I only focus on the end of this speech When he says your trouble It weighs on me yes, it invites me to cry, this is the strength of literature to learn to Empathizing with the suffering of the other person makes us people maybe more [Music] Edo one of the things that strikes me amazes and perhaps even worries me little bit of the Divine Comedy in its materiality and that we don't have the We don't have the original Divine Comedy, we don't even have Dante's manuscript an autograph of Dante and given that the first edition of the Divine Comedy of 1472 in Foligno we find it 150 years later Dante's death in 1321 makes us wonder what happened from 1300 until the first printed edition it is clear that the transmission of the poem occurs through the manuscripts and therefore various copyists who have handed it down the poem up to us but referring precisely to the book So how did Dante imagine it in its materiality? what Dante thought when did he physically put the text on paper or parchment? It's very interesting this is also because it brings me back to what you said at the beginning of Dante We do not own an autograph and the autograph we know it is fundamental to understand the author's primary will um and it's absurd to think that it hasn't reached us because we know that the comedy immediately had great success among the notaries Bolognese already from the early years began to refer with thoughts to to the text of the comedy it is fascinating to imagine what Dante thought of his text in its materiality as an indication of this we have from paradise in canto X when Dante talks about his book imagining it as a study book and tells the reader, imagining himself on the desk he speaks of the reader imagining himself on the desk This is an image that will be later also taken from Boccaccio but it's beautiful understand what Dante wanted. This also perhaps denotes an ambition desire for a book that was not so much a book to read but a book of study and and this with the reference of Paradise comes to us comes to us explained um here is an example and also the fact that he could imagine the book with Wide margins so you can annotate and write personal reflections fits well with the idea of the study book book We also know that the tradition of Comedy is often in the imagination of we all get illustrated we can't know actually if Dante wanted his illustrated comedy it is easy to think that as Contini says, it is an illustrable book which actually lends itself to the possibility of visually representing certain scenes because Dante manages to magically brush them with words but immediately has them in the reader's mind He had a graphic and visual idea and I relate to what you were saying about countertop book in my opinion there is also another intent Fundamental Dante which among other things we find in the epistle to Cangrande which is the character to whom Dante dedicates the Paradise and in the epistle he further aa explain to him why he called it Comedy clearly both because it was written in the vernacular but then because it was written with one comic comic style understood as humble humble because it is aimed at everyone and for everyone the Divine Comedy is a text that Dante uses both to tell about characters both To address people of all genders and that's why the language vulgar Unlike tragedy which instead had a courtly style turn to characters of high lineage and the Divine Comedy becomes accessible for Dante this access is fundamental for the ethics of the Comedy and for the intent of the Comedy Ehm is then impressive if we think about the transmission of the text see how it has been handed down for hundred years only in manuscript form and here we have the big one dilemma we that what do we read of the Divine Comedy Why the first copyists they were Dante's contemporaries, that is, Dante wrote down the text and immediately the text was immediately copied copied in the sense transcribed by by other copyists in immediately perhaps we say "dangerous" as far as the so-called contaminatio that copyists make concerns the authenticity of the text it becomes a fundamental element and I always like to remember the legendary Forese Donati who was an amateur copyist of the Comedy that al at the bottom of his manuscript he raises his hands and says in a note Be patient, I I transcribed what I could see from the sources I could receive But I know they may contain errors that no copyist transcribes a text perfectly and Forese Donati says it says I did it what I could Be patient the sources are many I did what I could in 1330 this therefore 9 years after death The problem is that the Donati's manuscript is the oldest manuscript we have of the Divina Comedy so we have the first known source already with some problems of transcription not problematic actually I wouldn't call them problematic but with a question did Dante actually write that? Did Dante want to convey that? then Boccaccio also transcribes it in short, in many, many Boccaccio very interesting in this Why Boccaccio's activity as a copyist is indeed fascinating for the commitment that Boccaccio puts in by virtue of love towards comparisons of Dante for the speech you were making it is also interesting to mention the son the poor son of Dante who also says this in his notes This is what I see but you will be forgiven if something is not and is difficult is very difficult and the work of many philologists of the past of present certainly of the future and returning however to the activity of Boccaccio there is something that is very interesting in fact