‘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
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.
