“Beauty Awakens the Soul to Act,” Blogpost by Angelica Hopes (2012)

“Going to the 2nd floor, shows the documents in connection with his painful exile in 1301, year of condemnation. In the 3rd floor, there’s the collection of documents on the fortune of Dante through the centuries, iconography. While sitting inside, admiring the historical artefacts and rich information on the influences of Florentine history to Dante Alighieri’s work, I was speechless and absorbed the moment with gratitude reflecting from my English term paper project in fourth year high school on the Divine Comedy, twenty three years later here I am and I got a copy of La Divina Commedia in its original language.” [. . .]     –Angelica Hopes, Landscapes of a Heart, October 27, 2012.

The post also references other quotations from Dante in Italian and in English, both accurate and apocryphal. In the image above, the author cites the phrase “A great flame follows a little spark” (“Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda,” Paradiso 1.34), which appears to have been e-translated back to Italian as “Un grande incendio spesso segue una piccola scintilla.” The title of the post, “Beauty awakens the soul to act,” is a translation of Purgatorio 18.21: “tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto.”