Help me find a specific piece of lit crit about Dante
August 27, 2020 5:21 AM Subscribe
I'm looking for a specific passage, likely written in the introduction or footnotes in a mass market edition of Inferno or Purgatory. Can anyone help me?
Specifically, it's a few lines about how the characters in the Divine Comedy are not really fully realized people--rather the ghosts are more like telephones or portable radios (or even the ticker tape of an old-fashioned stock readout) that float down into the story, emit their information, and abruptly turn off and float away. I had thought it was in the Robert Pinsky translation, Erich Auerbach, Ciaran Carson, or the Kirkpatrick Penguin Classics edition, but haven't been able to find it anywhere.
Specifically, it's a few lines about how the characters in the Divine Comedy are not really fully realized people--rather the ghosts are more like telephones or portable radios (or even the ticker tape of an old-fashioned stock readout) that float down into the story, emit their information, and abruptly turn off and float away. I had thought it was in the Robert Pinsky translation, Erich Auerbach, Ciaran Carson, or the Kirkpatrick Penguin Classics edition, but haven't been able to find it anywhere.
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