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Dante Alighieri
Andrea del Castagno
Mural of Dante in the Uffizi Gallery
c. 1450.
see also:
Dante Alighieri "The Divine Comedy"
(Illustrations by G. Dore, W. Blake, S. Dali)
Dante (Illustrations by Botticelli)
Dante
Italian poet
in full Dante Alighieri
born c. May 21–June 20, 1265, Florence, Italy
died Sept. 13/14, 1321, Ravenna
Overview
Italian poet.Dante was of noble ancestry, and his life was shaped by the conflict between papal and imperial partisans (the Guelfs and Ghibellines). When an opposing political faction within the Guelfs (Dante’s party) gained ascendancy, he was exiled (1302) from Florence, to which he never returned. His life was given direction by his spiritual love for Beatrice Portinari (d. 1290), to whom he dedicated most of his poetry. His great friendship with Guido Cavalcanti shaped his later career as well. La Vita Nuova (1293?) celebrates Beatrice in verse. In his difficult years of exile, he wrote the verse collection The Banquet (c. 1304–07); De vulgari eloquentia (1304–07; “Concerning Vernacular Eloquence”), the first theoretical discussion of the Italian literary language; and On Monarchy (1313?), a major Latin treatise on medieval political philosophy. He is best known for the monumental epic poem The Divine Comedy (written c. 1308–21; originally titled simply Commedia), a profoundly Christian vision of human temporal and eternal destiny. It is an allegory of universal human destiny in the form of a pilgrim’s journey through hell and purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, and then to Paradise, guided by Beatrice. By writing it in Italian rather than Latin, Dante almost singlehandedly made Italian a literary language, and he stands as one of the towering figures of European literature.
Main
Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy).
Dante’s Divine Comedy, a great work of medieval literature, is a profound Christian vision of man’s temporal and eternal destiny. On its most personal level, it draws on the poet’s own experience of exile from his native city of Florence; on its most comprehensive level, it may be read as an allegory, taking the form of a journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise. The poem amazes by its array of learning, its penetrating and comprehensive analysis of contemporary problems, and its inventiveness of language and imagery. By choosing to write his poem in Italian rather than in Latin, Dante decisively influenced the course of literary development. Not only did he lend a voice to the emerging lay culture of his own country, but Italian became the literary language in western Europe for several centuries.
In addition to poetry Dante wrote important theoretical works ranging from discussions of rhetoric to moral philosophy and political thought. He was fully conversant with the classical tradition, drawing for his own purposes on such writers as Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius. But, most unusual for a layman, he also had an impressive command of the most recent scholastic philosophy and of theology. His learning and his personal involvement in the heated political controversies of his age led him to the composition of De monarchia, one of the major tracts of medieval political philosophy.
Early life and the Vita nuova
Most of what is known about Dante’s life he has told himself. He was born in Florence in 1265 under the sign of Gemini (between May 21 and June 20) and remained devoted to his native city all his life. Dante describes how he fought as a cavalryman against the Ghibellines, a banished Florentine party supporting the imperial cause. He also speaks of his great teacher Brunetto Latini and his gifted friend Guido Cavalcanti, of the poetic culture in which he made his first artistic ventures, his poetic indebtedness to Guido Guinizelli, the origins of his family in his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, whom the reader meets in the central cantos of the Paradiso (and from whose wife the family name, Alighieri, derived), and, going back even further, of the pride that he felt in the fact that his distant ancestors were descendants of the Roman soldiers who settled along the banks of the Arno.Yet Dante has little to say about his more immediate family. There is no mention of his father or mother, brother or sister in The Divine Comedy. A sister is possibly referred to in the Vita nuova, and his father is the subject of insulting sonnets exchanged in jest between Dante and his friend Forese Donati. Because Dante was born in 1265 and the exiled Guelfs, to whose party Dante’s family adhered, did not return until 1266, Dante’s father apparently was not a figure considerable enough to warrant exile. Dante’s mother died when he was young, certainly before he was 14. Her name was Bella, but of which family is unknown. Dante’s father then married Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi and they produced a son, Francesco, and a daughter, Gaetana. Dante’s father died prior to 1283, since at that time Dante, having come into his majority, was able as an orphan to sell a credit owned by his father. The elder Alighieri left his children a modest yet comfortable patrimony of property in Florence and in the country. About this time Dante married Gemma Donati, to whom he had been betrothed since 1277.
Dante’s life was shaped by the long history of conflict between the imperial and papal partisans called, respectively, Ghibellines and Guelfs. Following the middle of the 13th century the antagonisms were brutal and deadly, with each side alternately gaining the upper hand and inflicting gruesome penalties and exile upon the other. In 1260 the Guelfs, after a period of ascendancy, were defeated in the battle of Montaperti (Inferno X, XXXII), but in 1266 a force of Guelfs, supported by papal and French armies, was able to defeat the Ghibellines at Benevento, expelling them forever from Florence. This meant that Dante grew up in a city brimming with postwar pride and expansionism, eager to extend its political control throughout Tuscany. Florentines compared themselves with Rome and the civilization of the ancient city-states.
Not only did Florence extend its political power, but it was ready to exercise intellectual dominance as well. The leading figure in Florence’s intellectual ascendancy was a returning exile, Brunetto Latini. When in the Inferno Dante describes his encounter with his great teacher, this is not to be regarded as simply a meeting of one pupil with his master but rather as an encounter of an entire generation with its intellectual mentor. Latini had awakened a new public consciousness in the prominent figures of a younger generation, including Guido Cavalcanti, Forese Donati, and Dante himself, encouraging them to put their knowledge and skill as writers to the service of their city or country. Dante readily accepted the Aristotelian assumption that man is a social (political) being. Even in the Paradiso (VIII.117) Dante allows as being beyond any possible dispute the notion that things would be far worse for man were he not a member of a city-state.
A contemporary historian, Giovanni Villani, characterized Latini as the “initiator and master in refining the Florentines and in teaching them how to speak well, and how to guide our republic according to political philosophy [la politica].” Despite the fact that Latini’s most important book, Li Livres dou Trésor (1262–66; The Tresor), was written in French (Latini had passed his years of exile in France), its culture is Dante’s culture; it is a repository of classical citation. The first part of Book II contains one of the early translations in a modern European vernacular of Aristotle’s Ethics. On almost every question or topic of philosophy, ethics, and politics Latini freely quotes from Cicero and Seneca. And, almost as frequently, when treating questions of government, he quotes from the book of Proverbs, as Dante was to do. The Bible, as well as the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca, as represented in Latini’s work, were the mainstays of Dante’s early culture.
