Iran, Italy to host seminars on spiritual travelogues

TEHRAN,May 20(MNA) -- Seminars on spiritual travelogues in Persian literature and the literature of the West is scheduled to be held in Iran in September and in Italy in October. The seminars have been organized by Tehran’s Book City Institute, Italy’s Societa’ Dante Alighieri, and several other Iranian institutes and Iranian cultural centers, Book City Institute Deputy Director Ali-Asghar Mohammad-Khani said in press release on Sunday. Tehran will be the first host on September 10 and 11, and Rome and Florence will be hosting the event from October 24 to 26. Mohammad-Khani said that a team of Iranian and Italian scholars and experts will be invited the colloquium, which aims to provide a comparative study of spiritual travelogues written in Persian and those penned in the West. Societa’ Dante Alighieri Secretary General Alessandro Masi and his colleague Eugenio Vender, and Carlo Saccone, the Italian translator of Sanai’s “Seyr al-ebad”, are among the guests invited to the Tehran meeting. He added that “Seyr al-ebad elal-maad” (The Journey of the Faithful to the Place of Return) by Sanai (d. ca. 1130), Persian poet of the later Ghaznavid era, and the Mantiq at-Tayr (Conference of the Birds) by the Persian classical poet Farid ud-Din Attar (c. 1145-1221) are some of the examples from Persian literature. Spiritual travelogue is rooted in Iranian and Islamic culture, however, Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is a typical example of a travelogue in the world literature, he said. “The Divine Comedy” is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature.