The moving pictures feature his
Inferno; the press issues, even in languages not his own, such a mass of
books and articles concerning him that a specialist can hardly keep
track of the output. In the universities, especially of Harvard, Cornell
and Columbia, not to speak of those in other lands, the courses on Dante
attract an unusually large number of students. Outside of the academic
atmosphere there are thousands of readers who still find in his
writings, a solace in grief, a strength in temptation, a deep sense of
reality, permanent though unseen, of the love of God and of His justice.
The reasons are not far away.
"Our poet," says Grandgent "was a many sided genius who has a message
for nearly everyone."
Dante's compelling renown among us, is due says Dr. Frank Crane both "to
the intrinsic greatness of the man's personality and to the sheer beauty
of his craftsmanship."
"The secret of Dante's power" writes James Russell Lowell "is not far
to seek. Whoever can express _himself_ with the full force of
unconscious sincerity will be found to have uttered something ideal
and universal."
Whether one or all these reasons are the true explanation of the
twentieth century's great interest in Dante, the fact remains, as
Tennyson said, that far from being a waning classic, Dante "in power
ever grows," and the interest he calls forth constitutes, as James Bryce
observed in his Lowell Institute lectures "the literary phenomenon of
England and America.
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