Kermode; Edwin Morgan

[John Dunn]

Part of the secret would be the education system of the time.  It is reasonable to suppose that while at school Frank Kermode would have studied  either Latin and Greek and one modern foreign language or Latin and two modern languages.    I would also assume that in Kermode's day admission to the Arts Faculty of Liverpool University would have required qualifications in Latin and at least one foreign language.   

While we are in elegiac mood, you may wish to know about the death of Edwin Morgan, also at the age of 90.  Among his multifarious achievements are translations of Majakovskij and other Russian poets into English and Scots.  There are obituaries in the main English and Scottish papers, perhaps the most interesting being that in The Independent:

<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-edwin-morgan-writer-celebrated-as-one-of-the-finest-scottish-poets-of-the-20th-century-2057166.html>

John Dunn.



Honorary Research Fellow
SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow

Via Carolina Coronedi Berti, 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
John.Dunn at glasgow.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Hugh McLean [hmclean at BERKELEY.EDU]
Sent: 19 August 2010 19:12
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Kermode

There is a good obit on Kermode in the NY Times today. It says that
while attending the University of Liverpool he learned to read Greek,
Latin, French, German and Italian with ease. Does anyone know whether
that is true? Was the secret just being terribly smart, as everyone
admits he was? He had no foreign languages in his background; his
parents were lower-class English.
> Literary critic Frank Kermode, who "combined an eminent scholarly career with popular success," died Tuesday, the Guardian<http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3716000Biz9928918> reported. He was 90.
>
> "He's probably the greatest literary conversationalist I've ever known--it wasn't just the lectures and the monographs and the books, it's the fact that just talking about a writer he'd say incredibly pithy, intelligent things which would prompt you to go and read them again," said Alan Samson, Kermode's publisher at Weidenfeld & Nicolson. "He knew he had exceptional gifts, but there was a modest manner about him. He knew he was smarter than everyone else, but he was this pipe-smoking, beguiling man who listened to what you had to say.... It's the wreath of pipe smoke, and the benign smile and wisdom, which I'm really going to miss."
>
> The late John Updike praised Kermode's gifts as a reviewer, noting that his conclusions seem "inarguable--indeed just what we would have argued, had we troubled to know all that, or goaded ourselves to read this closely," and Philip Roth admitted that although he dislikes reading reviews, "if Frank Kermode reviewed my book I would read it," the Guardian wrote.
>
>
>
> Russell Scott Valentino
> Professor and Chair
> Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature
> Editor, The Iowa Review
> University of Iowa
> tel. 319-335-2827
>
>
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