“Our Brother Dante”: Dantesque Reappropriations in Italian America

There is something to be said about the presence of Dante in ItalianAmerican letters and culture. And just saying that “something,” saying that it is there and it is worthy of a critical discourse, might prove to fulfill a significant part of the overall meaning of Dante among Americans of Italian descent. In fact, Dante’s position within Italian America is so obvious, and even in some way so predictable, that it is quite simply not very much considered. It is as if it is so taken for granted—especially by educated people and scholars—that it goes unnoticed, which is a telltale paradox. This unconscious strategy of effacement seems an introjection of the much wider removal experienced by Italian Americans both in the United States and in Italy. It functions—Dante’s removal, or bracketing—as a homeopathic remedy that stimulates and readies the larger Italian-American social body for its comfortable marginality. But this is made possible by the fact that Dante as a whole—his texts, his figura, the aura of his authority—has had a long history in North America, to the point that, as a cultural pawnbroker, he has acquired a quasi-ItalianAmerican status. Identifying with Dante implies legitimizing the history and existence of an Italian-American culture, and providing its experience with a radical narrative of searching and foundation, which is liable to be used both as an existential compass and as a shared, collective patrimony. A sign (yet another) of Dante’s inexhaustible depth, but also of the pliability of Italian-American culture, is the fact that the allegorical journey and the towering stature of the poet could and can be adapted to totally different historical conditions, forging a somewhat plausible dialogue between fiction and reality, between a God quest and a harsh economic pull. Dante and his encyclopedia are