700th anniversary of the poet’s death: Dante is everywhere


Status: 14.09.2021 8:23 a.m.

There are special programs, readings and concerts, even specially created songs and dishes: Italy is celebrating the 700th anniversary of the death of its greatest poet. The love for Dante is cross-generational.

By Jörg Seisselberg, ARD-Studio Rome

If you are looking for proof that Dante Alighieri is still part of popular culture in Italy, you will find it almost always and almost everywhere these days: on pizza plates, on TV programs, in music clubs.

The rappers Claver Gold and Murubutu dedicated a song to Dante on the 700th anniversary of his death. Dozens of restaurants in Naples bring Dante-inspired dishes to the table, including Enzo Coccia in his pizzeria “La Noteia”: “I used Dante’s story about salt and saltless bread and created a dish with the only once salted mozzarella Primo Sale, Zucchini from the pan and rocket. At Dante you can find a lot, including the beautiful lightness of healthy eating. “

Encyclopedia of Life

Dante’s “Divina Comedia” with its literary and philosophical journey from hell to purgatory to paradise is an encyclopedia of life to this day. It is firmly anchored in the minds of many Italians. The 91-year-old Furio Castelli from Rome can still recite entire chants of the “Divina Comedia” without errors even more than seven decades after his school days: “For example the beginning: ‘Halfway through our life I found myself in a dark forest, because the straight path was lost. ‘ Dante was great writing the ‘Divine Comedy’. ”

“Divine Comedy” as a comic

A work that the Italians almost in the cradle. At least in childhood, they encounter it, says 18-year-old Francesco Pagliaccia: “The first time that I was interested in it was when I read Mickey Mouse and such I was devoured – in a comic that told Dante’s work. “

Father of the Italian language

The Italians’ love for Dante spans generations. The Leipzig Romance Studies professor Uta Felten is not surprised: “I think young people in particular are enthusiastic about the inferno. It’s a real thriller, a real adventure when Dante wanders through these different circles of hell with Virgil. It’s an incredibly rich one Imagination that is developed there. ”

In a work that Dante, unlike the usual seven centuries ago, did not write in Latin, but in a cultural revolutionary way in the vernacular. Dante is therefore also considered the father of the Italian language. His “Divine Comedy”, his services to language, all contribute to it, says Professor Felten, “that Dante is the icon of Italian culture par excellence”. This is remembered in Italy around the anniversary of Dante’s death with hundreds of events and exhibitions across the country.

24-hour reading marathon in honor of Dante

There are special programs on Dante on television, public readings take place around the renovated Dante Museum in Ravenna, and in Florence none other than Maestro Riccardo Muti is conducting a concert in honor of Sommo Poeta. And, also in Dante’s hometown, prominent actors from Ralph Fiennes to Helen Mirren recite all 100 chants of the “Divine Comedy” in a 24-hour Dante marathon.

Dante is everywhere – Italy celebrates its national poet

Jörg Seisselberg, ARD Rome, September 14th, 2021 7:33 am



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