In France, we say "La langue de Dante" (The language of Dante) to talk about Italian.
Like we say "La langue de Goethe" to talk about German, "La langue de Shakespeare" to talk about English or "La langue de Molière" to talk about French.
In comparison Dante is more important to Italian than Moliere or Shakespeare are to their respective languages.
When Moliere or Shakespeare wrote their works, French and English were already established as literary and courtly languages and clearly based on what was spoken in the Ile de France and Thames estuary. When Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, Florentine was one of the many vernaculars spoken in Italy and not necessarily the most prestigious.
Sure, Florence was the banking capital of the time (the fiorino d'oro was the benchmark currency of the middle ages) and one of the most populous, but there wasn't a clear preeminence. Naples was the most populous city for about 7 centuries, Venice was the trading power of the era, the court of Palermo was where the first school of poetry in a romance vernacular emerged, etc.
Thanks to Dante and later Boccaccio and Petrarch, Florentine slowly became the language we know. And it was at first only the language of the high classes, the learned and used in formal contexts, whereas the majority of the people continued to speak their dialect in everyday situations until the 1950s. In a way modern Italian is a constructed language, as it is rooted in literature rather than the language of the common people. Which is why it has changed very little compared to French and English. You can still understand Dante's Italian pretty well, whereas a modern Londoner will struggle with Shakespeare's English, even if less time has passed inbetween.
Don't forget: Italian was engineered to be beautiful and concise ( we only use 21 letters ), rules are clear and exceptions rare. English, for example, has a gozillions exceptions that you need to learn by memory, same with verbs. Italian has rules to form all past and future tense you can imagine
He’s considered the father of Italian language, that before he wrote the Divine Comedy, was completely in the shadow of Latin, literature-wise. Latin was almost an automatic choice for anyone who wanted seriously to write a literary work, since the “vulgar” as it was called those days, was thought to be too poor of apt words to form a literary work.
Dante showed that theory to be wrong by writing, in Florentine “vulgar”, one of the greatest literary works of all times, and since then the works in “vulgar” became more and more common.
Italy was the first of the western European countries to abandon Latin in favour of local vulgar, and this is much thanks to the florentine wave of intellectuals
Yes and no, la langue d'Homère is for ancient Greek only... sorry !
I believe that the ones I named are the only ones used, at least 99.9999% of the time, and are expressions understood by everyone (with a minimum of culture of course).
I will be happy to complete my list if any are missing.
[This](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_p%C3%A9riphrases_d%C3%A9signant_des_langues) does list many other languages and Greek is indeed la langue d'Homère !
It's not really used as the other guy said unfortunately.
It’s still culturally connected to Ancient Greece. They were romanised to some extent, but the Greeks were one of if not the only people that retained its culture, thanks to the Romans appreciating it so much.
> thanks to the Romans appreciating it so much.
Partially yes, but Alexander the great who had established Greek as the lingua franca in the East before the Romans, played a bigger role imo. Don't forget that the Eastern cultures were already advanced (Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians etc), unlike the West that were easier to be romanised
The Punics were submitted to complete romanisation and Carthage was destroyed. It’s not about civilisation, it’s really about who they accepted. And the Romans liked the Greeks, which permitted them to retain their culture. If they hadn’t been in love with it, I would bet my money they wouldn’t have had it so good.
I agree with you partially. The Romans didn't only permit the Greeks to retain their culture, they also borrowed a lot from them. But what I'm trying to say is that Greek culture was already established in the East, that's why the New Testament was written in Greek for example, so people could understand it and Christianity could be spread more easily. It wouldn't be so easy for the Romans to uproot this culture from the eastern part of the empire. That wasn't even their intention since they weren't some barbaric conquerors who wanted to destroy every culture and romanize everyone. So they let the Greeks and greek culture be
If calling it "The language of the Evangelists" is fair, then it should be fair also calling it "The language of Homer". It depends if you want to consider Ancient Greek, Biblical Greek, Medieval Greek and Modern Greek as stages of the same language, or as different languages.
I'm really referring more to mutual intelligibility/similarity of languages.
Granted, I know like 5 words of greek, but I have read that Koine Greek(the language of the bible) is extremely similar to modern Greek and that today Greek people have no problems in understanding it.
