On May 21, 1265, one of the founders of the literary Italian language, the greatest poet, theologian, politician, who entered the history of world literature as the author of the Divine Comedy, was born. Dante Alighieri.
The Alighieri family belonged to the middle-class urban nobility, and his ancestor was the famous knight Kachchagvid, who died in the second crusade in 1147. The full name of the legendary poet is Durante degli Alighieri, he was born in Florence, the largest Italian economic and cultural center of the Middle Ages, and remained devoted to his hometown all his life. Little is known about the writer's family and life, even the exact date of his birth is questioned by many researchers.
Dante Alighieri was an amazingly confident man. At the age of 18, the young man said that he could write poetry perfectly and that he had mastered this “craft” on his own. Dante was educated within the framework of medieval school programs, and since there was no university in Florence at that time, he had to acquire basic knowledge himself. The author of The Divine Comedy mastered French and Provençal, read everything that came to hand, and little by little his own path as a scientist, thinker and poet began to be drawn before him.
exiled poet
The youth of the brilliant writer fell on a difficult period: at the end of the 13th century, the struggle between the emperor and the pope intensified in Italy. Florence, where the Alighieri lived, was divided into two opposing groups - "blacks" led by Corso Donati and the "whites" to which Dante belonged. Thus began the political activity of the “last poet of the Middle Ages”: Alighieri participated in city councils and anti-papal coalitions, where the writer’s oratorical gift was manifested in all its splendor.
Dante was not looking for political laurels, but political thorns soon overtook him: the “blacks” activated their activities and pogromed opponents. On March 10, 1302, Alighieri and 14 other "white" supporters were sentenced to death in absentia. To escape, the philosopher and politician had to flee from Florence. Never again did Dante manage to return to his beloved city. Traveling around the world, he was looking for a place where he could retire and work quietly. Alighieri continued to study and, most importantly, create.
monogamous poet
When Dante was nine years old, a meeting took place in his life that changed the history of all Italian literature. On the threshold of the church, he ran into a little girl next door Beatrice Portinari and fell in love with the young lady at first sight. It was this tender feeling, according to Alighieri himself, that made him a poet. Until the last days of his life, Dante dedicated poems to his beloved, idolizing "the most beautiful of all angels." Their next meeting took place nine years later, by this time Beatrice was already married, her husband was a rich signor Simon de Bardi. But no bonds of marriage could prevent the poet from admiring his muse, she remained "the mistress of his thoughts" all his life. The poetic document of this love was the autobiographical confession of the writer "New Life", written at the fresh grave of his beloved in 1290.
Dante himself entered into one of those politically calculated business marriages that were accepted at that time. His wife was Gemma Donati, daughter of a wealthy gentleman Manetto Donati. When Dante Alighieri was expelled from Florence, Gemma remained in the city with the children, preserving the remnants of her father's property. Alighieri does not mention his wife in any of his works, but Dante and Beatrice have become the same symbol of a love couple as petrarch And Laura, Tristan And Isolde, Romeo And Juliet.
Dante and Beatrice on the banks of the Lethe. Cristobal Rojas (Venezuela), 1889. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Italian "Comedy"
The death of Beatrice marked the beginning of Dante's philosophical reflections on life and death, he began to read a lot Cicero attend a religious school. All this served as an impetus for the creation of the Divine Comedy. A brilliant work created by the author in exile, and today is traditionally included in the top ten most famous books. Dante's poem had a huge impact on the emergence of proper Italian literature. According to researchers, it is this work that summarizes the entire development of medieval philosophy. It also reflects the worldview of the greatest poet, so the Divine Comedy is called the fruit of the life and work of the Italian master.
The "divine" comedy of Alighieri did not immediately become, as the author of the "Decameron" later dubbed it Giovanni Boccaccio, having come in admiration from what he read. Dante called his manuscript very simply - "Comedy". He used medieval terminology, where comedy is “any poetic work of the middle style with a frightening beginning and a happy ending, written in the vernacular”; Tragedy is “any poetic work of high style with an admiring and calm beginning and a terrible end.” Despite the fact that the poem touches on the "eternal" themes of life and the immortality of the soul, retribution and responsibility, Dante could not call his work a tragedy, because, like all genres of "high literature", it had to be created in Latin. Alighieri wrote his Comedy in his native Italian, and even with the Tuscan dialect.
Dante worked on the greatest poem for almost 15 years, having managed to complete it shortly before his death. Alighieri died of malaria on September 14, 1321, leaving behind a significant mark in world literature and marking the beginning of a new era - the early Renaissance.
The first love in the biography of Dante Alighieri was Beatrice Portinari. But she died in 1290. After that, Alighieri married Gemma Donati. One of the first stories of Dante Alighieri was "New Life". In 1300-1301, Alighieri held the title of prior of Florence, and was expelled the following year. At the same time, his wife remained to live in the old place, he did not call Gemma to accompany him. For the rest of his life, Alighieri never again came to Florence.
The next work in Alighieri's biography was The Feast, written in exile. It was followed by the treatise "On popular eloquence". Forced to leave Florence, Alighieri traveled to Italy and France. Then he was an active public figure - he lectured, took part in disputes. The most famous work in the biography of Dante Alighieri was the Divine Comedy, which the writer created from 1306 until the end of his life. The work consists of three parts - Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. Among other works of Alighieri: "Eclogues", "Messages", the poem "Flower", the treatise "Monarchy".
In 1316 he began to live in Ravenna. Dante Alighieri died in September 1321 from malaria.
