. The result of his labor was a translation of Plato's principal work on love that is, in both clarity and felicity of expression, unmatched by any contemporary translation.

Much of what the dialogue offers to today's reader - namely, its invitation to see erotic experience as the privileged locus of our contact with the sacred and the divine - is lost in translation by failures of tone more than by inaccuracies or simple infelicities. The elevation and sophistication of Shelley's prose makes his translation a much better English vehicle for Plato's writing than the rather chatty and colloquial translations current today. Plato's speeches on love need an English idiom in which myth is at home, and in which humor rises to urbanity rather than descending to mere wit and joke. With Shelley, we get a translation of a great literary masterpiece by a writer who is himself a literary master, and his mastery is of exactly the type required by Plato's text.

This translation came at the height of Shelley's powers, mirroring in language and conception some of his finest works, and so is itself a precious document in the history of Romanticism, for which the reappropriation of Plato is second in importance only to the massive influence of Shakespeare. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her husband's literary executor, upon publication of (a somewhat expurgated version of) the dialogue, boasted that "Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and the ideal than in the special and the tangible. This did not result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made Plato his study. He then translated his Symposium and Ion; and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley." If this goes too far, it goes at least in the right direction.

Ballagar

In this review I will compare 5 translations of Plato's Symposium:
1. Alexander Nehamas & Paul Woodruff (Hackett Pub Co, 1989).
2. Benardete (University of Chicago Press, 2001).
3. R.E. Allen (Yale University Press, 1993).
4. Shelley's Translation (St Augustine Press, 2002)
5. Sharon (Focus Publishing/R.Pullins Co, 1997)

I have given all translations 5 stars for their own unique perspectives. Each of these editions has its own strengths and weaknesses, and because of this, none of this edition is complete in itself. Inevitably, if you are serious in undertaking this work, you need to pick up more than one edition. I will give a recommendation on which one to use, at the end of this review.

Symposium consists of a series of speeches on love (Eros), culminating in Socrates' and then Alcibiades'. What I am looking for is, first, ease of understanding the central concept of the book, this is obtained through different types of translations. My bias is toward a translation that is fluid, natural, and conveys the concept in a straight forward way. Second, I am also looking for helpful insights and philosophical explanations of some key thoughts. You get this from the quality of commentary/notes as part of the book.

Both Sharon's and Nehamas' editions are similar in their lucid, straightforward, and current translations. I find that these 2 editions to be the best and easiest in understanding the text. On the translation side, I give these 5 stars. However, the commentaries in both editions are basic, and unsatisfying in my mind. For this, I give 4 stars.

Benardete's edition has a superb commentaries both written by him and another (which is the gem here) written by Allan Bloom. You may or may not like Bloom's style, but he does give you a lot of background especially in ancient Greek pederasty culture, and valuable insights in each of the speeches. I give this a 5 star. I will recommend buying this book just for those 2 commentaries. On the translation itself, however, I am not a fan of Benardete's style. I have commented this in other reviews for his other translations, especially the "Sophist". For some reason, I find it more complex, long winded, and harder to understand. For this I give this edition translation 4 stars only.

Allen's edition is superb for both translation and commentaries; this is a 5 star book for me.

Finally, on Shelley's translation: this is a unique edition for a couple of reasons. It is a translation of a masterpiece work, by a master in literature himself, Percy Shelley. So, you are reading not only Plato's works, but also a work by one of the most influential literary figure in the English world. Secondly, there is an extensive commentary by David O'Connor, not only on the Symposium, but also on Shelley's process and motivation of doing the translation.

Further note on this edition: O'Connor has done a superb job in noting that Shelley sometimes ommitted, or translated wrongly some of the original Greek words/phrase/sentences. Thus, when you read this translation, make sure to always check the footnotes.

This is a unique perspective into Shelley's cultural sexual puritanism in translating this work, as it appears in how he avoided homosexual refences in his edition.

My final recommendation: pick up either Sharon or Nehamas' book (personally I prefer Sharon's, it is beautifully done) for the translation, and then pick up Stanley Rosen's "Plato's Symposium" for the commentary (I have a separate review for this superb book). However, if you must read 1 and only 1 book, I would stay with Allen's.

Drelajurus

excellent end notes