TURIN. Other than “great poet”. Italy is proud of the Monday, but could very well do without it. Because a crafty, unoriginal and even plagiarist is celebrating. Who did not invent the language, as you want us to believe.
If we ever felt the need, to break into the solemn day of the celebrations for Alighieri is a German columnist of the Frankfurter Rundschau, Arno Widmann, who on the front page of the Frankfurt newspaper launches a cold attack against our immense Florentine poet. heritage of humanity, but not according to him. Widmann believes very much in what he says, outlines a summary career of Dante and declares that an eternal fame, in his opinion, is undeserved.
The commentator is also the founder of the Taz newspaper, as well as translator of Eco and Malaparte in Germany. He takes it first of all with the date set by Italy to remember the Florentine. Presumed date, he would like to specify. Because the result of reconstruction: it is assumed that precisely on March 25, it was a Good Friday, in 1300 Dante embarked on his journey to the afterlife, through hell, purgatory and heaven. The “Divine Comedy” begins with the words: “In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the straight path was lost.” Since “a date of birth of the poet has never been recorded, it was concluded that Dante was born in 1265 “, writes Widmann. Then he presses:” Italy praises him as one of those who have brought the national language to the top of great literature. In a certain sense, Dante has built a language specifically for his work, and from this language the language of his readers and then of Italy was born ”.
But according to him, this is the fairy tale that was told to students in the 60s, since they did not want to learn the text and had a hard time reading it. Dante’s was nothing more than the “vulgar” language, that is, the language of the people. “We have no idea if Beatrice, sung by the author, ever existed – he still writes -. But we know that, like his models, it was very important for him to create a warmth of sensations that would bring empathy to the reader ”. And here the journalist accuses him of having mimicked poets in the language of oil such as Brunetto Latini, exiled to France, and of having put himself in “competition with him, wanting to try to overcome him”. But Dante’s friend, Brunetto, also a Florentine, was smarter and would have written his Trésor in French (an archaic form) because that was the language of love poems.
And that’s not all, the “dishonest” Dante sends Paolo and Francesca to Hell, attributing their inauspicious fate to God’s will, so that they can blame him for it. But, Widmann says, it was not God, but Dante himself who raised himself up as supreme judge. The pinnacle of criticism of the German, taken very seriously on the Frankfurter Rundschau, is that, “as TS Eliot wrote, who published a small treatise on Dante in 1929”, he would be nothing more than an “easy-to-read author. And he is right “. Comparing “the single metaphors very carefully”, the imagination of the Florentine poet with that of the English poet, “Shakespeare’s efforts seem to us more modern light years”, says Widmann. “Shakespeare’s amorality” is much better than Dante’s vice of “having an opinion on everything, taking everything to the court of his own morality”.
Finally, the plagiarism: The Comedy would not be original. According to the journalist, this was said by the Spanish scholar Asín Palacios in 1919, who claimed that Dante was based on an Arab mystical poem in which the experience of the ascent to Heaven is narrated. Too bad that all Dante’s have denied it. Without wanting to censor Widmann, as they say: sometimes “sapiens est, qui tacere novit”, “a nice silence was never written”.