March 25 was a cold, gray day in Italy, and not only because of the COVID-19 lockdown. A chilly wind was coming from the snow-covered Alps, and rain began just before 1 p.m.
But thousands of students, teachers, intellectuals, and academics, locked in their houses because of the coronavirus, opened their windows, went to their balconies, stepped up onto their terraces. With a book in their hands, they started reading: “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself in a forest dark … .”
It was the beginning of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy,” a landmark of Italian literature and one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time. Written between 1308 and 1320, it is a narrative poem that can be read as an allegory, taking the form of a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.
Some 700 years after Dante’s death, Italy finally had decided to celebrate the greatest of poets. On Jan. 17, the Italian government established March 25 as a remembrance day for Alighieri.
To pay homage, various activities were undertaken in every school, but also in town squares, council rooms, and libraries.
The coronavirus pandemic prevented Italians from meeting and denied students access to the classroom. But the Supreme Poet is stronger than this predicament. The events were canceled, but not the enthusiasm of many Italians who saw “Dantedi” (Dante’s Day) as an opportunity to strengthen us and bind us to our identity in the name of our most important asset: culture.
The idea of the flash mob had come to Marcello Bramati, a teacher at Faes Milan High School. “In order to keep the event alive, why don’t we organize a flash mob at our windows?” he proposed to Panorama, the magazine I work for.
Bramati took inspiration from festive events taking place in mid-March in all of Italy’s windows and on balconies, with people singing and applauding to thank medical staff in an attempt to boost morale in the worst crisis since World War II.
“The flash mob aims to reunite us as a people, for a few minutes,” wrote Bramati. “People capable of a symbolic gesture in the name of culture, held together by a text as extraordinary and eternal as Dante’s.”
Panorama joined the initiative. In our virtual newsroom, we saw the event as a redemption opportunity for our healing country, whose condition recalled Dante’s words: “Slave Italy, hostel of grief, lost ship without a pilot in a storm.”
Using our network of contacts, we gave life to an event that did not remain within national borders, as it has to be when paying homage to one of the greatest interpreters of world literature.
Help came from ambassador Umberto Vattani, now president of Venice International University, the consortium of 18 academic institutions from around the world (including Duke University in the U.S.) based on the island of San Servolo in Venice.
The ambassador managed to involve also the international network of Italian Cultural Institutes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The result was a huge success. Thanks to the international mobilization, the Supreme Poet received the tribute he deserved. Universities from four continents took up our call.
From Japan to Tunisia, through Russia, France, and Slovenia, the world of culture celebrated with enthusiasm the first Dantedi.
Students and artists, poets, and academics from dozens of countries took out of their libraries the “Divine Comedy” and read it. High school students from all over Italy enthusiastically joined the celebration, reading the first 27 verses of the “Divine Comedy.”
A touching tribute came from the University of Ljubljana, where the Italian theatre group Nude Masks of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures sent us a superb video, with musical accompaniment.
Confined to their homes, sitting on the floor with their dogs and their books, five female students (one of them in Serbia) read as real actors the first verses of the “Divine Comedy” in excellent Italian.
John Cabot University in Rome also contributed with enthusiasm to Dantedi. In a bilingual video, students and professors read in an expressive way the incipit of “Dante’s Inferno.”
An interesting tribute came from France. Despite the Parisian lockdown, Christine Bach, director of the literary circle “Le Rendez-vous Rive Gauche,” sent Panorama a well-argued video. “Alongside all our philosophers, such as Montaigne and Descartes, Dante holds a privileged place,” she noted. “He appears to us Frenchmen as a visionary. His ‘Divine Comedy’ brings us an updated reflection of our world, in which all the metaphors make sense.”
The video sent by the European University of St. Petersburg had a moving introduction: “This film is a small gesture of compassion and solidarity with the country we all love, with the culture that inspires us, with the people so close to ours. We love you all so much.”
As Vattani said, “This wide participation is a demonstration of the universality of the poet’s thought. For all of us, Dantedi was the day of the awakening from our torpor. His lesson goes far beyond the 12 hours during which we celebrated his memory. Before our eyes, the evils that Dante denounces are multiplying: fraud, avarice, corruption, haughtiness, weakness, servility. But, more than any other depravity, greed.”
Let’s hope that March 25 will be the start of a cultural redemption, with the Florentine poet at the helm and we as his followers. Guided by his wisdom and his courage, we will be able to get out of the “forest dark” in which we have all ended up.