The Banquet [Paperback]

Plato (Author), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0943742129 | ISBN-13: 978-0943742120 | Publication Date: March 8, 2001

Witty, sexy and radiantly beautiful, the Shelley translation of Plato's great Dialogue on Love, The Banquet (or The Symposium) is by far the best in the English language. It has been described as conveying much of the vivid life, the grace of movement, and the luminous beauty of Plato -- the poetry of a philosopher rendered by the prose of a poet. Although a masterpiece in its own right, the translation was suppressed and then bowdlerized for well over a century. In 19th century Britain, male love at the heart of the dialogue was unmentionable. The Banquet and Shelley's accompanying essay, A Discourse on the Manners of the Antient Greeks, were not published in their entirety until 1931, and then in an edition of 100 copies intended for private circulation only. For many years, the Shelley translation has been unobtainable, new or used. Pagan Press now offers a new edition, which is complete and authentic. In terms of both typography and editing, it is the most readable edition ever published.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Reviewed by William A. Percy III Shelley's translation of The Symposium (or Banquet as he calls it) was the first in English to imply that the Greek boy love, discussed therein by Plato, involved sodomy. Shelley, possibly bisexual like his friend Byron, as Lauritsen argues in a separate paper, applied his talents as one of the greatest Romantic poets to render beautifully into English what may be Plato's greatest dialogue.... Plato's great Dialogue on Love is one of the supreme masterpieces of world literature. The English translation by the great English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is the finest of all, though very few people have even heard of it.... Shelley's translation is a pleasure to read. The poetical parts are fine English prose-poetry, the humorous parts are really funny, the narration is vivid, the conversations are lifelike, and the philosophical arguments are clear and cogent. According to classical scholar Beert Verstraete, "Shelley's translation is not only very fine as a work of literature in its own right, but also captures something of what I would term the aesthetic 'eidos' (or individuality) of the original." John Lauritsen and Pagan Press are to be commended for making this complete work available, in a beautifully produced little book. --Gay & Lesbian Review, Nov.-Dec. 2001

Reviewed by Jim Herrick The renowned freethinker and poet, Shelley, translated what is usually known as Plato's Symposium at great speed in the summer of 1818, when he was 26. His translation is pellucid and remarkably readable, but was never published in his short lifetime. It was bowdlerised and suppressed during the nineteenth and early twentieth century and it is very valuable to have this edition. The work consists of a dinner at which the guests all discourse on the subject of love. The famous idea that men and women were once conjoined as four-legged, four-armed creatures but are now divided is mentioned, with the implication both that the two want to join together to procreate and that there is a legacy of androgyny in which the male contains the female and vice versa. The diners speak of love as the attempt to reach the beautiful and the good. There is a remarkable account by Alcibiades of his love for Socrates. Shelley's introduction is entitled A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancient Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love. It is remarkable as an early attempt to write about homosexuality Shelley thought of male to male love as possible if pure and sacred, but could not countenance a sexual element. Shelley's translation and introduction are of great interest. --New Humanist (London), Summer 2001

About the Author

Plato (c. 428 - 347 BC) Ancient Greek philosopher.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) English Romantic poet.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Pagan Pr (March 8, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0943742129
• ISBN-13: 978-0943742120
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,049,896 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The five stars are for Shelley, September 17, 2001

By 

Laon (moon-lit Surry Hills) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Banquet (Paperback)

This book contains three things. Shelley's translation of Plato's dialogue _The Banquet_ (or _Symposium_), the first and still the greatest English version; Shelley's courageously anti-homophobic essay _A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancient Athenians Relative to the Subject of Love_; and an introduction by editor John Lauritsen. The five stars are for Shelley.

The _Symposium_ presents a group of Athenian aristocrats who share privilege, contempt for democracy and the leisure needed for philosophy. After one banquet, the slaves gone, they compete to make the best speech in praise of love. The most memorable speeches are by Aristophanes, Socrates and Alcibiades.

Aristophanes creates a comic myth in which men and women were once joined, sharing a body and a soul (and, each androgynous creature having four legs and four arms, getting about by tumbling). The gods became jealous of these creatures' happiness and split them up, creating the two sexes we know today. But men and women stayed together, each with the partner with whom they had shared a soul. So Zeus scattered them, forcing the male and female soulmates apart. And still men and women search amongst each other, looking for that one perfect soulmate.

