From Plato's Socrates
During a sharp critique of written discourse, Plato writes:
"No, that is not likely--in the garden of letters he will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are spent...
"But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness."
From Phaedrus 276d-277a
"No, that is not likely--in the garden of letters he will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are spent...
"But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness."
From Phaedrus 276d-277a
Labels: quotes
posted by AJV at 7:23 AM
1 Comments:
If I were to use planting as a way to explore or explain writing I would have to say this: A writer packages words in a book, or in an essay, like seeds are put into enveloped to be sold. The readers is the planter, not the writer. And he plants them in his own mind, heart or soul. That is how writing bears fruit: it grows into something inside the reader.
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