Poetics: with the Tractatus Coislinianus, reconstruction of Poetics II, and the fragments of the On Poets

- Sabetai Unguru, Tel Aviv University

“The translations of Joe Sachs are a great gift to Greekless amateurs like me. He uses simple, unambiguous words joined into sentences that are often complex, as they must be to be accurate, but always clear (after sufficient attention has been paid). A stylist may find some awkwardness in the hyphenated compound words and the noun clauses he prefers to the polysyllabic Latinate words often found in English versions of Aristotle. But these blunt locutions — along with Sachs’ excellent notes — manage to convey both the richness of meaning and the clarity of thought of their Greek antecedents. The resulting translation may strike some as awkward in style, but it will strike the careful reader who cares about what is translated as elegant (in the way mathematicians use that word).”

A complete translation of Aristotle''s classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle''s Physics, Metaphysics, and the Nicomachean Ethics )also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms.

Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience.