For each of the 365 days of Dante’s year, from 1 January to 31 December 2021, a different word or expression by Dante Alighieri will appear on the Accademia della Crusca website, enriched by a short comment, designed to reach the widest audience. These are phrases, mottos, Latinisms, neologisms created by the author of the ‘Divine Comedy’, which are still largely part of our linguistic heritage. Dante’s word, ‘fresh from the day’ despite the 700 years that separate us from the death of the Supreme Poet, will be relaunched through the Academy’s social channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
The president Claudio Marazzini explains: “Also in this way we intend to underline the creative ability, the topicality and the extraordinary readability of the great poet. The initiative is held as part of the celebrations of the eighteenth century since the death of Dante Alighieri”. These are some of the first Dante words and expressions that will be published in January. Expressions that have become proverbial such as ‘the beautiful stylus’ (Inferno, I, 87), the poetic style of which Dante is proud, and which he learned from the great classical models, Virgil first; ‘Color che son suspended’ (Inferno, II, 52), passed into Italian as a proverbial form to indicate a state of uncertainty and expectation; ‘The good of the intellect’ (Inferno, III, 18), today the expression is used to indicate the fullness of human rationality; ‘Beautiful person’ (Inferno, V, 101), an expression that Francesca da Rimini uses to refer to her own body, but today it refers to moral gifts such as generosity and loyalty.
Latinisms that enrich the vernacular will then be reported as ‘baiulo’ (Paradiso, VI, 73), to indicate the ‘bearer’ of the sign of the Empire, that is the emperor: Dante was convinced that the universal institution of the ancient empire of Rome also continued in his time, with Arrigo VII. Colubro (Paradiso, VI, 77); ‘snake’ which specifically indicates the asp with which Cleopatra gave herself death; ‘Rubro’ (Paradiso, VI, 79), ‘red’ that Dante uses only in the expression ‘lito rubro’ (traced on Virgil’s ‘litore rubro’) to indicate the Red Sea. There are also many neologisms created by Dante as ‘immiare’ (Paradiso, IX, 81) to indicate the penetration of the knowledge of others into myself, up to the identification and total understanding; ‘Trasumanar’ (Paradiso, I, 70), to indicate an experience that goes beyond the human; ‘Incielare’ (Paradiso, III, 97), Beatrice’s perfect life ‘inciela’ it, that is, he puts it in the sky: ‘Imparadisare’ (Paradiso, XXVIII, 3), Beatrice ‘imparadisa’ the mind of Dante, that is his mind in heaven, making him capable of contemplating heavenly things. “As we see Dante was not afraid to use new words, especially to describe the heavenly experience and the superhuman dimension”, comments Marazzini.
The Accademia della Crusca will also point out expressive and still meaningful words such as “tetragon” (Paradiso, XVII, 24), capable of resisting the shocks of misfortune; “botolo” (Purgatory, XIV, 46) small dog and of little strength, but which lets out its barking and barking; “broda” (Inferno, VIII, 53), not the broth of today’s starred cooks, but the water of the infernal river, muddy, marshy and smoky, greasy water; “brutes” (Inferno, XXVI, 119), not men, but almost animals, or animals in all respects, incapable of desire for knowledge, devoid of the noble drive that acts in man, even if it is not without risk, as precisely teaches the song of Ulysses.
Onomatopoeic voices such as “cricchi” (Inferno, XXXII, 30), perhaps the oldest onomatopoeic voice attested in written Italian, with which Dante makes the noise of the crunch of the ice that is about to break, referring to Cocito, the infernal frozen river; “tin tin” (Paradiso, X, 143) to indicate the pleasant sound produced by the wheels of the device of an alarm clock, to which the crown of the blessed souls appearing to Dante, moving around and singing, is compared. The rich vocabulary of Dante is the subject of another project of the Crusca, already underway for some time, the Dantesque Vocabulary, the result of the close collaboration between the Academy and the Institute of the CNR Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, a computer resource accessible free of charge and continuously vocabulariodantesco.it update.
To find out about the initiatives of the Academy and those of other Florentine institutions, you can consult the website of the Accademia della Crusca accademiadellacrusca.it and that of the Municipality of Florence 700dantefirenze.it.
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