Ursula von der Leyen

The Ode that is published here is the result of an intuition born in 2021, in the year of the centenary of Dante Alighieri's death. It is in the spirit of this anniversary that the Ode found its fundamental lyrical and poetic inspiration, reflecting on the historical, cultural and civil significance that Dante's lesson could have for Europe in the 21st century.

Dante as the poet of Italy - understood by him as a cultural, civil and spiritual unity, even in the absence, then, of any territorial unit - and to Dante as the poet of the woman - as enchanted finesse and exquisite amiability of life, on the paths of beauty and knowledge.

Projected onto our time, these reflections lead the author to the female figure of the President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, who, as the first woman in history, had reached the political leadership of a continent.

It is a completely new reading of the Rhine, antithetical to the long tradition that has delivered it to the literary, poetic and musical history of Germany and Europe as the river of the "Lorelei", following a feminine codification, born on the poetic level with the hugely popular Lorelei Song by Heinrich Heine.