Plato – The Complete Works

Автор: Plato
Название книги: The Complete Works
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Философия
Страницы: 3490
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

In publishing a Second Edition (1875) of the Dialogues of Plato in English, I had to
acknowledge the assistance of several friends: of the Rev. G.G. Bradley, Master of
University College, now Dean of Westminster, who sent me some valuable remarks on
the Phaedo; of Dr. Greenhill, who had again revised a portion of the Timaeus; of Mr.
R.L. Nettleship, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, to whom I was indebted for an
excellent criticism of the Parmenides; and, above all, of the Rev. Professor Campbell of
St. Andrews, and Mr. Paravicini, late Student of Christ Church and Tutor of Balliol
College, with whom I had read over the greater part of the translation. I was also
indebted to Mr. Evelyn Abbott, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, for a complete and
accurate index.
In this, the Third Edition, I am under very great obligations to Mr. Matthew Knight, who
has not only favoured me with valuable suggestions throughout the work, but has largely
extended the Index (from 61 to 175 pages) and translated the Eryxias and Second
Alcibiades; and to Mr Frank Fletcher, of Balliol College, my Secretary. I am also
considerably indebted to Mr. J.W. Mackail, late Fellow of Balliol College, who read over
the Republic in the Second Edition and noted several inaccuracies.
In both editions the Introductions to the Dialogues have been enlarged, and essays on
subjects having an affinity to the Platonic Dialogues have been introduced into several of
them. The analyses have been corrected, and innumerable alterations have been made
in the Text. There have been added also, in the Third Edition, headings to the pages and
a marginal analysis to the text of each dialogue.
At the end of a long task, the translator may without impropriety point out the
difficulties which he has had to encounter. These have been far greater than he would
have anticipated; nor is he at all sanguine that he has succeeded in overcoming them.
Experience has made him feel that a translation, like a picture, is dependent for its effect
on very minute touches; and that it is a work of infinite pains, to be returned to in many
moods and viewed in different lights.
I. An English translation ought to be idiomatic and interesting, not only to the scholar,
but to the unlearned reader. Its object should not simply be to render the words of one language into the words of another or to preserve the construction and order of the
original;—this is the ambition of a schoolboy, who wishes to show that he has made a
good use of his Dictionary and Grammar; but is quite unworthy of the translator, who
seeks to produce on his reader an impression similar or nearly similar to that produced
by the original. To him the feeling should be more important than the exact word. He
should remember Dryden’s quaint admonition not to ‘lacquey by the side of his author,
but to mount up behind him.’ (Dedication to the Aeneis.) He must carry in his mind a
comprehensive view of the whole work, of what has preceded and of what is to follow,—
as well as of the meaning of particular passages. His version should be based, in the first
instance, on an intimate knowledge of the text; but the precise order and arrangement of
the words may be left to fade out of sight, when the translation begins to take shape. He
must form a general idea of the two languages, and reduce the one to the terms of the
other. His work should be rhythmical and varied, the right admixture of words and
syllables, and even of letters, should be carefully attended to; above all, it should be
equable in style. There must also be quantity, which is necessary in prose as well as in
verse: clauses, sentences, paragraphs, must be in due proportion. Metre and even rhyme
may be rarely admitted; though neither is a legitimate element of prose writing, they
may help to lighten a cumbrous expression (Symp.). The translation should retain as far
as possible the characteristic qualities of the ancient writer—his freedom, grace,
simplicity, stateliness, weight, precision; or the best part of him will be lost to the
English reader. It should read as an original work, and should also be the most faithful
transcript which can be made of the language from which the translation is taken,
consistently with the first requirement of all, that it be English. Further, the translation
being English, it should also be perfectly intelligible in itself without reference to the
Greek, the English being really the more lucid and exact of the two languages. In some
respects it may be maintained that ordinary English writing, such as the newspaper
article, is superior to Plato: at any rate it is couched in language which is very rarely
obscure. On the other hand, the greatest writers of Greece, Thucydides, Plato,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Demosthenes, are generally those which are found to be
most difficult and to diverge most widely from the English idiom. The translator will
often have to convert the more abstract Greek into the more concrete English, or vice
versa, and he ought not to force upon one language the character of another. In some
cases, where the order is confused, the expression feeble, the emphasis misplaced, or the
sense somewhat faulty, he will not strive in his rendering to reproduce these characteristics, but will re-write the passage as his author would have written it at first,
had he not been ‘nodding’; and he will not hesitate to supply anything which, owing to
the genius of the language or some accident of composition, is omitted in the Greek, but
is necessary to make the English clear and consecutive.
