700th anniversary of the death of Italian poet Dante Alighieri

14 September marks the 700th anniversary of the death of the Italian writer Dante Alighieri.

On the occasion of this anniversary, we interviewed Gabriel Insausti, lecturer at School of Philosophy y Letras, who takes us into the figure of the "greatest poet of our era" and explains the influence that, seven centuries later, his work continues to have on Western culture and literature.

Q. Could you tell us briefly who Dante was?

R. Dante is the greatest poet of our age. He lived in Florence when it was the most thriving and wealthy city in Europe, became involved in local politics and, due to quarrels between Guelphs and Ghibellines, in 1302 was accused of corruption while on diplomatic duties in Rome. He was sentenced to death and had his sentence commuted to a lump sum, but he refused to pay it and had to live in exile - Forli, Pisa, Venice, Padua, Ravenna - for the rest of his life.

His greatest work is therefore the fruit of exile, uprooting and distance, an experience that many men and women of the 20th and 21st centuries know better than they would like to.

Q. What has been your main contribution?

R. First of all, his subject de work: it was he who elevated the Tuscan dialect to literary rank, thus demonstrating that it was possible to rival the classics in the Romance language (something he had defended in "De volgari eloquentia"). "Onorate l'altissimo poeta", the verse he dedicated to his admired Virgil, is the epitaph that today is read on the cenotaph (funerary monument) to Dante himself, in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence; it can be said, then, that the Renaissance begins with him or that his figure, like that of Giotto, anticipates it.

On the other hand, that language remained as the model (together with Manzoni 's "I promessi spossi" and some other degree scroll) on which modern Italian would be created; Umberto Eco calculated that of the two thousand basic words that today's Italian needs to express itself, eighteen hundred are in Dante. Moreover, in his monumental "Commedia" he managed to summarise the world of his time, the Middle Ages, with its conflicts, its symbols, its characters, etc. Anyone who wants to get to know the Middle Ages should go to him at average .

Q. Why is it that, 700 years later, your work is still so relevant?

R. First, because, as I have already said, it constitutes the best and most complete testimony of an epoch. Secondly, because that testimony has been sculpted in an admirable form: the third rhyme of the thirty-three cantos of each of the three parts of his "Commedia". Thirdly, because despite the time that has passed, this expression is still legible to the reader, unlike other literary works of his contemporaries. Fourth, because its verses bring together sound, rhythm, philosophical ideas, human drama, theological dogma, political gossip, everything. Fifth, because from the harshness of his own experience and the contradictions and rottenness of his time Dante draws a hymn to hope (also, incidentally, a reminder of responsibility).

P. "The Divine Comedy" is one of your best-known and best-known works, why?

R. Undoubtedly, because of the imagination, the poet' s artistic ability. It is about narrating the journey of Dante himself and his guide through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. In other words, eschatological realities which, as Scripture says, "neither eye has seen nor ear heard". A challenge. And yet Dante manages to lend a palpable embodiment to the realm of the spiritual, he makes things manifest to the senses. Almost, with some of his similes and descriptions, we feel we could touch his characters and settings.

Q. Can you tell us about any other degree scroll that, in your opinion, is a must-read?

R. "The Convivio", "Monarchy", "La vita nuova". In the first two, what today we would call essays, we can see how Dante occupies an intermediate place between the theocentric culture of scholastic roots and the anthropocentric vision that would soon appear in humanism, with one of its main heirs of the following generation: Petrarch. The third recognises the literary world from which Dante came: the love poetry of the dolce stil nuovo (sweet new style) which had been cultivated by friends of his such as Guido Cavalcanti.

Dante, we see then, is the poet of theology, yes, but also of politics, of Europe, of human love. He is the eminent man who wonders about the nature of true nobility, he is the sinner in search of redemption, he is the citizen who both longs for and despises his city of origin, he is the thinker who projects a political order of unity against permanent fragmentation and conflict, he is the inhabitant of the historical world who grants earthly realities their entity and relative autonomy but knows that everything comes from God and is ordered towards Him, he is the lover of beauty who recognises in it a foretaste of a higher reality.

P. Next year you plan to publish the book "Letter to Dante", could you give us some information about this work?

R. It is a sort of travel book in which I talk to the poet. I wrote it on the occasion of a stay two years ago in Bologna, where Dante himself spent some time in his youth. Moreover, given that it is the birthplace of the university institution, it was inevitable to reflect on the present and the future of the Education. And, since the stay coincided with the last European election campaign, it seemed to me an opportunity to introduce some ideas on the future of Europe.

Actually, the idea of finding an interlocutor in Dante had occurred to me earlier, when I read that the Florence City Council had voted to overturn the sentence that had sent him into exile. The motion was passed, but by nineteen votes to five! Seven centuries later and five guys still have it in for Dante? That's a lot of vendetta spirit, by golly. And I asked myself: well, if he could, would Dante today want to go back to that Florence, to that Europe he left so long ago?