"I have not read Dante for ages: it is a great pity. He is the supreme modern poet: Greek tragedy..."

“I have not read Dante for ages: it is a great pity. He is the supreme modern poet: Greek tragedy deals with the elemental difficulties of life—the terrible things external to us—but in Dante are all the complexities of the modern soul.”

- Oscar Wilde christens Dante Alighieri “the supreme modern poet” in a letter to art critic, editor, and close friend, More Adey, dated March, 1899. (via craftingtheclassics)