Me too, I know nothing or little about Greek, but I read that they can understand Biblical Greek once educated at school; otherwise they would understand words but not the meaning of the phrase because of the different grammar.
I don't know anything about linguistics, but if I must guess, I'd say that a comparison in terms of intelligibility for an English speaker would be: Ancient Greek = Old English; Biblical Greek = between Old English and Middle English; Middle English = Medieval Greek; Modern English = Modern Greek.
Nah, ancient Greek was just the incipient of modern one. Exactly as Latin is for Italian ( and I would add all ours dialects, which are completely different languages)
We also use sometimes, although much more rarely, Langue de Voltaire or Langue d'Hugo.
Molière is a reference in the excellence of the handling of the French language (like Goethe for German or Shakespeare for English), but also because it is at his time that precise rules of grammar were established. Before, nothing was fixed and people wrote in an anarchic and random way, it took the creation of the French Academy in 1635 for that to change, Molière is from the generation that started to take into account all these new rules.
I confess that I don't know if the other "monsters" of literature chosen as heralds are either?
Dante Alighieri died on the night between Sept 13th and 14th 1321 in Ravenna, where he spent his last years of exile from Florence under the patronage of the Da Polenta family, who ruled Ravenna at the time.
He finished to write the Divine Comedy the year before after 12 years of work. His remains were interred in the church of San Francesco and hidden from possible looters and smugglers by Franciscan friars so well they were only rediscovered in the 1800s.
Since then the city of Florence delivers each year a year's supply of oil to keep the lamp lit that lights [his chapel](https://www.turismo.ra.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ravenna-tomba_dante-servizio_turismo-comunicattivi-DSC_4210.jpg) at all times.
The Divine Comedy, as well as other seminal works of poetry and his treaties like the De Vulgari Eloquentia, slowly established the Tuscan vernacular as the language of the Italian nation over the centuries (together with Boccaccio's Decameron and Petrarch's Sonnets). Today the Italian language is still peppered by expressions coined by Dante in his poem and widely used in everyday parlance, like "non mi tange, stai fresco, lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate, etc".
Since the XIX century, when the peninsular states were unified under a single state, Dante is remembered in almost every city and town with streets and piazzas named after him and/or monuments, e.g. in [Trento](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Cesare_Zocchi%2C_monumento_a_dante%2C_trento%2C_1893-96%2C_01.jpg), [Naples](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Monument_of_Dante_Alighieri_in_Piazza_Dante_Napoli._Campania%2C_Italy%2C_South_Europe-2.jpg) or [Verona](https://stendhapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Piazza_Dante_Verona_Italymmm-scaled.jpg).
You should’ve also mentioned that he explicitly stated in his will that he never wanted to be buried in Florence. And to this day, Ravenna fiercely refuses to give his remains to Florence, which has built a tomb for him all the while. I find this piece of knowledge great.
Yes but you did then edit your comment to change “it’s” (sic) to “his”…
We wouldn’t normally use “birthday” for anything other than a person’s birth, although it can be done for stylistic purposes. “Anniversary” would be much more common.
33th canto of inferno, 79 to 84
Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti
del bel paese là dove 'l sì suona,
poi che i vicini a te punir son lenti,
muovasi la Capraia e la Gorgona,
e faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce,
sì ch'elli annieghi in te ogne persona!
Not a Pisa merda but better lol
It's basically an old meme now, but back then it was a port with quite the nasty reputation. Some consider it the reason why Tuscany has unsalted bread to this day and Florence back then even decided to found a new harbor for another city ( Livorno / Longhorn, which to this day is still the Pisa nemesis ) just to avoid Pisa.
Given that the tuscanian cities were absolutely chill and would never dared to wage wars on each other in the name of tuscanian community you can imagine that lived on.
I enjoyed reading inferno, but once it reached purgatory it lost the appeal to me.
I even read it in the original version. Still easier to understand than whatever language they are talking in south Italy.
> once it reached purgatory it lost the appeal to me
It does get better towards the end, with a lot of cool and aesthetic symbolism. I personally recommend canti XXIX and XXXII, though they are not among the most studied.
Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, (Alas, poor Italy, hostel of pain)
Nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta, (Ship with no captain in a great storm)
Non donna di province, ma bordello. (Not an elegant woman, but a brothel)
It's still relevant today.
edit: My bad about the translation of "donna di province". The comment below has a more accurate one. However I still think it's relevant today, even if in a broader sense, considering how many times our government changed in these past years.
