Nick Ripatrazone applauds a new translation and presentation of the Roman writer Seneca’s play The Madness of Hercules.
Dana Gioia, the notable American Catholic poet and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, has made a trade of writing seminal essays that capture the pulse of the literary moment. In 1991, his essay “Can Poetry Matter?” lamented the absence of poetry reading and engagement outside of academia. Across the span of two decades, Gioia has been able to offer an objective but passionate assessment of the literary world. He now takes those considerable talents and directs them toward antiquity: the plays of Seneca. The pivot is surprisingly natural. As a deeply Catholic writer, Gioia is innately interested in form and function – in the symbol and substance, so to speak, of a text and narrative. He is also concerned with the moral scope of literature; although not, thankfully, as a moralist admonishing his audience. Gioia has always been a literary realist: he wants all of us to read, and to read better.