Of these Rome presents the most inspiring source of identification. The cult of Cicero began to develop alongside that of Aristotle; Cicero was perceived as not only preaching but as fully exemplifying the intellectual as citizen. A second Roman element in Latini’s legacy to become an important part of Dante’s culture was the love of glory, the quest for fame through a wholehearted devotion to excelling. For this reason, in the Inferno (XV) Latini is praised for instructing Dante in the means by which man makes himself immortal, and in his farewell words Latini commits to Dante’s care his Tresor, through which he trusts his memory will survive.
Dante was endowed with remarkable intellectual and aesthetic self-confidence. By the time he was 18, as he himself says in the Vita nuova, he had already taught himself the art of making verse (chapter III). He sent an early sonnet, which was to become the first poem in the Vita nuova, to the most famous poets of his day. He received several responses, but the most important one came from Cavalcanti, and this was the beginning of their great friendship.
As in all meetings of great minds the relationship between Dante and Cavalcanti was a complicated one. In chapter XXX of the Vita nuova Dante states that it was through Cavalcanti’s exhortations that he wrote his first book in Italian rather than in Latin. Later, in the Convivio, written in Italian, and in De vulgari eloquentia, written in Latin, Dante was to make one of the first great Renaissance defenses of the vernacular. His later thinking on these matters grew out of his discussions with Cavalcanti, who prevailed upon him to write only in the vernacular. Because of this intellectual indebtedness, Dante dedicated his Vita nuova to Cavalcanti—to his best friend (primo amico).
Later, however, when Dante became one of the priors of Florence, he was obliged to concur with the decision to exile Cavalcanti, who contracted malaria during the banishment and died in August 1300. In the Inferno (X) Dante composed a monument to his great friend, and it is as heartrending a tribute as his memorial to Latini. In both cases Dante records his indebtedness, his fondness, and his appreciation of their great merits, but in each he is equally obliged to record the facts of separation. In order to save himself, he must find (or has found) other, more powerful aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual sponsorship than that offered by his old friends and teachers.
One of these spiritual guides, for whom Cavalcanti evidently did not have the same appreciation, was Beatrice, a figure in whom Dante created one of the most celebrated fictionalized women in all of literature. In keeping with the changing directions of Dante’s thought and the vicissitudes of his career, she, too, underwent enormous changes in his hands—sanctified in the Vita nuova, demoted in the canzoni (poems) presented in the Convivio, only to be returned with more profound comprehension in The Divine Comedy as the woman credited with having led Dante away from the “vulgar herd.”
La vita nuova (c. 1293; The New Life) is the first of two collections of verse that Dante made in his lifetime, the other being the Convivio. Each is a prosimetrum, that is, a work composed of verse and prose. In each case the prose is a device for binding together poems composed over about a 10-year period. The Vita nuova brought together Dante’s poetic efforts from before 1283 to roughly 1292–93; the Convivio, a bulkier and more ambitious work, contains Dante’s most important poetic compositions from just prior to 1294 to the time of The Divine Comedy.
The Vita nuova, which Dante called his libello, or small book, is a remarkable work. It contains 42 brief chapters with commentaries on 25 sonnets, one ballata, and four canzoni; a fifth canzone is left dramatically interrupted by Beatrice’s death. The prose commentary provides the frame story, which does not emerge from the poems themselves (it is, of course, conceivable that some were actually written for other occasions than those alleged). The story is simple enough, telling of Dante’s first sight of Beatrice when both are nine years of age, her salutation when they are 18, Dante’s expedients to conceal his love for her, the crisis experienced when Beatrice withholds her greeting, Dante’s anguish that she is making light of him, his determination to rise above anguish and sing only of his lady’s virtues, anticipations of her death (that of a young friend, the death of her father, and Dante’s own premonitory dream), and finally the death of Beatrice, Dante’s mourning, the temptation of the sympathetic donna gentile (a young woman who temporarily replaces Beatrice), Beatrice’s final triumph and apotheosis, and, in the last chapter, Dante’s determination to write at some later time about her “that which has never been written of any woman.”
Yet with all of this apparently autobiographical purpose the Vita nuova is strangely impersonal. The circumstances it sets down are markedly devoid of any historical facts or descriptive detail (thus making it pointless to engage in too much debate as to the exact historical identity of Beatrice). The language of the commentary also adheres to a high level of generality. Names are rarely used—Cavalcanti is referred to three times as Dante’s “best friend”; Dante’s sister is referred to as “she who was joined to me by the closest proximity of blood.” On the one hand Dante suggests the most significant stages of emotional experience, but on the other he seems to distance his descriptions from strong emotional reactions. The larger structure in which Dante arranged poems written over a 10-year period and the generality of his poetic language are indications of his early and abiding ambition to go beyond the practices of local poets.
Dante’s intellectual development and public career
A second contemporary poetic figure behind Dante was Guido Guinizelli, the poet most responsible for altering the prevailing local, or “municipal,” kind of poetry. Guinizelli’s verse provided what Cavalcanti and Dante were looking for—a remarkable sense of joy contained in a refined and lucid aesthetic. What increased the appeal of his poetry was its intellectual, even philosophical, content. His poems were written in praise of the lady and of gentilezza, the virtue that she brought out in her admirer. The conception of love that he extolled was part of a refined and noble sense of life. It was Guinizelli’s influence that was responsible for the poetic and spiritual turning point of the Vita nuova. As reported in chapters XVII to XXI, Dante experienced a change of heart, and rather than write poems of anguish, he determined to write poems in praise of his lady, especially the canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies Who Have Understanding of Love”). This canzone is followed immediately by the sonnet Amore e ’l cor gentil sono una cosa (“Love and the Noble Heart Are the Same Thing”), the first line of which is clearly an adaptation of Guinizelli’s Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore (“In Every Noble Heart Love Finds Its Home”). This was the beginning of Dante’s association with a new poetic style, the dolce stil nuovo (“the sweet new style”), the significance of which—the simple means by which it transcended the narrow range of the more regional poetry—he dramatically explains in the Purgatorio (XXIV).This interest in philosophical poetry led Dante into another great change in his life, which he describes in the Convivio. Looking for consolation following the death of Beatrice, Dante reports that he turned to philosophy, particularly to the writings of Boethius and Cicero. But what was intended as a temporary reprieve from sorrow became a lifelong avocation and one of the most crucial intellectual events in Dante’s career. The donna gentile of the Vita nuova was transformed into Lady Philosophy, who soon occupied all of Dante’s thoughts. He began attending the religious schools of Florence in order to hear disputations on philosophy, and within a period of only 30 months “the love of her [philosophy] banished and destroyed every other thought.” In his poem Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (“You Who Through Intelligence Move the Third Sphere”) he dramatizes this conversion from the sweet old style, associated with Beatrice and the Vita nuova, to the rigorous, even severe, new style associated with philosophy. This period of study gave expression to a series of canzoni that were eventually to form the poetic basis for the philosophic commentary of the Convivio.
