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#dante

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #dante




In rereading one of the best essays I know on Dante's Paradiso, Giovanni Getto's "Aspetti della poesia di Dante" (Aspects of Dante's Poetry, 1947), one can see that there is not one single image of Paradise that does not stem from a tradition that was part of the medieval reader's heritage, I won't say of ideas, but of daily fantasies and feelings. It is from the biblical tradition and the church fathers that these radiances come from, these vortices of flame, these lamps, these suns, these brilliances and brightnesses emerging "like a horizon clearing" (Par. 14.69)...For medieval man, reading about this light and luminosity was equivalent to when we dream about the sinuous gracefulness of a movie star, the elegant lines of a car...It is this appeal to a poetry of understanding that can make the Paradiso fascinating even for the modern reader who has lost the reference points familiar to his medieval counterpart.


Umberto Eco


#poetry-of-understanding #dreams






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