I love words. I love how they sound, how they feel on the tongue. I love that we speak of a well-worded phrase as "well crafted." It can imply both the tekhne (artistic element) and wit or play (craftiness) of the writer/speaker.
So I began my reading of this pieces somewhat expectant of the craft of Gorgias and the care of the translator. Kennedy says, "The translation...seeks to imitate features of [Gorgias'] style, including antitheses, assonance, a fondness for parallel phrases or clauses with an equal number of syllables, and word play."
Perhaps it is my fondness for wordcraft that predisposes me to this idea, but I don't believe (as Kennedy and some classmates indicate) that the wordplay, or Gorgias' enjoyment of it, is meant to diminish the seriousness of the subject. I think instead it is meant to give equal value to speech and myth. The famous retellings of the epic stories were often (if not always) set in verse, precisely worded and witty.
I find throughout the speech recurring references to speech, language, and words. Part of this is clearly stylistic, the speaker drawing attention to the speech (which is not an aspect of contemporary speech-making or writing). Some examples occur in #2, where Gorgias mentions "the function of a single speaker," again at #5 when he apologizes for the length of the introduction and prepares to "proceed to the intended speech," and in the much-maligned #20 where he concludes with a recap of his intent in the careful crafting of the speech.
But there are other references that I think cast some light on the idea that the wordplay is at least as serious a matter as the subject at hand.
One phrase I find most interesting is "by giving some logic to language." I have to stop here and wonder what word Gorgias used for each of these ideas--would it have been logos? He appears to have used logos throughout the speech to mean several different things. Would that, in itself, have been a form of wordplay? Unfortunately I am forced to use only the English translation and so my reading is colored by what I think he might mean.
I feel that the phrase has a double meaning, one to style and one to intent. I think the first meaning is a foreshadowing of his final statement--that the speech is a deliberate, if droll, tribute to Helen. The second, I think, is more the more direct meaning--following a prescribed form of logic and argument to make a case through the use of words.
5 comments:
I always approach translations warily, being mindful that a writer like Kennedy can allow me a skewed enlightenment of a text I'm unable to read. And at the same time he filters the original text. For example, I think a reader can get the premise of Crime and Punishment by reading an English translation, but I do not think of this as honestly reading Dostoevsky: I had to be fluent in Russian to do that.
I hope not to digress from whatever our appropriate agenda is. And I should put aside my prejudice toward translations---I'll never be able to read Greek. Still I think that being one of Jerry Shea's Style Babies has embedded a critical view of text in me.
I glossed over Dsrtrosy's Kennedy citation in which he defends his purpose, "seek[ing] to imitate features of [Gorgias'] style, including antitheses, assonance, a fondness for parallel phrases or clauses with an equal number of syllables, and word play." And now I am rethinking Kennedy's translation.
I think forcing isocolon and assonance, etc. as intellectually dangerous to the translation. I've translated enough Latin and French to know that emulating or crossing over wordplay from one language to another is an impossibility that only distances atranslation from the original. And I've cringed at enough forced rhymes in pop music and hip hop to know that avoiding a prescribed rhyme scheme in favor of unintended rhyme and random assonance is a fresher choice.
To consider Kennedy's admission of wordplay as an echo of Gorgias causes me to think more of Kennedy's writing and less of Gorgias. By trying to emulate the authorial intent of Gorgias, Kennedy only forces his own hand and the Encomium further away from Gorgias. And now I do not think that I am reading Gorgias so much as I am reading Kennedy.
Fun pushing through it in class today. I felt as though this post didn't even touch the surface of what I was reading/thinking, but had to cut it off at some point. Thanks for your thoughts! --Sarah--
In class we tried to define the Encomium in terms of its seriousness or absurdity, and, like Sarah, I don't think that split gets it quite right. It's clear that Gorgias is "serious" about his craft: as someone astutely observed in class, the Prooemion is filled with big, important ideas, signalling to the listeners that the speaker is doing something he believes is important. But what, exactly, is important? I don't think it's all that important to Gorgias to "free the accused of blame" (2). It's important that he has the ability to do so. So maybe it's more appropriate to ask if Gorgias is speaking in earnest, or is he merely showing off? I think he's showing off.
We talked on Tuesday about commonplace and the possibility that Helen had become a type, a trope—the disloyal woman—in Greek society. This seems likely, as Gorgias refers to her as a "memorial of disasters" (2). Who better to defend for someone claiming virtuosity in persuasion? Gorgias takes a hard case, puts all of his considerable powers on display, wins the crowd, and says at the end that he's just playing. He's not, as it turns out, left-handed.
He is playing, in the sense that no one's fate (except maybe his own) hangs in the balance. He can fail and no one will hang. But the care that he takes in laying out his argument, in calling upon cities and armies and wisdom and virtue (1), in all the verbal cleverness he employs, shows that he clearly is not playing. The absurdity here lies in the subject, but I think Gorgias would consider the method as serious as it can be.
Rather than "merely" play, perhaps Gorgias's intent was to display the power of rhetoric to completely reverse a commonplace. When I read the Encomium, I was not at all convinced by Gorgias's argument, but then I am not his intended audience. Since part of the study of rhetoric, according to the sophists at least, is a thorough knowledge and understanding of your audience, why should it be convincing to me?
Rhetoric in Gorgias's time was mostly an oral art, as we've already acknowledged, and audiences can't dissect an oral text the way we dissect a written one. It makes me wonder (and this is addressed in a different way by Helen on Plato's Gorgias) about how Gorgias's charisma, how his performance of the piece added to its persuasiveness.
Finally, to add to the discussion about translation, I wanted to suggest that if Kennedy is a student of rhetoric himself, and not just a translator, then he is likely to have some skill in persuading his audience that his translation is accurate. But as a rhetor, he also has the responsibility to his audience to act morally, to be as honest as possible given the confines of human nature and the indefinite nature of language.
I still think this is an entertainment piece, with serious purpose. I imagine what it would be like if we had a place where people gathered to debate topics and show off rhetorical skills, say the island in the middle of the duck pond. I might expect to find the rhetors making up topics to debate, and arbitrarily taking sides: e.g. "Daffy Duck: Pure Evil or Just Misunderstood?" I think the Encomium displays some signs of being structured around a silly, popular topic serving only as the basis for serious demonstration of rhetorical skills. That the topic was chosen for its entertainment value is clearly indicated at the same point at which we learn that the piece was not improvised (last line). Yet Gorgias indicates that the speech is expected to meet certain standards (5, "exceeded time allotted"; 20, "abided by the principle), and the topic is used to demonstrate the power of speech, both in Gorgias' arguments (8) and in his style. It's a lovely little gem, and if I heard someone expound so on Daffy Duck at the duck pond, I would think the rhetor a genius. In that sense, I don't mind the translation issues. I expect to have to look at many different translations in order to grasp various aspects of the text. This one happens to illustrate the stylistic spirit of the work. I think, as Susan said, it's valuable to look at the original even if you don't know the language, and do some deciphering by identifying particular words and structures.
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