{"id":2122,"date":"2018-07-17T08:30:40","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T08:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2122"},"modified":"2018-07-17T08:30:40","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T08:30:40","slug":"on-this-day-in-1818-17-july-percy-bysshe-shelley-translates-platos-symposium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2122","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1818: 17 July, Percy Bysshe Shelley translates Plato’s\u00a0Symposium"},"content":{"rendered":"

We continue to celebrate the 200th anniversary of literary and historical events in the Romantic period with the BARS ‘On This Day’ blog series. Following a post by\u00a0Alan Weinberg in March on Shelley’s arrival in Italy in 1818<\/a>, we now present this commentary by Amanda Blake Davis<\/a> on the poet’s translation of the\u00a0Symposium, a task that he undertook during\u00a0his stay in\u00a0Bagni di Lucca, Tuscany.<\/em><\/p>\n

On This Day in 1818: 17 July, Percy Bysshe Shelley translates Plato’s\u00a0Symposium<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Amanda Blake Davis (University of Sheffield)<\/p>\n

This summer marks the bicentenary of Percy Bysshe Shelley\u2019s translation of Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em> into English, an exercise of remarkable speed that was conducted over ten days in the summer of 1818.\u00a0 For James A. Notopoulos, \u2018[t]he translation of the Symposium <\/em>was one of the most important things in Shelley\u2019s poetic life. \u00a0It is valuable not only in itself but also for its influence on Shelley\u2019s subsequent poetry\u2019.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 In light of this comment, I would like to briefly consider the history of the translation\u2019s composition and its impact upon Shelley\u2019s poetic thought.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u2018The Symposium\u2019, Pietro Testa (1648)<\/p><\/div>\n

Shelley began translating the Symposium<\/em> on the 7th<\/sup> of July and continued on a daily basis until its completion on the 17th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Shelley then made corrections from the 19th<\/sup> and finished these on the 20th<\/sup> when Mary Shelley took up the task of transcribing that lasted until the 6th<\/sup> of August.<\/p>\n

The act of translation enabled Shelley to deeply consider the moral and imaginative properties of love and allowed him to bring the poeticisms of Plato\u2019s language to life in the English language.\u00a0 Stephanie Nelson observes that both the speed of the translation and Shelley\u2019s intentional refusal to consult a Greek lexicon \u2018preserve the flow of the dialogue\u2019, and Michael O\u2019Neill states that Shelley\u2019s work is \u2018closer in spirit to Plato than virtually any other translation\u2019.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Shelley\u2019s assertion in A Defence of Poetry<\/em> that \u2018Plato was essentially a poet\u2019 is anticipated by his prefatory fragment to his translation, wherein he describes how the philosopher expresses \u2018the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, melted by the splendour and harmony of his periods into one irresistible stream of musical impressions\u2019.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 In her preface to Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments<\/em>, Mary Shelley describes her late husband\u2019s translation as a \u2018noble piece of writing\u2026which for the first time introduces the Athenian to the English reader in a style worthy of him\u2019.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Prior to Shelley\u2019s translation, the existing English translation by Floyer Sydenham was a \u2018sanitized\u2019 and bowdlerised rendition, described by Mary Shelley as being \u2018so harsh and un-English in its style\u2019, and Nelson notes that \u2018[t]he only translations of Plato available to Shelley, aside from Ficino\u2019s Latin version, were Andre Dacier\u2019s French translation of a number of dialogues, an English translation of Dacier\u2019s selection, a French translation of the Republic<\/em>, and Thomas Taylor\u2019s Neoplatonic completion of Floyer Sydenham\u2019s Collected Dialogues<\/em>, first published in 1804\u2019.[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 However, this period of translation was not the poet\u2019s first encounter with the Symposium<\/em>.\u00a0 In her journal, Mary records that Shelley read the Symposium<\/em> one year prior to his translation, in the summer of 1817.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Even earlier, Thomas Jefferson Hogg recalls that the two studied French and Latin translations of Plato\u2019s works, including passages from the Symposium<\/em>, while at Oxford in 1810.[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 These studies were purely recreational, as the works of Plato were not added to the curriculum at Oxford until 1847.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 While it was the Phaedo<\/em> that captivated the young Shelley at Oxford,[9]<\/a> the Symposium<\/em> seems to have had the most lasting effect on the poet\u2019s mind, as it was this text that he returned to repeatedly throughout his career.<\/p>\n

Shelley\u2019s explained his reasoning for translating Plato\u2019s dialogue on love in 1818: it was to allay \u2018the despair of producing any thing original\u2019.[10]<\/a>\u00a0 Rather than simply serving as a distraction from creative despondency, however, the translation in both content and purpose also reveals the significance of love to Shelley\u2019s poetic thought.\u00a0 In 1821, Shelley defines love as<\/p>\n

\u2026a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action or person, not our own.\u00a0 A man to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.<\/p>\n

