The Ferrara mosquito which killed Dante (with St. Francis and the 20 minutes)
It was a gray December morning a few years ago, on a Thursday during the first hour, to be precise, and I was questioning in a third grade class. Subject of the oral test: Dante's life and works, plus a good dose of Inferno from the Divine Comedy. The two chosen "victims" were a boy and a girl (L. and C., we say the sin but not the sinner, let the full names be forgotten), who were preparing to face the second round of questions for the first four-months period.At this point, however, as in every self-respecting soap opera, we need the background, then a flashback. Since we teachers struggle daily with the need to not let our students fall asleep on their benches, a way to achieve this purpose is to "move" the lessons with some original idea (at our peril). Since I teach Italian literature, Dante and in particular, I teach in Ferrara, I resort regularly to some anecdotes to liven up his biography. I usually refer that we, in Ferrara, produced Dante and destroyed him altogether: in fact, the great-great-grandmother of Dante was from Ferrara (it was Aldighiera, who also gave the name to the family and was married to the great-great grandfather Cacciaguida, the crusader appearing in Paradise 15-17), so that Dante, as shown in Inferno XIX, was familiar with the vicissitudes of Ferrara families (the ladies loved by Ferrara lord Obizzo II d'Este, for instance, and the families involved in his affairs).Moreover, when, in the late summer of 1321, the poet returned by boat from an embassy to Venice, on behalf of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, he stopped at the abbey of Pomposa (located right down at the bottom of the street where I live, but several dozen kilometers away), and here he got malaria; after returning to Ravenna with a fever, he died on the night between 13 and 14 September 1321. He must have been bitten by an anopheles mosquito in this area, which was swampy back then (but mosquitoes are still here): then, when I close my dissertation on Dante's biography, I usually say, joking (joking!), that Dante was killed by a Ferrara mosquito. And, I even add, that his ghost appears occasionally at the Abbey of Pomposa, pointing to the wall which should be removed to access a cache, where the lost original manuscript of the Divine Comedy should be; but since the Superintendency of Arts does not believe in ghosts, the wall remains where it is. And, perhaps, the manuscript too (!).
Well, this is the background and part of what I had told, days before, to my students. The fearless teenagers sitting next to me, one on my right and the other one on my left, had to relate about the biography of Dante (which I use to frame his works). C., the girl, so began, with the colorless voice of a RAI announcer (our main channel): "Well, Dante Alighieri, born in Florence in June 1265, when he was 12 years old, he was engaged to Gemma Donati, he was mainly self-taught, he studied rhetoric under Brunetto Latini, he went into the Stilnovo ... ".I should point out that the "machine" effect of these answers, kind of a recorder running, is totally unwanted by me. Just as it is absolutely unwanted the notional attitude. As long as they tell me things right, however, I prefer not to intervene (if I were more cruel, I should do every day a massacre worse than cannibals in the jungle). You should hear what they can learn in certain classes. Last year, the fifth grade, who is now graduated, had specialized in recalling every time that the Pharsalia by Lucan, the epic poem on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, consists of exactly 8,060 Latin hexameters (I had to go to look for this piece of news to write it now: I did not know): they never failed to remind it to me, at every oral test (forgetting more serious things). Otherwise, a few years ago, in a class where I taught geography, students did not fail to repeat every time that Russia has an area of 17,098,242 square kilometers (mind the final 2 kilometers). Blessed youth! Why racking their brains to remember such things? (Genius? Never mind ...).Well, my young lady was repeating Dante's biography with the enthusiasm worthy of the voice of a GPS and, meanwhile, I was napping. It was early (first hour), it was winter, cold and with my coat I had created a warm niche on the seat of my chair. I was at peace with the world and everything appeared quiet and peaceful. Meanwhile, she continued, in a voice as flat as an ironing board: "... He studied rhetoric with Brunetto Latini, went into the Stilnovo, dedicated his poems to Beatrice, he got into politics, he was exiled in 1302 and, in 1321, he was killed by a Ferrara mosquito".
