Press Releases  ·  09 | 08 | 2019

Switzerland's first participation of Dantedì

Engraving: Un punto vidi che raggiava from Divina Commedia by Dante - illustration designed by John Flaxman, engraved by Tommaso Piroli.

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In the frame of Ascona's Monte Verità, Marco Solari, President of the Locarno Film Festival and Delegate of the Management Committee for Literary Events, launches the first Swiss entry to the establishment of a day dedicated to Dante Alighieri in view of the 700th anniversary of his death, in 2021: the Dantedì.

It was on September 14, 1321, in Ravenna, while returning from an embassy in Venice, when the poet who wrote, citing Jorge-Luis Borges, «the best book ever written by a man», died. A little over a year after the 700th anniversary, the columns of Il Corriere della Sera gave rise to the idea of establishing a day in memory of the poet; Dantedì. An initiative that immediately received the support of the Dante Alighieri Society, major Italian cultural institutions, writers, intellectuals and personalities from the political world of the country where Dante was born. This enthusiasm involved, among others, the translator of Dante's Divine Comedy into French, René de Ceccatty, who was determined to solicit the participation of foreign cultural entities in Dantedì.

At the reception organized at Monte Verità by the Locarno Film Festival on the occasion of the visit of Federal Councillor and Minister of Culture Alain Berset, Marco Solari, President of the Locarno Film Festival and Delegate of the Management Committee for Literary Events at Monte Verità, welcomed and supported the establishment of Dantedì. A day that other cultural associations in Switzerland, a country in which the Italian language is one of the four national languages, will soon join with the same conviction and participation.


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