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Brief biography of the poet, the main facts of life and work:
Dante ALIGIERI (1265-1321)
The great Italian poet of the Early Renaissance Dante Alighieri was born in mid-May 1265 in Florence. Dante's parents were native Florentines and belonged to a poor and not very noble feudal family.
From the documents preserved in the archives, it is known that the Alighieri owned houses and plots of land in Florence and its environs and were considered a middle-class family.
Father Dante Alighiero Alighieri, probably a lawyer, did not disdain usury and, according to the Florentine custom, gave money on interest. He was married twice. Dante's mother died when the poet was still a child. Her name was Bella, full name Isabella. Dante's father died before 1283.
Eighteen years old, Dante became the eldest in the family. He had two sisters - one was called Tana (full name Gaetana), the name of the second history has not been preserved. Subsequently, with Dante's nephew from his second sister, Andrea di Poggio was a sign of Boccaccio, who received from Andrea and wrote down valuable information about the Alighieri family. Dante also had a younger brother, Francesco, who was also expelled from Florence in 1302, but later returned and even helped Dante financially.
Since the life and work of Dante were largely determined by the political situation in his homeland, it is necessary to briefly talk about what happened in Italy in the 13th century.
The country was fragmented into many feudal states, including the so-called commune cities. The Pope, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (the empire included mainly German territories) and the French king fought for supreme power over them. In the process of this struggle, the population of Italy was divided into political parties. The Guelphs supported the power of the pope, the Ghibellines supported the power of the emperor. Florentine merchants, who played a decisive role in the life of the city, traded mainly with Catholic France, the main Florentine banking families were also associated with it. Commercial Florence was Guelphian, otherwise one could incur excommunication by the pope from the church and lose ties with France. Among other things, the Guelph party was divided into white Guelphs, who advocated the independence of Florence from the pope, and black Guelphs, supporters of papal power. The Dante family traditionally belonged to the Guelph party, and Dante himself eventually became a white Guelph.
It is believed that Dante studied at the school of law in Bologna, where he got acquainted with the work of the local poet Guido Gvinicelli, the founder of a new “sweet style” in poetry. The genius of Dante was largely formed under the influence of Guinicelli.
Dante and Beatrice. First meeting
You can learn about the young years of the poet from his autobiographical story in verse and prose "New Life". Here the young poet told the story of his love for Beatrice. According to Boccaccio, Beatrice was the daughter of a wealthy and respected citizen Folco Portinari (died in 1289) and later became the wife of Simone de'Bardi from an influential family of Florentine bankers. Dante first saw the girl when he was nine years old and she was eight. For medieval Italy, when the marriage of a twelve-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy was in the order of things, the age of their meeting was quite consistent with the timing of puberty. (It is curious that in Dante's work the number 9 became a symbol of Beatrice. Whenever the number 9 appears in his work, one must look for a secret meaning in the text.) The poet's deep-seated love was fed only by rare chance meetings, fleeting glances of her beloved, her cursory bow. In June 1290, Beatrice died. She was twenty-four years old.
"New Life" glorified the name of Dante. This book became the first lyrical confession in world literature, a book that for the first time spoke sincerely, reverently and with inspiration about the great love and great sorrow of a living human heart.
Shortly after the death of Beatrice, Dante married Gemma, from the influential Donati family of magnates. The marriage was arranged as early as 1277 between the parents. The poet himself never mentioned Gemma in his works. We only know that the wife's family belonged to the party of Black Guelphs - Dante's worst enemies. From this marriage, the poet had sons Pietro, Jacopo and, presumably, John (the name of the latter is found in documents only once - in 1308), as well as a daughter, Anthony, who later became a nun in the Ravenna monastery of San Stefano degli Olivi under the name Beatrice.
The decisive role in the fate and further work of Dante was played by the expulsion of the poet from his native Florence. Dante's sympathies were on the side of the White Guelphs, and from 1295 to 1301 the poet took an active part in the political life of the city, he even participated in the military campaigns of the Florentines against the neighboring cities of the Ghibellines. The Black Guelphs of Florence under Dante were led by the Donati family, the White Guelphs by the Cherki bankers.
On November 5, 1301, with the active support of the army of the brother of the French king Philip IV the Handsome - Charles of Valois - and Pope Boniface VIII, the Black Guelphs seized power in Florence, and the White Guelphs were executed and exiled. Dante was not in the city these days, and he learned about the sentence of exile in absentia on the road in January 1302. Due to the fact that the poet's wife was from the Donati family, most of Dante's property passed to her and her children, that is, it remained with the poet's family, but later Dante's case was reviewed - he was sentenced to "burn by fire until he dies." Dante never returned to Florence.
During the first years of his exile, Dante found shelter near Florence in the city of Arezzo, which at that time was the refuge of the Ghibellines expelled from Florence. The Ghibelline emigrants were preparing a military invasion of Florence and tried to involve Dante in preparing an intervention. Dante - a white Guelph - was brought closer to the Ghibellines by the similarity of political slogans. But soon the poet realized that the Ghibelline emigration was a bunch of political adventurers, overwhelmed only with ambition and a thirst for revenge. Dante broke with them, henceforth he rejected civil strife and became "his own party."
The poet settled in Verona, but, having quarreled with the local authorities, he was forced to wander around the Italian cities. He visited Brescia, Treviso, Bologna, Padua. Over time, Dante managed to secure the patronage of the supreme captain of the Guelph League of Tuscany, Marquis Moroello Malaspina of Lunigiana. The cycle of his poems "About the Stone Lady" belongs to this period. It is assumed that they are dedicated to the new beloved Dante - Pietra from the Malaspina clan.
