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BEST OF WEB
Writers and Artists at Harvard
How to welcome and nurture the poets and painters of the future
By Helen Vendler
“Universities are the principal educators, now, of men and women alike, and they produce the makers of culture. Makers of culture last longer in public memory than members of Parliament, representatives, and senators; they modify the mind of their century more, in general, than elected officials. They make the reputation of a country. Michelangelo outlasts the Medici and the popes in our idea of Italy; and, as one French poet said, “le buste/ Survit à la cité”: art outlives the cities that gave it birth.”
To read more, click:
http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/11/writers-and-artists-at-harvard 

Literature is not Data
Against Digital Humanities
By Stephen Marche
“The first problem is that literature is terminally incomplete. You can record every baseball statistic. You can record every trade over the course of a year. You can work out the trillions of permutations and combinations available on a chessboard. You can even establish a complete database for all of the legislation and case law in the world. But you cannot know even most of literature, even English literature. Huge swaths of the tradition are absent or in ruins. Among the first Anglo-Saxon poems, from the eighth century, is “The Ruin,” a powerful testament to the brokenness inherent in civilization. Its opening lines:
The masonry is wondrous; fates broke it
The courtyard pavements were smashed; the work of giants is decaying.”
To read more, click:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=1040&fulltext=1&media=

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