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Why I Think About Jesus
Stephen Greenblatt and Robert Pinsky in conversation with Edward Hirsch
APRIL 29, 2007 3:45 PM
THE CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY

Jesus is as much a cultural figure as a religious one—the subject of innumerable poems, paintings, and symphonies. During the past few centuries, Jewish artists and cultural critics have contributed perhaps as much to Jewish understanding of Jesus as rabbis and Talmudic scholars. How do contemporary Jewish artists and critics figure into this tradition? How does a Jewish poet take on translating Dante? How does a Jewish literary critic interpret Renaissance texts suffused with Christian stories and images? Stephen Greenblatt and Robert Pinsky talk about the cultural history of Jesus and why it matters to them.

STEPHEN GREENBLATT is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, where he specializes in Shakespeare, 16th- and 17th-century English literature, the literature of travel and exploration, and literary theory. His books include Hamlet in Purgatory; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; and Three Modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley. He is the General Editor of both The Norton Shakespeare and The Norton Anthology of English Literature and is an editor and cofounder of Representations.

ROBERT PINSKY served three terms as United States Poet Laureate and is the winner of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture's 2006 Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Literary Arts. He is author of six collections of poetry, most recently Jersey Rain. He is also author of Poetry and the World, nominated for the National Book Critics' Circle Award; Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry; and The Life of David, a retelling and examination of the David stories. His next collection of poetry is entitled Gulf Music. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.

EDWARD HIRSCH has published six books of poems, including Wild Gratitude (1986), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Lay Back the Darkness (2003). He has also written four prose books, among them How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller, and Poet's Choice (2006). He is a McArthur Fellow and serves as president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Stephen Greenblatt photo © Juergen Bauer; Robert Pinsky photo © Emma Dodge Hanson