Another great change was Dante’s more active political involvement in the affairs of the commune. In 1295 he became a member of the guild of physicians and apothecaries (to which philosophers could belong), which opened his way to public office. But he entered the public arena at a most perilous time in the city’s politics. As it had been during the time of the Guelf and Ghibelline civil strife, in the 1290s Florence once again became a divided city. The ruling Guelf class of Florence became divided into a party of “Blacks,” led by Corso Donati, and a party of “Whites,” to which Dante belonged. The Whites gained the upper hand and exiled the Blacks.
There is ample information concerning Dante’s activities following 1295. In May 1300 he was part of an important embassy to San Gimignano, a neighbouring town, whose purpose it was to solidify the Guelf league of Tuscan cities against the mounting ambitions of the new and embattled pope Boniface VIII. When Dante was elected to the priorate in 1300, he presumably was already recognized as a spokesman for those in the commune determined to resist the Pontiff’s policies. Dante thus experienced a complete turnabout in his attitudes concerning the extent of papal power. The hegemony of the Guelfs—the party supporting the Pope—had been restored in Florence in 1266 by an alliance forged between the forces of France and the papacy. By 1300, however, Dante had come to oppose the territorial ambitions of the Pope, and this in turn provided the intellectual motivation for another, even greater change: Dante, the Guelf moderate, would in time, through his firsthand experience of the ill effects of papal involvement in political matters, become in the Convivio, in the later polemical work the Monarchia, and most importantly throughout The Divine Comedy, one of the most fervently outspoken defenders of the position that the empire does not derive its political authority from the pope.
Events, moreover, propelled Dante into further opposition to papal policies. A new alliance was formed between the papacy, the French (the brother of King Philip IV, Charles of Valois, was acting in concert with Boniface), and the exiled Black Guelfs. When Charles of Valois wished permission to enter Florence, the city itself was thrown into political indecision. In order to ascertain the nature of the Pope’s intentions, an embassy was sent to Rome to discuss these matters with him. Dante was one of the emissaries, but his quandary was expressed in the legendary phrase “If I go, who remains; if I remain, who goes?” Dante was outmaneuvered. The Pope dismissed the other two legates and detained Dante. In early November 1301 the forces of Charles of Valois were permitted entry to Florence. That very night the exiled Blacks surreptitiously reentered Florence and for six days terrorized the city. Dante learned of the deception at first in Rome and then more fully in Siena. In January 1302 he was called to appear before the new Florentine government and, failing to do so, was condemned, along with three other former priors, for crimes he had not committed. Again failing to appear, on March 10, 1302, Dante and 14 other Whites were condemned to be burned to death. Thus Dante suffered the most decisive crisis of his life. In The Divine Comedy he frequently and powerfully speaks of this rupture; indeed, he makes it the central dramatic act toward which a long string of prophecies points. But it is also Dante’s purpose to show the means by which he triumphed over his personal disaster, thus making his poem into a true “divine comedy.”
Exile, the Convivio, and the De monarchia
Information about Dante’s early years in exile is scanty; nevertheless, enough is known to provide a broad picture. It seems that Dante at first was active among the exiled White Guelfs in their attempts to seek a military return. These efforts proved fruitless. Evidently Dante grew disillusioned with the other Florentine outcasts, the Ghibellines, and was determined to prove his worthiness by means of his writings and thus secure his return. These are the circumstances that led him to compose Il convivio (c. 1304–07; The Banquet).Dante projected a work of 15 books, 14 of which would be commentaries on different canzoni. He completed only four of the books. The finished commentaries in many ways go beyond the scope of the poems, becoming a compendium of instruction with much of the random display of an amateur in philosophy. Dante’s intention in the Convivio, as in The Divine Comedy, was to place the challenging moral and political issues of his day into a suitable ethical and metaphysical framework.
Book I of the Convivio is in large part a stirring and systematic defense of the vernacular. (The unfinished De vulgari eloquentia [c. 1304–07; Concerning Vernacular Eloquence], a companion piece, presumably written in coordination with Book I, is primarily a practical treatise in the art of poetry based upon an elevated poetic language.) Dante became the great advocate of its use and in the final sentence of Book I he accurately predicts its glorious future:
This shall be the new light, the new sun, which shall rise when the worn-out one shall set, and shall give light to them who are in shadow and in darkness because of the old sun, which does not enlighten them.
The revolution Dante described was nothing less than the twilight of the predominantly clerical Latin culture and the emergence of a lay, vernacular urban literacy. Dante saw himself as the philosopher-mediator between the two, helping to educate a newly enfranchised public readership. The Italian literature that Dante heralded was soon to become the leading literature and Italian the leading literary language of Europe, and they would continue to be that for more than three centuries.
In the Convivio Dante’s mature political and philosophical system is nearly complete. In this work Dante makes his first stirring defense of the imperial tradition and, more specifically, of the Roman Empire. He introduces the crucial concept of horme, that is, of an innate desire that prompts the soul to return to God. But it requires proper education through examples and doctrine. Otherwise it can become misdirected toward worldly aims and society torn apart by its destructive power. In the Convivio Dante establishes the link between his political thought and his understanding of human appetite: given the pope’s craving for worldly power, at the time there existed no proper spiritual models to direct the appetite toward God; and given the weakness of the empire, there existed no law sufficient to exercise a physical restraint on the will. For Dante this explains the chaos into which Italy had been plunged, and it moved him, in hopes of remedying these conditions, to take up the epic task of The Divine Comedy.
But a political event occurred that at first raised tremendous hope but then plunged Dante into still greater disillusionment. In November 1308 Henry, the count of Luxembourg, was elected king of Germany, and in July 1309 the French pope, Clement V, who had succeeded Boniface, declared Henry to be king of the Romans and invited him to Rome, where in time he would be crowned Holy Roman emperor in St. Peter’s Basilica. The possibility of once again having an emperor electrified Italy; and among the imperial proponents was Dante, who saw approaching the realization of an ideal that he had long held: the coming of an emperor pledged to restore peace while also declaring his spiritual subordination to religious authority. Within a short time after his arrival in Italy in 1310 Henry VII’s great appeal began to fade. He lingered too long in the north, allowing his enemies to gather strength. Foremost among the opposition to this divinely ordained moment, as Dante regarded it, was the commune of Florence.
