The Divine Comedy, III: «Paradís» Reading and interpretation of a classic

Description

The Divine Comedy, III: «Paradís»
Reading and interpretation of a classic
April 13 - December 14, 2026
Courses and workshops

This interpretative and progressive reading of the Divine Comedy—by group of songs, in monthly sessions lasting two years—is intended to explore the text along the main lines of narratives, motifs and memorable characters who believe that the book was an immortal work of poetry and a literary monument with an expressive power and thought that magnificently resists the passing of time.
Not only is it a tract of poetry in the strictly formal sense—the three chains of decasíl·labs—, but also a thought that, at the highest philosophical level, crosses in a brilliantly critical and innovative way all the fields of knowledge: religion and history, society and costums, language and politics, l'economia i l'art in the six forms expressives concretes - painting and music, for example, the llenguatges of which Dante coneixia perfectly. Beneathed in the society and culture of its times—the end of the mitjana age—this work is also a projection of the future, in being so full of visionary, or prophetic, intuitions; a work that shows, to posterity, is to say to us, current values ​​and utopias. European poet with the other cap, and with the other cap and coneixedor and hereu of the ancient and medieval tradition, Dante will intuit, as they begin to forge themselves, the continguts of modern civilization, the six virtues and the six conflicts, but and projectant-los in the eternal and utopian dimension of the most Christian.

The three parts in which the work is divided, Infern, Purgatori i Paradís, correspond to three physical landscapes - which the protagonist, in the fiction of the poem, physically travels - and to three spiritual dimensions in which the characters - animals of the dead - come to life and reality as in the previous poem. By a brilliant paradox, Dante will discover, in the novel fiction of transcendence, the immanent meaning of the world and the way of representing it. As one of the most insightful readers of Comedy, Erich Auerbach, will teach us, Dante will be the first to represent reality, and in this way he will form, to the educator, the public of Western literature.

April 13, 2026
Songs I–IV
L’harmonia de l’univers i el neoplatonismo; the cel of the Moon and the lloc of the dona in creation; Piccarda and the theory of the vote.

May 18, 2026
Cants V–IX
Mercuri's cell Justinià and the epic of the Roman Empire. The cel of Venus: the Regne of Nàpols, Catalonia and the “maleït florí”.

June 22, 2026
Songs X–XVII
The cel del Sol i la saviesa: sant Francesc i sant Domènec; the resurrection of the flesh. Mart's cell and Dante's noblewoman; Cacciaguida and the history of Florència; Dante's poetic investiture: a providential mission.

October 5, 2026
Songs XVIII–XXII
The sky of Jupiter and divine and human justice; universal monarchy and national state. Saturn's cell and contemplative mysticism: the escape of the moon.

November 9, 2026
Songs XXIII–XXIX
The cel de les Estrelles and the triomf de Crist i Maria; Dante's examination; Adam and human language. The Cristal·lí, or first mobile cell: the creation and the celestial world. The angelic hierarchies.

December 14, 2026
Songs XXX–XXXIII
L’Empiri, and the “candid rose” of the benaurats; Beatriu's last invective and his comiat: a rainy somriure. Sant Bernat and the Prayer to the Verge; the final vision.

ParticipantsRaffaele Pinto