Alberto Casadei.
Dante: Storia avventurosa della “Divina Commedia” dalla selva oscura alla realtà aumentata.
Milan: il Saggiatore, 2020. 195 pp. €18.

Alberto Casadei’s latest book, published by Il Saggiatore in August 2020, arrives at a particularly poignant moment: in fact, this contribution is surely one of the first volumes about Dante that will be written and published in light of the upcoming Dantean centenary (2021); in addition, it was also completed during Italy’s first lockdown for the Covid-19 pandemic. This double pecularity makes Dante. Storia avventurosa della Divina Commedia dalla selva oscura alla realtà aumentata a rather compelling and interesting read. Casadei, Professor in Italian Philology at the University of Pisa, is by no means new to Dante studies; as a matter of fact, some of his previous books (Dante oltre la Commedia (2013), Dante: altri accertamenti e punti critici (2019), to cite the most recent ones) deal precisely with the Sommo poeta and the reception of his works. What makes his latest a most welcome addition to his corpus – and to Dante studies at large – are several features arising precisely from the current historical convergence: a compactness that does not allow many digressions, an attention both to the academic and to the general public, an interest in Dante’s modernity, and the narrativity in its pace.

As for the book’s compactness, it is made apparent even at first sight: the volume is divided into six brief chapters and an introduction, in which Casadei states the book’s intent in argument and audience. His interest lies not only in presenting Dante’s life journey with a linearity in which real life facts are intertwined with the genesis and contents of Dante’s works, but he also offers his own interpretations to perennial vexatae quaestiones which have been topical in Dante studies for centuries. In his introduction, Casadei is also adamant about making this book accessible even to non-specialists by adopting a style which is not academic but more narrative. Without oversimplyfing the subject matter – indeed, he offers food for thought even for Dantean aficionados – Casadei’s detailed attention to Dante’s reception and modernity functions as a bridge between academics and general readers.

The first chapter covers the years 1265-1292; Casadei presents a thorough overview of Dante’s socio-political climate at the time of his birth and offers a useful insight on the dynamics of the comune in terms of class and political structure. The author intertwines general information regarding historical events with Dante’s own intellectual education and his first literary works, especially the Vita Nuova. On this matter, he stresses the revolutionary features of Dante’s prosimeter and details the manner in which Dante’s literary relationship with Beatrice evolves within the Vita Nova, and how her death ultimately paved the way for his subsequent writings.

The second chapter deals with the years 1293-1302, when Dante turned to politics and engaged in various literary experimentations (the tenzone, the rime petrose). Casadei’s valuable input is most apparent when he deals with the first years of Dante’s exile and the genesis of the Commedia: here, the author embraces the theory that first four canti of the poem (and not the first seven, as usually speculated) were written when Dante was still living in Florence, citing a considerable difference in style, tone and allegorization from the first four to the subsequent ones. In the third chapter, before delving into the last decades of Dante’s life and the proper drafting of the Commedia, Casadei aptly follows Dante’s whereabouts after his exile; the reader is offered a succint but detailed map of Dante’s stays in those years, while also dealing with the writing of the Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia and the canzone montanina. The latter appears to be a consequence of a proper erotic turmoil experienced in Casentino around 1307 that, according to Casadei, lead Dante to abandon his previous unfinished works and focus solely on the sacrato poema.

Chapters four and five are focused, then, on the writing of the Commedia. Casadei remains true to his modus scrivendi and not only offers an overview of the poem’s content, structure and unique feautures, but also sheds light on the historical contingences of the time in which Dante was composing the cantiche. Even here, Casadei presents his own interpretation to some critical issues: he not only reinforces the idea that the first four cantos were composed before Dante’s exile, but he also makes some suggestions regarding the circulation of the Inferno and the Purgatorio (especially in the case of the Inferno, Casadei seems convinced that the cantica was modified later on in order to add Pope Clement V in the 19th canto, following the pope’s betrayal of Emperor Henry VII). When dealing wih the Paradiso, Casadei also dismisses the much debated Epistola a Cangrande, stating that it almost certainly was not authored by Dante. In addition, anticipating the following – and final – chapter, the author brilliantly links the last ten cantos of the Paradiso to what nowadays would be associated with “augmented reality”, due to their retelling of a complete immersion in a reality both enhanced and foreign.

Dante’s reception through the centuries – and the relevance that the Commedia still has in our time – is the subject matter of the sixth and last chapter of the book. From the early commentators to Dante’s rediscovery in the 19th and 20th centuries, Casadei paints a detailed picture of the reasons why Dante has remained a source of inspiration for not only for Italian, but also international, artists across a range of mediums. The author aptly distinghishes between an intentio auctoris, prerogative of philological studies, and an intentio lectoris, which is exemplified in the numerous adaptations and rewritings of such an iconic work of literature; due to its ties with contemporary narrative forms and the neverending appeal of its metaphorizations, the Commedia remains to this day both the ultimate classic and contemporary work. By outlining an impressive amount of historical facts, tied with his own philological takes on many Dantean issues, Casadei offers a solid tool both for Dante specialists and the general public, demonstrating that Dante and his poema sacro can be appreciated by everyone, everywhere, and at any time.

Giulio Genovese, University of Pennsylvania