Why Plato wrote the dialogues? Jorge Luis Borges in English [LECTURE]

And, since I have spoken of Socrates, I would like to say something about Plato. I remember Bernard Shaw said that Plato was the dramatist who invented Socrates, even as the four evangelists were the dramatists who invented Jesus. This may be going too far, but there is a certain truth in it. We might say also that Plato was wistful about Socrates, that after Socrates' death, he would say to himself, now, what would Socrates have said about this particular doubt of mine? And then, in order to hear once again the voice of the master he loved, he wrote the dialogues. In some of these dialogues, Socrates stands for the truth. In others, Plato has dramatized his many moods, and some of those dialogues come to no conclusion, whatever, because Plato was thinking as he wrote them. He did not know the last page when he wrote the first. He was letting his mind wander, and he was dramatizing that mind into many people. But I suppose his chief aim was the illusion that despite the fact that Socrates had drunk the hemlock, Socrates was still with him. I feel that to be true, because I have had many masters in my life. I am proud of being a disciple, a good disciple, I hope. When I think of my father, when I think of the great Jewish-Spanish author, Rafael Cancinos, when I think of Macedonio Fernandez, I would also like to hear their voices. And sometimes I train my voice into a trick of imitating their voices, in order that I may think as they would have thought. They are always about me.