Territories such as the eastern border of Italy, where the need for an identity definition is stronger, are significant examples of what the myth of Dante increases in proportion to geographical eccentricity, in communities that feel isolated and marginalized: as early as the sixteenth century Dante’s verses from Inferno IX, 106-120 were the point of reference for those who claimed the Italian character of these areas and produced a mythografic narrative. As in the rest of Italy, in Istria and in Triest, especially starting from romanticism Dante has been interpreted in a political sense, against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Political dissidents and exiles have identified themselves in Dante’s existential story. Literature has become a form of political activism for Istrian and Triestiner writers. Irredentism has almost deified Dante, with the mediation of Giosuè Carducci. In the years before First World War and in Gabriele d’Annunzio, Dante becomes the symbol of the Italian claims in the warlike and imperialist tensions against the Slavic people. The story of the myth of Dante on the eastern border of Italy proves that the Florentine poet is a polysemous icon in wich even different political positions have been recognized at different historical moments. Dante interprets the expectations and imagination of a community, expressed by the writers.
