David Bentley Hart

Zibaldoneby giacomo leoparditranslated by kathleen baldwin, richard dixon, david gibbons, ann goldstein, gerard slowey, martin thom, and pamela williamsedited by michael caesar and franco d’intinofarrar, straus and giroux, 2,592 pages, $75In the history of Italian literature, arguably only . . . . Continue Reading »

I went in at the sign of The Temulent Termagant (a frowsy slattern asplay in a shallow ditch along the wayside, with toes pointing upward, cheeks feverishly flushed, hair and bonnet and skirts wildly disordered, and a fist angrily raised at a rachitic child hobbling by on crutches). A . . . . Continue Reading »

In 2009, the remains of Vladimir Nabokov’s unfinished last novel, The Original of Laura, were published, more than three decades after the dying author had asked his son Dmitri to destroy them. In 2012, Nabokov’s first large literary work, a play entitled The Tragedy of Mister Morn, appeared in . . . . Continue Reading »

Afew months ago, the morning before my eldest brother was to return home to Norway after a long visit, I dreamed that I had just awakened in the early light of dawn to find my dog Roland sitting at the end of my bed, a bar of softly glaucous shadow—cast by the central casement frame of my . . . . Continue Reading »

I could tell at once that he was a ghost. There was a certain translucency about him: The sallow light of the lamp on my library desk shone out not only behind him but through him, acquiring an emerald tint from the specter of his velvet smoking jacket as it did so. I also, nearly as quickly, . . . . Continue Reading »

This year, of course, we mark the centenary of the beginning of the end. It was in July of 1914 that European civilization entered its final death throes, the last convulsions of which would not subside for more than thirty years. After that, not even the illusions remained. The great Western . . . . Continue Reading »

Some years ago, when I was teaching in a respected department in a prestigious university in one of the older states of the union (note how nimbly I pirouette past specifics there), a slightly more senior member of the faculty stopped me in the hallway to trade brief pleasantries. After a moment, . . . . Continue Reading »

A few months ago, I began reading a book by the sociologist Christian Smith called What Is a Person?—concerning which, though it is very interesting, I have nothing of consequence to report just at the moment. I mention it here only because its early chapters reminded me of a topic upon which I . . . . Continue Reading »

The Divine Comedy  by dante alighieri  translated by clive james  liveright, 560 pages, $29.95 For me, the appearance of Dan Brown’s newest Robert Langdon novel, its dust jacket adorned with Dante’s flinty profile and a misappropriated title, poses a purely historical . . . . Continue Reading »

That Helen never really eloped with Paris, that the Achaeans and the Trojans fought their great war over an ethereal eidolon conjured up by divine spite, and that the true Helen went instead to live in Egypt is a story known to most classical scholars from the expiatory Palinode of Stesichorus (c. . . . . Continue Reading »