John Freccero - Danielle Callegari, Dartmouth College

This reflection was originally presented as a talk during an online tribute to Robert Hollander (1933-2021) and John Freccero (1931-2021) presented by the Dante Society of America following its 140th annual meeting on May 7, 2022. For more information about the tribute, including a videorecording and links to the remarks given by other presenters, please see "Quel Savio Gentil: Remembering our Teachers," posted under the "Pedagogy" section of Dante Notes.

I first met John Freccero in Florence in 2007. He was nearing the end of his career and, as I realized later, a bit different from the Freccero most of the world knew—less guarded and more self-deprecating I think. He shared more of himself with me more quickly than he might have, and by then, endlessly returning to the subject of his own death. But he was still John, sitting in Piazza Santo Spirito, in his bespoke suit, smoking, drinking a martini he had taught the bartender at Caffè Ricchi to make to his liking. I was there to do my Master’s degree, and when I arrived in Italy I was under the impression that I would work on early modern literature; John of course made quick work of that, and soon I was writing a thesis on Dante’s Purgatorio. It now seems almost comical to think I could have escaped his orbit, but in any case I naïvely believed that I had made the decision myself.

I knew that having a year in Florence with him was special; now it seems like one of the rarest things that could happen in any life. We spent most of the time in very informal settings: there was a proper seminar with him for all the graduate students who were there—some, like me, just starting their research, others more advanced, cycling through on fellowship years as they worked on their dissertations— but a lot of our conversations were like that first one in the piazza, over drinks, usually too many, but luckily we both lived in spitting distance of the bar so it wasn’t too tricky to get home.

I don’t think I ever reflected upon it consciously, but if I had I certainly wouldn’t have thought that the exchanges we had in that Florentine context could be translated to our university in New York. I wouldn’t have imagined the same professor engaging the unwieldy disparate groups of students at a university like NYU, coming for what was once called a Western civ requirement in a large lecture format, and most of whom just wanted to walk out relatively unscathed at the end of the semester. But whatever I had expected, I know I still remember the first time I saw him lecture to a group like that. Most of the lights in the auditorium were off, and students were still rustling around and chatting. He made no announcement about what the class was or who he was or what we were there for. He just picked up his copy of Inferno and began discussing the first canto. And everyone paid rapt attention. It was uncanny. When he concluded he said: “If you have questions about anything administrative, my brilliant assistant Danielle Callegari can help you.” I hadn’t known I would be assisting him, and I certainly didn’t know the answers to any of their questions, but I assumed if he trusted me, I could trust myself to figure it out.

The whole semester went forward like that, and many more after it. All of his classes were always overenrolled, and every student said his was the best class they had taken in their college career. He was unquestionably a captivating lecturer and an inspiring teacher, and clearly he was confident in both of those things, but I think what made him most successful was that he was confident in the text. He never once doubted that Dante was the most thrilling thing you could talk about, and that unwavering faith in the poem was a sort of rudder that kept us sailing smoothly ahead.

The semester after I defended my dissertation I was hired as an adjunct at NYU and John was about to retire, so he let me live in his apartment for the semester. The day I moved in he called to make sure I had everything I needed and then asked if I would send him just a few things: a Zegna suit in the closet, an Omega watch on the dresser, and a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on the night table. It was a performance of who he was, but it was also who he was. And I remember that when he said it to me, I thought to myself, I’m going to tell everyone this story when you die. And then I thought to myself, but you already knew that.