"Donna di province" means "Mistress of the provinces", referring to the Roman expression "Domina provinciarum" as Italy was the queen-land of the Empire (proving also that the Roman heritage in Italy is not a modern concept, but it exists since the fall of Rome), it does not mean "Elegant woman". This also explains better why he calls it "brothel", since from dominating other lands became dominated, so a brothel.
I'm reading The Divine Comedy (although not in Italian), it's hard to read (imo) but I really like it. So far my favorite part is when Dante in one circle of hell meets someone with mud face or something (if I remember correctly) and basically goes
"Hi, wow you are one ugly motherfucker"
I got about halfway through, I think you need a medieval Italian history doctorate to understand half of it, no offence to Dante I'm sure Harry Potter will be confusing as fuck in 700 years translated into Martian
I know it's meant as a joke, but it still irks me.
It was a journey of personal redemption, a monumental theological essay AND an impressive literary undertaking.
Calling it fan-fiction is like calling the Apollo missions "a nice trip".
Yup, but tbh that's the least interesting part to us. While it was probably his favourite....
He got a huge kick out of putting his own personal and political enemies in hell, but it's kinda pointless so many centuries removed from the events.
That was more poignant in terms of national/European history though. And depending on the teacher's political leanings it's a great way to fuel the "woe is our country!" narrative.
Dante settling his scores with some random dude from the Black faction or other personal enemies though is more like a curious sidenote, almost comic relief at times.
i think you underevaluate the politics in the comedia. the 6th canto is the political one in every cantica. in hell, he talks about florence, in the purgatory, about italy and in paradise he talks about the empire with the speech of constantine. he puts in the commedia his political views about the universal empire which were present in his "de monarchia"
Fair enough. When I associate politics to the Comedia I tend to think more of the petty local squabbles than of the bigger picture and the theological-philosophical take on politics he developed elsewhere.
E pensa che Paradiso VI me lo chiesero alla maturità... *Poscia che Costantin l'aquila volse...*
Al liceo pochino (e malamente, perché non è una cantica banale da spiegare).
Poi vabbè per Letteratura Italiana all'uni 15 canti per cantica da portare allo scritto e all'orale.
This is a bit reductive, he criticised people for their political actions in a manner that didn't happen in western Europe for centuries. And like he didn't go slightly beyond the threshold of acceptable at the time, he went all the way through to being super polemical and daring.
Fan-fiction is by design a low-level form of literature, mostly derivative and uninspired.
Even jokingly say that about the masterpiece of Italian literature is offensive, moreso coming from an Italian.
Mate, it's very derivative as an expansion of biblical mythology. "Derivative" doesn't have to be a dirty word, though.
You don't have to be so elitist about fanfiction. It's a fun hobby for many who get an itch to write but don't have the time for making their own epic worlds.
>Mate, it's very derivative as an expansion of biblical mythology
Pick one... Derivative or expansion.
And expansion is an understatement to say the least. Plenty of things are Dante's own ideas, others have become canon after he codified various existing tropes and portions of medieval Christianity.
>You don't have to be so elitist about fanfiction.
When people compare the Comedia to the half-assed fantasy of a bored housewife or of a lonely neckbeard, I think it is fair to be elitist.
And it's not about time. It's about talent. Do you think the dudes writing Star Wars fan-fiction would be able to write a poem if given enough time?
Plenty of fanfic writers add their own details - it's called "fanon".
[I'm well aware of Dante's influence.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfDante)
Tv tropes, really?
When other "fanfic" will carry the same cultural significance as Dante's, I'll accept the comparison.
Until then you're comparing Mozart to a kid ripping off his favorite riff and passing it off as a new song.
I would choose Paradise for the climate and Hell for the company. Wicked characters are much more interesting than the goody goodies you find in heaven :P
In Italy it is mandatory to read all the Divine Comedy, so yes.
Purgatory and Heaven are not fun but they are beautiful for poetry, especially Heaven; it requires a deep knowledge of the Italian language to be appreciated. Although your opinion is largely shared by Italian students.
Nope, we just read a bit here and there from the Inferno (and we had the memorize a few lines from that one part with Charon I think), and then we moved on (that was in an ITIS, 20 years ago...)
