Sulla semantica dell’“abisso” nella “Divina Commedia”: libertà e spazio nell’originale dantesco e nelle traduzioni estoni

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to discuss the semantics of the spatial image abisso (“abyss”) in Dante’s Commedia. Parting from the methodological principles of Paul Ricoeur of his general theory of the intersection of poetic discourse and speculative discourse, this study, based also on examining the translations of Dante’s work into Estonian, wishes to demonstrate that from the derogatory semantics of abisso in Inferno and the semantics of doubt related to the same concept in Purgatorio Dante arrives at the semantics of openness and freedom of the non-spatial abisso in Paradiso. Therefore the dynamics of this particular image is emblematic of the whole cognitive voyage in Commedia: from the abyss of the confusion of his mind Dante free-willingly plunges into the orderly abyss of God’s freedom which man’s mind, however, can never grasp with his own will.