In Dante’s mirror. Temptation and warning

The exhibition ‘In Dante’s Mirror’. Temptation and warning is a proposal to look at human problems from a distance.

Through art, poetry and literature, which sometimes in surprising juxtapositions, will tell us about the topoi, symbols and truths of Mediterranean and Christian culture, we will look at life from an unusual perspective. The exhibition will tell the story of people, their vices, sins, dreams, feelings.

Dante Alighieri, the greatest poet of the late Middle Ages, will be our guide in this thicket. Why him?

He was a man with a deep understanding of the world of his day and told it to the full of his genius. But he was also an active, militant politician and was interested in the sciences, theology and philosophy. He was no stranger to the problems of family life. In his Comedy (later called The Divine), he brilliantly told the whole world about what awaits us in the hereafter.

We will familiarise ourselves with its contents, but above all we will try to find in it warnings and guidelines for us in the earthly journey.

Heroes of the imagination of generations, cruel and holy, beautiful and tempting, husbands and women, mermaids and sorcerers, monks, dreamers and scientists. Sadness, joy, lust, hatred and love as seen through the eyes of artists from antiquity to the present day. The heroes and artists will be many.

We will be tempted by beauty and gold, we will listen to the declamations of Polish poets, we will experience the fascination of the Divine Comedy felt by our Romantics – Norwid and Mickiewicz – and by the seven Polish translators whose translations of the entire Comedy outdo each other in mastery.

The artists will guide us along the path of earthly life in nine scenes. Then, after honouring the ancestors, we will cross the gate of Hell. Contrary to the message of the inscription on it, we will not abandon hope and we will pass through Purgatory in order to end our journey in Paradise, as we began it, with the one “who moves the Sun and the other stars” (transl. Jarosław Mikołajewski) – Love.

Don’t be dismayed, the experience of your predecessors awaits you.

Swiatosław Lenartowicz, author of the scenario and curator of the exhibition