This infatuation did not last long. Biographers say that in 1307 or 1308 the poet traveled to Paris to improve his knowledge and spoke at debates, surprising the audience with his erudition and resourcefulness.
It is believed that Dante set to work on the main work of his life, the Divine Comedy, around 1307. The main theme of the conceived work was to be justice - in earthly life and in the afterlife. Dante called his poem a comedy, since it has a gloomy beginning (Hell) and a joyful end (Paradise and contemplation of the Divine essence) and, moreover, is written in a simple style (as opposed to the sublime style inherent, in Dante's understanding, tragedy), in folk the language "as women speak". The epithet "Divine" in the title was not invented by Dante, it first appeared in an edition published in 1555 in Venice.
The poem consists of one hundred songs of approximately the same length (130-150 lines) and is divided into three canticles - Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, thirty-three songs each. The first song of Hell serves as a prologue to the entire poem. The size of the “Divine Comedy” is an eleven-syllable, rhyming scheme, tercina, invented by Dante himself, who put a deep meaning into it.
In 1307, as a result of the long intrigues of the French king, the Frenchman Bertrand was elected to the papacy under the name Clement V, who transferred the papacy from Rome to Avignon. The so-called "Avignon captivity of the popes" (1307-1378) began.
On November 27, 1308, Henry VII became Holy Roman Emperor. In 1310, he invaded Italy with the aim of "reconciling everyone." Thousands of Italian exiles rushed to meet the emperor, who announced that he did not distinguish the Guelphs from the Ghibellines and promised his patronage to everyone. Among them was Dante. Many cities - Milan, Genoa, Pisa - opened their gates to the emperor, but the Guelph League in central Italy did not want to recognize Henry. Florence led the resistance.
During these days, Dante wrote a treatise "On the Monarchy", in which he sought to prove that: a) only under the rule of a universal monarch can humanity come to a peaceful life; b) The Lord chose the Roman people to rule the world, and therefore, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire should be the universal monarch; c) the emperor and the pope receive power directly from God, therefore, the first is not subordinate to the second.
In August 1313, after an unsuccessful three-year campaign, Henry VII died suddenly. The death of the emperor caused joy in Florence and deep sorrow for Dante and other exiles.
After these tragic events, Dante temporarily disappeared from the field of view of biographers. It is only known that he lived in Assisi and in the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellano, where he was completely absorbed in work on the Divine Omedia. Then the poet moved to Lucca, to some lady named Gentukka.
During these years, Dante was invited to return to Florence on the condition that he would agree to undergo a humiliating rite of repentance. The poet refused, and on October 15, 1315, again, together with his sons, he was condemned in absentia by the Florentine lordship to a shameful execution.
Dante settled in Verona under the auspices of Can Grande della Scala, the leader of the northern Italian Ghibellines, whom he glorified in The Divine Comedy. In his youth, Can Grande de Scala (1291-1329) received the title of imperial vicar in Verona and became the head of the Ghibelline League in Lombardy, "one of the most powerful and never changed his champions of the imperial power in Italy."
One can only guess about the reasons that prompted Dante to leave the court of Can Grande and move to Ravenna. The ruler of Ravenna, Guido da Polenta, was a lover of poetry and even wrote poetry himself. It was he who invited Dante to his city.
It was the happiest time in Dante's life. The poet liked to walk with his students from Ravenna in the forest of pine trees between Ravenna and the Adriatic. This forest, later sung by Byron, resembled both the garden of paradise on earth and the shepherd's Sicily from Virgil's eclogue. Here Dante finished the third part of the Divine Comedy. There is a legend that the last songs of "Paradise" were lost, but one night the shadow of Dante appeared to the son of the poet Jacopo and pointed to a hiding place in the wall where the manuscript was hidden.
In the summer of 1321, Dante, as the ambassador of the ruler of Ravenna, went to Venice to conclude peace with the Republic of St. Mark. Returning along the road between the banks of the Adria and the swamps of Po, Dante fell ill with malaria and died on the night of September 13-14, 1321.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
There are names in world literature that will always be pillars, beacons, symbols of greatness and divinity of talent. These are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin… The very building of civilization stands on these geniuses.
Italy of the XIII century was a field of constant strife and battles. The country was fragmented, there was a fierce struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Florence, the birthplace of Dante, considered herself a Guelph. All those who left the power of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, preferring the protectorate of the pope, as well as the kings and princes of French blood, became Guelphs. Feudal lords and urban patricians, as well as entire cities, like Pisa, who traded with the East and competed with Florence, became Ghibellins. Heretical movements that hated the pope became allies of the Ghibellines.
On September 4, 1260, the Ghibellines utterly defeated the armed forces of the Guelphs. The traitorous Florentine Bocca degli Abati cut off the hand of his standard-bearer, and the Florentines fled. The river, crimson from the blood of the Florentines, people remembered later for decades. Dante, as a child, heard many stories about this insidious betrayal and about the bloody river. Then, in The Divine Comedy, he will place the traitor in the deepest abysses of hell: the poet touches his head frozen into the ice with his foot - the traitor del Abati is condemned to eternal torment in an icy grave.
Dante was born in May 1265. Florence at this time was under papal interdict (excommunication). Not a single bell rang in the city.
From childhood, Dante was proud that he comes from the Elisei family, the founders of Florence. The ancestor, the crusader of Kachagvid, fought against the Saracens under the banner of Emperor Conrad. Dante believed that it was from him that he inherited militancy and intransigence. From the Bollincione family, a fanatical Guelph, the poet inherited political passion.