During these years Dante wrote important political epistles—evidence of the great esteem in which he was held throughout Italy, of his personal authority, as it were—in which he exalted Henry, urging him to be diligent, and condemned Florence. In subsequent action, however, which was to remind Dante of Boniface’s duplicity, Clement himself turned against Henry. This action prompted one of Dante’s greatest polemical treatises, his De monarchia (c. 1313; On Monarchy) in which he expands the political arguments of the Convivio. In the embittered atmosphere caused by Clement’s deceit Dante turned his argumentative powers against papal insistence on its superiority over the political ruler, that is, against the argument that the empire derived its political authority from the pope. In the final passages of the Monarchia Dante writes that the ends designed by Providence for man are twofold: one end is the bliss of this life, which is conveyed in the figure of the earthly paradise; the other is the bliss of eternal life, which is embodied in the image of a heavenly paradise. Yet despite their different ends, these two purposes are not unconnected. Dante concludes his Monarchia by assuring his reader that he does not mean to imply “that the Roman government is in no way subject to the Roman pontificate, for in some ways our mortal happiness is ordered for the sake of immortal happiness.” Dante’s problem was that he had to express in theoretical language a subtle relationship that might be better conveyed by metaphoric language and historical example. Surveying the history of the relationship between papacy and empire, Dante pointed with approval to specific historical examples, such as Constantine’s good will toward the church. Dante’s disappointment in the failed mission of Henry VII derived from the fact that Henry’s original sponsor was apparently Pope Clement and that conditions seemed to be ideal for reestablishing the right relationship between the supreme powers.
The Divine Comedy
Dante’s years of exile were years of difficult peregrinations from one place to another—as he himself repeatedly says, most effectively in Paradiso [XVII], in Cacciaguida’s moving lamentation that “bitter is the taste of another man’s bread and . . . heavy the way up and down another man’s stair.” Throughout his exile Dante nevertheless was sustained by work on his great poem. The Divine Comedy was possibly begun prior to 1308 and completed just before his death in 1321, but the exact dates are uncertain. In addition, in his final years Dante was received honourably in many noble houses in the north of Italy, most notably by Guido Novello da Polenta, the nephew of the remarkable Francesca, in Ravenna. There at his death Dante was given an honourable burial attended by the leading men of letters of the time, and the funeral oration was delivered by Guido himself.The plot of The Divine Comedy is simple: a man, generally assumed to be Dante himself, is miraculously enabled to undertake an ultramundane journey, which leads him to visit the souls in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. He has two guides: Virgil, who leads him through the Inferno and Purgatorio, and Beatrice, who introduces him to Paradiso. Through these fictional encounters taking place from Good Friday evening in 1300 through Easter Sunday and slightly beyond, Dante learns of the exile that is awaiting him (which had, of course, already occurred at the time of the writing). This device allowed Dante not only to create a story out of his pending exile but also to explain the means by which he came to cope with his personal calamity and to offer suggestions for the resolution of Italy’s troubles as well. Thus, the exile of an individual becomes a microcosm of the problems of a country, and it also becomes representative of the fall of man. Dante’s story is thus historically specific as well as paradigmatic.
The basic structural component of The Divine Comedy is the canto. The poem consists of 100 cantos, which are grouped together into three sections, or canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Technically there are 33 cantos in each canticle and one additional canto, contained in the Inferno, which serves as an introduction to the entire poem. For the most part the cantos range from about 136 to about 151 lines. The poem’s rhyme scheme is the terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.) Thus, the divine number of three is present in every part of the work.
Dante’s Inferno differs from its great classical predecessors in both position and purpose. In Homer’s Odyssey (Book XII) and Virgil’s Aeneid (Book VI) the visit to the land of the dead occurs in the middle of the poem because in these centrally placed books the essential values of life are revealed. Dante, while adopting the convention, transforms the practice by beginning his journey with the visit to the land of the dead. He does this because his poem’s spiritual pattern is not classical but Christian: Dante’s journey to Hell represents the spiritual act of dying to the world, and hence it coincides with the season of Christ’s own death. (In this way, Dante’s method is similar to that of Milton in Paradise Lost, where the flamboyant but defective Lucifer and his fallen angels are presented first.) The Inferno represents a false start during which Dante, the character, must be disabused of harmful values that somehow prevent him from rising above his fallen world. Despite the regressive nature of the Inferno, Dante’s meetings with the roster of the damned are among the most memorable moments of the poem: the Neutrals, the virtuous pagans, Francesca da Rimini, Filipo Argenti, Farinata degli Uberti, Piero delle Vigne, Brunetto Latini, the simoniacal popes, Ulysses, and Ugolino impose themselves upon the reader’s imagination with tremendous force.
The visit to Hell is, as Virgil and later Beatrice explain, an extreme measure, a painful but necessary act before real recovery can begin. This explains why the Inferno is both aesthetically and theologically incomplete. For instance, readers frequently express disappointment at the lack of dramatic or emotional power in the final encounter with Satan in canto XXXIV. But because the journey through the Inferno primarily signifies a process of separation and thus is only the initial step in a fuller development, it must end with a distinct anticlimax. In a way this is inevitable because the final revelation of Satan can have nothing new to offer: the sad effects of his presence in human history have already become apparent throughout the Inferno.
In the Purgatorio the protagonist’s painful process of spiritual rehabilitation commences; in fact, this part of the journey may be considered the poem’s true moral starting point. Here the pilgrim Dante subdues his own personality in order that he may ascend. In fact, in contrast to the Inferno, where Dante is confronted with a system of models that needs to be discarded, in the Purgatorio few characters present themselves as models; all of the penitents are pilgrims along the road of life. Dante, rather than being an awed if alienated observer, is an active participant. If the Inferno is a canticle of enforced and involuntary alienation, in which Dante learns how harmful were his former allegiances, in the Purgatorio he comes to accept as most fitting the essential Christian image of life as a pilgrimage. As Beatrice in her magisterial return in the earthly paradise reminds Dante, he must learn to reject the deceptive promises of the temporal world.
Despite its harsh regime, the Purgatorio is the realm of spiritual dawn, where larger visions are entertained. Whereas in only one canto of the Inferno (VII), in which Fortuna is discussed, is there any suggestion of philosophy, in the Purgatorio, historical, political, and moral vistas are opened up. It is, moreover, the great canticle of poetry and the arts. Dante meant it literally when he proclaimed, after the dreary dimensions of Hell: “But here let poetry rise again from the dead.” There is only one poet in Hell proper and not more than two in the Paradiso, but in the Purgatorio the reader encounters the musicians Casella and Belacqua and the poet Sordello and hears of the fortunes of the two Guidos, Guinizelli and Cavalcanti, the painters Cimabue and Giotto, and the miniaturists. In the upper reaches of Purgatory, the reader observes Dante reconstructing his classical tradition and then comes even closer to Dante’s own great native tradition (placed higher than the classical tradition) when he meets Forese Donati, hears explained—in an encounter with Bonagiunta da Lucca—the true resources of the dolce stil nuovo, and meets with Guido Guinizelli and hears how he surpassed in skill and poetic mastery the reigning regional poet, Guittone d’Arezzo. These cantos resume the line of thought presented in the Inferno (IV), where among the virtuous pagans Dante announces his own program for an epic and takes his place, “sixth among that number,” alongside the classical writers. In the Purgatorio he extends that tradition to include Statius (whose Thebaid did in fact provide the matter for the more grisly features of the lower inferno), but he also shows his more modern tradition originating in Guinizelli. Shortly after his encounter with Guinizelli comes the long-awaited reunion with Beatrice in the earthly paradise. Thus, from the classics Dante seems to have derived his moral and political understanding as well as his conception of the epic poem, that is, a framing story large enough to encompass the most important issues of his day, but it was from his native tradition that he acquired the philosophy of love that forms the Christian matter of his poem.
