The Death and Rebirth of Vergil
To the broader reading public, Vergil has died and come back to life numerous times. Where are we right now, in 2022?
About the Event
This lecture ventures to conjure up a Vergil (also spelled Virgil) for our times through the imaginative mediation of the Austrian writer of Jewish descent, Hermann Broch (1886-1951). His novel, The Death of Virgil (1945), was greeted by Hannah Arendt as “the greatest poetic achievement of the age since Kafka’s death” and by Thomas Mann as “one of the most extraordinary and profound experiments ever to have been undertaken with the flexible medium of the novel.”
The lecture will quote from Vergil, The Aeneid, translated by Shadi Bartsch (Random House, 2021) and Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil, translated by Jean Starr Untermeyer (Vintage International, 1995).
In Spring 2022, Katia Mitova will teach a course on The Death of Virgil.
Who's Speaking
Katia Mitova
Basic Program Instructor
Katia Mitova, who has been teaching in the Basic Program since 1998, holds an MA in Comparative Slavic Studies from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. In her native city of Sofia, she worked as an assistant professor of Slavic literatures; editor of Panorama, the national quarterly magazine for literature and political philosophy; and daily correspondent for Radio Free Europe. She has published two books of poetry, The Human Shell, in Bulgarian, and Dream Diary (2013), in English. She has translated (into Bulgarian) and edited about a dozen books of fiction, poetry, and philosophy. She taught philosophy and literature in the College at the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include storytelling as well as the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. Katia Mitova is the 2008 recipient of the Graham School’s Excellence in Teaching Award for the Basic Program.