Essays on the most celebrated Italian poet by eminent poets
of the twentieth century

"Perhaps confessions by poets, of what Dante has meant to them, may even contribute something to the appreciation of Dante himself."
-T. S. Eliot

The great fourteenth-century poet has been an unequaled influence on many writers in the twentieth century, whose "confessions" may well foster a deeper appreciation of Dante. Previously published essays by some of this century's most renowned poets-Pound, Eliot, Mandelstam, Robert Fitzgerald, Borges, Merrill, Montale, Lowell,...

John Freccero enables us to see the Divine Comedy for the bold, poetic experiment thatit is. Too many critics have domesticatedDante by separating his theology from hispoetics. Freccero argues that to fail to see theconvergence of the letter and the spirit, thepilgrim and the poet, is to fail to understandDante's poetics of conversion. For Dante, body and soul go together and there is nosalvation that's purely intellectual, no poetrythat is simply literary.

The essays that form this book were originally published between 1959 and 1984.They are arranged to follow the order of...