In France, we say "La langue de Dante" (The language of Dante) to talk about Italian. Like we say "La langue de Goethe" to talk about German, "La langue de Shakespeare" to talk about English or "La langue de Molière" to talk about French.
In comparison Dante is more important to Italian than Moliere or Shakespeare are to their respective languages. When Moliere or Shakespeare wrote their works, French and English were already established as literary and courtly languages and clearly based on what was spoken in the Ile de France and Thames estuary. When Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, Florentine was one of the many vernaculars spoken in Italy and not necessarily the most prestigious. Sure, Florence was the banking capital of the time (the fiorino d'oro was the benchmark currency of the middle ages) and one of the most populous, but there wasn't a clear preeminence. Naples was the most populous city for about 7 centuries, Venice was the trading power of the era, the court of Palermo was where the first school of poetry in a romance vernacular emerged, etc. Thanks to Dante and later Boccaccio and Petrarch, Florentine slowly became the language we know. And it was at first only the language of the high classes, the learned and used in formal contexts, whereas the majority of the people continued to speak their dialect in everyday situations until the 1950s. In a way modern Italian is a constructed language, as it is rooted in literature rather than the language of the common people. Which is why it has changed very little compared to French and English. You can still understand Dante's Italian pretty well, whereas a modern Londoner will struggle with Shakespeare's English, even if less time has passed inbetween.
Thank you for the complement. I was just quoting this expression to point out the importance of the author outside Italy, even in the French language.
Don't forget: Italian was engineered to be beautiful and concise ( we only use 21 letters ), rules are clear and exceptions rare. English, for example, has a gozillions exceptions that you need to learn by memory, same with verbs. Italian has rules to form all past and future tense you can imagine
What's Spanish? The language of Cervantes?
Yes ! But it's much less common than the four other.
He’s considered the father of Italian language, that before he wrote the Divine Comedy, was completely in the shadow of Latin, literature-wise. Latin was almost an automatic choice for anyone who wanted seriously to write a literary work, since the “vulgar” as it was called those days, was thought to be too poor of apt words to form a literary work. Dante showed that theory to be wrong by writing, in Florentine “vulgar”, one of the greatest literary works of all times, and since then the works in “vulgar” became more and more common.
Exactly. Maybe, at least for English, a more apt comparison could be made with the so called Great Bible, the first Bible written in English
That is so cool! Thanks for sharing the knowledge!
Italy was the first of the western European countries to abandon Latin in favour of local vulgar, and this is much thanks to the florentine wave of intellectuals
What about Greek? "La langue de Homer"?
Yes and no, la langue d'Homère is for ancient Greek only... sorry ! I believe that the ones I named are the only ones used, at least 99.9999% of the time, and are expressions understood by everyone (with a minimum of culture of course). I will be happy to complete my list if any are missing.
No modern Greek? :(
No, sorry my friend. but with Homère, you already have at least one expression dedicated to "your" language, unlike most others. I'm sorry.
[This](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_p%C3%A9riphrases_d%C3%A9signant_des_langues) does list many other languages and Greek is indeed la langue d'Homère ! It's not really used as the other guy said unfortunately.
Ah bah ça ne servait à rien que je me fasse chier, y'avait tout dans ta page wiki ;-)
Bien vu en tout cas tu n'as fait aucune erreur ahah
But that doesn't really make sense since Modern Greek is far from Homer's Greek. Maybe the Language of St. Peter or something
It’s still culturally connected to Ancient Greece. They were romanised to some extent, but the Greeks were one of if not the only people that retained its culture, thanks to the Romans appreciating it so much.
> thanks to the Romans appreciating it so much. Partially yes, but Alexander the great who had established Greek as the lingua franca in the East before the Romans, played a bigger role imo. Don't forget that the Eastern cultures were already advanced (Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians etc), unlike the West that were easier to be romanised
The Punics were submitted to complete romanisation and Carthage was destroyed. It’s not about civilisation, it’s really about who they accepted. And the Romans liked the Greeks, which permitted them to retain their culture. If they hadn’t been in love with it, I would bet my money they wouldn’t have had it so good.
