Dante could have been tripping on psychedelic drugs in his loftiest poetic flights, an Italian expert said Tuesday, commenting on cheeky speculation by eminent British Dantist Barbara Reynolds.
"It's not just possible but probable," said Giulio Leoni, a scholar who has written three 'cowl and dagger' thrillers featuring Dante as an imaginary detective.
In her latest book, Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, The Man, the 92-year-old Reynolds provocatively suggests cannabis or aloe could have fuelled some of the Divine Comedy's visionary moments.
The Dantist establishment has turned up its nose at the idea - based on an episode in the epic poem where a character becomes a sea god after sniffing a herb - as an entertaining but unsubstantiated wheeze.
But Leoni, whose Dante jaunts have been translated into ten languages including English, French, Spanish, Russian, Slovakian and South Korean, claims there's a good basis for Reynold's apparently playful suggestion.
"People have been speculating about this for 100 years," he claimed.
"Dante was forced to become a member of Florence's Herbalists' Guild as a way into city politics.
"He shows elsewhere that he had a solid knowledge of herbal remedies and knew what plants to use for remedies.
"Why shouldn't he have tried out other plants to give his imagination a boost".
"For some time now, Dante's traditional image has been challenged," Leoni went on.
"Reynold's provocative remark should keep the process going".
But Italy's Dante Association was sniffy about the idea, saying "this is not a credible hypothesis".
"There has recently been a widespread and regrettable tendency to project all our vices onto Dante, even the guiltiest ones," said the association's president, Guglielmo Gorni.
One of Italy's two great Dante popularisers, scholar and broadcaster Vittorio Sermonti, called the notion of an acid-dropping Dante "completely idiotic".
The other one, filmmaker Roberto Benigni, told an audience for his regular Dante readings and stand-up show Tuesday night:
"People today take heroin to write a rock song. What was Dante supposed to do?"