Dante's father was a lawyer. The future poet lost his mother in infancy. His father died when Dante was eighteen years old. He first received a classical education in Florence, then in Bologna at the university he studied higher sciences - the ethics of Aristotle, the rhetoric of Cicero, the poetics of Horace and Virgil, and languages.
At eleven, he was engaged to six-year-old Gemma Donati. He married her only after the death of Beatrice, the famous beloved of the Poet.
Beatrice - "giving bliss" - was she really or is it a poetic fiction? Biographers of Dante found information in the archives of Florence that the rich banker Folco Portinari lived in Florence at that time and had a daughter, whom Dante sang. She died in 1290. That's all we know about her. The poet himself reports only that he first saw her when the girl was nine years old. She was several months younger than him. But Dante talks a lot about his feelings: “in the innermost depths of the heart,” love for the girl was born in him. She was dressed "in the noblest blood-red, modest and decorous, adorned and girded as befitted her young age." "Lord of love - Amor" took possession of the boy's heart. “Often he ordered me to go in search of this young angel; and in my teenage years I went out to behold her. And I saw her, so noble and worthy of praise in all matters, that, of course, one could say about her in the words of Homer: “She seemed to be the daughter not of a mortal, but of God.”
It was the secret life of the boy's soul, it made him go "into himself", live in his inner world - all this developed his poetic talent in him.
Dante's love for Beatrice in nine years will take on an almost cosmic scale. He will see God's providence in it and will find a special meaning in the numbers surrounding their meeting. “The number three is the root of nine, so without the help of another number it produces nine; for it is evident that three times three is nine. Thus, if three are able to work nine, and the Trinity is the creator of miracles in itself, that is, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three in one, then it should be concluded that this lady (Beatrice) was accompanied by the number nine, so that everyone would understand that she herself is nine, that is, a miracle, and that the root of this miracle is the only miraculous Trinity.
These scholarly-scholastic arguments reflect the spirit of that time, but they are also bold enough - after all, the poet compares a mere mortal with the divine Trinity.
Nine years later, Dante saw Beatrice, "dressed in clothes of dazzling white." “As she passed, she turned her eyes in the direction where I was in confusion ... she greeted me so kindly that it seemed to me that I see all the facets of bliss ... when I heard her sweet greeting ... I was filled with such joy that, as intoxicated, retired from people, secluding himself in one of my rooms ... "
At this age, the poet began the real pangs of love. Everyone saw that he was in love. It was impossible to hide it, day and night he thought about his beloved. This feeling found its way out in poetry.
Everything in the confused memory dies -
I see you in the glow of the dawn
And at that moment the god of love tells me:
"Run away from here or burn in the flames!"
My face reflects the color of my heart.
Seeking support, shocked inside;
And drunkenness gives rise to awe,
It seems to me that the stones are screaming: "Die!"
And whose soul froze in insensibility,
He will not understand my suppressed cry.
Dante will write many such piercing sonnets about his love. His love will outlive Beatrice. Some sources report that Beatrice married a banker. But the poet's love did not diminish from this. On the contrary, she inspired him to new beautiful sonnets. Beatrice died in 1290 - for Dante, her death was tantamount to a cosmic catastrophe. Dante wept for a year after Beatrice's death. He poured out all his feelings in the book "New Life".
After the death of Beatrice, contemporaries did not see the poet smiling.
The poet did not finish the university in Bologna where he studied - the reason for this could be the situation in the family, and love for Beatrice, and something else.
Further, Dante's life developed dramatically. The Guelphs, to which the poet's family belonged, were divided into whites and blacks: the whites stood in opposition to the pope and involuntarily became close to the Ghibellines, while the blacks were supporters of the pope and became close to the Neapolitan king. A fiery tail of a comet appeared over Florence, resembling a cross. Everyone considered this an omen of wars, misfortunes, ruin.
The whites will lose the political struggle - and Dante was a white - Pope Boniface VIII will set himself the goal of subjugating Italy and bowing emperors and kings to the throne. Dante will then call him "the prince of the new Pharisees" and throw him into the lower abysses of hell.
Pope Boniface VIII appointed Prince Charles, brother of the French King Philip the Handsome, as governor of the Church's dominions in Florence. Persecution of whites, robberies and arson of houses began in the city. The Black Guelphs formed their own government. Dante was included in the lists of political criminals. He was accused of embezzlement, illegal income, resisting the Pope and Karl. The city herald, to the sound of silver trumpets in front of Dante's house, announced that Alighieri was sentenced to exile and confiscation of property. And if he returns, then "let them burn him with fire until he dies."
Dante will never return to Florence, his wife Gemma will be left alone with three children in her arms.
Dante retired from political life. “You will become your own party,” he decided. Friends accused him of betrayal. Soon he became a stranger to almost everyone.
The twenty-year exile life was given to the poet hard:
... how mournful to the lips
Someone else's chunk, how difficult it is in a foreign land
Go down and up the stairs.
In 1303, the poet moved to Verona, then wandered around the north of Italy, then lived in Paris, where he served as a bachelor at the University of Paris. He writes the treatises "Feast", "On Popular Eloquence", "Monarchy" ...
And most importantly, during these years he creates a work that will glorify his name through the ages, the Divine Comedy. He writes a significant part of this work in a mountain Benedictine monastery. Then he will again live in Verona, and the poet will end his days on earth in Ravenna, where the ruler of Ravenna will lay a laurel wreath on Dante's head.
Dante died of malaria on the night of September 13-14, 1321. He is buried in a Greek marble sarcophagus, preserved from ancient times. A hundred and fifty years later, the architect Lombardo will build a mausoleum over it, which still towers in Ravenna. The folk trail will not overgrow to it - people from all over the world come to honor the memory of the creator of the great "Divine Comedy".
