Since 1903, members of Arts and Letters have delivered commemorative tributes to fellow members who have passed away. These remarks celebrate and reflect on the lives and work of the members being honored and acknowledge their contribution to the arts. A selection of tributes is now available in the digital archive below. As we prepared this archive, we were reminded that these tributes reflect their times, and, in some instances, include terminology and social and moral judgments we do not endorse.
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Even if Dudley Fitts had never written anything, many would remember him as a personality and as a brilliant teacher of boys at Choate and Andover, and also as the judicious and generous editor of the Yale Younger Poets Series. Fortunately, in particular for those of us who did not know him well or see him often, he did write. He is to be remembered for his own poems, excellent, though too few.
And he is to be remembered as one of the master translators of our age. In rendering Greek tragedy into living, modern verse he was, with Robert Fitzgerald, a breaker of new ground, making those with little or no Greek realize for the first time the power and originality of the Athenian poets. From tragedy he went on to comedy, with dazzling success in reclothing the crazy and marvelous humors of Aristophanes. Translation of the classics has never been the same since, and all of us who have attempted it since he began are in a real sense his followers. I am not well qualified to speak about his work in making and editing and collecting translations from the Spanish, particularly from the poets of Latin America, but here also I have the impression of highly skilled, devoted work.
It is sad that he suffered from poor health in the later part of his life, and that this limited the volume of his written work. Many of us are deeply indebted to him and we all mourn him.