Don't Bring Me Down, Bruce.

I apparently have the most fucked up ideas about Plato ever. What topsy cradle did I fall out of?

My silly, absurd, crazy ideas stem from my own backwards belief that Plato was a great writer of fiction, a (closet?) lover of Homer, and a very sad, conflicted human being. It's not completely ridiculous to believe such things: when studying any work of literature, you infer such things about the author based on cultural and historical circumstances, what comes through in the author's own words (or the translation of those words), and lastly, what is conspicuously missing from the author's own words. It's not an exact science.

The whole idea that you can better understand a work of art/literature/philosophy by understanding its artist/author is a relatively modern method. And the older an author is, the less information we have preserved about them in personal correspondence and second hand accounts, the more widely debated and ugly and desperate the scholarship becomes. There are huge pitfalls in this method--many modern scholars read distinctly modern ideas into things, for instance, the whole idea that Plato was a feminist. Or that Milton was a feminist. Or that Jesus was gay. Or any of the wacky things that were ever suggested about Shakespeare. I won't even go there. Point is, it's putting the cart before the horse.
But I am not making such claims. I am not claiming that Plato was an environmentalist or that he started the Lesbian Avengers. I don't think I have suggested anything weird merely by suggesting that Plato was a talented individual with noted artistic sensibilities. Crickets, I mean, stranger claims have been made by so-called experts in the field.

Clearly, Plato had a flair for the dramatic. This fact is glaringly obvious. How often did he quote Homer?
But it is not merely his knowledge of poets and poetry that makes him talented--I mean, look at Aristotle, for example. He certainly had a lot of knowledge about contemporary poetry and comedy and drama, and I think I heard somewhere that he actually wrote poetry, but it was terrible. He could identify it, quantify it, label it, pull it to pieces, but he couldn't capture it. Although, I don't think it was Aristotle's purpose to inject any such thing into his work.
Then there is the case of Xenophon, who also wrote dialogues with Socrates as the main character. I think I will just quote the translator here: "Plato is eloquent and often, in a wry, ironical fashion, extremely funny; he is also highly interesting philosophically. Xenophon lacks these qualities." Truly, I just started reading Xenophon's Defence, and it is just about as interesting as a court clerk reading back testimony at a trial. I have a hard time believing that is due to the translator, based on what he said about the work itself as compared to Plato's. Clearly he formed that opinion having read it in Greek.
But enough about him; comparing Plato's work with any of the other Socrates groupies who also wrote dialogues, we can safely assume that Plato's accounts were not totally historically accurate, that he embellished things, set the scene, added characters, injected his own humor and wit into the dialogue, in short, because it made for a better story. The man understood character development and narrative style. Duh.

Plato was a natural storyteller, and he favored the dialogue throughout his career because it was inherently more dramatic, it existed in real time rather than being bogged down by heavy expository writing, the style had some degree of popularity, and people would want to read it. Hell, it could even be performed.
What's even better is that it served his philosophical agenda to an astounding degree. Plato completely understood the power of poetry and drama, which is why he spoke out so vehemently against it in his Republic. But he didn't outlaw it entirely; he had guidelines for appropriate drama. In a way, he was writing the only acceptable drama for his own ideal state, leading by example. Fucking brilliant.

Obviously, Plato would never admit to being a Dramatist. Plato would never do that, because he didn't write frivolous bullshit, and he wouldn't have wanted to be put in the same category as the rest of the rubes putting on sexy plays in the market square. And all that stuff about art being an imitation of an imitation of an imitation, well, I'll get into that at a later time, once I get the feeling in my fingers back, because that will add to the already enormous length of this post. Whatever Plato considered himself, whatever his silly pride demanded, whatever came along with his "philosophy-is-the-best-thing-ever" crusade, the motherfucker wrote damn good historical fiction. I'm just calling a spade a spade.

It is unfortunate that until I learn Ancient Greek, my understanding of Plato will always be twice removed. I don't profess to be an expert on Plato, having never read him in his own language. That is the responsibility of higher, more learned people than little insignificant me. But I do know a good story when I read one. And Plato spins a damn good tale. How can that even possibly be denied? How could anyone not be moved by The Phaedo? What about the crazy dialogue-within-a-dialogue of the Symposium? These stories--the main elements, the skeletal concepts--never change from translation to translation. The story remains the same. I could read every translation of the Republic (and I pretty much have) and still come out of it with the very same general ideas. But I have realized that a translation is only as good as the person who translates it. I don't want the voice of the translator to be so overpowering that it shadows Plato's voice, or all of the voices of the individual characters. If every line of dialogue sounds like it's the same person speaking, I would say that it's a problem. But apparently, I am the only one who thinks so. If the translator gives no consideration to those factors--or any factors that are beyond mere philosophy and literalness--then that is reflected in the work as a whole.

Am I really foolish to think that these sentiments could be as important to the work itself as the words themselves?
Is it really a crime against humanity to think that someone who undertakes the arduous and complicated task of translating such a work would strive to preserve the subtlety and mastery of craft that was so wonderful, and so obviously present? Because, Chris was right--that is the joy of the experience. What's left is just the experience. Philosophy can be comprehensible and aesthetically pleasing. To deny one of those things is to deny that aspect of Plato, and I think it does a disservice to his work. It has nothing to do with literalism--that is an entirely different kettle of fish. A big, smelly, rotten kettle of fish. Why choose to translate anything inherently dramatic if you are going to kill all of those qualities that make it so?

These are not lofty philosophical assertions. They are my own kooky misinformed assumptions and I'm entitled to them.

I am so burnt out on philosophers and academics: they analyze things to absurdity, and quibble over words. If I spent the rest of my life counting the dots in Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte, I would be no closer to understanding George Seurat, and I would have missed what was actually going on in the painting.

Somebody tell me, why is that woman walking a monkey?