It is difficult to harmonize all these conflicting elements. In a translation of Plato what
may be termed the interests of the Greek and English are often at war with one another.
In framing the English sentence we are insensibly diverted from the exact meaning of
the Greek; when we return to the Greek we are apt to cramp and overlay the English. We
substitute, we compromise, we give and take, we add a little here and leave out a little
there. The translator may sometimes be allowed to sacrifice minute accuracy for the
sake of clearness and sense. But he is not therefore at liberty to omit words and turns of
expression which the English language is quite capable of supplying. He must be patient
and self-controlled; he must not be easily run away with. Let him never allow the
attraction of a favourite expression, or a sonorous cadence, to overpower his better
judgment, or think much of an ornament which is out of keeping with the general
character of his work. He must ever be casting his eyes upwards from the copy to the
original, and down again from the original to the copy (Rep.). His calling is not held in
much honour by the world of scholars; yet he himself may be excused for thinking it a
kind of glory to have lived so many years in the companionship of one of the greatest of
human intelligences, and in some degree, more perhaps than others, to have had the
privilege of understanding him (Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Lectures: Disc. xv.).
There are fundamental differences in Greek and English, of which some may be
managed while others remain intractable. (1). The structure of the Greek language is
partly adversative and alternative, and partly inferential; that is to say, the members of a
sentence are either opposed to one another, or one of them expresses the cause or effect
or condition or reason of another. The two tendencies may be called the horizontal and
perpendicular lines of the language; and the opposition or inference is often much more
one of words than of ideas. But modern languages have rubbed off this adversative and
inferential form: they have fewer links of connection, there is less mortar in the
interstices, and they are content to place sentences side by side, leaving their relation to
one another to be gathered from their position or from the context. The difficulty of
preserving the effect of the Greek is increased by the want of adversative and inferential particles in English, and by the nice sense of tautology which characterizes all modern
languages. We cannot have two ‘buts’ or two ‘fors’ in the same sentence where the Greek
repeats (Greek). There is a similar want of particles expressing the various gradations of
objective and subjective thought—(Greek) and the like, which are so thickly scattered
over the Greek page. Further, we can only realize to a very imperfect degree the common
distinction between (Greek), and the combination of the two suggests a subtle shade of
negation which cannot be expressed in English. And while English is more dependent
than Greek upon the apposition of clauses and sentences, yet there is a difficulty in
using this form of construction owing to the want of case endings. For the same reason
there cannot be an equal variety in the order of words or an equal nicety of emphasis in
English as in Greek.
(2) The formation of the sentence and of the paragraph greatly differs in Greek and
English. The lines by which they are divided are generally much more marked in
modern languages than in ancient. Both sentences and paragraphs are more precise and
definite—they do not run into one another. They are also more regularly developed from
within. The sentence marks another step in an argument or a narrative or a statement;
in reading a paragraph we silently turn over the page and arrive at some new view or
aspect of the subject. Whereas in Plato we are not always certain where a sentence
begins and ends; and paragraphs are few and far between. The language is distributed in
a different way, and less articulated than in English. For it was long before the true use
of the period was attained by the classical writers both in poetry or prose; it was (Greek).
The balance of sentences and the introduction of paragraphs at suitable intervals must
not be neglected if the harmony of the English language is to be preserved. And still a
caution has to be added on the other side, that we must avoid giving it a numerical or
mechanical character.
