Italian-born Francesca Ancillotti, who moved to New Zealand when she was 10, recently commissioned a tattoo of a quote from Dante’s Inferno, which she studied in a third-year Italian paper last year.
The words “fatti non foste a viver come bruti”—“you were not made to live like brutes”, are etched on her upper right arm. These are the words Ulysses uses to convince his companions to sail on into the open Atlantic, beyond what was considered the edge of the world. He says, “Consider your seed [the race you spring from]: you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge”.
“The theme of following knowledge to go beyond your boundaries struck a chord with me—that’s the way I want to live,” says Francesca.
“This is a line that everyone knows in Italy, and I know that when I’m next sitting in a bar in Italy and the locals see my tattoo they will instantly recognise it.”
Francesca was able to do the third-year paper in her first year at Victoria because of her fluency in Italian. She says she loved studying Inferno, gaining an A+ for her research on the section where her favourite quote appears. “As a first-year student this was a great boost for the start of my studies. When I finished the paper I really felt like I needed to get a tattoo. I left it for almost a year to be absolutely sure, but finally decided I just had to do it.”
Francesca says she chose to take the Inferno paper as a way of embracing her Italian heritage.
“It’s a classic Italian text that most of my friends in Italy, and my parents, studied during high school and I missed out on that. It’s such an important text for learning about the way society was back then, and for learning more about Greek and Roman mythology.”
Francesca’s former lecturer Dr Sally Hill, Italian Programme Director at the School of Languages and Cultures, says she was delighted when Francesca showed her the tattoo.
“Her tattoo made my day! There is nothing like seeing students respond to Dante’s work. I think it’s the greatest poem ever written—as vivid now as it was 700 years ago. To me the quote Francesca chose is what the humanities are all about—the idea that wanting to make sense of the world and push ourselves beyond what is in front of us is fundamental to what makes us human. So it was moving to know that reading Dante meant so much to her that she wanted his words to be a physical part of her.”
Francesca already has three other tattoos, and says that her parents were apprehensive when she mentioned getting another one. However, they are happy with the final result.
“They thought it was really nice, because it’s written in a serious font to reflect a serious quote.”