Dante called his poetic work a "comedy" according to the norms of ancient poetics - it was the name of a work with a happy and joyful denouement. Dante's work begins with "Hell" and ends with "Paradise"
Pushkin said that "the unified plan of (Dante's) "Hell" is already the fruit of a lofty genius." The plan of the poem is three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise". Each has thirty-three songs. Hell is a huge, deep funnel, divided into nine circles. There sinners suffer. At the very bottom of Lucifer. Purgatory is a powerful, cone-shaped mountain, surrounded by the ocean. There are seven steps in the mountain. Climbing them, the sinner is freed from sins. Heaven has nine heavens. The last one is Empyrean.
Dante's poem begins with the fact that in the middle of his life's journey ("Having passed his earthly life to half") he got lost in the forest, and three terrible beasts appeared before him - a she-wolf, a lion and a panther. All these are allegories. Forest - life, animals - human passions lion - lust for power, she-wolf - self-interest, panther - from the point of view of Christian morality, this is a passion for bodily pleasures, for carnal sins.
Who will lead out of the forest of life's delusions? Intelligence. Reason appeared to Dante in the form of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who shows him what threatens a person with his passions - they go to Hell, then to Purgatory, so that Dante, cleansed of vices, appears before his pure beloved Beatrice in Paradise, so that she brings the poet to the throne of God , which personifies the highest moral perfection.
Such a brilliant plan, such a composition.
Along the way, Virgil and Dante see a lot: at the very entrance to Hell, a crowd of moaning people. Who are they? They are indifferent. They did neither good nor evil. "They are not worth the words: look, and by!" Here are all those who lived before Christ. They didn't know God's grace. In the second circle of Hell whirlwinds and storms. Here those who indulged in bodily pleasures are tormented. Here Semiramis, "the sinful harlot Cleopatra", Elena the Beautiful - "the culprit of painful times." Indeed, because of her satanic beauty, there was a long-term Trojan War. Here is Achilles, the great warrior, he succumbed to love temptations ...
Voluptuaries, gluttons, misers and squanderers, heretics, rapists of their neighbors and their property, rapists of nature (sodomites), covetous men, pimps and seducers, flatterers, soothsayers, bribe-takers, hypocrites, thieves, instigators of strife, traitors to the motherland ... - all sins are represented in hell.
Here is how Dante describes the torment of alchemists, forgers of metals:
I was pierced by screams and curses,
Like arrows sharpened by longing;
I had to pinch my ears from the pain.
What a moan would be if in the summer heat
Gather the hospitals of Valdichiana in a herd,
Maremma and Sardinia and in one
To pile up a hole - so this moat is filthy
Shouted below, and the stench hung over him,
How festering wounds stink.
My leader and I went down to the extreme rampart,
Turning, as before, to the left of the spur,
And here my gaze penetrated more vividly
To the depths, where, the servant of God,
Severe Punishes Righteousness
Forgers who are strictly numbered.
Hardly any bitter flour is spilled
Was over the dying Aegina,
When the infection became so fierce,
That all living creatures to a single
Beat the pestilence, and the former people
Was recreated by an ant breed,
As one of the singers conveys, -
Than here, where the spirits along the bottom of the blind
Now they languished in heaps, then at random.
Who is on the stomach, who is on the shoulders of another
Falling, lying, and who crawling, in the dust,
On mournful moved home.
Step by step, we silently walked,
Bowing eyes and ears in the crowd of the sick,
Powerless to rise from the ground.
I saw two, sitting back to back,
Like two frying pans on top of a fire
And from the feet to the top of the head are aggravated.
Hasty groom does not scrape the horse,
When he knows - the master is waiting,
Or tired at the end of the day,
What did this and that bite into itself
Nails to calm the overthrow for a moment,
Which only made it easier.
Their nails peeled off the skin completely,
Like scales from a large-scaled fish
Or a knife scrapes off a bream.
"O you, whose curves are all torn apart,
And fingers, like ticks, tear the meat, -
The leader said to one, - could not
We'll hear from you, isn't it here
What Latins? Don't break
Forever nails that carry this work!
He sobbed like this: “You are now looking
For two Latins and for their misfortune.
But who are you that you ask?
And the leader said: "I'm going with him, alive,
From circle to circle in the dark expanse,
So that he can see everything that is in Hell."
(Translated by M. Lozinsky)
In one of the last circles they meet the teacher Dante Bruneto Latini, who is here as a criminal against nature, that is, a sodomite. Dante exclaimed:
Bitter me now
Your paternal image, sweet and cordial,
The one who taught me more than once.
Among the tyrants, the poet placed Alexander the Great. There is Attila. Tyrants are tormented in the seething stream.
In the ninth circle, the most terrible, there are traitors to the motherland, traitors to friends. Among them, the first murderer on earth is Cain. They all froze into the icy lake Cocytus.
With the help of the heavenly angel and the dragon Gerion, travelers reach the center of Hell - here is the center of the world's evil and ugliness - Lucifer.
Lucifer has three heads, in each of which there is a sinner, the three most terrible criminals: Judas, who betrayed Christ, Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Julius Caesar.
The ascent through Purgatory begins. To Ray. Here, too, specific people, specific destinies.
In Paradise, Dante meets Beatrice. Through the lips of his beloved, he reproaches himself for the fact that he sometimes walked the “bad path”, that he rushed to “deceitful” benefits.
Dante reaches the Empyrean, the summit of Paradise. God and angels and blessed souls live here. Everything here is immaterial, God cannot be seen. The image of God is the thought of God in its radiance, omnipotence and immensity.
