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Attachment (c)

March 18, 2007

Dear Editor,

Kudos to you for getting into the public eye on your front page, on the 13 th of March: "Comp Lit program in danger/UW plans to let it fade away." Since the UW is a public university, its affairs should become known to the public. You've made that possible.

I hope there is not more to this 'fade away' than meets the public eye. Unfortunately, I think there is: I already know that a major 'public' reason given for closing the Department (budgetary constraints) looks bogus. Statistics will show that the Comparative Literature Department already brings in to the university more monies than the university spends on it . Secondly, please tell me how it can be morally defensible to destroy one of the most intellectually demanding departments in the study of literary aesthetics (internationally recognized as such too) because, as I understand it, a former Chair of the Department was dismissed for personal egregious behavior! I don't think it's possible to connect those two issues in the realm of reason.

Perhaps the most helpful thing I can do at this immediate time is to quote Dante on the issues, and hope my fellow Wisconsinites will come to their intellectual senses and choose the right priorities for mankind, and for the University of Wisconsin. Dante said:

Distracted mortals! of [sic.] what paltry worth
Are the arguments whereby ye are so prone
Senselessly to beat down your wings to earth!

Paradiso , XI, 1-3
Verse translation of Laurence Binyon
The Portable Dante
Viking Press, New York (1947)

 

Mary Gilbertson
University of Wisconsin (Madison)
Honors Graduate, Class of 1962