Boccaccio will copy by his hand the Divine Comedy three times in three in three manuscripts but it's not so much those I want to focus on as on a manuscript that was not written by Boccaccio Boccaccio has naturally checked we define it as an idiograph and this manuscript exists this manuscript gives us the chance to uncover a big lie um this manuscript of the Divine Comedy by Boccaccio decides to give it to someone of his own dear friend and master Petrarca we know that Petrarca for all his poetic activity throughout his life he will try to make us believe that he did not have never read Dante says I've never read Dante and then corrects himself says But not I've never read it because I don't like it so much, hats off to Dante, I don't have it Never read it so as not to be influenced by its style but this is totally it a lie But it was already clear that it was a lie given the actual production of Petrarch But how can I say it we got it together thanks to that manuscript that Boccaccio gave away to Petrarch Because at a certain point in Ulysses' song we we find this in lines 121-123. A small pencil mark my literature teacher in Bologna again after so many years he gets excited to tell it because this little staple is fascinating us we call it a flower clip. It's a little line with three dots on it and it's a Petrarch's hallmark that he marks When there is something important to remember and there he will mark it after the very famous lines "fatti non steste a live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge" below in the triplet exactly below he scores with this Fiorellino staple what needs to be remembered and therefore Petrarca of a Petrarca read it absolutely It's enough actually he is often a liar it is up to us in our hearts to decide what to do with Petrarca, whether to forgive him or not forgive him let's try to forgive him because if you think about all the effort of those poor philologists of those poor biographers to understand when Petrarch he told the truth or when he lied if if I thought about it I would stick my tongue out to the songbook Before I start reading it So let's try to forgive of course And just like Boccaccio there were many copyists and many Us To date we have received around 800 manuscripts of the Divine Comedy. But yes think the original Corpus was 2000 so it's true what you said that It was a huge success and everyone wanted to read it right away they wanted to own it was extremely expensive however the copyist's procedure therefore not everyone could afford it but the disclosure was Immediately Dante was immediately recognized as a man of change for the for the civilization of that time for the society of that time and and I believe that despite the difficulties in identifying the most accurate sources, the value and weight of the Comedy are still as evident today as they were right from the start Dante and and when I ask myself why we continue to read the Divine Comedy because it can't just be one study of the past cannot only be a return to literature which was so powerful in the 4 and 500 I believe there is a very profound motivation and I believe that Dante also said it explicitly again in the epistle to Cangrande where he says I with the Comedy I want to save society from its state of misery and lead it to a state of happiness to lead it operationally and not just theoretically and in my opinion this is very current today reading the Divine Comedy is for me that for me as an individual is that eh and here too the question of the individuality of the Divine Comedy In my opinion it is fundamental. That is, it is true that Dante uses the classical story and that Christian this syncretism which in the Middle Ages was also very common. But which he does in a sublime way while others do in a much more crude way Oh he manages to provide continuity between the ancient world and the Christian world Roman morality and now I already know that the Romans will write morality in the comments There is no such thing as a Roman civil virtue as applied by the Romans or anyone else he did it in the history of man then combined with ethics Christian but also Greek ethics, Aristotelian Nicomachean ethics are certainly there this meeting between between these two realities what it means to read Dante today I wouldn't talk so much about the Divine Comedy, the name always given from our dear Boccaccio I would talk about Dante in general speaking you before the use of the vernacular on it is nothing left to chance in what Dante writes and the actual charm it is the fact that everyone reading Dante's work recognizes an aspect detail of himself This is fundamental When first talking about the vulgar immediately comes to mind what Dante thinks of the vulgar language and he writes it he writes it in De Vulgari Eloquentia and tells us the vernacular you must knowing that maternal speech is the true language, the vulgar is what we learn from the nurse Dante tells us while Latin is a language It's artificial, it's grammar, it's not natural, it's not spontaneous, that's what he tells us a lot from a linguistic point of view certainly but it tells us also a lot of the attention that Dante has both towards what writes but with respect to how he writes it of the language he uses of style that he also uses on the style he focuses a lot on thinking that in the Convivio Well he will try to say no to what I wrote in the Vita Nova it was what a young man in love wrote not dat and therefore an extreme pay attention to style and the way things are said even at the banquet this idea of his, also a