First of all, "Hell" makes an indelible impression on readers. There were legends about Dante, women were afraid of his face and beard, allegedly covered with the ashes of hell.
Thousands of artists painted on Dante's subjects. And our great compatriots were influenced by Dante.
They rejoice, these animals,
Meanwhile, looking down,
Poor exile, Alighieri,
Step unhurriedly descends into hell.
(Nikolai Gumilyov)
Michelangelo never parted with Dante's poem - he read and re-read all his life. Pushkin read and reread:
Zorya is beaten. From my hands
Old Dante drops out.
On the lips of the last verse
Unread silence...
The spirit flies away.
(A. Pushkin)
* * *
You read the biography (facts and years of life) in a biographical article dedicated to the life and work of the great poet.
Thanks for reading. ............................................
Copyright: biographies of the lives of great poets
SAINT PETERSBURG STATE UNIVERSITY
CULTURE AND ARTS
ESSAY
at the rate: FOREIGN LITERATURE
Topic: "Dante Alighieri and his "Divine Comedy" as a standard of Italian Renaissance literature"
PERFORMED:
2nd YEAR STUDENT
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION
OFFICES
CORRESPONDENCE TRAINING
A. V. FOMINYKH
TEACHER: KOZLOVA V. I.
Introduction ................................................ ................................................. .............3
Chapter 1. Biography of the poet............................................... ........................................4
Chapter 2. Dante's "Divine Comedy" .................7
Conclusion................................................. ................................................. ........fourteen
Bibliography............................................... ......................15
INTRODUCTION
The study of the literature of the Italian Renaissance begins with an examination of the work of the great predecessor of the Renaissance, the Florentine Dante Alighieri (Dante Alighieri, 1265 - 1321), the first of the great poets of Western Europe.
By the whole nature of his work, Dante is a poet of transitional times, standing at the turn of two great historical eras.
The main work of Dante, on which his world fame is primarily based, is the Divine Comedy. The poem is not only the result of the development of Dante's ideological, political and artistic thought, but provides a grandiose philosophical and artistic synthesis of the entire medieval culture, while at the same time throwing a bridge from it to the culture of the Renaissance. Precisely as the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante is at the same time the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times.
Chapter 1. Biography of the poet
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265. The poet came from an old noble family. However, the Dante family has long lost its feudal appearance; already the poet's father belonged, like himself, to the Guelph party.
Having reached adulthood, Dante enrolled in 1283 in the guild of pharmacists and doctors, which also included booksellers and artists and belonged to the seven “senior” guilds of Florence.
Dante received an education in the volume of the medieval school, which he himself recognized as meager, and sought to fill it with the study of French and Provencal languages, which opened him access to the best examples of foreign literature.
Along with the medieval poets, the young Dante carefully studied the ancient poets and, first of all, Virgil, whom he chose, in his own words, as his "leader, master and teacher."
The main passion of the young Dante was poetry. He began to write poetry early and already in the early 80s of the XIII century. wrote many lyrical poems, almost exclusively of love content. At the age of 18, he experienced a great psychological crisis - love for Beatrice, daughter of the Florentine Folco Portinari, a friend of his father, subsequently
married to a nobleman.
The story of his love for Beatrice Dante outlined in a small book, New Life, which brought him literary fame.
After the death of Beatrice, the poet engaged in an intensive study of theology, philosophy and astronomy, and also learned all the subtleties of medieval scholasticism. Dante became one of the most learned people of his time, but his learning was typically medieval in nature, as it was subject to theological dogmas.
Dante's political activity began very early. Barely reaching adulthood, he takes part in the military enterprises of the Florentine commune and fights on the side of the Guelphs against the Ghibellines.
In the 90s, Dante sat in city councils and carried out diplomatic missions, and in June 1300 he was elected a member of the college of six priors that ruled Florence.
After the split of the Guelph party, he joined the Whites and vigorously fought against the orientation towards the papal curia. After the Blacks were defeated by the Whites, Pope Boniface VIII intervened in their struggle, calling for help from the French prince Charles of Valois, who entered the city in November 1301 and massacred the supporters of the White party, accusing them of all kinds of crimes.
In January 1302, the blow fell on the great poet. Dante was sentenced to a heavy fine on a trumped-up charge of bribery. Fearing the worst, the poet fled from Florence, after which all his property was confiscated. Dante spent all the rest of his life in exile, wandering from city to city, he fully learned “how bitter is the bread of a stranger”, and never again saw Florence dear to his heart - “a beautiful sheepfold where he slept like a lamb”.
Life in exile significantly changed political beliefs
Dante. Full of anger against Florence, he came to the conclusion that her citizens had not yet grown up to defend their interests on their own. More and more, the poet is inclined to believe that only the imperial power can pacify and unite Italy, giving a decisive rebuff to the papal power. He pinned the hope for the implementation of this program on Emperor Henry VII, who appeared in Italy in 1310, allegedly to restore “order” and eliminate the internecine strife of Italian cities, in fact, with the aim of robbing them. But Dante saw in Henry the desired "messiah" and vigorously agitated for him, sending Latin letters in all directions.
messages. However, Henry VII died in 1313 before he could occupy Florence.
Now Dante's last hopes of returning to his homeland have collapsed. Florence crossed his name twice from the amnestied list, because she saw him as an implacable enemy. The offer made to him in 1316 to return to Florence under the condition of humiliating public repentance, Dante resolutely rejected. The poet spent the last years of his life in Ravenna with Prince Guido da Polenta, the nephew of Francesca da Rimini, whom he sang.
