'Auditors, Go Home!'

"The figure of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment has important philosophic implications. There are comparable conceptions of the Superman in other countries: in England, Marlowe's Faustus; in Germany, Nietzshe's Ubermensch; in America, "Superman Comics." With his pipe clenched slightly crooked through an ironic smile, Professor Renato Poggioli warmed to his subject. And if the mark of a brilliant teacher is his ability to remain popular while insulting, threatening, and deliberately patronizing his students, then Poggioli must certainly be brilliant.

In an early meeting of Slavic 155, commonly known as "Tolstoyevsky," he opened the lecture with: "There are too many people in this course. Auditors, go homel" A week later he was able to boast, "I chased all the auditors off in a day or two." The trouble was that many who had come as auditors stayed as regularly enrolled members, so that Poggioli had to announce, "We are moving from Emerson A to Longfellow Terrace. It should be very interesting teaching Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Longfellow."

Once in Longfellow, Poggioli could not resist making another attempt to get rid of a few students. "This class," he said, "will meet promptly at 11:10. Supposing you come in after 11:10--if it isn't raining why don't you take a walk?"

Poggioli also has the habit of introducing the most obscure references with the words, "As you know . . ." A few days ago he remarked that, "As you know, Turgenev's opinion of Dostoevsky was . . ." and quoted a paragraph in Russian. No translation.

Acerbic and Unorthodox

But his students love it. Whether the popularity of Slavic 155 can be attributed to the fiendish length of the reading assignments (second largest in the Colleges, next to Professor Levin's "Proust, Joyce and Mann"), to the accrbic brilliance of the instructor, or simply to the fascination of the reading itself, there is no doubt that Poggioli is one of the most unorthodox lecturers around. His students are attracted to him as inevitably as he is to wisecracks. And while he always lectures with a pipe in his teeth, he does not always notice that it is sometimes upside down.

Poggioli's early life was simple enough. The son of a railroad administrator in Florence, Italy, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Florence, where he specialized in Russian literature. On the side he did free-lance work as a translator and critic. In 1935, he married Renata Nordio, a classmate of his at Florence and a student of Spanish literature. But by that time Mussolini was already in power, and the intellectual atmosphere was getting somewhat unhealthy. In 1938 he won a Litt. D. from the University of Rome, but it was Munich time in Germany, so the Poggiolis fled to the United States.

His first teaching appointment was as a visiting professor of Italian at Smith. A year later, he became an assistant professor at Brown, but when told that he was expected to teach "graduate students," he realized he had no idea what they were. Too embarrassed to ask the administration, he kept a student after class one day and asked simply, "What is a graduate student?" Apparently the answer pleased him, for his department, Comparative Literature, is presently one of few in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which are limited to graduate students.

The war interrupted Poggioli's duties at Brown in 1943. "I entered the Army as a private," he said, "and left it as a PFC. They drafted me into the Medical Corps and started me writing an Italian-English dictionary for use of the troops when the war with Italy was nearly over."

Once more a civilian, Poggioli received from Harvard an honorary M.A. and was persuaded by Professor Levin, who had just reorganized the department of Comparative Literature, to join the Faculty. Then, in 1950, he was appointed a full professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature and the next year became head of the department.

But Poggioli's teaching activities since then have not been limited to Harvard. Last year he won a Fulbright Scholarships and took a leave of absence to lecture at his alma mater in Florence. Just to keep busy, he also made a lecture junket throughout Italy under the auspices of the U.S. Information Office, and in his spare time he translated the Igor Tale, an old Russian epic, into Italian.

Upon returning to America, he resumed his duties as chairman of Comparative Literature, Senior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, a member of the Committee on General Education, and Foreign Editor of Inventario, an international literary quarterly published in Italy. He also maintained his liaison with Italy by advising a "good Italian publisher" on American books.

Poggioli has written quite a few books himself, ranging from a study of Wallace Stevens (in Italian' to a collection of critical essays covering vast tracts of French and Italian literature. His courses here cover an equally broad mas of material: "Ideas of Tragedy," "The Symbolist Movement," 'European Classicism," "Dostoevsky and Tolstoy," and a few others. Many of Poggioli's colleagues consider him one of the two or three top scholars in comparative literature in the world. Concerning his plans for the future, he is working on a book which will analyze the whole field of avant-grade art and literature. During his summers, he says, "I travel all over the country. I like to travel far, and I like variety."