I jumped on my chair and suddenly woke up. So, not believing my ears, I turned towards her with a terrified air, stared wide-eyed in disbelief and asked: "What did you teeeeellll?". She did not dare repeat, but I had heard all too well."But I say, C .: it was a joooooke!!!", I exclaimed, trying to call her back to reality, as a Red Cross doctor with a badly wounded. And she was unperturbed, as a soldier, impaled before the eyes of his captain on the Red Square. Some people just do not understand the differences in style between irony, joke, sarcasm (I rarely use it, but sometimes it's needed) and serious, if not tragic style. The Swiss were like that: if I said that I wanted to physically eliminate someone, they hastened to call the police.Meanwhile, the first line, where the most talented were stationed (Marco, Tommaso), were splitting their sides with laughter. I still struggled to recover and I repeated the idea that differences of style EXIST; at that point, always the most talented ones, still laughing out loud, recalled (a bit wickedly) that L., the other victim of the day, had bumped into a similar accident a few weeks before (oral test of the first round). It's the story of "St. Francis and the 20 minutes." But even here, we need a flashback.As everyone knows, St. Francis is not only the patron saint of Italy, but also the initiator of our Italian poetry with the Canticle of Creatures. Well, when he converted, in 1207, he stripped himself (see Giotto's frescoes in the Upper Basilica of Assisi) before the bishop and the entire city, to return everything to his father, even the last garment. And every year, in the third grade, I insist that nudity, back then, had not so much an indecent meaning (we come after the Victorian era), but it was a sign of vulnerability, lack of defense. First of all, clothes defend us from others; and here usually occurs the parallel with the asag (the topic of Provencal poetry preferred by my students...).
Giotto's fresco in the Upper Basilica of Assisi
In courtly poetry, in fact, the knight had to perform, before conquering his lady, a path of courtship rigidly organized, with well-defined stages: and the last but one, before the real night of love, was the asag (Provencal term). This is the side expected with the greatest enthusiasm by my students and which, every year, makes me fear a lawsuit by parents for corruption of minors: in fact, as I refer impassively, the asag was nothing but the moment when the knight had to prove his reliability ... being introduced completely naked in front of the lady, ready to please her with kisses and caresses, but WITHOUT GOING BEYOND. That is, for the night of love itself, see you to the next episode.Obviously, that year someone did not fail (one of the boys, of course) to ask what would happen if the knight in question had his hormones "out of control"; but I can not respond for male hormones, then, hoping that the aforementioned knight found a solution to the old problem, at least until the next stage, I cleverly made a dribbling, pointing out that this was a great manifestation of self-control, and respect from a man to a woman, a demonstration of how he respected her to the point of being completely at her mercy. At a time when women were completely subordinate, that was not so little (and, let's face it, the preliminaries are important! Kudos to Provencal knights).In essence, even St. Francis, so to speak, who knew the Provencal poetry and claimed to be the spouse of Lady Poverty, did a kind of asag; so, that year, explaining that to my teenagers, I said, remembering the scene of the famous movie by F.Zeffirelli on St. Francis: "You see, when St. Francis strips himself of his clothes, at the beginning the Bishop does not care of the fact that he is naked; only after 20 minutes, after discussing with him, he reminds that he is naked and screams: "Cover him!". But the point is not indecency: the point is that S.Francis decided to remain completely vulnerable and poor and to rely solely on Providence. Then the bishop gave him a robe. "Well, L., during the oral test of the first round, took care to explain: "St. Francis, born in 1181, son of a wealthy merchant, Peter Bernardone, after being a prisoner in Perugia, decided to convert, then he stripped himself in front of the Bishop, who realized it after 20 minutes... "Recalling the incident, which involved another pupil questioned that morning, the first line were still splitting their sides with laughter: and, meanwhile, I was thinking that St. Francis, Dante, and so on were probably turning in their graves. I do not remember how the test ended and which note I gave (maybe I was forgiving, forgiving and resigned): but, since then, I try to be careful to what I say. Basically, I should always point out that I am joking with a smile....
This is really funny: good reading!
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