social idea, an operation, comes out social he says what I want to do is take the crumbs from banquet of the wise because I am lucky enough to attend non-academies I am an academic, I take the crumbs from the banquet of the wise and give them to you so that then everyone is also following the Aristotelian precept according to which no there is no man who does not have the desire to I offer you the opportunity to know Latin You don't know it even if you don't enter the academies I want to give the crumb of the banquet of the wise from which to start building what is by human nature the greatest desire, that is, to know this speaking of Dante's work in general, read the Comedy and it happens that you walk down the street and something comes back to your mind even today in 2024 This morning I came here for the first time to Turin This morning I went to have breakfast at the bar and Eh after having had breakfast yes bring this gentleman to me in a state of poverty need he asked me for some some coins I gave what I had and I What he said to me made me think a lot um You're the first person who's looked at me since this morning at 4:00 that I turned around and, not knowing how to respond, I said good luck and his response it was society The wolf ate it And you say Dante where does he have it put Dante in this I put it in with Ciacco it comes to mind I prepared it on purpose he changed the total course of how this was supposed to go conversation But you see a word spoken at the bar and at a certain point and this is very interesting er Dante meets in Canto Sesto Ciacco and Elli to me I will leave aside the political discussion your city which is full of envy is already overflowing with him he kept me in a peaceful life You citizens called me Ciacco: for the harmful guilt of gluttony, how you see I get weak in the rain and I, a sad soul, am not alone because all these a similar punishment is for similar guilt and he didn't say another word. I answered them Ciacco, your trouble weighs me down so much that it invites me to cry etc. etc. etc. I only focus on the end of this speech When he says yours trouble weighs me down so much, that the strength of the forces invites me to cry literature learning to empathize with the suffering of others person makes us people perhaps more worthy of defining ourselves as social and in this society something about the other's worry that weighs on me almost enough to make Dante cry he had already said it he had said it in the Vita Nova Dante is very much in love with We know Beatrice in this condition of tormented love for for the rejection after after the dream vision of Beatrice he is it can be seen that he is hurt in the face and his friends tell him so in the Vita Nova the friends of Dante is told that his condition makes them feel bad and this makes them feel bad in my opinion it is beautiful, fascinating and an example of how comedy enters in all of our lives we simply need to have the eye to see it Of course, certainly also because Dante's intent in the end is to lead to the truth and to salvation thanks to reason clearly And in fact I also remember you mentioning i Bolognese notaries Francesco da Barberino in 1513 mentions Dante in a footnote one of the very first testimonies that we have related to Dante or at least one part of the comedy of hell and Francesco da Barberino says There is this Dante who speaks of infernal things as well as other things Virgil is his guide so already at the time yes knew about this character of this Dante who relying on reason he followed a path towards the truth and this is where in my opinion he exists the relevance of the Divine Comedy to this day for every individual who before starting from himself he tries to get out of the Selva and then improve everything that which is around him therefore the society of which we today We rightly find defects everywhere it improves but if it improves the individual Of course, if he starts from the individual, Dante started from himself himself did not start from another by telling about another of any one lost starts from itself and I believe that this is the humanity of the Comedy Dante's humanity that shines through and becomes ours and becomes anyone's at any time you said the reason and this is it is very nice to think that this reason was Maybe it was thought it might be we don't have it certainties but it could have been one of the elements that damaged relations between Dante and Cavalcanti because he wants this reason apply also in love and I will return to Vita Nova. You will forgive me but by now my weakness for the vita nova has been understood And he says it says ok love Yes but love with the faithful advice of reason Because otherwise not if he runs away I spoke on another occasion about the metaphor of the circle of the love that must be at the center of oneself but also the discourse of reason It's very interesting because Cavalcanti and all we say the previous generation aa Dante thought of Cavalcanti in particular that perhaps love with reason isn't that much love there was the exception of Jacopone da Todi who spoke of an immeasurable love without measure, however, it was for God so we can perhaps also accept Jacopo there he was clever because if he talks about God he can say everything in the Loving speech and Dante Cavalcanti instead says no. Love cannot have reason with it otherwise Not it's actually love and Dante makes a good joke by saying at the beginning no teasing Maybe it's wrong but at the beginning He says I do I dedicate this book of mine to you, my dear Guido