Dante

by Romano Guardini

Nel vastissimo panorama della letteratura di esegesi e critica dantesca, in Italia e all'estero, si inseriscono con una loro originalità i due saggi di Romano Guardini qui raccolti, "Gli angeli nella Divina Commedia" e "Paesaggio dell'eternità". L'angolatura non è la più consueta per indagini sull'Alighieri: essa è innanzitutto teologica e filosofica, pur non trascurando notazioni linguistiche e rilievi stilistici che testimoniano, insieme con un gusto sottile, l'amorosa familiarità col testo, che all'autore era stata instillata dal padre. La cultura che vi si dispiega è ricca di suggestioni, che scaturiscono da accostamenti e contrasti imprevisti, come tra le figure angeliche dantesche e l'enigmatica essenza dell'angelo di Rilke, o sottofondi sapienziali remoti, quali appaiono, ad esempio, nel riferimento alla "mistica rosa" del Paradiso alla struttura del mandala orientale, o negli inquietanti paralleli tra le metamorfosi dei ladri nell'Inferno e fenomeni di spersonalizzazione quasi da "lupo mannaro" nell'epos nordico. Agli studi danteschi ne viene l'apporto dell'apertura di orizzonti non abituali, dove la ricerca può svilupparsi fecondamente, tendendo a una comprensione del pensiero di Dante, oltreché dell'arte sua, più profonda e matura.

400 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 1999

About the author

Romano Guardini was a Catholic priest, author, and academic. He was one of the most important figures in Catholic intellectual life in the 20th century.

Guardini was born in Verona, Italy in 1885. His family moved to Mainz when he was one year old and he lived in Germany for the rest of his life. After studying chemistry in Tübingen for two semesters, and economics in Munich and Berlin for three, he decided to become a priest. After studying Theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen, he was ordained in Mainz in 1910. He briefly worked in a pastoral position before returning to Freiburg to work on his doctorate in Theology under Engelbert Krebs. He received his doctorate in 1915 for a dissertation on Bonaventure. He completed his “Habilitation” in Dogmatic Theology at the University of Bonn in 1922, again with a dissertation on Bonaventure. Throughout this period he also worked as a chaplain to the Catholic youth movement.

In 1923 he was appointed to a chair in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Berlin. In the 1935 essay “Der Heiland” (The Saviour) he criticized Nazi mythologizing of the person of Jesus and emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus. The Nazis forced him to resign from his Berlin position in 1939. From 1943 to 1945 he retired to Mooshausen, where his friend Josef Weiger had been parish priest since 1917.

In 1945 Guardini was appointed professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen and resumed lecturing on the Philosophy of Religion. In 1948, he became professor at the University of Munich, where he remained until retiring for health reasons in 1962.

Guardini died in Munich on 1 October 1968. He was buried in the priests’ cemetery of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Munich. His estate was left to the Catholic Academy in Bavaria that he had co-founded.