Dante meets political enemy in hell

November 30, 1960 Florence

Hello, J Dear,

I just got back from an afternoon in Empoli, a small town about twenty miles or so down the Arno on the way to Pisa. It was a bright, spring-like day and I went with the Colonel and Ede to see a re-enactment (in medieval costumes, with horses) of the war conference which was held after the battle of Montaperti (1260, a few miles from Siena) in which Farinata, the victor, convinces his Ghibellines to spare Florence and not raze her to the ground. Long golden trumpets, swords, standards, halberts, bright colored costumes—it was quite a show. They read out loud Canto Ten of Dante’s Inferno in which Dante (a White or moderate Guelph) encounters Farinata in the circle of the heretics. Farinata is lying on his back, agonizing in a fiery coffin but when he hears Dante talking to Virgil in Italian (with a Florentine accent) he begs him to stop and talk with him. Dante does. They soon realize that they belonged to opposite parties and start arguing bitterly. Here are Farinata’s first words to Dante (before he discovers that he is a Guelph). They are not easy to translate but I’m sure you will appreciate the nobility of the language, the concision and power of the lines. Farinata refers to Florence as his patria. This shows how powerful the city state was in the minds of people during the Middle Ages. I try to keep this in mind when I visit cities in Italy. The pride in one’s city of birth is still there.

O, Tosco, che per la città del fuoco
Oh, Tuscan who through the city of fire

vivo t’en vai così parlando onesto,
alive, go about your way, thus speaking modestly,

piacciati di restare in questo loco.
May it please you to stay in this place.

La tua loquela ti fa manifesto
Your speech reveals you to be

di quella nobil patria natio
of that noble fatherland (Florence) a native

alla qual forse fui troppo molesto.
to which maybe I was too harsh

My trip to Empoli was an exciting experience and I’m grateful to Ede and the Colonel for tipping me off and taking me with them. They are watching out for the Dante-loving Canadian.  [This passage was taken from my recent book, “Florence, Dante and Me”. You can see the cover and read excerpts by going to my website: http://www.godwinbooks.com]

Museo Galileo

Sala VII. T. Lessi, Galileo con Vincenzo Viviani, olio su tavola.

Museo Galileo, the former Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (Institute and Museum of the History of Science) is located in Florence, Italy, in Piazza dei Giudici, along the River Arno and close to the Uffizi Gallery. It is housed in Palazzo Castellani, an 11th-century building which was then known as the Castello d’Altafronte. Museo Galileo owns one of the world’s major collection of scientific instruments, which bears evidence of the crucial role that the Medici and Lorraine Grand Dukes attached to science and scientists. The Museo di Storia della Scienza re-opened to the public under the new name Museo Galileo on June 10, 2010, after a two-year closure due to important redesigning and renovation works. It was inaugurated just four hundred years after the publication in March 1610 of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger), the booklet that revolutionized mankind’s conception of the universe, decisively contributing to the advent of modern science.

Wikipedia

Robert Stuart Thomson

Robert Thomson was born in Vancouver in 1940. He graduated from West Vancouver High School in 1958 then went to the University of British Columbia where he graduated in 1962 with a first class honors degree in French and Italian. While doing his B.A. Thomson was awarded a one year scholarship to attend the University of Florence; he also received a Woodrow Wilson fellowship (1962) which he used to attend Yale University. He received his PhD from Yale in 1966. (Thomson says that one of his biggest thrills in life was to see two much-admired people on the same stage as himself: Barbara Tuchman and “Duke” Ellington.) After a teaching career Thomson took early retirement (1995) and set up his own publishing house, Godwin Books. (www.godwinbooks.com) He has published several of his own books and has been instrumental in reprinting and gaining recognition for the books of his great-uncle, George Godwin (1889-1974).