Per piacere, Signora Benigni!
OK OK, so I may be really excited about old historical novels and octogenarian translators and restorers of 18th-century clocks (see earlier entry)… but I have not forgotten my interest in today’s youth. In fact, last week marked the first meeting of Humanities 199A, my undergraduate thesis-writing workshop. This hour was full of delightful surprises. One delightful surprise came when I informed the class how much I had enjoyed reading their thesis proposals, and it emerged that the class already knew how much I had enjoyed reading their proposals, because, as one student explained: “They actually sent us your blog. I’m the one writing about St. Jerome.”
“They” turned out to be the administrator of the humanities program, whom I had somehow not pegged as a habitué of the blogosphere (Monica, I was wrong!), and who had emailed the URL to the entire class list. Students, if you are reading this, hello! I had fun on Tuesday!
Already I am deeply immersed in youthful issues. Consider the case of the double major in Italian and music, who has, during her undergraduate years, completed multiple sojourns in Italy where, in addition to singing in opera choruses in Milan and Rome and Florence, she came up with a thesis proposal about lectura dantis: the 700-year-old tradition where Italians go to public spaces and “vocalize” Dante’s Commedia, recently revitalized by Roberto Benigni on Italian TV.
Roberto Benigni reciting Dante.
Image from La Stampa
While we were talking about block quotations in foreign languages, the question was raised of how these public recitations—many of which exist only as YouTube clips—could be “quoted” in a thesis. Upon consulting department authorities, I was instructed to tell the student to submit the clips on a DVD (needless to say, in addition to citing the YouTube URL in the approved MLA or Chicago style for electronic sources). The student then brought up the interesting technical question of how to transfer clips from YouTube to DVD. I started poking around online and saw that there is a lot of software evidently designed to enable just this process… but, is it legal? I couldn’t figure it out, and all I need at this delicate stage in my career is to get sued by Roberto Benigni.
In an ideal world, of course, the student would obtain the video clips directly from Benigni’s mom, or whoever handles his YouTube postings; with which end in mind end she—my student, of course, not Sgra Benigni—actually asked me whether I had any experience with “asking TV stations for hi-res clips or videos… especially in Italy.” I thought this was very touching. I wish I had such experience. I told her to ask her advisor, Robert Pogue Harrison, the internationally renowned Italianist and scholar of death, who I think was briefly dead in 2006 because of a heart condition, but was restored to health by Stanford University Hospital’s excellent cardiothoracic surgery department, so he is back teaching again and advising undergraduates, and he also has his own radio show (called Entitled Opinions). It will be undeniably interesting to see how many hi-res clips emerge from this avenue of inquiry.
In the meantime, however, we found another solution. It turns out, you see, that the student in question, in addition to being a concert soprano and a promising young Dantista, is also enrolled this quarter in a computer programming class with a final project requirement. For this project, she is now planning to design a web page for her thesis, with embedded YouTube videos. So all that remains to be hoped for, really, is that Benigni’s mom doesn’t take down his posts before the end of the Stanford academic year.
I was actually going to write some more about some other young people, but it is getting late… so I will leave you, instead, with an anecdote from my own personal life. Just the other day I went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on $3.99 Syrah; for I number among those who believe, with Hafiz, that
It’s not important whether we drink Gallo or Mouton Cadet: drink up!
And be happy, for whatever our Winebringer brings is the essence of grace.Hafiz, Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved, trans. Thomas Rain Crowe
At the cash register, I had the following exchange. CASHIER (a winsome undergraduate-looking slip of a thing): “Do you have an ID for that wine?” (BATUMAN displays drivers’ license.) CASHIER (brightly): “Wow… good job!” BATUMAN: “Excuse me?” CASHIER: “You don’t look that old!”
Tags: academic life, comparative literature, music, St. Jerome, Stanford, today's youth