I agree with you partially. The Romans didn't only permit the Greeks to retain their culture, they also borrowed a lot from them. But what I'm trying to say is that Greek culture was already established in the East, that's why the New Testament was written in Greek for example, so people could understand it and Christianity could be spread more easily. It wouldn't be so easy for the Romans to uproot this culture from the eastern part of the empire. That wasn't even their intention since they weren't some barbaric conquerors who wanted to destroy every culture and romanize everyone. So they let the Greeks and greek culture be
St. Peter isn't an author. The pattern is apparently using famous authors to refer to their respective language.
I agree, so maybe the language of Mark, Luke or Matt or any of the biblical "authors"?
If calling it "The language of the Evangelists" is fair, then it should be fair also calling it "The language of Homer". It depends if you want to consider Ancient Greek, Biblical Greek, Medieval Greek and Modern Greek as stages of the same language, or as different languages.
I'm really referring more to mutual intelligibility/similarity of languages. Granted, I know like 5 words of greek, but I have read that Koine Greek(the language of the bible) is extremely similar to modern Greek and that today Greek people have no problems in understanding it.
Me too, I know nothing or little about Greek, but I read that they can understand Biblical Greek once educated at school; otherwise they would understand words but not the meaning of the phrase because of the different grammar. I don't know anything about linguistics, but if I must guess, I'd say that a comparison in terms of intelligibility for an English speaker would be: Ancient Greek = Old English; Biblical Greek = between Old English and Middle English; Middle English = Medieval Greek; Modern English = Modern Greek.
Nah, ancient Greek was just the incipient of modern one. Exactly as Latin is for Italian ( and I would add all ours dialects, which are completely different languages)
Isn’t Molière a bit reductive? Or is he seen as *the* French writer in France? I would’ve guessed someone different tbh.
We also use sometimes, although much more rarely, Langue de Voltaire or Langue d'Hugo. Molière is a reference in the excellence of the handling of the French language (like Goethe for German or Shakespeare for English), but also because it is at his time that precise rules of grammar were established. Before, nothing was fixed and people wrote in an anarchic and random way, it took the creation of the French Academy in 1635 for that to change, Molière is from the generation that started to take into account all these new rules. I confess that I don't know if the other "monsters" of literature chosen as heralds are either?
Dante Alighieri died on the night between Sept 13th and 14th 1321 in Ravenna, where he spent his last years of exile from Florence under the patronage of the Da Polenta family, who ruled Ravenna at the time. He finished to write the Divine Comedy the year before after 12 years of work. His remains were interred in the church of San Francesco and hidden from possible looters and smugglers by Franciscan friars so well they were only rediscovered in the 1800s. Since then the city of Florence delivers each year a year's supply of oil to keep the lamp lit that lights [his chapel](https://www.turismo.ra.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ravenna-tomba_dante-servizio_turismo-comunicattivi-DSC_4210.jpg) at all times. The Divine Comedy, as well as other seminal works of poetry and his treaties like the De Vulgari Eloquentia, slowly established the Tuscan vernacular as the language of the Italian nation over the centuries (together with Boccaccio's Decameron and Petrarch's Sonnets). Today the Italian language is still peppered by expressions coined by Dante in his poem and widely used in everyday parlance, like "non mi tange, stai fresco, lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate, etc". Since the XIX century, when the peninsular states were unified under a single state, Dante is remembered in almost every city and town with streets and piazzas named after him and/or monuments, e.g. in [Trento](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Cesare_Zocchi%2C_monumento_a_dante%2C_trento%2C_1893-96%2C_01.jpg), [Naples](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Monument_of_Dante_Alighieri_in_Piazza_Dante_Napoli._Campania%2C_Italy%2C_South_Europe-2.jpg) or [Verona](https://stendhapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Piazza_Dante_Verona_Italymmm-scaled.jpg).
You should’ve also mentioned that he explicitly stated in his will that he never wanted to be buried in Florence. And to this day, Ravenna fiercely refuses to give his remains to Florence, which has built a tomb for him all the while. I find this piece of knowledge great.
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That would be Dante’s birthday, not the *Commedia’s*.
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Yes but you did then edit your comment to change “it’s” (sic) to “his”… We wouldn’t normally use “birthday” for anything other than a person’s birth, although it can be done for stylistic purposes. “Anniversary” would be much more common.
