TRI ČITANjA DANTEA: T. S. ELIOT, O. MANDELjŠTAM, H. L. BORHES

Abstract

The paper deals with a comparative analysis of the essays by three authors from the 20th century who have Dante and his Divine Comedy as their subject: T. S. Eliot, O. Mandelstam, and J. L. Borges. Eliot’s essay “Dante” was published in 1920 in the collection of essays The Sacred Wood, Mandelstam’s Conversation on Dante was written 13 years later, in 1933 (it was published posthumously, first in an English translation in 1965, and then in 1967 in the original Russian), while Borges’ essay “The Divine Comedy” was published in 1980 in the book of lectures-essays Seven Nights (two years later, in 1982, Borges’s collection of essays was published under the title Nine Essays on Dante). The research in this paper is focused on finding similarities and differences in their interpretations, taking into account the poetical context of each of the aforementioned authors, and accordingly, the views presented in the texts under our analysis will be observed and evaluated. Particular attention is paid to juxtaposing their interpretations of well-known episodes from Dante’s poem, such as that of Odysseus’s tragic fate and death, as well as the story of the legendary lovers Francesca and Paolo.