Well, I’ve finished my first week of work! There’s a couple things I had trouble remembering how to do, but they are at the periphery of my work and I essentially had no trouble getting back into the swing of things. There were mixed reactions to my returning there. Everyone was happy to see me once they realized it was me, but a few of them didn’t recognize me at first, or at all. It wasn’t until some of them introduced themselves to me thinking I was new that they found out that it was the same me from last summer with slightly longer hair. (Which, by the way, both my boss and my his boss like.) It was somewhat odd how they remembered me. One remembered me as the boy who drew sketches in the lunchroom. I would have hoped that they would remember me as the quick, conscientious temp worker in put-away. I guess that’s a little too much to ask of people who weren’t in my department.
I’ve finished Plato’s Apology, which of course didn’t take too long. I’m now working on Plato’s Republic. Allan Bloom wrote an awfully long preface for the first edition. The second edition, which I have, has a shorter preface as well as the original. When I read the preface to the second edition, which was written in 1991, I was slightly put off and figured that I would be disappointed by the translation. One of the things that Fr. Patrick Cronauer taught us in Old Testament (or was it Br. Elliot in Epistles of Saint Paul?) was that every translation is automatically an interpretation. For this reason, I tend to be skeptic of translations down by thinkers that I find too far off-center to be taken reasonably—either to the left or the right, if such distinctions can be applied to academic disciplines. For instance, I just bought a copy of Martin Buber’s I and Thou. I was incredibly excited to read it until I opened in and found that the translator had “discarded the archaic ‘thou’ in favor of the more personal ‘you.’” I was crushed. ‘Thou is completely comprehensible to respectable thinkers of the 21st century. I don’t feel at all uncomfortable reading a text full of ‘thee’s, ‘thou’s, and ‘thy’s. They make perfect sense to me. And, from my very scant knowledge of Buber, ‘thou’ probably connotes much more of Buber’s true meaning than ‘you.’ So, without making commentary on the translator whatsoever, who is a respected contemporary philosopher and a professor at an Ivy League school, I am hesitant to use that translation of I and Thou, since the translator made an obvious interpretative decision for his translation. Now, recognizing that the words of whichever monk it was are true, every translation will involve some interpretation, but I prefer to read translations in which the translator made a clear attempt to avoid as much interpretation as possible. To bring this around to my point, I was afraid that Bloom’s translation would be extremely interpretative, since, as it seemed from reading the second preface, he had a clear agenda and clear ideas to which he subscribed. However, the original preface seemed to have been composed by a completely different person. The tone of it was incredibly different. I might have supposed the translator to be barely off-center in either direction, swayed by no political motives, seeking only for the exact meaning of Plato’s words. The tone of the second preface was that such a goal was impossible—it could be attempted, but never reached. I don’t know anything about Allan Bloom except what I’ve read in his prefaces and seen of his translations of the first two books of the Republic. I have incredible respect for him as a thinker without a doubt. It would be interesting though to talk to him and find out about his progression of thinking throughout his life. I’d much rather get to meet him, talk to him, and discover how he has developed as a thinker than merely have someone label him to me as a liberal or conservative. (Allan Bloom, if you read this, shoot me an email. Next time I’m in Chicago, I’d like to get coffee with you. Your translation of the Republic is the best I’ve read yet.)
Well, my sister had her shower today. She’s getting married in July, so all the relatives and friends gathered at my aunt’s house to do whatever it is girls do at these things. Thankfully, being male, I was not forced into attendance. Anyway, the family is examining her gifts downstairs as I type and is waiting for me to join them for a good family movie night, so I’d best wrap this up. Hopefully, my next blog will be much closer to this one than this one was to my last.
|