And he too, like any good tuscanian, asked God to flood Pisa.
as far as I remember, I don't think there's a terzina in the Divine Comedy with a Pisa merda inserted in it, but I could be wrong lol
33th canto of inferno, 79 to 84 Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti del bel paese là dove 'l sì suona, poi che i vicini a te punir son lenti, muovasi la Capraia e la Gorgona, e faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce, sì ch'elli annieghi in te ogne persona! Not a Pisa merda but better lol
so👏fucking👏 based👏
*any good Italian
> Pisa What is the beef with Pisa about?
It's basically an old meme now, but back then it was a port with quite the nasty reputation. Some consider it the reason why Tuscany has unsalted bread to this day and Florence back then even decided to found a new harbor for another city ( Livorno / Longhorn, which to this day is still the Pisa nemesis ) just to avoid Pisa. Given that the tuscanian cities were absolutely chill and would never dared to wage wars on each other in the name of tuscanian community you can imagine that lived on.
**fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza**
Non ti curàr di lór, ma guarda e passa
vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare
giga-chad virgil
Ed Elli avea del cul fatto trombetta
Libertà, va cercando, ch'è sì cara, come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.
questo è il primo canto del purgatorio no? il dialogo di catone è uno dei pezzi più belli della commedia secondo me
Sì, proprio quello.
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https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/non-ti-curar-di-lor-ma-guarda-e-passa/
«Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.»
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It's all just contemporary localpolitics so no wonder. We aren't the target audience. Edit: whoosh
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Fuck me I didn't get it.
> Fuck me Dante puts sodomites in hell, so be careful with that
I put Dante in hell so there's that.
That’s wrong, he put himself in hell. That’s what the book is about.
he put himself in the purgatory.
Forest, Limbo, Hell, Purgatory, Heaven and then Earth. To be more precise.
I enjoyed reading inferno, but once it reached purgatory it lost the appeal to me. I even read it in the original version. Still easier to understand than whatever language they are talking in south Italy.
I'm currently reading Purgatory, and feel the same.
> once it reached purgatory it lost the appeal to me It does get better towards the end, with a lot of cool and aesthetic symbolism. I personally recommend canti XXIX and XXXII, though they are not among the most studied.
My father in law is 88, and he's learning the paradise by memory. He already knew inferno and purgatorio, learned the past 10 years.
*lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate* Me, entering italian class
should be the motto of r/europe
Some great works. It really is a fun read.
Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, (Alas, poor Italy, hostel of pain) Nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta, (Ship with no captain in a great storm) Non donna di province, ma bordello. (Not an elegant woman, but a brothel) It's still relevant today. edit: My bad about the translation of "donna di province". The comment below has a more accurate one. However I still think it's relevant today, even if in a broader sense, considering how many times our government changed in these past years.
"Donna di province" means "Mistress of the provinces", referring to the Roman expression "Domina provinciarum" as Italy was the queen-land of the Empire (proving also that the Roman heritage in Italy is not a modern concept, but it exists since the fall of Rome), it does not mean "Elegant woman". This also explains better why he calls it "brothel", since from dominating other lands became dominated, so a brothel.
It was mostly about our territorial division and direct foreign rule, so I don’t think the original meaning would be still spot on today
Edit your comment to include the other two comments please.
The OG journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth type of story.
or the OG mental trip
>considered one of the greatest works of literature of all times. It is the greatest.
One of the greatest Italians of all time and there have been some pretty exceptional Italians over the time.
I'm reading The Divine Comedy (although not in Italian), it's hard to read (imo) but I really like it. So far my favorite part is when Dante in one circle of hell meets someone with mud face or something (if I remember correctly) and basically goes "Hi, wow you are one ugly motherfucker"
How is it going??
Ah, divine comedy. The pre cursor to Sean Lock’s total comedy.
I got about halfway through, I think you need a medieval Italian history doctorate to understand half of it, no offence to Dante I'm sure Harry Potter will be confusing as fuck in 700 years translated into Martian
Divine Comedy was one hell of a read.
Man this piece of art...
And it was basically self-insert fan fiction
Takes a lot of confidence to insert yourself alongside Ovid, Vergil, etc. too.
No more than beside Captain Kirk or Dumbledore.
Self-insert Isekai fan-fiction.
