American Cant | Defector

"Dante Alighieri thought he could write himself out of exile. In 1300, while serving on a governing committee in his beloved Florence, the poet was involved in a factional dispute among city leaders. The following year, while in Rome on a diplomatic mission, he found his own faction on the outs, was charged with corruption, and sentenced in absentia to burn at the stake should he ever return."

"The journalist Olivia Nuzzi, hiding out for a year in California after revelations that she was sexting former presidential nominee and current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wrote a memoir on her phone. The sexting, of course, was a grave breach of ethics, given she had recently profiled the then-candidate for New York magazine, where she had held the position of Washington correspondent since 2017."

Dante Alighieri was exiled after factional disputes in Florence and a corruption conviction in absentia that barred his return and shaped his life with bitterness and longing. He composed The Divine Comedy during exile as a means to settle personal scores and assert his claim to be welcomed back. Olivia Nuzzi retreated to California after revelations of sexting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., lost her Washington correspondent post, and drafted a memoir on her phone while in hiding. Nuzzi studied Dante closely, hired an Italian tutor, and kept The Divine Comedy visible alongside a Bible during the lead-up to her book American Canto.

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