This paper adopts a filologia d’autore approach to the composition of Gianfranco Contini’s 1965 essay Un’interpretazione di Dante, outlining the essay’s multiple redactions between the winter of 1964 and the autumn of 1965, when it was published in «Paragone». It shows that Contini’s «famoso saggio» (Pasolini) developed from public-facing work – both Contini’s work curating the 1965 Mostra di codici danteschi in Florence, as well as a number of translations produced for public talks Contini gave in Canada, Malta, Austria, Russia and the UK. It then offers a close analysis of the production of Contini’s signature «untranslatable» (Calvino) style in the final published work, based on autograph material held in the Archivio Gianfranco Contini.