|
Dante's
Ghost
Florentine
poet Dante Alighieri wrote his Divine Comedy in the
thirteenth-century. Ironically
the last 13 cantos of this tale of heaven and hell were retrieved
after Dante’s death because of a visit to Dante’s son by the
ghost of his father.
Boccaccio,
who wrote “The Decameron”, was 8 years old when Dante died.
He was a passionate admirer of the older writer, and moved in
the same circle of people. He
swore the following tale to be true:
“A
worthy man of Ravenna, called Piero Giardino, who had been for a
long time a pupil of Dante’s, a sober-minded and trustworthy man,
related that when eight months had elapsed from the day of his
master’s death, Jacopo di Dante came to his house one night, close
upon the hour we call matins, and said that, that very night and a
little before that hour, he had in his sleep seen his father Dante
come to him, dressed in shining white garments and his face
resplendent with unwonted light.
“And
it seemed to him that he asked him whether he was alive, and heard
him answer: ‘Yes, but with the true life and not this of ours.’
“Wherefore
he dreamed that he went on to ask whether he had finished his work
before passing into the true life and, if he had, where was the
missing portion, which they had never been able to find.
“To
this he seemed, as before, to hear the answer: ‘Yes, I finished
it.’
“And
then it seemed to him that he took him by the hand and led him into
the room where he used to sleep, when he lived in this life and,
touching one of the walls with his hand, said: ‘Here is what you
have been searching for so long.’
“And
as soon as those words were spoken, it seemed to him that his sleep
and Dante departed from him together.
And so, he said, he could not wait, but had to come and tell
him what he had seen, so that they might go together to look in the
place shown to him (which remained very clearly impressed upon his
memory) so as to see whether that which had so pointed it out was a
true spirit or a false delusion …”
Giardino
immediately accompanied Jacopo to Dante’s former residence, waking
up the current occupant and gaining access to the exact place shown
in the dream … there was indeed a cubby-hole behind a mat at that
point. They quickly
retrieved the contents and they found …
“…
a quantity of written sheets, all mouldy with the dampness of the
wall and ready to rot away if they had been left there any longer.
When they had cleaned off all the mould, they saw that the
pages were numbered and having placed them in order, they found they
had recovered, all together; the thirteen cantos that were lacking
of the Comedy … and thus the work which had taken so many years in
the making was completed.”
Detail Of Statue Of Poet Dante Alighieri In Piazza Di Santa Croce, Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Dallas Stribley/Lonely Planet Images
Buy this Giclee Print at AllPosters.com
Reviews
(applause received) 
Be
the first to review this anecdote - click here.
|
