by Francesca Bezzone

To an Italian, Dante is croce e delizia, pleasure and pain: forcefully immersed in the study of his heavenly works during the rebellious years of adolescence, we usually begin our relationship with the Dantean world with the wrong foot. But then comes adulthood and, with it, this strange necessity to pick those old high school volumes and read, to discover the true beauty and complex creativity of Dante's works.

Dante does not simply and only belong to Italy, though, he is a world patrimony: witness to this, also the presence, in the US, of one of the world best known Dantean institutions, the Dante Society of America. Created by poets, with the aim of kindling the flame of Dante's work among people of all education and social extraction, the Society is today headed by respected Italianist and Berkeley professor Albert Russell Ascoli, with whom I recently have had the honor – and pleasure – to have a chat.

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Fonte: L'italo-Americano