David Lurie, the soured academic who is the protagonist of J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace, earns his living as a professor of 'communications' in a Cape Town university (his former department, Classics and Modern Languages, has been rationalised out of existence). He is obliged to spend most of his time teaching this new subject, in which he has no interest, no belief even, but is allowed to offer one special course per year 'irrespective of enrolment'. Against the spirit of the institution and the times, he chooses 'Romantic poets'. One of this bleak book's slices of academic vérité is Lurie's class on Book vi of The Prelude, the crossing of the Alps, delivered to sullen and silent students. The more they refuse to respond, the more excitable becomes his commentary on Wordsworth's exploration of 'the limits of sense-perception'. 'For as long as he can remember, the harmonies of The Prelude have echoed within him,' but in the classroom the echo stays inside his head.

LRB 5 April 2001 | PDF Download