EDITOR(s)

Iuri Moscardi

Sandro-Angelo de Thomasis

Description

On February 17th, 1454, Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, held the legendary “Feast of the Pheasant,” swearing upon the resplendent bird to summon a crusade against the Ottomans. The crusade never left the realm of promise. Yet, the memory of that feast endures—like an epic whose final lines drift just beyond reach, whole in form yet incomplete, for each retelling reflects the restless, reiterative nature of the human condition. Poetry, too, stands at the threshold of fulfillment, chasing after visions that dissolve the moment they come into focus. Wallace Stevens likened poetry to a pheasant disappearing into the brush—flashing its brilliant plumage before scattering beyond sight. In 1991, under Luigi Ballerini’s watch, poets and scholars pursued this fleeting bird. Thirty years later, the chase resumed. Some swore they glimpsed the glint of its feathers; others believed it had long since taken flight. Still, the search continues, for poetry demands vows no less extravagant than Philippe’s. Perhaps it is in the act of seeking that we hold it closest. And so, as chroniclers of this gathering, we lay these acts before you—offering not the bird itself but traces of its passage, like a vow, left for those willing to follow.

Sandro-Angelo de Thomasis is an Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts and Modern Languages at The Juilliard School, where he teaches French, Italian, and literature courses, including Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio. He holds a Ph.D. in Italian from Yale University, with research conducted at Oxford under Prof. Simon Gilson. His work explores the intersections of Italian and French literature, focusing on multilingual pedagogy and translation studies. His book reviews, essays, and translations appear in Annali d’italianistica, Italica, the Journal of Italian Translation, and the forthcoming anthology Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies (2025). His translation of Piero Gobetti’s writings will be published in The Lorenzo da Ponte Italian Library (2025).

Iuri Moscardi is Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian at Bryn Mawr College. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature (Italian Specialization) from the Graduate Center, CUNY, with a dissertation analyzing the Digital Social Reading projects of Twitteratura that allowed readers to comment on canonical Italian authors in an innovative way. He edited the volumes Cesare Pavese Mythographer, Translator, Modernist (2023) and the complete English translation of Pavese’s Il mestiere di vivere (forthcoming). He collaborated with professors Luigi Ballerini, Beppe Cavatorta, and Gianluca Rizzo in the poetry anthology Those Who From Afar Look like Flies. His articles appeared in Italica, Ticontre. Teoria Testo Traduzione, and Revue des Études Italiennes.

ISBN 978-1-946328-50-2