The present study investigates the sampling presence of the Divine Comedy, its genetic material, in the poetry and poetic thought of European lyricism, from Shelley and Solomos to Yeats, Mandelstam, Eliot, Frost, Montale, Brodsky, and Seferis.

“The afterlife is not Dante's invention. However, he gave it the clearest –and most human– form. He populated it with characters from his own life and enriched it with the lives of others: a whole human population; the buzzing hive of the Divine Comedy. That is why the only worthy counterpart to it is the Shakespearean human geography, now, in conditions of Weltliteratur, just as it was before.”

“The reverent assimilation of Dante into other national languages is a constant element of his reception in the history of European poetry. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita our auditory memory has assimilated it, like a spell or a magical incantation, equivalent to 'Tell me, O Muse, of that man.' We all believe that we hear the Divine Comedy even if we do not know Italian; and this happens because its poetry is primarily auditory, addressing the ear and organizing its imagery in a unique way, so that sound and meaning, line and thought, cannot be distinguished (we often say this, but here it holds absolutely true). This method is called terza rima.”

COVER DESIGN: SANDRO BOTTICELLI Divine Comedy – Hell, Eighth Circle (Malebolge). The punishment of the bad advisors – Discussion with Guido da Montefeltro. From the volume: Sandro Botticelli, The Drawings for Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2001.