This means of course that Virgil, Dante’s guide, must give way to other leaders, and in a canticle generally devoid of drama the rejection of Virgil becomes the single dramatic event. Dante’s use of Virgil is one of the richest cultural appropriations in literature. To begin, in Dante’s poem he is an exponent of classical reason. He is also a historical figure and is presented as such in the Inferno (I): “. . . once I was a man, and my parents were Lombards, both Mantuan by birth. I was born sub Julio, though late in his time, and I lived in Rome under the good Augustus, in the time of the false and lying gods.” Virgil, moreover, is associated with Dante’s homeland (his references are to contemporary Italian places), and his background is entirely imperial. (Born under Julius Caesar, he extolled Augustus Caesar.) He is presented as a poet, the theme of whose great epic sounds remarkably similar to that of Dante’s poem: “I was a poet and sang of that just son of Anchises who came from Troy after proud Ilium was burned.” So, too, Dante sings of the just son of a city, Florence, who was unjustly expelled, and forced to search, as Aeneas had done, for a better city, in his case the heavenly city.
Virgil is a poet whom Dante had studied carefully and from whom he had acquired his poetic style, the beauty of which has brought him much honour. But Dante had lost touch with Virgil in the intervening years, and when the spirit of Virgil returns it is one that seems weak from long silence. But the Virgil that returns is more than a stylist; he is the poet of the Roman Empire, a subject of great importance to Dante, and he is a poet who has become a saggio, a sage, or moral teacher.
Though an exponent of reason, Virgil has become an emissary of divine grace, and his return is part of the revival of those simpler faiths associated with Dante’s earlier trust in Beatrice. And yet, of course, Virgil by himself is insufficient. It cannot be said that Dante rejects Virgil; rather he sadly found that nowhere in Virgil’s work, that is, in his consciousness, was there any sense of personal liberation from the enthrallment of history and its processes. Virgil had provided Dante with moral instruction in survival as an exile, which is the theme of his own poem as well as Dante’s, but he clung to his faith in the processes of history, which, given their culmination in the Roman Empire, were deeply consoling. Dante, on the other hand, was determined to go beyond history because it had become for him a nightmare.
In the Paradiso true heroic fulfillment is achieved. Dante’s poem gives expression to those figures from the past who seem to defy death. Their historical impact continues and the totality of their commitment inspires in their followers a feeling of exaltation and a desire for identification. In his encounters with such characters as his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida and SS. Francis, Dominic, and Bernard, Dante is carried beyond himself. The Paradiso is consequently a poem of fulfillment and of completion. It is the fulfillment of what is prefigured in the earlier canticles. Aesthetically it completes the poem’s elaborate system of anticipation and retrospection.
Assessment and influence
The recognition and the honour that were the due of Dante’s Divine Comedy did not have to await the long passage of time: by the year 1400 no fewer than 12 commentaries devoted to detailed expositions of its meaning had appeared. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a life of the poet and then in 1373–74 delivered the first public lectures on The Divine Comedy (which means that Dante was the first of the moderns whose work found its place with the ancient classics in a university course). Dante became known as the divino poeta, and in a splendid edition of his great poem published in Venice in 1555 the adjective was applied to the poem’s title; thus, the simple Commedia became La divina commedia, or The Divine Comedy.Even when the epic lost its appeal and was replaced by other art forms (the novel, primarily, and the drama) Dante’s own fame continued. In fact, his great poem enjoys the kind of power peculiar to a classic: successive epochs have been able to find reflected in it their own intellectual concerns. In the post-Napoleonic 19th century, readers identified with the powerful, sympathetic, and doomed personalities of the Inferno. In the early 20th century they found the poem to possess an aesthetic power of verbal realization independent of and at times in contradiction to its structure and argument. Later readers have been eager to show the poem to be a polyphonic masterpiece, as integrated as a mighty work of architecture, whose different sections reflect and, in a way, respond to one another. Dante created a remarkable repertoire of types in a work of vivid mimetic presentations, as well as a poem of great stylistic artistry in its prefigurations and correspondences. Moreover, he incorporated in all of this important political, philosophical, and theological themes and did so in a way that shows moral wisdom and lofty ethical vision.
Dante’s Divine Comedy is a poem that has flourished for more than 650 years: in the simple power of its striking imaginative conceptions it has continued to astonish generations of readers; for more than a hundred years it has been a staple in all higher educational programs in the Western world; and it has continued to provide guidance and nourishment to the major poets of our own times. William Butler Yeats called Dante “the chief imagination of Christendom”; and T.S. Eliot elevated Dante to a preeminence shared by only one other poet in the modern world, William Shakespeare: “[They] divide the modern world between them. There is no third.” In fact, they rival one another in their creation of types that have entered into the world of reference and association of modern thought. Like Shakespeare, Dante created universal types from historical figures, and in so doing he considerably enhanced the treasury of modern myth.
Ricardo J. Quinones
THE DIVINE COMEDY
Type of work: Poem
Author: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Type of plot: Christian allegory
Time of plot: The Friday before Easter, 1300
Locale: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise
First transcribed: ñ 1320
Dante's greatest work, an epic poem in one hundred cantos, is divided equally after an introductory canto into sections, each thirty-three cantos in length, which see Dante and a guide respectively through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The cosmology, angelology, and theology of the poem are based on St. Thomas Aquinas. Dante's literal journey is also an allegory of the progress of the human soul toward God and the progress of political and social mankind toward peace on earth. Characterization is drawn from ancient Roman history and from Dante's contemporary Italy, making the work a realistic picture and an intensely involved analysis of human affairs and life, even though in structure it appears to be a description of the beyond. It is, in essence, a compassionate, oral evaluation of human nature and a mystic vision of the Absolute toward which mankind strives, and it endures more through the universality of the drama and the lyric quality of the poetry than through specific doctrinal content.
Principal Characters
Dante (dan'ta), the exile Florentine poet, who is halted in his path of error through the grace of the Virgin, St. Lucy, and Beatrice, and is redeemed by his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. He learns to submerge his instinctive pity for some sinners in his recognition of the justice of God, and he frees himself of the faults of wrath and misdirected love by participating in the penance for these sins in Purgatory. He is then ready to grow in understanding and love as he moves with Beatrice nearer and nearer the presence of God.
