‘What Dante Means to Me’is the title of an essay by T.S.Eliot published in his To Criticize the Critic,originally a lecture he gave at the Italian Institute in London.I am,of course,no T.S.Eliot,but I have adopted h...‘What Dante Means to Me’is the title of an essay by T.S.Eliot published in his To Criticize the Critic,originally a lecture he gave at the Italian Institute in London.I am,of course,no T.S.Eliot,but I have adopted here his title to indicate that what I will try to do here is to reconstruct the story of my own relationship with Dante.It is a very personal story and I do not expect it to have any exemplary value whatsoever.As a story,I have structured it on one level—and with a high degree of presumptuousness—in the form of a‘life and works’of Dante Alighieri,so that I will as it were go through my own Vita Nuova,De Vulgari Eloquentia and Convivio.I hasten to add that this fiction has some use for me in that it forces me to go through some stages of the experience that has made me what I am,but the only use it might have for other people is to make them think what encountering and reading Dante has meant to them.展开更多
I met Derek Pearsall for the first time in the winter of 1982 in York and saw him for the last time,again in York,in November 2010.For me,his figure is therefore inevitably tied to York,its ramparts,its Minster,the Ce...I met Derek Pearsall for the first time in the winter of 1982 in York and saw him for the last time,again in York,in November 2010.For me,his figure is therefore inevitably tied to York,its ramparts,its Minster,the Centre for Medieval Studies he did so much to foster.To York,and to Harvard,where I saw him quite often in the late 1980s,in the 1990s and after 2000.展开更多
文摘‘What Dante Means to Me’is the title of an essay by T.S.Eliot published in his To Criticize the Critic,originally a lecture he gave at the Italian Institute in London.I am,of course,no T.S.Eliot,but I have adopted here his title to indicate that what I will try to do here is to reconstruct the story of my own relationship with Dante.It is a very personal story and I do not expect it to have any exemplary value whatsoever.As a story,I have structured it on one level—and with a high degree of presumptuousness—in the form of a‘life and works’of Dante Alighieri,so that I will as it were go through my own Vita Nuova,De Vulgari Eloquentia and Convivio.I hasten to add that this fiction has some use for me in that it forces me to go through some stages of the experience that has made me what I am,but the only use it might have for other people is to make them think what encountering and reading Dante has meant to them.
文摘I met Derek Pearsall for the first time in the winter of 1982 in York and saw him for the last time,again in York,in November 2010.For me,his figure is therefore inevitably tied to York,its ramparts,its Minster,the Centre for Medieval Studies he did so much to foster.To York,and to Harvard,where I saw him quite often in the late 1980s,in the 1990s and after 2000.
