Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Book of the week months
posted at 9:03 AM |
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One of the advantages of working in a fairly large firm is that there are always different people to talk with and therefore different ways to look at things. Sometimes you expand your people universe because you run into someone unexpected in the hall (not run into literally, one hopes). And sometimes the larger universe comes to you.
On the elevator the other day, I exchanged pleasantries with a woman I know and have always admired for her intellectual curiosity and eagerness to stretch and learn in many directions. Shortly after our encounter, she mentioned - and invited me to join - a reading / discussion group she is in with some academic friends. The book they have begun is Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and I have to say I was excited at the prospect of reading and studying it now. And since my father wrote his doctoral thesis on Dante it feels quite full circle.
Like many, I studied The Divine Comedy in college literature classes but one is so inexperienced with life's events and with people in one's late teens and early twenties. I imagine it will be as it is an entirely new book. The professor recommends the Mandelbaum translation, by the way, as it displays the old Italian verses on the left ("old" being a technical term in this case as old Italian is quite different from modern Italian, not unlike English I suppose) and the English translation on the right. I'm sure she is correct that even if we do not know Italian, we will glean from it.
On the elevator the other day, I exchanged pleasantries with a woman I know and have always admired for her intellectual curiosity and eagerness to stretch and learn in many directions. Shortly after our encounter, she mentioned - and invited me to join - a reading / discussion group she is in with some academic friends. The book they have begun is Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and I have to say I was excited at the prospect of reading and studying it now. And since my father wrote his doctoral thesis on Dante it feels quite full circle.
Like many, I studied The Divine Comedy in college literature classes but one is so inexperienced with life's events and with people in one's late teens and early twenties. I imagine it will be as it is an entirely new book. The professor recommends the Mandelbaum translation, by the way, as it displays the old Italian verses on the left ("old" being a technical term in this case as old Italian is quite different from modern Italian, not unlike English I suppose) and the English translation on the right. I'm sure she is correct that even if we do not know Italian, we will glean from it.
Labels: books, conversations
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