The Italian Department has been left with no professor of Italian to teach its popular and important course on Dante. The course was scheduled to be taught by Erich Auerbach of Yale, who passed away over the weekend.

The course, "Reading and Explanation of Dante's Comedy" is being taught instead by Renato Poggioli, Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature. Poggioli had agreed to take over the course after Auerbach, an authority on Dante, had told the department that an illness would keep him from Harvard this fall.

The Romance Language Department will appoint a new professor of Italian literature before next year, retiring chairman Raimundo Lida said last night. The decision will probably be made some months after Wilbur M. Frohock, Professor of Romance languages and Literatures takes over the department chairmanship next month.