Dick Morse died on 17 April 2001, at his Haitian home in Pétionville. Thus Latin Americans lost one of their most beloved interpreters, Latin Americanists, their only pensador.
Richard McGee Morse was on born 26 June 1922, in Summit, New Jersey; the family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, early on. Morse’s family name was distinguished by three centuries in New England; his grandfather, a merchant, figured in the earliest commerce with Japan. His father followed in Asian trade, residing in New York, where the family enjoyed social prominence and wealth, until the Crash of 1929. From his mother, Morse took his love of literature, cultivating it in elite private schools. He followed his father to Princeton, in 1939. There, he studied literature with Allan Tate and R. P. Blackmur. The summer of his first year, Morse sought to travel abroad. Access to France was problematic in 1940; he had some...
