Dante and the Cosmos of Illumination

In an interview with the A.V. Club, Roberto Benigni enthused about his current project, TuttoDante, a one-man show about Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that he never thought that his show would have an audience other than Dante scholars and 3rd year UA&P students taking Medieval Literature, he found himself playing to audiences of up to 10,000 people. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Because Dante Alighieri has the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. So it’s talking about us, it’s concerning us. Everything in it conveys sentiment, emotions. He is really the greatest poet ever. So I am really very proud to present the shining pearl of Italian culture around the world. And also because Dante sometimes is very difficult and incomprehensible. But we need to talk sometimes about incomprehensible things. It’s very healthy...

...You don’t need also to understand Italian or to know Italian, because when Dante’s writing, when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony. And it is very modern and ancient at the same time. It’s like a cross between Beethoven and Jimi Hendrix. Bach and Janis Joplin. It’s jazz, Duke Ellington, everybody, Wagner. It’s music.

The idea that The Divine Comedy is one of the finest examples of the ability of poesy to transcend simple apprehension is nothing new. My good friend, Paul Dumol, insists as much whenever he teaches Dante. But Benigni's wonderfully stilted exclamation "...when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony" is worth reading through the entire interview.