“Dante For Everyone Project”

September 14, 2021

Today, on the 700th anniversary of the passing of the Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture proposes to launch the “Dante For Everyone Project”. Who is Dante, and why is he and his great poem—the Commedia—still so alive today?

For the past year and a half, the world was forced to endure a pandemic that no one in living history has experienced. We may indeed yet discover that, at least a huge segment of the human population, is now confronted with a possible general meltdown of society, culture and education.

Nearly 700 years ago, the Western Hemisphere experienced a similar meltdown—a catastrophic depopulation through disease and a near-breakup of society itself that was poetically foreseen by Dante. Through his great poem, the Commedia, written during his permanent political exile from Florence, Dante sought to invent a new way to give understanding to everyone what were required of each and every person in order to avoid not merely physical, but also spiritual extinction. It was not only to the educated, but to every stratum of society, that he directed his efforts. Thus, Dante, through his Commedia, created a new language for Italy, and through it, the pathway to a Renaissance for the West. Dante’s words are so beautiful that his poem, later called by Boccaccio the Divina Commedia—Divine Comedy—did nothing less than give people access to deeply profound ideas of man, nature, and universal Being. In doing so, it gave birth to a new world of science, arts and culture.

To think and act clearly in a time of crisis, we must now rise above lower, prosaic forms of communication such as ideology. Instead, we all need to act, and seek to inspire one another to a new creativity, as Dante did. We must strive to invent new educational means—through music and poetry in particular—for durable survival and intellectual prosperity, even under conditions of adversity, as Dante did. Therefore, we propose to introduce this Dante Alighieri to the world today. Because he very much lives, and can live in each and every one of us.

Lynn J. Yen

Executive Director

Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture

Www.ffrcc.org

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