CHECKMATE

This poem published under a different title in 2013, and very different from what N. Boyle says in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 2014-"In a European perspective he appears as the central and unsurpassed representative of the Romantic movement, broadly understood. He could be said to stand in the same relation to the culture of the era that began with the Enlightenment and continues to the present day as William Shakespeare does to the culture of the Renaissance and Dante to the culture of the High Middle Ages. His 'Faust', though eminently stageworthy when suitably edited, is also Europe's greatest long poem since John Milton's 'Paradise Lost', if not since Dante's 'The Divine Comedy'." The character of the poem at hand is "I" and is of some little interest because he has an aspect of the divine in the sense of The "Divine" Comedy. The new thing about this work is so much the fact that the poem will improve in translation.