Beatrice (ܸ'ý-tre'cha), his beloved, who is transformed into an angel, one of Mary's handmaids. Through her intercession, her compassion, and her teaching, Dante's passion is transmuted into divine love, which brings him to a state of indescribable blessedness.
Virgil, Dante's master, the great Roman poet who guides him through Hell and Purgatory. The most favored of the noble pagans who dwells in Limbo without hope of heavenly bliss, he represents the highest achievements of human reason and classical learning.
St. Lucy, Dante's patron saint. She sends him aid and conveys him through a part of Purgatory.
Charon, traditionally the ferryman of damned souls.
Minos, the monstrous judge who dooms sinners to their allotted torments.
Paolo and Francesca, devoted lovers, murdered by Paolo's brother, who was Francesca's husband. Together even in hell, they arouse Dante's pity by their tale of growing affection.
Ciacco, a Florentine damned for gluttony, who prophesies the civil disputes which engulfed his native city after his death.
Plutus, the bloated, clucking creature who guards the entrance of the fourth circle of Hell.
Phlegyas, the boatman of the wrathful.
Filippo Argenti, another Florentine noble, damned to welter in mud for his uncontrollable temper.
Megaera, Alecto, and Tisiphone, the Furies, tower warders of the City of Dis.
Farinata Degli Uberti, leader of the Ghibelline party of Florence, condemned to rest in an indestructible sepulcher for his heresy. He remains concerned primarily for the fate of his city.
Cavalcante, a Guelph leader, the father of Dante's friend Guido. He rises from his tomb to ask about his son.
Nessus, Chiron, and Pholus, the courteous archer centaurs who guard the river of boiling blood which holds the violent against men.
Piero Delle Vigne, the loyal adviser to the Emperor Frederick, imprisoned, with others who committed suicide, in a thornbush.
Capaneus, a proud, blasphemous tyrant, one of the Seven against Thebes.
Brunetto Latini, Dante's old teacher, whom the poet treats with great respect; he laments the sin of sodomy which placed him deep in Hell.
Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, Jacopo Rusticucci, and Guglielmo Borsiere, Florentine citizens who gave in to unnatural lust.
Geryon, a beast with human face and scorpion's tail, symbolic of fraud.
Venedico Caccianemico, a Bolognese panderer.
Jason, a classical hero, damned as a seducer.
Alessio Interminei, a flatterer.
Nicholas III, one of the popes, damned to burn in a rocky cave for using the resources of the Church for worldly advancement.
Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eurypylus, Michael Scot, and Guido Bonatti, astrologers and diviners whose grotesquely twisted shapes reflect their distortion of divine counsel.
Malacoda, chief of the devils who torments corrupt political officials.
Ciampolo, one of his charges, who converses with Dante and Virgil while he plans to outwit the devils.
Catalano and Loderingo, jovial Bolognese friars, who wear the gilded leaden mantles decreed eternally for hypocrites.
Caiphas, the high priest who had Christ condemned. He lies naked in the path of the heavily laden hypocrites.
Vanni Fucci, a bestial, wrathful thief, the damned spirit most arrogant against God.
Agnello, Francisco, Cianfa, Buoso, and Puccio, malicious thieves and oppressors, who are metamorphosed from men to serpents, then from serpents to men, before the eyes of the poet.
Ulysses and Diomed, Greek heroes transformed into tongues of flame as types of the evil counselor. Ulysses retains the splendid passion for knowledge which led him beyond the limits set for men.
Guido de Montefeltro, another of the evil counselors, who became involved in the fraud and sacrilege of Pope Boniface.
Mahomet, Piero da Medicina, and Bertran de Born, sowers of schism and discord, whose bodies are cleft and mutilated.
Capocchio and Griffolino, alchemists afflicted with leprosy.
Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha, sinners who disguised themselves because of lust and greed, fittingly transformed into swine.
Master Adam, a counterfeiter.
Sinon and Potiphar's Wife, damned for malicious lying and treachery.
Nimrod, Antaeus, and Briareus, giants who rebelled against God.
Camincion de' Pazzi, Count Ugolino, Fra Alberigo, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius, traitors to family, country, and their masters. They dwell forever in ice, hard and cold as their own hearts.
Cato, the aged Roman sage who was, for the Middle Ages, a symbol of pagan virtue. He meets Dante and Virgil at the base of Mount Purgatory and sends them on their way upward.
Casella, a Florentine composer who charms his hearers with a song as they enter Purgatory.
Manfred, a Ghibelline leader, Belacqua, La Pia, Cassero, and Buonconte da Montefeltro, souls who must wait many years at the foot of Mount Purgatory because they delayed their repentance until the time of their death.
Sordello, the Mantuan poet, who reverently greets Virgil and accompanies him and his companion for part of their journey.
Nino Visconti and Conrad Malaspina, men too preoccupied with their political life to repent early.
Omberto Aldobrandesco, Oderisi, and Provenzan Salvani, sinners who walk twisted and bent over in penance for their pride in ancestry, artistry, and power.
Sapia, one of the envious, a woman who rejoiced at the defeat of her townspeople.
Guido del Duca, another doing penance for envy. He laments the dissensions which tear apart the Italian states.
Marco Lombardo, Dante's companion through the smoky way trodden by the wrathful.
Pope Adrian, one of those being purged of avarice.
Hugh Capet, the founder of the French ruling dynasty, which he castigates for its crimes and brutality. He atones for his own ambition and greed.
Statius, the author of the "Thebaid." One of Virgil's disciples, he has just completed his penance for prodigality. He tells Dante and Virgil of the liberation of the truly repentant soul.
Forese Donati, Dante's friend, and Bonagiunta, Florentines guilty of gluttony.
Guido Guinicelli and Arnaut, love poets who submit to the flames which purify them of lust.
Matilda, a heavenly lady who meets Dante in the earthly paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory and takes him to Beatrice.
Piccarda, a Florentine nun, a fragile, almost transparent spirit who dwells in the moon's sphere, the outermost circle of heaven, since her faith wavered, making her incapable of receiving greater bliss than this.
Justinian, the great Roman Emperor and law-giver, one of the champions of the Christian faith.
Charles Martel, the heir to Charles II, King of Naples, whose early death precipitated strife and injustice.
Cunizza, Sordello's mistress, the sister of an Italian tyrant.
Falco, a troubadour who was, after his conversion, made a bishop.
Rahab, the harlot who aided Joshua to enter Jerusalem, another of the many whose human passions were transformed into love of God.
Thomas Aquinas, the Scholastic philosopher. He tells Dante of St. Francis when he comes to the sphere of the sun, the home of those who have reached heaven through their knowledge of God.
