When he discovered that two friends were regularly reading Dante in the original Italian, Robert disappeared from Göttingen’s cafés for a month and returned with enough Italian to read Dante aloud. Dirac was unimpressed, grumbling, “Why do you waste time on such trash? And I think you’re giving too much time to music and that painting collection of yours.” But Robert lived comfortably in worlds beyond Dirac’s comprehension and so was merely amused by his friend’s urgings, during their long walks around Göttingen, to abandon the pursuit of the irrational.
