Rereading the preface now, one is struck, but perhaps not surprised, that things don’t seem to have changed much in the decades since. Basic Books’s new third edition is thus cause to celebrate and reflect on the text and its famous translator.Īt the start of his preface to the translation’s second edition (1991), Bloom begins, “When I teach the Republic now, the reactions to it are more urgent and more intense than they were a quarter-century ago when I was working on this translation and this interpretation.” The pages that follow map the high points of the text onto the passions and longings of modern students who are, Bloom perceives, simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by Plato. Add a lengthy, provocative interpretive essay and extensive textual notes, and one could almost be forgiven for playfully referring to the book as Bloom’s Republic. Its mastery is such that, with the exception of Joe Sachs, no one else has even come close to balancing Bloom’s fidelity to Greek with intelligible English prose. Next year, Allan Bloom’s translation of Plato’s Republic turns 50.
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