St. Bonaventura, his companion, who praises St. Dominic.
Cacciagiuda, Dante's great-great-grandfather, placed in the sphere of Mars as a warrior for the Church.
Peter Damian, a hermit, an inhabitant of the sphere of Saturn, the place allotted to spirits blessed for their temperance and contemplative life.
St. Peter, St. James, and St. John, representatives, for Dante, of the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. The three great disciples examine the poet to assure his understanding of these three qualities.
Adam, the prototype of fallen man, who is, through Christ, given the greatest redemption; he is the companion of the three apostles and sits enthroned at the left hand of the Virgin.
St. Bernard, Dante's guide during the last stage of his journey, when he comes before the throne of the Queen of Heaven.
The Story
Dante found himself lost in a dark and frightening wood, and as he was trying to regain his path, he came to a mountain which he decided to climb in order to get his bearings. Strange beasts blocked his way. however, and he was forced back to the plain. As he was bemoaning his fate, the poet Virgil approached Dante and offered to conduct him through Hell, Purgatory, and blissful Paradise.
When they arrived at the gates of Hell, Virgil explained that here were confined those who had lived their lives without regard for good or evil. At the River Acheron, where they found Charon, the ferryman. Dante was seized with terror and fell into a trance. Aroused by a loud clap of thunder, he followed his guide through Limbo, the first circle of Hell. The spirits confined there, he learned, were those who, although they had lived a virtuous life, had not been baptized.
At the entrance to the second circle of Hell, Dante met Minos, the Infernal Judge, who warned him to take heed how he entered the lower regions. Dante was overcome by pity as he witnessed the terrible punishment which the spirits were undergoing. They had been guilty of carnal sin, and for punishment they were whirled around without cessation in the air. The third circle housed those who had been guilty of the sin of gluttony. They were forced to lie deep in the mud, under a constant fall of snow and hail and stagnant water. Above them stood Cerberus, a cruel monster, barking at the helpless creatures and tearing at their flesh. In the next circle, Dante witnesses the punishment of the prodigal and the avaricious, and realized the vanity of fortune.
He and Virgil continued on their journey until they reached the Stygian Lake, in which the wrathful and gloomy were suffering. At Virgil's signal, a ferryman transported them across the lake to the city of Dis. They were denied admittance, however, and the gates were closed against them by the fallen angels who guard the city. Dante and Virgil gained admittance into the city only after an angel had interceded for them. There Dante discovered that tombs burning with a blistering heat housed the souls of heretics. Dante spoke to two of these tormented spirits and learned that all the souls in Hell, who knew nothing of the present, can remember the past, and dimly foresee the future.
The entrance to the seventh circle was guarded by the Minotaur, and only after Virgil had pacified him could the two travelers pass down the steep crags to the base of the mountain. There they discerned a river of blood in which those who had committed violence in their lifetimes were confined. On the other side of the river they learned that those who had committed suicide were doomed to inhabit the trunks of trees. Beyond the river they came to a desert in which were confined those who had sinned against God, or Art, or Nature. A stream flowed near the desert and the two poets followed it until the water plunged into an abyss. In order that they might descend to the eighth circle, Virgil summoned Geryon, a frightful monster, who conducted them below. There they saw the tortured souls of seducers, flatters, diviners, and barter-ers. Continuing along their way, they witnessed the punishment accorded hypocrites and robbers. In the ninth gulf were confined scandalmongers and spreaders of false doctrine. Among the writhing figures they saw Mahomet. Still farther along, the two discovered the horrible disease-ridden bodies of forgers, counterfeiters, alchemists, and all those who deceived under false pretenses.
They were summoned to the next circle by the soul of a trumpet. In it were confined all traitors. A ring of giants surrounded the circle, one of whom lifted both Dante and Virgil and deposited them in the bottom of the circle. There Dante conversed with many of the spirits and learned the nature of their particular crimes.
After this visit to the lowest depths of Hell. Dante and Virgil emerged from the foul air to the pure atmosphere which surrounded the island of Purgatory. In a little while, they saw a boat conducted by an angel, in which were souls being brought to Purgatory. Dante recognized a friend among them. The two poets reached the foot of a mountain, where passing spirits showed them the easiest path to climb its slope. On their way up the path they encountered many spirits who explained that they were kept in Ante-Purgatory because they had delayed their repentance too long. They pleaded with Dante to ask their families to pray for their souls when he once again returned to earth. Soon Dante and Virgil came to the gate of Purgatory, which was guarded by an angel. The two poets ascended a winding path and saw men, bent under the weight of heavy stones, who were expiating the sin of pride. They examined the heavily carved cornices, which they passed, and found them covered with inscriptions urging humility and righteousness. At the second cornice were the souls of those who had been guilty of envy.
They wore sackcloth and their eyelids were sewed with iron thread. Around them were the voices of angels singing of great examples of humility and the futility of envy. An angel invited the poets to visit the third cornice, where those who had been guilty of anger underwent repentance. Dante was astonished at the examples of patience which he witnessed there. At the fourth cornice he witnessed the purging of the sin of indifference or gloominess. He discussed with Virgil the nature of love. The Latin poet stated that there were two kinds of love, natural love, which was always right, and love of the soul, which might be misdirected. At the fifth cornice, avarice was purged. On their way to the next cornice, the two were overtaken by Statius, whose spirit had been cleansed and who was on his way to Paradise. He accompanied them to the next place of purging, where the sin of gluttony was repented, while voices sang of the glory of temperance. The last cornice was the place for purging by fire of the sin of incontinence. Here the sinners were heard to recite innumerable examples of praiseworthy chastity.
An angel now directed the two poets and Statius to a path which would lead them to Paradise. Virgil told Dante that he might wander through Paradise at his will until he found his love, Beatrice. As he was strolling through a forest, Dante came to a stream; on the other bank stood a beautiful woman. She explained to him that the stream was called Lethe and helped him to cross it. Then Beatrice descended from heaven and reproached him for his unfaithfulness to her during her life, but the virgins in the heavenly fields interceded with her on his behalf. Convinced of his sincere repentance and remorse, she agreed to accompany him through the heavens.
On the moon Dante found those who had made vows of chastity and determined to follow the religious life, but who were forced to break their vows. Beatrice led him to the planet Mercury, the second heaven, and from there to Venus, the third heaven, where Dante conversed with many spirits and learned of their virtues. On the sun, the fourth heaven, they were surrounded by a group of spirits, among them Thomas Aquinas. He named each of the spirits in turn and discussed their individual virtues. A second circle of blessed spirits surrounded the first, and Dante learned from each how he had achieved blessedness.
Then Beatrice and Dante came to Mars, the fifth heaven, where he saw the cherished souls of those who had been martyred. Dante recognized many renowned warriors and crusaders among them.