Here Dante worked to complete his great poem, written during the years of exile. He hoped that poetic fame would bring him an honorable return to his homeland, but did not live to see it.
Dante died on September 14, 1321 in Ravenna. He remained faithful to the end of his mission as a poet of justice. Subsequently, Florence repeatedly made attempts to regain the ashes of the great exile, but Ravenna always refused her.
Chapter 2. Dante's Divine Comedy
The title of the poem needs clarification. Dante himself called it simply “Comedy”, using this word in a purely medieval sense: in the poetics of that time, any work with a happy beginning and a sad end was called a tragedy, and any work with a sad beginning and a happy, happy end was called a comedy. Thus, the concept of "comedy" in the time of Dante did not include the installation necessarily cause laughter. As for the epithet “divine” in the title of the poem, it does not belong to Dante and was established no earlier than the 16th century, and not with the aim of denoting the religious content of the poem, but solely as an expression of its poetic perfection.
Like other works of Dante, The Divine Comedy is distinguished by an unusually clear, thoughtful composition. The poem is divided into three large parts (“canticles”), dedicated to the image of the three parts of the underworld (according to the teachings of the Catholic Church) - hell, purgatory and paradise. Each of the three canticles consists of 33 songs, and one more song (the first) is added to the first canticle, which has the character of a prologue to the entire poem.
For all the originality of Dante's artistic method, his poem has numerous medieval sources. The plot of the poem reproduces the scheme of the popular in medieval clerical literature genre of "visions" or "traveling through torment", that is, poetic stories about how a person managed to see the secrets of the afterlife.
The task of medieval “visions” was the desire to distract a person from worldly fuss, show him the sinfulness of earthly life and encourage him to turn his thoughts to the afterlife. Dante, on the other hand, uses the form of “visions” in order to most fully reflect real, earthly life; he does judgment on human crimes and vices not for the sake of
denial of earthly life as such, but with the aim of correcting it. Dante does not lead a person away from reality, but immerses a person into it.
Depicting hell, Dante showed in it a whole gallery of living people endowed with various passions. He is perhaps the first in Western European literature to make the image of human passions the subject of poetry, and in order to find full-blooded human images, he descends into the afterlife. Unlike medieval “visions”, which gave the most general, schematic representation of sinners, Dante concretizes and individualizes their images.
The afterlife is not opposed to real life, but continues it, reflecting the relationships that exist in it. In Dante's hell, as on earth, political passions rage. Sinners have conversations and disputes with Dante on contemporary political topics. Proud Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti, punished in hell among heretics, is still full of hatred for the Guelphs and talks with Dante about politics, although he is imprisoned in a fiery grave. In general, the poet retains in the afterlife all the political passion inherent in him and, at the sight of the suffering of his enemies, bursts into abuse against them. The very idea of afterlife retribution acquires political overtones in Dante. It is no coincidence that many of Dante's political enemies reside in hell, and his friends live in paradise.
Fantastic in its overall design, Dante's poem is built entirely from pieces of real life. So, when describing the torment of the covetous, thrown into boiling tar, Dante recalls the marine arsenal in Venice, where ships are caulked in melted tar (“Hell”, canto XXI). At the same time, the demons make sure that sinners do not float up, and push them with hooks into the pitch, as cooks “heat meat with forks in a cauldron.” In other cases, Dante illustrates the described torment of sinners with pictures of nature. So, for example, he compares traitors immersed in an icy lake with frogs, who
from the pond” (Ode XXXII). The punishment of crafty advisers, enclosed in fiery tongues, reminds Dante of a valley filled with fireflies on a quiet evening in Italy (Canto XXVI). The more unusual the objects and phenomena described by Dante, the more he strives to visually present them to the reader, comparing them with well-known things.
So, “Hell” is characterized by a gloomy color, thick sinister colors, among which red and black dominate. They are replaced in “Purgatory” by softer, pale and misty colors - gray-blue, greenish, golden. This is due to the appearance in purgatory of wildlife - the sea, rocks, verdant meadows and trees. Finally, in "Paradise" dazzling brilliance and transparency, radiant colors; paradise is the abode of the purest light, harmonious movement and music of the spheres.
Particularly expressive is one of the most terrible episodes of the poem - the episode with Ugolino, whom the poet meets in the ninth circle of hell, where the greatest (from Dante's point of view) crime - betrayal - is punished. Ugolino furiously gnaws the neck of his enemy, Archbishop Ruggeri, who, having unjustly accused him of treason, locked him with his sons in a tower and starved him to death.
Horrible is Ugolino's story about the torments he experienced in the terrible tower, where before his eyes his four sons died of starvation one after another, and where he, in the end, mad with hunger, attacked their corpses.
Allegorism is of great importance.
