From October 18 a series of lectures, conversations, presentations, new creations, and thematic itineraries dedicated to the Supreme Poet

On the occasion of the XXI Week of the Italian Language in the World (October 18-24), dedicated in 2021 to “Dante, the Italian”, “Stanze Italiane” – the virtual home of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York directed by Italianist from Padua Fabio Finotti – will host new content with daily releases and news.

Monday, October 18 marks the beginning of an intense week program dedicated to the Supreme Poet, with the inaugural lecture “Dante’s Footprints in 21^st Century Italian” by Hermann Haller, Accademia della Crusca; on Tuesday, October 19, Piermario Vescovo (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) will talk about the prophetic and anticipatory nature of Dante; on Wednesday, October 20, Ernesto Livorni (University of Wisconsin Madison) will deliver a lecture on the reception of Dante in 20^th century Italy. On Thursday, October 21, we will have the conversation between Luigi Ballerini (Emeritus at UCLA University) and the poet and translator Mary Jo Bang, who has published a rewriting of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio; on Friday, October 22, Fabio Finotti (Director of the ICI in New York) and Anthony Tamburri (Dean, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute) will guide us through the exhibition “Suggestioni. La Divina Commedia Illustrata” (“Suggestions. The Divine Comedy Illustrated”). On Saturday, October 23, we will move to Italy to discover the new itinerary – collaboratively created by the City and the University of Verona – “Dante in Verona”: a proper dispersed museum comprising 21 stops, devised to celebrate the years in which the Poet lived in Verona. The video, specially filmed for the “Stanze Italiane” of the ICI, shows some of the places in Verona linked to Dante (Piazza dei Signori, the Prefecture, Arche Scaligere, Palazzo della Ragione, Biblioteca Capitolare, alongside some of the exhibitions set up in the city in 2021), recounted by Tiziana Franco (art historian) and Paolo Pellegrini (linguist and Dante’s biographer), both from the University of Verona, and Francesca Rossi, Director of Musei Veronesi.

The XXI Week of the Italian Language in the World is also the occasion to recall and rewatch the other exclusive content on Dante produced for the stanzeitaliane.it platform, including “Dante ‘prezioso’ 1321-2021”, presentation of the gold, enamel and diamond brooch designed by Mimmo Paladino and created by designer Cleto Munari; or the exhibition Dante Ipermoderno. Illustrazioni dantesche nel mondo 1983-2021 (Hypermodern Dante. Dantesque Illustrations in the World 1983-2021) curated by Giorgio Bacci, professor of Art History at the University of Florence; Leonardo Frigo, a young Italian artist living in London, talks about his work Dante Alighieri Inferno dedicated to the first Canto of The Divine Comedy: 33 violins and a cello decorated with ink drawings each illustrating a Canto. Then we have the conversation with Pier Alvise Serego Alighieri, descendant of the Poet, still engaged in taking care of the properties purchased by Dante’s son in Valpolicella. Il suono di Dante (The Sound of Dante) by Mariateresa Sartori, produced in collaboration with the Fondazione Querini Stampalia of Venice and curated by Chiara Bertola, is a project based on the sound material of the Divine Comedy: in a video we listen to actors Gustavo Frigerio, Elettra De Salvo and Savino Liuzzi recite the lines of the III Canto of Inferno using a consonant dislocation technique that shifts the focus from the semantic to the rhythmic and sound level; in the same virtual space, you will also find this Dantesque Canto recited by Vittorio Sermonti (courtesy of Emons Edizioni) and the piece Queste parole di colore oscuro (These Words – Their Aspect Was Obscure), composed by Paolo Marzocchi on the basis of the Canto’s prosody transformed and recited by the three actors, as well as a conversation with the artists.

The Week of the Italian Language in the World, under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic, was born in 2001 in collaboration with the Accademia della Crusca and is organized by the Diplomatic and Consular Network and the Italian Cultural Institutes, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of University and Research, the Swiss Government, and the main partners for language promotion.