Discovering Dante’s dark side








It is now known that Dante lived in the city of Arezzo during his exile, also stopping in Gargonza and Casentino. Petrarch speaks of the stay of the great poet in the Tuscan city, in the epistles Familiares (1359), stating that Dante and his father lived together in Vicolo dell’orto. In addition to Petrarch, Boccaccio tells, in a letter kept at the Laurentian Library in Florence, that he had met Dante several times in the city streets, as Leonardo Bruni refers, in the work Historiae Florentini Populi, to the poet’s stay in the city of Arezzo. It is also known that Alighieri, an exile from Florence, stayed in Poppi in 1310, at the Castello dei Conti Guidi, where he composed canto XXXIII of Hell, dedicated to the traitors and Count Ugolino. Thus Dante’s events are intertwined with the history of Arezzo and that of its valleys and the book is dedicated to Alighieri. Dante and esoteric criticism (Publisher differences) from Eleonora Lizzulwhich offers an innovative and absolutely original reading of Dante’s work.



The cover of the book


We interviewed the author to better understand the very interesting research she conducted in her essay and from which a new face of Dante and his poetics emerges.


Your book, “Dante and esoteric criticism” (Divergences), has just been released, an original essay dedicated to one of the greatest poets of all time. Briefly, what is the central content of your work?


In my critical essay I tried to show a different face of the author, a face that breaks the mold with the tradition of positive criticism: it is a Ghibelline and revolutionary Dante who conspired behind the Catholic Church, joining the ranks of a group (of poets and artists) who had the same intentions, that is to return to the origins of spirituality. He is a Dante like no one has ever known him, struggling with Catharism, with a cryptic language understandable only to his companions, with women who do not really exist, but who live in the depths of the authors themselves.


Recently, the attempt to find hidden and mysterious meanings inthe work of artists and writers – I am thinking, for example, of Leonardo da Vinci and, indeed, of Dante himself – has received wide appreciation in the public, however, this approach has often revealed a commercial intent. SinceAnd your work has nothing to do with such sensationalism, let me ask you, what exactly do you mean by lexpression esoteric criticism “?


With the expression “esoteric criticism” I intend to go back to the origins of the idea itself: think of Rossetti, Aroux or – in the contemporary world – of Umberto Eco, all personalities and authorities who had made their research a “common goal”, namely that to analyze the language of Dante’s corpus without preconceptions or prejudices, with a broad vision open to any interpretative possibility; this does not mean, of course, accepting any kind of interpretation, but rather broadening the horizons that positive criticism had made “unbreakable”, digging a little deeper and keeping in mind that Dante’s personal history – hence the biographical aspect – and his writings cannot be separated, but they need an overview.


What are, in your opinion, the unfathomed lands in the study of theDante’s work and what is thereinheritanceà main that we have received since supreme poet ”, which determines, alltoday, ltimeliness of his work?


Certainly, at the level of inheritance, Dante did not leave us only “a language” or literary works: Dante can be seen as the creator of our homeland spirit, of our being Italian. Perhaps a small part of the whole is known about the Supreme: even today, positive and esoteric critics are looking for an “all-encompassing” meaning that can hardly be reached without written testimony from the poet himself. Here the precious tool of philology takes over: it is necessary, in fact, to implement a collaboration between several fronts and try, first of all, to start from his early works to arrive, only at the end, at the “Comedy”. The path to follow is always chronological, but it needs constant connections between writings-characters-critics: the Templarism present in the works, as well as the Cathar aspect and numerology, are only a part of the whole to be deepened with a vision of together with a broad spectrum, moving on to foreign and ancient literature.


We often hear critics and experts, but also laymen, speak of the symbologies that are hidden among the verses of the “Divine Comedy” and there are even those who believe that Dante belonged to the Faithful dLove“, What do you think about it and who were, exactly, the Faithful dLove?


Among the interpretative possibilities, that of the Fedeli d’Amore seems to me the most convincing, as well as the most interesting together with the Cathar one. The Fedeli d’Amore were nothing more than poets, artists, “courtiers” in the broad sense, who frequented Dante and his own circles; I am referring to characters such as Cino da Pistoia, Dante da Maiano, Cavalcanti himself (“the first of my friends”). They are confreres of the Templars, or rather of the “affiliates” of the Order; they have their own way of life which includes, like every sect, internal precepts and ceremonies: the same “greeting” that Dante receives from Beatrice is nothing more than the initiation ceremony to become part of the Faithful (it follows therefore that Beatrice is either Dante’s interiority, the so-called divine spark that will lead him to asceticism and knowledge, or one of the companions of the sect itself, given that with the term “women”, the Faithful often intended to appeal to their friends ).


What are the main sources you consulted to write the essay? And, if you were asked what is the innovative contribution your book makes to the study ofDante’s work, what would you answer?




Umberto Eco and his “deformed idea” must certainly be included among the main sources; the reading of authors such as Guénon, Molli, Ledwidge and Valli was also important, as well as a complete rereading of all of Dante’s works. The innovative contribution, in my opinion, lies precisely in the research and dissemination mechanism: starting from an in-depth study of esoteric criticism, understanding the methods of interpretation and analysis, I moved directly to the Dante text, searching between the lines for possible references and connections. Much importance, in fact, was given not only to the character Dante, but to all those who gravitated, in those years, around the figure of him and in the historical-political panorama of those times (Cavalcanti, Filippo il Bello, Lapo Gianni etc) . Finally, it is always good – to carry out a complete study – to report the opinion of the “oppositional” criticism, in this traditional case: analyzing the point of view of the “positivists” also helps to find inconsistencies that, without a comparison, would be lacking in the critical eye and, consequently, it is then possible to refute secular theses which – right now – have very little innovation.








Discovering Dante’s dark side