Commentary In the introduction to his magisterial “Essays on European Literature” (1950), E. R. Curtius remarked on his good fortune in having been a contemporary and an interpreter of “men like Gide, Claudel, Péguy, Proust, Valéry, Hofmannsthal, Ortega, Joyce, Eliot.” Greatness calls forth greatness, so it is easy to understand Curtius’s gratitude. But what about…