Cavallanti, and then at the end the idea is not the same he talks about something completely different he says unlike Guido I do I believe that love should always have with it the faithful advice of reason which is the reason It is the one that gives us the possibility of of navigate correctly between the emotions of life and therefore reason, reason Yes Absolutely, it's a handrail, something Dante would never have thought of doing with us what Virgil did with him at a certain point Dante talks about Virgil holding the lantern behind him to make way for Dante and Dante perhaps he's doing it with us. Yes, and the humility with which he leaves is also beautiful about Dante Wait wait don't make me talk about humility Dante who when it is the song of Ulysses was careful not to But I have in mind the second canto Inferno where he says I am not Aeneas, I am not Paulus I'm because because he says I I begin this journey like Aeneas in the descent into hell and Saint Paul instead of the ascent to Paradise he says I don't I know I don't feel like it I don't know if I'm suitable I don't know if I'm suitable for this undertaking that I am doing Virgilio intervenes in his help but he knew it very well Of course he knew it But it's nice that he told us stay humble Yes from above stay humble him next to of me I have that piece there that that short stretch I really appreciated it love that I have for Dante This is something that I cannot in any clever way How are the words I can't find the right way to make him seem humble because he is not humble he is humble he is someone who in 300 comes out saying I am now I write a book where I visit all the otherworldly worlds and reach God myself I come to God I look him in the face and then I tell you men that as you must Behaving humble is certainly not necessary, perhaps we need to see, okay certainly beauty and everything we talk about and that I also talk about in my private life and but this discussion of humility is interesting because in the singing of Ulysses when he pays close attention because we Ulysses in our imagination Maybe we have always condemned him as a How can you say a boastful No not even naive, perhaps someone who doesn't find the right term for this moment How do you say a person who eh superb, here it didn't come to me. Perhaps in our imaginary Ulysses we tend to condemn him for for his for his pride for the fact that he wanted go and visit the never explored world wanted to cross go towards the part where no one had ever gone and Dante does everything to present it to us like this and then in reality it is not condemnation for this Odysseus is condemned among the fraudulent counselors for the horse's deception No for not for the fact of having taken and having done Picciola's prayer is given to his companions and therefore he has it in his mind this is to say, let's pay attention a little to this discussion of of humility right right in reference to the song of Ulysses would you like to read a part of it that I honor on the edition of 1578 Mamma mia and it's a really beautiful edition "O friars," I said, "who by a hundred thousand perils have come to the West, to this very small eve of our senses which is of the rest do not want deny hope, say retro to the sun, del mondo sanza gente. Consider your seed: you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtues knowledge. I made my companions so eager, with that little prayer, on the way, that I would soon retain them; and turn our stern in the morning, of the oars we made wings in the crazy flight always buying from the left-handed side. All the The night already saw stars from the other pole, and ours was so low that no rises out of the marine soil. Five times it was turned on and so many times the light was underneath from the moon when we were entering the high pass, when one appeared mountain, brown from the distance, and seemed to me as high as I had no view. We rejoiced, and soon he was crying again; because of the new earth a turbo the first song was born and struck on wood. Three times the fé goes around with everyone the waters; at the fourth lift the stern upwards and the bow downwards, like others it pleased us, until the sea was above us closed again". thank you thank you And I would conclude with a suggestion for us and for those who are there you are looking now we said that Dante's manuscript does not exist there is no autograph work by Dante But is it true in your opinion? No in my opinion eh not I hope and hope is always the last to die and I sincerely hope that sooner or later it will be found but I think somehow I don't know the autograph though one one immediately following copy Yes for me there is something that we don't have found and which I sincerely hope we will find, check at home if you have an autograph of the comedy if it's handwritten bring it to us tell us we'll come to see check Esatto He who evaluates Esatto will ask you for a 10 But I am also convinced that somewhere in some archive some library somewhere there is something and in the meantime we let's continue reading Dante and others use it for us for our lives and for our society Yes, I thank you. I thank you for following this wonderful meeting I won't even ask you if you liked the video because I think you can't pleasure and therefore I ask you to comment and write what struck you more and to ask questions if you are interested in this topic, like Subscribe to the channel to follow the next videos and nothing Edo see you next time because there will be a next one See you next time and take care ut in good health