Dante and the gift of freedom, conference by Meris Monti in San Marino
(Rimini) Under the aegis of the San Marino Committee for the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, the second cycle of lectures and readings of the “Dante Year” continues, conceived to celebrate the Supreme Poet. This second cycle once again sees the relative cultural and educational realities of our Republic as protagonists, within a heterogeneous program in terms of themes and suggestions, aimed at consulting the multiform and inexhaustible richness, transdisciplinary by definition, of the Comedy, the works and the figure of Dante.
Professor Meris Monti, renowned lecturer, former professor of Arts and Literature at the Liceo Classico of the Upper Secondary School and President of the San Marino National Commission for Unesco, will hold Wednesday 24 November, at 21:00, at Teatro Titano, with free admission, a Lectio entitled: “Light is given to you for good and malice, and free will. Dante’s path to discover the gift of freedom”.
Starting from the words pronounced by Marco Lombardo in the middle of Canto XVI of Purgatory, which due to their particular location can be almost the center of gravity of the whole work, Professor Monti will guide us in the discovery of a fundamental theme for the installation of the whole Dante’s work, of its moral and eschatological system. For Alighieri, in fact, man, an intelligent being endowed with a light that allows him to distinguish good from evil, depends on the exercise of “free will”.
This freedom, for himself and for all humanity to which the sacred poem is intended, the pilgrim-poet “goes looking for” (Purg. I 71), when, after having plunged into the infernal chasm and reached the mountain beach of Purgatory, is preparing to climb the mountain and experiences, parallel to the slavery that arises from the choice of evil, the convenience of good.
Finally, it will be Beatrice, in canto V of Paradise, to make a further and moving celebration of human freedom, defining it as the greatest gift that God has given to men. Not our conquest, therefore, but an innate kit, of inestimable value, wanted for us by the Creator. The dimension of freedom as a gift cannot fail to recall a particularly vivid aspect in the conscience of the people of San Marino who, according to tradition, have this privileged condition to the will expressed by the Holy Founder in his testament: “relinquo vos liberos ab utroque homine”.
At the end of the second cycle of lectures and readings of the Dantean Year, the eighth and last meeting will be held on Wednesday 1 December, again at 21:00 at the Titano Theater. The concert-event evening curated by Maestro Marco Capicchioni is scheduled: “Dante in musica. Composers inspired by the Poet ”. The talented students of the Musical Institute will perform pieces from the classical and contemporary repertoire, all linked, by themes and suggestions, to the figure and work of Alighieri, thus celebrating the mass to music of the genius and imagination of the great Florentine poet.