Dante in red shirt. The coded messages between Gramsci and Togliatti

The search for an almost partisan political profile, one in prison, the other in Moscow at the head of the Communist International. The poet was angry with the indifferent and, paradoxically, with those of his own side

“That Dante is a Fascist all his works prove it”. So says, not Mussolini, who according to his British biographer Denis Mack Smith “knew long passages of Dante by heart” and “read Dante every day”, but a diligent official of his. His name is Peter Jacopini. He is not a prefect but a captain of the Royal Guardia di Finanza. With contempt for ridicule, he doesn’t just enlist Dante in the Fascist Party, but it makes him a bitter enemy of the enemies of the regime. In verses 76-84 of canto VI of Purgatorio, that of Sordello, sees “a first condemnation that Dante makes of socialism, which, being international, does not admit borders, or country, or the symbol of the country itself, the flag; and here is a first affirmation of the fascist faith of the Poet, who deeply wants and loves the country, e on the contrary, he complains that this is without a helmsman in a great storm, precisely as Italy was before the advent of Fascism. Dante is therefore a forerunner of fascism and, if he had lived today, he would certainly have honored us with his company, holding his truncheon against all the socialists and communists who are renegades and disruptors of the nation…”.