The Tower

♂ THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY,THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST…BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGSWERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY.ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE — Dante, Inferno Canto III [[Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Mandelbaum, Inferno, Canto III, 1-9, […]

☉ So sweet my torment and my plaint a game,I play, I dance, and singand at my foolish risksinging and dancing I go languishingto follow a basilisk.So wills my fate, or my mistake. — Sannazaro, Arcadia [[Sannazaro, Jacopo. Arcadia & Piscatorial Ecologues. Translated by Ralph Nash. Wayne State University Press, 1966; p. 39, Eclogue 2.]]

♀ When the wretched perceive or feel that their woes arouse compassion, their longing to give vent to their anguish is thereby increased. And so, since, from long usance, the cause of my anguish, instead of growing less, has become greater, the wish has come to me, noble ladies… to win your pity, if I

☿ Yet even when the demons’ prophets are instructed by the demons, they foretell the truth, sometimes by virtue of their own nature, the author of which is the Holy Ghost, and sometimes by revelation of the good spirits, as Augustine declares: so that even then this truth which the demons proclaim is from the

FOOL Considerate Lilia Agri ☾ Dearest ladies, I find myself faced with the task of having to recount an actual occurrence which sounds much more like an invention than it really was… — Boccaccio, The Decameron [[Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. Mark Musa, 3.8, p.255.]] Preface Y DEAREST NEPHEW CLAUDIO, May God lend grace to

The following book was discovered in the city of Parma in 2019, soon before the global pandemic silenced the bustling streets and shut us all in our solitary towers.

In the Piazza Ghiaia, a stone’s throw from the Museo Bodoniano, there is an old building with a new edifice which, unbeknownst to its inhabitants, once housed the clandestine printing press of Giorgio Bagatello…