The Wisdom of Hope and Other Conversations about Dante

Olga Sedakova's book "The Wisdom of Hope and Other Conversations About Dante" continues her previous book "Translating Dante" (2020), but this time it is not about the translation of Dante into Russian, rather it is a discussion about his "innate and insatiable thirst for understanding", about Dante as a thinker and a poet-theologian.
The book is divided into three parts. The first section includes works directly related to the "Divine Comedy". Among them, we especially highlight the previously unpublished essay "Circle, Cross, Man", dedicated to the Dante of Ravenna and his anthropology, unexpectedly resonating with early Christian thought. The second section includes works on the Italian context of Dante and his presence in Russian poetry. The third small section consists of translations of excerpts from "New Life" and brings us back to the beginning of Dante's journey. All translations from Italian and other languages are done by the author. Almost all essays included in the book are published for the first time in Russian or are published for the first time at all.
Including in her thought the experience of many readers and researchers - dantologists, poets, philosophers, theologians - Sedakova's book represents a deeply personal and, in many ways, unexpected reading of the "Divine Comedy". In dialogue with such a grand and provocative interlocutor as Dante, the author brings to the forefront themes important to her as a poet, philologist, and thinker: hope and will, wisdom and reason, geometry and flesh, creation and freedom.
"Beauty is not only the last, final word of Dante's image of the world. It is its initial word. Beauty precedes Dante's very first poetic word. Beauty compels him to begin to speak ("make footnotes" to the book of his life) and to give a great promise: to create in her honor something that has never been created before. The epiphany of beauty in his life is where everything begins: the "new miracle" of young Beatrice, her apparition, which early and forever brought into Dante's life the red color of martyrdom, the color of new life.
And then - the only narrative voyage in the world under the wind of Minerva." Olga Sedakova