The Symposium: The Shelley Translation (Annotated) by Plato

Author:Plato [Plato]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy
Publisher: Lexicos Publishing
Published: 2012-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

THE CLASSICAL CULTURE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

To read the letters of Shelley 1 is to trace an amazing increase in the influence of the literatures of Greece and Rome on his character and writings. This increase can best be shown by quoting excerpts from two letters : the first, written in 1812, when, to be sure, Shelley had read his Greek and Latin authors, but with much of the disinterestedness of the immature schoolboy; and the second, written in 1821, after the literature of Greece had made a complete conquest of his soul. The first is written to William Godwin, who had so great an influence on the development of Shelley's mind; and is apropos of Godwin's plea for the classics, in a letter which he had latterly written to Shelley. "I am not sufficiently vain and dogmatical to say that now I have no doubts on the deleteriousness of classical education; but it certainly is my opinion - nor has your last letter sufficed to refute it - that the evils of acquiring Greek and Latin considerably overbalance the benefit." 2 In the second letter, written from Pisa, in 1821, to John Gisborne, he says : 3 "I read the Greek dramatists and Plato for ever." And Shelley believed that the spirit of classical literature could be obtained only in the original. In a note of Mrs. Shelley, accompanying a letter which Shelley had written to an unnamed woman, and which Mrs. Shelley had published in turn as a note to the published letter 4

I The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Roger Ingpen, London, 1909.

2 Letters, Vol. 1, p. 345.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.