Socrates' speech concerns love between men and boys, arguing that in their highest forms these loves have no sexual element. Alcibiades arrives late and drunk, and refuses to speak in praise of anything but Socrates himself. The party then breaks up.

The _Symposium_ is Plato's most theatrical dialogue, with vivid characterisation, deft comic touches and soaring poetic language. Shelley was also fascinated by Alcibiades' anecdote about Socrates standing lost in thought, oblivious to sun, cold, thirst or pain, motionless for three days. Shelley's translation is literally accurate (despite some minor errors) but also accurate in the higher sense of being a brilliantly poetic rendering of a brilliantly poetic work. Shelley called Plato's original "radiant", lamenting that his own words were a "gray veil" over the brightness of the original. But his modesty was unwarranted: his is one of the great English prose translations: fresh, clear and indeed radiant.

Shelley's _Ancient Athenians_ essay is just as remarkable. It attempts to explain how [some] ancient Athenians could have thought love between men, including sexual love, was "higher" than heterosexual love. In doing so he presented a pioneering case against homophobia. The courage of Shelley's stance in his 1818 essay, as in so many things, is simply astonishing.

Shelley's argument was that homosexuality flourished in
ancient Athens, and was considered nobler than heterosexual relations, because of the suppression of women. Athenian society didn't educate girls or women, and excluded them from the city's intellectual, artistic and political life. Therefore, Shelley argued, it was harder for male-female relationships to be equal partnerships, or to include the life of the mind, or indeed much beyond the housekeeping mundane or the purely sexual. Though he argued against condemning homosexuality he was also, as a proto-feminist, arguing that the social conditions that (he thought) foster homosexuality are unjust and undesirable.

Lauritsen's introduction misreads both texts in claiming them as gay classics. Plato's text has Socrates promote intergenerational same-sex relationships, though ideally without sexual practice or the body. Alcibiades' speech is homoerotic in its praise of Socrates, but crucial to that praise is that Socrates is celibate, even when tempted by the beautiful Alcibiades himself. Later, Plato will withdraw this limited tolerance, banning homosexuals from his "ideal" republic. As Karl Popper observed, Plato was a sign on the road that led to Fascism, Nazism, Communism. The _Symposium_ is a treasure of world literature, but too problematic a text simply to be celebrated as a gay classic.

Shelley's essay is also classic but not "gay". (Setting aside the fact that "gay" places someone within a culture that didn't exist in Shelley's lifetime.) Shelley argued that homosexual relationships can be loving and noble, and should not be condemned unless there is brutality or other things that would be equally undesirable in a heterosexual relationship. But he argues as a sympathetic outsider (with bisexual male friends), who also wrote essays defending the political rights of Ireland, deists and Catholics, without being Irish, or a deist or Catholic.

Lauritsen arguments for claiming Shelley as "gay" are astonishingly shonky. One, amazingly, is that Shelley was good-looking. But ... what about good-looking heterosexuals? Or Shelley's facial boils? More Lauritsen "evidence" is that Shelley stood naked when Trelawney first met him. But in public school culture then as now it was "manly"; not to fuss about being naked in front of other men; also, Shelley had been bathing, and he'd expected to pass women on the beach but didn't know Trelawney was there. Lauritsen mentions missing diary pages to suggest a cover-up. But he should know that the diary in question is Claire Claremont's and surrounding evidence indicates that the missing pages concern a pregnancy, an entirely heterosexual scandal. And Lauritsen says, meaningfully, that Shelley kissed friends at school, but should surely know that in that less emotionally constrained age men kissed to indicate friendship, not trouser turbulence. And so on.

Instead, Shelley was something more radical. Fascinated by androgyny, he asserted the right to enact masculinity as it suited him; ridin', shootin' and boatin' with Byron and Trelawney, and gentle and "womanly" with women and some male friends. Shelley unhitched the link, as Lauritsen does not, between gender performance and sexual orientation, in that sense being an ancestor of more fluid current thinking on sexuality. The idea that a man who is prepared to drop the male "armour" is necessarily homosexual is a 19th century conservative idea: it's ironic that some gay activists later took it up.

But despite reservations on Lauritsen's claims, he deserves our thanks for making Shelley's two magnificent tests available again. Shelley might be bemused to find himself claimed as gay, but he'd be pleased to find his works still enlisted in the struggle against bigotry and in the cause of love.

Cheers!

Laon