Jean-pierre Vernant
Book (italiano):
<div><p>Admirably framed in a preface by the historian François Hartog, this is a small introduction to the very large work of the genial French classicist, Jean-Pierre Vernant (1914-2007). Yet for all its brevity, it is a unique contribution to Vernant's great corpus on ancient Greece, for in the form of an interview it relates in his own words the unusual story of how it all came to be: his trajectory from student days in the Communist party fighting fascism; to his experience as a soldier in the stupefying defeat by Germany in 1940; to his war years overtly as a professor in a Toulouse lycee and covertly as the leader in the local Resistance, then underground in the person of Colonel Berthier in charge of Resistance forces in the Haut-Garonne; and finally, on to Paris and a distinguished academic career after the war, capped by a prestigious professorship at the College de France. Besides the details of the culture of these important French milieus, this text offers precious evidence of significant intellectual continuities in Vernant's traverse from the maquis to the polis, including the firm companionship of many of the same people--his teachers and faithful "copains"-- through the combats of both. There are echoes of his own life in recurrent themes of his work on ancient Greece, also including warfare and politics. And when it comes to his illuminating concern for humanity in antiquity, those who knew Jean-Pierre Vernant will recognize the warm generosity, the concern for others, the empathetic soul of the man himself. He wrote too about memory; now, by the imperishable memory he left with us, he is one of the immortals.</p><p></p></div><p></p>
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