In 1959, C. P. Snow, the noted British chemist and novelist, delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University that has come to be far more discussed and debated than perhaps any other of such in the past century. In his The Two Cultures, as it was later published, Baron Snow described the existence of two […]
Of all the poets whose works I admire, Dante Alighieri is foremost in my personal pantheon. And of all his works, “Inferno” is my unquestioned favorite. The beauty of Virgil’s explanation in Canto 2 of Beatrice’s charge to him to aid Dante in his journey, concluding in “Why do you delay, when three such blessed ladies care for you in the court of Heaven?” always brings tears to my eyes. However something has long puzzled me about the poem – the astronomical references in it.