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The stream of time |
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O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,
so deep my vision was consumed in it!
I saw how it contains within its depths
all things bound in a single book by love
of which creation is the scattered leaves...
(Paradiso XXXIII, 82–87, trans. Musa)
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From Anne Stevenson's "Lament for the makers".
CUL MS Add. 9451 [this page not on display]
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"The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge
thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world"
(Percy Bysshe Shelley, A defence of poetry).
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Dante's influence on writers, translators, artists, and book
designers continued throughout the twentieth century and continues still today. Echoes
of Dante can be heard throughout the landscape of twentieth and twenty-first-century poetry,
from Wilfred Owen's "Strange meeting" and the works of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, to modern
poets such as Seamus Heaney and Anne Stevenson. Artists of all kinds continue to be inspired
by his writing, working with modern media such as film and television as well as the
traditional crafts of book design and production - all of them finding new ways to turn Dante's
language into text and image.
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