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  1. It is my greatest intellectual satisfaction to be able to read a line from Plato's dialogues and see what is sounds like in any of the languages in which I can read.

  2. It is my greatest intellectual satisfaction to be able to read a line from Plato's dialogues and to see what is sounds like in any of the languages in which I can read.

Which one sounds grammatically and stylistically better?

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The first one I would think is more common in English - this works because it's clear from the sentence that to applies both to read and see.

You would use the second one if this wasn't clear or if you wanted to be more precise or were being more formal.

It's probably worth noting that, unlike in Romance languages, where the infinitive is a single form, in English it is to /verb/ - 2 words at least, so you have the freedom to split or reuse the to - although this has been controversial - mainly due to the influence traditionally of Latin grammar on English.

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    The infinitive is only one word, the plain form of the verb. To is a particle and not part of the verb. You can see this when the infinitive follows a modal verb.
    – Barrie England
    Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 10:39
  • The form without to is called the bare infinitive, and the form with to is called the full infinitive or to-infinitive.
    – Å Stuart
    Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 11:37
  • Yes, I know that, but to is still not part of the verb.
    – Barrie England
    Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 11:53
  • Grammar books often use imprecise terminology. Barrie is correct; the to is a complementizer for infinitive complements, and is deletable only with certain predicates, and in certain special cases like to be-Deletion. In much the same way, for is the complementizer for the subject of an infinitive, but is much more often deleted, because subjects of infinitives are often deleted, or moved. He would like for me to pick up the check.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 13:19

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