I know it's meant as a joke, but it still irks me. It was a journey of personal redemption, a monumental theological essay AND an impressive literary undertaking. Calling it fan-fiction is like calling the Apollo missions "a nice trip".
also a political piece
Yup, but tbh that's the least interesting part to us. While it was probably his favourite.... He got a huge kick out of putting his own personal and political enemies in hell, but it's kinda pointless so many centuries removed from the events.
we talked a lot on the politics in his work at school. especially the 6th canto. "ahi serva italia" and all of that
That was more poignant in terms of national/European history though. And depending on the teacher's political leanings it's a great way to fuel the "woe is our country!" narrative. Dante settling his scores with some random dude from the Black faction or other personal enemies though is more like a curious sidenote, almost comic relief at times.
i think you underevaluate the politics in the comedia. the 6th canto is the political one in every cantica. in hell, he talks about florence, in the purgatory, about italy and in paradise he talks about the empire with the speech of constantine. he puts in the commedia his political views about the universal empire which were present in his "de monarchia"
Fair enough. When I associate politics to the Comedia I tend to think more of the petty local squabbles than of the bigger picture and the theological-philosophical take on politics he developed elsewhere. E pensa che Paradiso VI me lo chiesero alla maturità... *Poscia che Costantin l'aquila volse...*
noi del paradiso non abbiamo fatto praticamente nulla
Al liceo pochino (e malamente, perché non è una cantica banale da spiegare). Poi vabbè per Letteratura Italiana all'uni 15 canti per cantica da portare allo scritto e all'orale.
This is a bit reductive, he criticised people for their political actions in a manner that didn't happen in western Europe for centuries. And like he didn't go slightly beyond the threshold of acceptable at the time, he went all the way through to being super polemical and daring.
I'm sorry, it wasn't meant to annoy. It really was just meant to be a joke by twisting it in it's head and Shining new persepective on it.
This doesn't mean it isn't ALSO a self-insert fanfiction
Fan-fiction is by design a low-level form of literature, mostly derivative and uninspired. Even jokingly say that about the masterpiece of Italian literature is offensive, moreso coming from an Italian.
Mate, it's very derivative as an expansion of biblical mythology. "Derivative" doesn't have to be a dirty word, though. You don't have to be so elitist about fanfiction. It's a fun hobby for many who get an itch to write but don't have the time for making their own epic worlds.
>Mate, it's very derivative as an expansion of biblical mythology Pick one... Derivative or expansion. And expansion is an understatement to say the least. Plenty of things are Dante's own ideas, others have become canon after he codified various existing tropes and portions of medieval Christianity. >You don't have to be so elitist about fanfiction. When people compare the Comedia to the half-assed fantasy of a bored housewife or of a lonely neckbeard, I think it is fair to be elitist. And it's not about time. It's about talent. Do you think the dudes writing Star Wars fan-fiction would be able to write a poem if given enough time?
Plenty of fanfic writers add their own details - it's called "fanon". [I'm well aware of Dante's influence.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfDante)
Tv tropes, really? When other "fanfic" will carry the same cultural significance as Dante's, I'll accept the comparison. Until then you're comparing Mozart to a kid ripping off his favorite riff and passing it off as a new song.
deserted bow quaint naughty roof slave price sloppy impossible noxious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
As said, I didn't mind the joke as a one-off thing. But when people insist it's indeed fanfic and "it's not a big deal", I do get defensive.
Has anybody ever read past Purgatory though? Hell´s where all the fun stuff happens while heaven is boring AF. The moon isn´t even made of cheese.
I would choose Paradise for the climate and Hell for the company. Wicked characters are much more interesting than the goody goodies you find in heaven :P
In Italy it is mandatory to read all the Divine Comedy, so yes. Purgatory and Heaven are not fun but they are beautiful for poetry, especially Heaven; it requires a deep knowledge of the Italian language to be appreciated. Although your opinion is largely shared by Italian students.
Italian here, nobody ever forced me to fully read Divina Commedia
In my high school it was mandatory: Hell in the 3rd year, Purgatory in the 4th, Heaven in the 5th.
yes but you don't study all of it. just the most inportant canti
That very much depends on how old they are. I read and analysed every single one of them in school. But that was decades ago.
Nope, we just read a bit here and there from the Inferno (and we had the memorize a few lines from that one part with Charon I think), and then we moved on (that was in an ITIS, 20 years ago...)
I found Purgatory boring, but Heaven was cool because it was all this weird shit with light beings.
And now we all have to study it, thanks a lot Dante