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Article: Mark Van Doren remembered.
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- June 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Above the columns of Butler Library at Columbia University, inscribed in the stone frieze, you read permanent testimony that some writers are in fact important: Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, Spinoza, Aquinas ... These names are representative of importance, they are not a limiting "list" as relativists sneer. Butler Library stands across a series of geometrical terraces and walks from Charles Follen McKim's Low Library, which dominates the whole scene with its ten Ionic columns and low dome inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. The Columbia campus, designed integrally by McKim, Mead & White, represents architecturally a ...