(3) This, however, is not one of the greatest difficulties of the translator; much greater is
that which arises from the restriction of the use of the genders. Men and women in
English are masculine and feminine, and there is a similar distinction of sex in the
words denoting animals; but all things else, whether outward objects or abstract ideas,
are relegated to the class of neuters. Hardly in some flight of poetry do we ever endue
any of them with the characteristics of a sentient being, and then only by speaking of
them in the feminine gender. The virtues may be pictured in female forms, but they are not so described in language; a ship is humorously supposed to be the sailor’s bride;
more doubtful are the personifications of church and country as females. Now the
genius of the Greek language is the opposite of this. The same tendency to
personification which is seen in the Greek mythology is common also in the language;
and genders are attributed to things as well as persons according to their various
degrees of strength and weakness; or from fanciful resemblances to the male or female
form, or some analogy too subtle to be discovered. When the gender of any object was
once fixed, a similar gender was naturally assigned to similar objects, or to words of
similar formation. This use of genders in the denotation of objects or ideas not only
affects the words to which genders are attributed, but the words with which they are
construed or connected, and passes into the general character of the style. Hence arises
a difficulty in translating Greek into English which cannot altogether be overcome. Shall
we speak of the soul and its qualities, of virtue, power, wisdom, and the like, as feminine
or neuter? The usage of the English language does not admit of the former, and yet the
life and beauty of the style are impaired by the latter. Often the translator will have
recourse to the repetition of the word, or to the ambiguous ‘they,’ ‘their,’ etc.; for fear of
spoiling the effect of the sentence by introducing ‘it.’ Collective nouns in Greek and
English create a similar but lesser awkwardness.
(4) To use of relation is far more extended in Greek than in English. Partly the greater
variety of genders and cases makes the connexion of relative and antecedent less
ambiguous: partly also the greater number of demonstrative and relative pronouns, and
the use of the article, make the correlation of ideas simpler and more natural. The Greek
appears to have had an ear or intelligence for a long and complicated sentence which is
rarely to be found in modern nations; and in order to bring the Greek down to the level
of the modern, we must break up the long sentence into two or more short ones. Neither
is the same precision required in Greek as in Latin or English, nor in earlier Greek as in
later; there was nothing shocking to the contemporary of Thucydides and Plato in
anacolutha and repetitions. In such cases the genius of the English language requires
that the translation should be more intelligible than the Greek. The want of more
distinctions between the demonstrative pronouns is also greatly felt. Two genitives
dependent on one another, unless familiarised by idiom, have an awkward effect in
English. Frequently the noun has to take the place of the pronoun. ‘This’ and ‘that’ are
found repeating themselves to weariness in the rough draft of a translation. As in the previous case, while the feeling of the modern language is more opposed to tautology,
there is also a greater difficulty in avoiding it.
(5) Though no precise rule can be laid down about the repetition of words, there seems
to be a kind of impertinence in presenting to the reader the same thought in the same
words, repeated twice over in the same passage without any new aspect or modification
of it. And the evasion of tautology—that is, the substitution of one word of precisely the
same meaning for another—is resented by us equally with the repetition of words. Yet
on the other hand the least difference of meaning or the least change of form from a
substantive to an adjective, or from a participle to a verb, will often remedy the
unpleasant effect. Rarely and only for the sake of emphasis or clearness can we allow an
important word to be used twice over in two successive sentences or even in the same
paragraph. The particles and pronouns, as they are of most frequent occurrence, are also
the most troublesome. Strictly speaking, except a few of the commonest of them, ‘and,’
‘the,’ etc., they ought not to occur twice in the same sentence. But the Greek has no such
precise rules; and hence any literal translation of a Greek author is full of tautology. The
tendency of modern languages is to become more correct as well as more perspicuous
than ancient. And, therefore, while the English translator is limited in the power of
expressing relation or connexion, by the law of his own language increased precision
and also increased clearness are required of him. The familiar use of logic, and the
progress of science, have in these two respects raised the standard. But modern
languages, while they have become more exacting in their demands, are in many ways
not so well furnished with powers of expression as the ancient classical ones.