INTERVIEW ROBERTO CINCOTTA, DIRECTOR OF THE ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE IN BELGRADE By Sonja Ćirić
Living The
ITALIAN WAY “Thanks to Dante, it is easy for us Italians to promote our culture and our country. Dante is considered the father of the Italian language, il “Sommo Poeta”, but he also represents the cultural heritage of all humanity” ~ Roberto Cincotta
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he whole of Italy is this year commemorating the 700th anniversary of the death of the great Dante Alighieri, so it is only natural to talk about this “father” of the Italian language and one of the giants of world literature with Roberto Cincotta, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Belgrade. Numerous programmes have been planned to mark this great jubilee, and - thanks to the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute Belgrade will host several of these events. Last February the Italian Cultural Institute presented the book ‘From the Dark Wood to Paradise. A Journey through Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy in thirty-three languages’, with one of those languages being Serbian, while it was precisely from Belgrade in April that the exhibition ‘Hypermodern Dante. Illustrations of Dante’s work from around the world, 1983-2021’ set out on its European tour, bound for Athens, Prague, Moscow, Madrid and London.
Why did you choose Belgrade to launch this really unusual presentation of the world of the great Dante? - I accepted our Ministry’s proposal to host this important exhibition as a sign of attention for Belgrade’s public and because, as you are saying, this exhibition confirms that Dante is always modern, indeed “hypermodern”. I was sure the audience would appreciate it, and in fact some hundred visitors came, despite restrictions on access due to the pandemic. Celebrations marking the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, organised by the Italian
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Institute of Culture, started back in February, when you presented the audio-visual book ‘From the Dark Wood to Paradise. A Journey through Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy in thirty-three languages’. What does Dante teach us? - Dante never stops pushing us to look within ourselves. Describing the faults and merits of humankind, his drives, his reactions, his desperation, but also his aspirations, Dante shows us the right path, warns us against the traps of selfishness, greed, sins and baseness that men are capable of, but at the same time showing us the way to redemption. He first takes us to hell, then creates a glimmer of hope through purgatory to finally reach
heaven. The “Divina Commedia” appears to be a religious poem, but is actually also profoundly secular, because it shows us the pitfalls and, at the same time, the beauty of our earthly life. Dante deals with universal topics through the experience of his own life in the historical period in which he lived. That’s why Dante is modern; he’s always been modern, in every historical era. Both the exhibition and the audio-visual book represent a fusion of Dante’s art and our times. At the same time, these projects are also exceptional examples of how today, in this time of the abundance of information, other nations are promoting
