Fwd: ☀ It’s Dante Day

NEWS    EVENTS    ART+CULTURE    FOOD+WINE    LIFESTYLE    TRAVEL It's Dante Day March 25 marks the first annual celebration of Dantedì, when Italy will celebrate Dante Alighieri in an outpouring of culture. Organized prior to the Covid-19 emergency, the 13th-century Florentine poet is being embraced as a symbol of Italian culture and language to unite the country at this difficult time. So, pull down your copy of the Divine Comedy, blow off the dust, take a selfie with your tome and post it on social media (#IoleggoDante), and read the opening verse from your windows at 6pm. We've done singing, playing music and applauding our incredible medics. Now it's time to mull over the modern meaning of these words penned by a great man, who was exiled from Florence, while most of us are shored up within our beloved city's historic walls. This translation, a personal favourite, is a nineteenth-century classic by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.   Midway upon the journey of our life   I found myself within a forest dark,   For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say   What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,   Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more;   But of the good to treat, which there I found,   Speak will I of the other things I saw there. I cannot well repeat how there I entered,   So full was I of slumber at the moment   In which I had abandoned the true way. But after I had reached a mountain's foot,   At that point where the valley terminated,   Which had with consternation pierced my heart, Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders,   Vested already with that planet's rays   Which leadeth others right by every road. Then was the fear a little quieted   That in my heart's lake had endured throughout   The night, which I had passed so piteously. And even as he, who, with distressful breath,   Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,   Turns to the water perilous and gazes; So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,   Turn itself back to re-behold the pass   Which never yet a living person left. DANTE DAY Dantedì: celebrating the father of the Italian language March 25 marks the first annual celebration of Dantedì, when Italy will celebrate Dante Alighieri. Organized prior to the Covid-19 emergency, the 13th-century Florentine poet is being embraced as a symbol of Italian culture and language to unite the country at this difficult time. Read more Poems for Dante by Harry Cochrane 'Dante Revisited' I entered my old home like one entranced. Quaresima was almost ticked away. "What Lenten diet, how much have they renounced?"   Read more ''La chiesa di Dante'' Enter, feigning nonchalance, the French tour group to hear Dominum Jesum Christum escape the newly christened sound system. "   Read more DEDICATED TO DANTE Exiled inside Dante was debarred from Florence, but hopped between the hospitality of various Romagnolo and Venetian nobles. Our movement might be much more limited that Dante's right now, but how often have we been able to say that in our lives? Our homes are not prisons: we can choose what we hang on the walls and what activities we practise within them. Read more Nine circles of hell The Florentine's team gets creative with Dante's "Inferno", reworking the magnum opus as limericks and comics. Read more Digesting Dante Dante's 14,233-line epic, the Divina Commedia, is the most famous work of Italian literature, and it would be strange indeed if the most famous work of Italian literature contained no mention of food. Read more Dante: the battle of the bones Since 1829, a magnificent empty cenotaph patiently awaits Dante's arrival at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, a pantheon of Italy's greats. The inscription on it is from Canto IV of Dante's Inferno, which reads honour the loftiest of poets". But in Florence, they count on the next line of the Canto, which predicts his shadow, which had departed, now returns". Read more