This week's collection of whimsical and curious stories will reflect on a famous Italian poet and statesman who has had quite an exciting year so far. This would not be noteworthy if it wasn't for the fact that he has been dead for exactly 700 years.
Trials and tribulations - To say that Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was quite an important poet would be like saying that Michelangelo liked to “dabble in painting”, or that Machiavelli had an “interest in politics”. His Divine Comedy did not only give us a front-row seat to the afterlife but also helped establish modern Italian as a language. However, while being a towering giant of medieval literature, his venture into politics was less successful. In the best tradition of Florence, he fell victim to the age-old mistake of backing the wrong branch of its ruling family and was charged with corruption when "his" branch was mostly unceremoniously murdered by the other branch.
Now, 700 years later, Dante was pardoned during a conference that involved one his descendants (Sperello di Serego Alighieri) as well as a descendant of the Florentine official who convicted Dante all these years ago (Cante de Gabrielli da Gubbio).*
Posthumous portrait of Dante by Sandro Botticelli, 1495
The sincerest form of flattery - For any ordinary human, receiving a pardon 700 years after dying could be considered enough publicity for at least another century. However, our protagonist was in the news a second time this year (and for a topic he likely did not see coming). The humanoid robot Ai-Da became the first of its (her?) kind to perform poetry she had written after her neural network had ingested all three volumes of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Interestingly, Ai-Da herself had quite an interesting year. In October, she was accused by Egyptian border guards of being a spy when she was on her way to perform at a pyramid show. According to her creator, Aidan Meller, she was first detained because she possessed a modem, and then because she had cameras in her eyes (which she uses to draw). Meller later remarked that he “[…] can ditch the modems, but [he] can’t really gouge her eyes out”. Luckily, Ai-Da was finally released by the Egyptian authorities without modem or camera amputation.
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*Here is a good summary of the case
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