Dante's Inferno: Shakespere Short Story

Dante has one, but Shakespere and Cervantes do not...we're talking about a direct descendant. To celebrate the 750 years since the birth of Italy's most famous poet, The Local set off to meet his great-great-great (you get the idea) grandson.

Sperello di Sergio Algierei is his name and he hasn't spent much time dewlling on his family history. In fact, he has spent most of his life looking out of observatory domes at distant galaxies. He is an astronomer who is currently living and working at the Arcetri observatory in Dante's old hometown of Florence.

“Yes. People ask me about my name a lot,” Sperello told the Local. “They are always pretty shocked when I tell them I'm his relative, so much time has passed that most people don't believe

Sixty-three year old Sperello's face bears and uncanny resemblance to a famous death mask made of his ancestor's face – a fact the Local carefully avoids ponting out.

“There was a time in my life when I was younger when being his relative really irritated me. I'd say or do something and people would presume I'd said or done that thing only because I was his relative. It was annoying.”

It's easy to see how it might have annoyed: relatives like Dante cast a long shadow. For starters, his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy is considered a masterpiece of world literature. The story tracks the poet on his imagined journey through heaven, hell and purgatory and is considered a masterpiece of world literature.

Not only that, but Dante is considered as the father of the modern Italian language – as he chose to write his works not in Latin, as was common at the time, but in his vernacular Tuscan dialect. This choice had profound consequences for writers who followed and is often cited as the main reason led Tuscan dialect became the basis for the modern Italian language. Talk about a lot to live up