Originally posted by french frank
View Post
This could be on A funny thing or Drama to be eradicated. But I've chosen here:
I was in the caff earlier where my chosen reading was the Penguin 60 edition of Plato's Phaedrus. I took it with me to try and work out whether actors might be able to deliver the lines in an entertaining way for Drama on 3. When my food arrived I laid the book on the table and after a few minutes became acutely aware of how deliberately ostentatious/pretentious this might appear
Au contraire (as we say round here), I had been genuinely struck by how hilariously funny I was finding it; and more, how I could identify with Socrates in the face of "Know thyself", trying to work out what kind of a person he was, whether: " ... a more complicated and puffed-up sort of animal than Typho or whether I am a gentler, simpler creature, endowed by heaven with with a nature altogether less typhonic."
I often wonder whether, when I post on the forum, I am an intellectual genius or a thumping idiot. But my heart bleeds that nowadays so many are fated never to discover the sheer entertainment of a work like Phaedrus.
I was in the caff earlier where my chosen reading was the Penguin 60 edition of Plato's Phaedrus. I took it with me to try and work out whether actors might be able to deliver the lines in an entertaining way for Drama on 3. When my food arrived I laid the book on the table and after a few minutes became acutely aware of how deliberately ostentatious/pretentious this might appear
Au contraire (as we say round here), I had been genuinely struck by how hilariously funny I was finding it; and more, how I could identify with Socrates in the face of "Know thyself", trying to work out what kind of a person he was, whether: " ... a more complicated and puffed-up sort of animal than Typho or whether I am a gentler, simpler creature, endowed by heaven with with a nature altogether less typhonic."
I often wonder whether, when I post on the forum, I am an intellectual genius or a thumping idiot. But my heart bleeds that nowadays so many are fated never to discover the sheer entertainment of a work like Phaedrus.
In 1962 Phaedrus was done on the Third Programme - with Carleton Hobbs as Socrates and Frank Duncan as Phaedrus. I don't think it's survived though, although Phaedo is in the Archives.
In the 70s/80s, The Republic (3 parts!), The Last Days of Socrates (2 parts - 'Euthyphro', 'The Apology', 'Crito' & 'Phaedo') & The Symposium have all been successfully produced on Radio 3 with Leo McKern as Socrates & very strong casts - all are in the Archives (the plays, not the cast) or as off-air recordings.
. I was struck that what came through to me by means of a modern English translation of ancient Greek was Plato's sense of humour in depicting the exchanges between Socrates and Phaedrus. Of course, perhaps he meant it to be a serious philosophical discourse :-/ ...
Comment