Ambassador Giuseppina Zarra was a special guest at the exhibition organized at the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences “Dante Alighieri – 700 years of divine poetry”. The exhibition is dedicated to the seven hundredth anniversary of the death of the supreme poet and presents precious editions of the Divine Comedy and other works of the poet and the first translations of Dante’s works into Bulgarian, which began in 1883 on the pages of the “Bulgarian Review”, continued in “Bulgarian Reading” by Ivan Vazov and Konstantin Velichkov (1884), as well as translations by Kiril Hristov, Milko Ralchev, Ivan Ivanov, Lyuben Lyubenov and others. Translations of the “Divine Comedy” into English, French, German, Russian from the personal libraries of Prof. Marko Balabanov, Stoyan Mihaylovski, Dr. Nikola Sakarov, Prof. Toma Tomov were presented. Particular attention is paid to the editions of Dante in the Italian language, preserved in the funds of the BAS, the oldest of which are: “La Divina Commedia col comento del P. Bonaventura Lombardi” (1847), “Opere minori” preceded by a philological-critical discourse by PI Fraticelli (1855) and “La Divina Commedia” of the Florentine publishing house Fratelli Alinari of 1902, which contains drawings and graphics of contemporary Italian artists created especially for this purpose. Bulgarian and foreign criticism of Dante Alighieri is also included. Most of the books are illustrated by the great French artist and engraver Gustave Doré.
