![]() ![]() It’s no mean feat to achieve clarity in writing about Parmenides’ verse and thought and I envy Coxon his lucidity. Coxon’s collection of testimonia is also typically thorough. He has a particularly acute eye for allusions to epic and presents a thorough and invaluable survey of the manuscript tradition. ![]() As with his introduction, the strength of Coxon’s commentary lies in his commitment to and interest in both the philological and the philosophical aspects of the fragments. ![]() I confess that I don’t think Parmenides intended his verse to be transparent, but nor, of course, did he intend it to be transmitted only in fragments, and I admire any translator who is as scrupulous in offering justifications for his choices as Coxon is in his extensive commentary. Coxon chose a prose translation that is, in its transparency and sensitivity, superior to most. His poetry is, after all, notoriously obscure. One of the hardest tasks for anyone writing about Parmenides is that of translating the fragments. This is not simply due to the detail with which Coxon surveys the manuscript tradition, but also to his decision to include references to those passages in earlier poetry to which Parmenides seems to be alluding and to those passages in later texts which seem to allude to Parmenides. His edition of the verbatim fragments is an invaluable resource. Coxon offered a beautifully clear and wide-ranging introduction, which is particularly strong on tracing the influences on and of Parmenides. Happily, McKirahan’s new edition includes all that was so successful in the first. Further, Coxon offers perhaps one of the most successful accounts of the way these two aspects of Parmenides’ verse interact. He succeeds in an endeavour that some others don’t even attempt, let alone succeed at, in offering an analysis of Parmenides’ verse that is sympathetic to and interested in both his engagement with Greek poetry and his philosophical innovation. And, if you think you’re not interested in Parmenides, I suspect Coxon’s detailed and thoughtful scholarship could persuade you otherwise. If you’re interested in Parmenides and you haven’t read Coxon, you should. Much as I find it thrilling to see books on ancient philosophers move at such a lightning pace, it is undoubtedly preferable that Coxon’s scholarship is once more available to all. The 1986 edition has long been out of print and such is its success that I have, in the past, witnessed a desperate scramble for the ‘phone provoked by rumours of a volume for sale. Edited by Richard McKirahan, it includes a typically acute foreword by Malcolm Schofield, who notes both the authority and indispensability of the first edition and the real need for a second. This new edition is released on the hundredth anniversary of Coxon’s birth. Many with an interest in Parmenides, perhaps the most difficult of all the Presocratics, will already be aware of the value and depth of Coxon’s original treatment. Coxon’s 1986 edition of the fragments of Parmenides. Parmenides Publishing deserves full praise for producing this revised and expanded edition of A. ![]()
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