The Inferno: A Continuous Reading
On the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth, (1265-1321), the Italian Cultural Institute wishes to honor Italy’s greatest poet by holding a continuous reading of the Divine Comedy’s first Cantica, the “Inferno”.We wish to celebrate Dante not only as the father of the Italian language and literature but also as the writer who ceaselessly pursued knowledge of what it is to be human and who could declare that “the whole world [was his] homeland, as the sea is to fish” (Nos autem cui mundus est patria velut piscibus equor, De vulgari eloquentia, I, iv).To stress Dante’s universal appeal, the 34 Cantos narrating his journey through hell will be read by 34 different readers, 17 in the Italian and 17 in translation, each in a different language. A warm thank you to all those who have accepted to read a canto, in order of participation: Federica Anichini, Maria Giulia Grosso, Alex Magnani, Luciano Niedermann, Natalia Quintavalle, Elissa Bemporad (Yiddish), Claudia Godi, Miki Hotta (Japanese), Thomas Schneider (German), Ennio Ranaboldo, Julie van Peteghem (Flemish/Dutch), Luigi Ballerini, Assia Nakova and Daniela Pondeva (Bulgarian), Maria Miller (Romanian), Tiziana Rinaldi, Amara Lakhous (Arabic), Tiziana Ferrario, Kristi Roosmaa (Estonian), Krizia Ribotta, Tamara Venditti (Portuguese), Ilaria Costa, Jordi Graupera (Catalan), Bernardo Siciliano, Ronit Muskabitz and Ghiora Aharoni (Hebrew), Magda Nuovo (Polish), Giovanna Calvino (French), Nadia Urbinati, Humberto Ballesteros (Spanish), Pier Mattia Tommasino, Xingchen (Adriano) Liu (Chinese), Tatiana Hegay (Russian), Laura Caparrotti, Dave Johnson (English), Giovanna Botteri. During the entire evening, the exhibit of Bronzino’s Allegorical Portrait of Dante will remain open.