(A Defence of Poetry<\/em>, 682)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shelley\u2019s definition of love is deeply indebted to his translation of Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em> and particularly to the speech of the prophetess Diotima who, echoing Shelley\u2019s Hymn<\/em> of 1816, discusses \u2018intellectual beauty\u2019 and asserts that \u2018the beauty which is in souls [is] more excellent than that which is in form\u2019,[11]<\/a> thereby emphasising love as a mental act.\u00a0 Michael O\u2019Neill notes that \u2018\u201cintellectual\u201d is not present in the Greek, nor in the Latin gloss of Ficino at the foot of Shelley\u2019s Bipont edition of the Symposium<\/em> and often used by him when he was gravelled by the Greek\u2019, positing that \u2018[t]he adjective\u2019s insertion suggests that Shelley found in Plato a subject-rhyme with his own intuitions in his earlier Hymn to Intellectual Beauty<\/em>\u2019.[12]<\/a>\u00a0 Shelley\u2019s insertion of the phrase into his translation reveals his own \u2018identification\u2026with the beautiful which exists in thought, action or person, not our own\u2019.\u00a0 Shelley seems to feel that Plato\u2019s emphasis on the beauty of the soul reflects his own belief in love as a meeting of minds and not simply of bodies.\u00a0 This is further emphasised in the fragment of the essay that was to accompany the translation, wherein<\/p>\n

\u2026the gratification of the senses is no longer all that is sought in sexual connexion.\u00a0 It soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love, which is rather the universal thirst for a communion not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative, and sensitive\u2026<\/p>\n

(\u2018Essay on the Literature, the Arts and the Manners of the Athenians\u2019, p. 57)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the 10th<\/sup> of July, while engaged in the act of translation, Shelley wrote to the Gisbornes and declared that he hoped \u2018to give Mary some idea of the manners & feelings of the Athenians\u2014so different on many subjects from that of any other community that ever existed\u2019.[13]<\/a>\u00a0 The translation is a gift of love and an encouragement for Mary to \u2018put [herself] in the place of another and of many others\u2019 by means of her imaginative recognition of the \u2018inmost state of manners & opinions among the antient Greeks\u2019.[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Mary reciprocates this act of love in writing to Maria Gisborne that: \u2018It is true that in many particulars [the Symposium<\/em>] shocks our present manners, but no one can be a reader of the works of antiquity unless they can transport themselves from these to other times and judge not by our but by their morality\u2019.[15]<\/a>\u00a0 Here, Mary\u2019s defence of the ancient Greeks and her recommendation for mental and moral transportation clearly anticipate Shelley\u2019s definition of love in the Defence<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Shelley\u2019s translation, edited and published by Mary as The Banquet<\/em> nearly twenty years after his death, anticipated the English revival of interest in Plato\u2019s life and philosophy.\u00a0 Shelley\u2019s engagement with the Symposium <\/em>extends far beyond the summer of 1818, possibly beginning during his time at Eton and certainly remaining at the forefront of his thought up until his accidental death in 1822.\u00a0 Poignantly, the last words Shelley wrote to Mary are: \u2018I have found the translation of the Symposium<\/em>\u2019.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Shelley\u2019s last letter to Mary.\u00a0 Pisa, July 1822 Shelley c. 1, fol. 505v Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (via Shelley’s Ghost<\/a>).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> James A. Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1949), p. 57.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Stephanie Nelson, \u2018Shelley and Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em>: The Poet\u2019s Revenge\u2019, International Journal of the Classical Tradition<\/em>, 14.1\/2 (2007), p. 104; Michael O\u2019Neill, \u2018Emulating Plato: Shelley as Translator and Prose Poet\u2019 in The Unfamiliar Shelley<\/em> ed. by Timothy Webb and Alan Weinberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 243.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry<\/em> in The Major Works<\/em>, ed. by Zachary Leader and Michael O\u2019Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 679; Percy Bysshe Shelley, \u2018Preface to the Banquet<\/em> of Plato\u2019 in The Platonism of Shelley<\/em>, p. 402.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Mary Shelley, ed., Percy Bysshe Shelley, Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, <\/em>vol. 1 (London: Edward Moxon, 1852), preface vii.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Steven Bruhm, \u2018Reforming Byron\u2019s Narcissism\u2019, Lessons of Romanticism: A Critical Companion<\/em>, ed. by Thomas Pfau and Robert F. Gleckner (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1998), p. 432; Mary Shelley, Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, <\/em>vol. 1, preface viii; Nelson, p. 102.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Mary\u2019s journal entry for 13 August 1817 reads: ‘Shelley writes\u2014reads Plato’s Convivium’.\u00a0 The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844<\/em>.\u00a0 2 vols., ed. by Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott Kilvert (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), vol. 1, p. 178.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/em> (London: George Routledge & Sons Limited, 1906), p. 72.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Notopoulos, p. 31.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/em> (London: George Routledge & Sons Limited, 1906), p. 72.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/em>, ed. by Frederick L. Jones, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), vol. 2, p. 22.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Notopoulos, pp. 447 and 448.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> O\u2019Neill, p. 242.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> PBS Letters II<\/em>, p. 20.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> PBS Letters II<\/em>, p. 22.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Shelley, Mary, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley<\/em>, ed. by Betty T. Bennett, 3 vols (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980-1988), vol. I, p. 77.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> \u2018Shelley\u2019s first introduction to Plato was through James Lind\u2026who befriended Shelley at Eton. \u00a0Thomas Medwin, who took an interest in Shelley\u2019s Platonism, mentions Shelley\u2019s statement that he read the Symposium <\/em>with Dr. Lind\u2019, Notopoulos, p. 30; PBS Letters II<\/em>, p. 444.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We continue to celebrate the 200th anniversary of literary and historical events in the Romantic period with the BARS ‘On This Day’ blog series. Following a post by\u00a0Alan Weinberg in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2128,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions\/2128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}