In the 2024 Princeton Seminar in Poetry and Poetics, April 15-17, James Porter took audiences through the philosophies set forth in the fragments of Heraclitus(link is external) (6/5th centuries BCE) and Empedocles(link is external) (5th century BCE) that survive in quotations by later ancient authors. In the third lecture, Porter turned to the 20th-century philosopher — and dancer and choreographer — Rachel Bespaloff(link is external), fragments of whose final, unfinished project, “The Instant and Freedom” were published in 1949 by her friend Jean Wahl.
Porter is the Irving Stone Chair in Literature and Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
The 2024 Princeton Seminar in Poetry and Poetics was presented by the Department of English, sponsored by the Bain-Swiggett Fund, Department of English, and cosponsored by the Department of Classics.