On Jupiter, the sixth heaven, Dante saw the souls of those who had administered justice faithfully in the world. The seventh heaven was on Saturn, where Dante found the souls of those who had spent their lives in meditation and religious retirement. From there Beatrice and her lover passed to the eighth heaven, the region of the fixed stars. Dante looked back over all the distance which extended between the earth and this apex of Paradise and was dazzled and awed by what he saw. As they stood there, they saw the triumphal hosts approaching, with Christ leading, followed by Mary.
Dante was questioned by the saints. Saint Peter examined his opinions concerning faith; Saint James, concerning hope, and Saint John, concerning charity. Adam then approached and told the poet of the first man's creation, of his life in Paradise, and of his fall and what had caused it. Saint Peter bitterly lamented the avarice which his apostolic successors displayed, and all the sainted host agreed with him.
Beatrice then conducted Dante to the ninth heaven, where he was permitted to view the divine essence and to listen to the chorus of angels. She then led him to the Empyrean, from the heights of which, and with the aid of her vision, he was able to witness the triumphs of the angels and of the souls of the blessed. So dazzled and overcome was he by this vision that it was some time before he realized Beatrice had left him. At his side stood an old man whom he recognized as Saint Bernard, who told him Beatrice had returned to her throne. He then told Dante that if he wished to discover still more of the heavenly vision, he must join with him in a prayer to Mary. Dante received the grace to contemplate the glory of God, and to glimpse, for a moment, the greatest of mysteries, the Trinity and man's union with the divine.
Critical Evaluation
Dante was born into an aristocratic Florentine family. Unusually well educated even for his time and place, he was knowledgeable in science and philosophy and was an active man of letters as well as an artist. He lived in politically tumultuous times and was active in politics and government. All of his knowledge, his experience, and his skill were brought to bear in his writings. During an absence from Florence in 1302, he was sentenced to exile for opposing the government then in power; he was never allowed to return to his beloved Florence. In exile, Dante wrote The Divine Comedy. He died in Ravenna.
This masterpiece was written in Italian, but Dante also wrote in Latin, the language of scholarship at that time. His Latin treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia (On the Vulgar Tongue)—a compelling defense of the use of the written vernacular, instead of Latin—argued in conventional Latin the superiority of unconventional written Italian as a medium of expression. His other major Latin treatise was De Monarchia (About Monarchy), a political essay. He also used Latin for some very important letters and for
a few poems. But Dante's choice was his native Italian. His earliest major work—La Vita Nuova (The New Life), a mystical-spiritual autobiography, combining prose and poetry—was written in Italian. So, too, was // Convivio (The Banquet), a scholarly and philosophical treatise. And he wrote a number of lyric poems in Italian as well. Standing above all as a tribute to the eloquence of written Italian is The Divine Comedy.
La Commedia—as it was first titled; Divina was added later—is an incredibly complex work. It is divided into three sections, or canticles, the Inferno (Hell), the Pur-gatorio (Purgatory), and the Paradiso (Heaven). The entire work is composed of 100 cantos, apportioned into segments of 34 (Inferno), 33 (Purgatorio), and 33 (Paradiso). The rhyme scheme is called terza rima—aba bab cbc dcd—an interlocking pattern which produces a very closely knit poem. This structure is neither arbitrary nor a mere intellectual exercise.
Number symbolism plays an important part in The Divine Comedy. As an essentially Christian poem, it relies heavily on mystical associations with numbers. Inasmuch as the poem deals with Christian religious concepts, it is not difficult to discern the relationship between one poem in three canticles and one God in Three Persons. So, too, terza rima becomes significant. But then more complex intricacies come into play. The unity or oneness of God is diffused on a metric basis: one is divided into one hundred cantos, for example. And two becomes the duality of nature: corporeal and spiritual, active and contemplative, Church and State, Old Testament and New, and so on. Three signifies Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Power, Wisdom, Love; Faith, Hope, Charity; and other combinations. Four—as in seasons, elements, humors, directions, cardinal virtues—combines with three to make a mystical seven: days of creation, days of the week (length of Dante's journey), seven virtues and seven vices (reflected in the seven levels of Purgatory), planets, and many more. Moreover, multiples of three—three times three equals nine—create further permutations: choirs of angels, circles of Hell, and the like. And adding the mystical unity of one to the product nine makes ten, the metric permutation of one discussed above.
These complex relationships of number symbolism were deliberately contrived by Dante and other medieval writers. Dante himself explained, in// Convivio, his view of the four levels of interpretation of a literary work and by doing so legitimized such explanations of number symbolism. He proposed that a text be read literally, alle-gorically, morally, and anagogically. The literal reading attended to the story itself. The allegorical reading uncovered hidden meanings in the story. The moral reading related to matters of human behavior. And the ana-gogical reading, accessible to only the most sophisticated, pertained to the absolute and universal truths contained in a work. Hence, The Divine Comedy can be appreciated on each of these four levels of interpretation.
As a literal story, it has the fascination of autobiographical elements as well as the features of high adventure. The protagonist Dante, led by Vergil, undertakes a journey to learn about himself, the world, and the relations between the two. In the course of his journey, he explores other worlds in order to place his own world in proper perspective. As his journey progresses, he learns.
As an allegorical story, The Divine Comedy traces the enlightenment of Dante's soul. It also delineates social, political, cultural, and scientific parables. By integrating all of these aspects into an intricately interwoven pattern, the poem becomes an allegory for the real and spiritual world order.
As a moral story, the work has perhaps its greatest impact as a cautionary tale to warn the reader about the consequences of various categories of behavior. In the process, it helps the reader to understand sin (Hell), penance (Purgatory), and salvation (Heaven). Thus. The Divine Comedy becomes a vehicle for teaching moral behavior.
As an anagogical story, the poem offers a mystical vision of God's grand design for the entire universe. The complex interdependency of all things—including the web of interrelationships stemming from number symbolism—is, in this view, all part of the Divine Plan, which humankind can grasp only partially and dimly. For God remains ineffable to the finite capacities of human beings, and His will can never be fully apprehended by humans, whose vision has been impaired by sin. The anagogical aspects of The Divine Comedy are therefore aids for the most spiritually enlightened to approach Eternal Truth.
To be sure, no brief explanation can do justice to the majesty of this monumental achievement in the history of Western poetry. The very encyclopedic nature of its scope makes The Divine Comedy a key to the study of medieval civilization. As such, it cannot be easily or properly fragmented into neat categories for discussion, and the reader must advance on tiptoe, as it were. Background in history and theology are strongly recommended. But, above all, the reader must recognize that no sweeping generalization will adequately account for the complexity of ideas or the intricacy of structure in The Divine Comedy.
The Divine Comedy
Translated by
James Finn Cotter
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