"Cet enfer qui, peut-être, un jour, aura son Dante". Balzac e la commedia della modernità

Critics have often discussed the relationship between Dante and Balzac, assuming that there can be some identification of the author of the Comédie humaine’s with his illustrious predecessor, whose cosmological model is been used in the description of modernity offered by the Comédie. The article proposes to rethink the relationship and to offer some further interpretation, starting from the choice of the title, in which the reference to Dante’s Comedy is obvious, but is never made explicit by Balzac. The study of the short story Les Proscrits, where Balzac represent the Florentine poet as the protagonist of the story, also offers some new insight, as the text can be read as a parable of the condition of the modern author, struggling with the materialism of a contemporary society which also affects his creative work, and makes it impossible to write a «nouvelle Divine Comédie».