“The beauteous land where si is uttered”; and to that land the work of his mind and of his pen lent an added beauty, and wove a spell which should draw together all her scattered elements in the enthusiasm of a common speech and a common literary heritage. That is Dante’s first claim to supply the inspiration of a “United Italy.”
The second claim is, as we have said, more specific. It is claimed for him that he described, as it were prophetically, the future boundaries of Italy.
In the ninth Canto of the Inferno (113-114) he includes the whole of the Istrian peninsula in Italy, describing the broad inlet to the east of it—the bay which stretches northward up to Fiume—as “The Quarnaro which shuts in Italy and bathes her boundaries”—
Sì come a Pola presso del Carnaro,
Che Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna....
Again, in his words about the Lago di Garda in the Twentieth Canto of the Inferno (61-63)—
Suso in Italia bella giace un laco
A piè dell’ alpe che serra Lamagna
Sovra Tiralli, ch’ ha nome Benaco.