«LIBERTÀ VA CERCANDO»
Emanuele Banfi
The aim of the paper is to show the difficulty of rendering, in Chinese, some cultural and philosophical notions typical of the Western tradition. Moving from the Western notion of “freedom” (related to individuals), just as it is proper to Western thought of Greek-Latin derivation, the paper deals with how, by using an ancient Chinese term semantically very far from the Italian word libertà (derived from Latin word libertas, libertatis), the Chinese translators of Dante’s Divina Commedia rendered the famous verse of Purg. I, 71 «libertà va cercando» («freedom is looking for») related to the “high-spirited” Cato Uticensis.
«Libertà va cercando»