L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 2021 www.italoamericano.org 4 FRANCESCA BEZZONE NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS I f 2021 is the year of Dante, it also has to b e t h e y e a r o f t h e Italian language, because it's almost impossible to speak about one without mentioning, or at least thinking about, the other. Because Dante, with its poetry and prose, embo- died most famously by his m a s t e r p i e c e , t h e D i v i n a Commedia, epitomizes the Italian language as much as — forgive the ordinariness of this comparison — pizza epi- tomizes Italian food. In a year that will still be affected by the pandemic — although hope for a return to normality is high and rea- l i s t i c — I t a l y e m b r a c e s Dante to honor the 700th a n n i v e r s a r y o f h i s d e a t h and, with him, also the most beautiful gift he gave to the country, the Italian lan- guage. D a n t e w a s b o r n i n F l o r e n c e , s o m e t i m e s between the 21st of May and the 21st of June 1265. In I t a l y , w e k n o w h i m a s I l Sommo Poeta, The Greatest Poet, or quite simply as Il Poeta, The Poet, because no one, before or after him, wrote verses like he did. To us Dante is, first and fore- most, the f a t h e r o f t h e Italian language, a figure t h a t i s e m b o d i m e n t a n d symbol of Italy as much as Abraham Lincoln is a sym- bol of the US. H i s D i v i n a C o m m e d i a has been groundbreaking for many reasons, not only b e c a u s e , i n i t , m e d i e v a l VIPs were judged for their s e c u l a r d e e d s . T h e s h e e r magnitude of the work, as said, was enough to put it on the world's annals of lite- rature. In it, Dante adopted the lyrical style of the Dolce Stil Novo and most impor- tantly, he decided to use Italian vernacular to write about philosophy and theo- logy, something fully and totally unprecedented. He showed how the idiom of his people, the Florentines, had the elegance and depth needed to portray artfully every image, to pray with the most profound faith, to p r o p o s e t h e h i g h e s t a n d most skilled philosophical a r g u m e n t s . H e g i f t e d F l o r e n c e ' s v e r n a c u l a r , which was to become the v e r n a c u l a r o f t h e e n t i r e peninsula, the intellectual and cultural credentials it needed. T r u t h i s , D a n t e r e a l l y l o v e d F l o r e n t i n e , o u r Italian. He loved it because he believed it was the lan- guage of love, of emotions, of connections and of creati- ve expression. It was natural and musical, free from the structural complexities of Latin. What an incredibly modern conception of our l a n g u a g e h e h a d : i f y o u think about it, those are the very same things Italophiles around the world say about Italian today. Of course, the l a n g u a g e u s e d b y D a n t e then is not the same as what we speak today: languages are, by definition, a living creature and, in more than 700 years, there have been many changes in structure, syntax and lexicon. Many words Dante and his con- t e m p o r a r i e s w o u l d h a v e used commonly are no lon- ger part of our vocabulary today, or they changed mea- n i n g t h r o u g h u s e . S o m e became a rarity and others have been substituted by dialectal forms. Grammar c h a n g e d a n d , o f c o u r s e , foreign languages have also made their appearance in ours, lending it expressions a n d w o r d s . B u t D a n t e ' s I t a l i a n b e l o n g s t o u s , nevertheless, it is connected to the way we speak every day just like we are connec- t e d , i n b l o o d , g e n e s a n d love, with our ancestors. Of course, Dante wasn't alone in his endeavor, as every Italian middle school kid can tell you. There are other great names in our c u l t u r e , b o t h b e f o r e a n d after him, who contributed immensely to transform the vernacular into a literary language, influencing with t h e i r w o r k s t h e w a y w e s p e a k a n d w r i t e t o d a y : G u i d o C a v a l c a n t i , G i a c o m o d a L e n t i n i , Petrarca, Boccaccio, all the way to the 19th century a n d A l e s s a n d r o M a n z o n i , w h o s e m a i n creative effort, I Promessi S p o s i , i s p i v o t a l i n t h e history of Italian, because it shows how Dante's langua- Dante in a painting by Domenico di Michelino (Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution. Author: Wikicommons/Public Domain) Continued to page 6 2021: a year to celebrate Dante and our language

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