Luigi Valli (1878-1931). Contributo alla storia delle interpretazioni esoteriche dell’opera di Dante

Once a well-known writer, a man of manifold cultural interests and international relations, today Luigi Valli is not mentioned among the Italian prominent figures of early twentieth-century if not for his Dante studies, based on an interpretation that he connected to a hermeneutic "school". A “school” whose allegorist approach culminated in the mid nineteenth century with Gabriele Rossetti, the real founder of the esoteric interpretation of Dante. Valli considered Giovanni Pascoli’s Dantescan work as his link to this hermeneutic chain, and systematizing this work – nearly ignored by critics –, he found the “symmetries of the Cross and the Eagle”, the structure of a secret imperialistic political theology in the Comedy. A discovery with practical implications on the political imaginary of Fascist Italy and German "conservative revolution". When in 1928, Valli extends his hermeneutics with the publication of Il linguaggio segreto di Dante e dei Fedeli d’Amore, the secret political theology changes into a real esotericism of Dante, in the sense that the term esotericism has acquired as an academic discipline. Appreciated in newspapers cultural section, and fought by academic Dantism, after the untimely death of their author, the theories of the Linguaggio segreto will be pursue by new followers of the "school", mainly Alfonso Ricolfi and Gaetano Scarlata, but also by external circles. In fact, Valli’s Dantescan work offered a fruitful hermeneutic space, opened to the contributions from other schools of thought. First of all, supporters of an "esoteric ecumenism", such as Julius Evola and Arturo Reghini, who, in the Twenties, tried to insert neo-pagan influences into Fascist regime, but also authors with a totally different approach, such as the perennialism of René Guénon or the "religionism" of Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin. The latter, highlighting the intersections between Eastern and Western "Fedeli d’Amore", will provide scholars such as Giorgio Agamben to locate the esotericist vein inside Dolce stil nuovo as an access point now unavoidable to investigate the origins of Italian poetry.