So, for example, in the first song of his poem, Dante tells how “in the middle of his life's journey” he got lost in a dense forest and was nearly torn to pieces by three terrible beasts - a lion, a she-wolf and a panther. He is led out of this forest by Virgil, whom Beatrice sent to him. The entire first song of the poem is a continuous allegory. In religious and moral terms, it is interpreted as follows: a dense forest - the earthly existence of a person, full of sinful delusions, three animals - three
the main vices that destroy a person (the lion - pride, the she-wolf - greed, the panther - voluptuousness), Virgil, ridding the poet of them, is earthly wisdom (philosophy, science), Beatrice - heavenly wisdom (theology), which is subject to earthly wisdom (mind - threshold of faith). All sins entail a form of punishment that allegorically depicts the state of mind of people covered by this vice. For example, the voluptuous are condemned to forever spin in a hellish whirlwind, symbolically depicting the whirlwind of their passion. Just as symbolic are the punishments of the angry (they are immersed in a stinking swamp in which they fiercely fight each other), tyrants (they wallow in boiling blood), usurers (heavy purses hang around their necks, bending them to the ground), sorcerers and soothsayers ( their heads are turned back, since during their lifetime they boasted of the imaginary ability to know the future), hypocrites (they are wearing lead robes, gilded on top), traitors and traitors (they are subjected to various tortures with cold, symbolizing their cold heart). Purgatory and paradise are filled with the same moral allegories. According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, those sinners who are not condemned to eternal torment and can still be cleansed of their sins are in purgatory. The internal process of this cleansing is symbolized by the seven letters P (the initial letter of the Latin word peccatum, "sin"), inscribed with an angel's sword on the forehead of the poet and denoting the seven deadly sins; these letters are erased one by one as Dante goes through the circles of purgatory. Dante's guide through purgatory is still Virgil, who gives him long instructions about the mysteries of divine justice, about the free will of man, etc. Having climbed with Dante along the ledges of the rocky mountain of purgatory to the earthly paradise, Virgil leaves him, because further ascent to him, as a pagan, inaccessible.
Virgil is replaced by Beatrice, who becomes
Dante's guide to the heavenly paradise, for in order to contemplate the divine reward given to the righteous for their merits, earthly wisdom is no longer sufficient: heavenly, religious wisdom is needed - theology, personified in the image of the poet's beloved. She ascends from one celestial sphere to another, and Dante flies after her, carried away by the power of his love. His love is now cleansed of everything earthly, sinful. It becomes a symbol of virtue and religion, and its ultimate goal is the contemplation of God, who himself is "love that moves the sun and other stars."
In addition to the moral and religious meaning, many images and situations in the Divine Comedy have a political meaning: the dense forest symbolizes the anarchy that reigns in Italy and gives rise to the three vices mentioned above. Dante carries through his entire poem the idea that earthly life is a preparation for a future eternal life. On the other hand, he reveals a passionate interest in earthly life and revises from this point of view a whole series of church dogmas and prejudices. So, for example, outwardly identifying with the teaching of the church about the sinfulness of carnal love and placing the voluptuous in the second circle of hell, Dante internally protests against the cruel punishment that befell Francesca da Rimini, who was deceived into marrying Gianciotto Malatesta, ugly and lame, instead of his brother Paolo, whom she loved.
Dante critically revisits the ascetic ideals of the church in other respects as well. Agreeing with the church teaching about the vanity and sinfulness of striving for glory and honors, at the same time, through the mouth of Virgil, he praises the striving for glory. He extols another property of a person, equally severely condemned by the church - the inquisitiveness of the mind, the thirst for knowledge, the desire to go beyond the narrow circle of ordinary things and ideas. A vivid illustration of this trend is the wonderful image of Ulysses (Odysseus), who is executed among other evil
advisers. Ulysses tells Dante about his thirst to "explore the world's far horizons." He describes his journey and thus conveys the words with which he encouraged his weary companions:
O brothers, - so I said, - into the sunset
Those who came along the difficult road,
That short period, while they still do not sleep
Earthly feelings, their remnant is meager
Give in to the comprehension of novelty,
To follow the sun to see the deserted world!
Think about whose sons you are
You were not created for animal fate,
But they were born to valor and knowledge.
("Hell," Ode XXVI.)
In the nineteenth canto of Inferno, speaking of the punishment of the popes who sell church positions, Dante compares them to the harlot of the Apocalypse and angrily exclaims:
Silver and gold are now God for you;
And even those who pray to the idol,
They honor one, - you honor a hundred at once.
But Dante condemned not only the greed and greed of the popes and princes of the church. He threw the same accusation against the greedy bourgeoisie of the Italian communes, in particular he reproached his Florentine compatriots for their thirst for profit, for he considered money to be the main source of evil, the main reason for the decline of morality in Italian society. Through the mouth of his ancestor, the knight of Kachchagvida, a participant in the second crusade, he paints in the XV song of Paradise a wonderful picture of ancient Florence, in which
simplicity of morals prevailed, there was no pursuit of money and the luxury and debauchery generated by it:
Florence within the ancient walls,
Where the clock still strikes terts, nones,
Sober, modest, lived without change.
This idealization of the good old days is not at all an expression of Dante's backwardness. Dante is very far from glorifying the world of feudal anarchy, violence and rudeness. But at the same time, he surprisingly sensitively discerned the basic properties of the emerging bourgeois system and recoiled from it with disgust and hatred. In this, he showed himself to be a deeply popular poet, breaking the narrow boundaries of both the feudal and bourgeois worldview.
CONCLUSION
Accepted by the people for whom it was written, Dante's poem became a kind of barometer of the Italian people's self-consciousness: interest in Dante either increased or fell, according to the fluctuations of this self-consciousness. The Divine Comedy enjoyed particular success during the years of the national liberation movement of the 19th century, when Dante began to be praised as an exiled poet, a courageous fighter for the unification of Italy, who saw art as a powerful weapon in the struggle for a better future for mankind. This attitude towards Dante was also shared by Marx and Engels, who ranked him among the greatest classics of world literature. In the same way, Pushkin referred Dante's poem to the number of masterpieces of world art, in which "a vast plan is embraced by creative thought."
Dante is first and foremost a poet who still touches hearts. For us, the readers who today reveal the Comedy, what matters in Dante's poetry is poetry, not religious, ethical or political ideas. These ideas are long dead. But Dante's images live on.
Of course, if Dante had written only The Monarchy and The Feast, there would not have been a whole branch of science dedicated to his legacy. We carefully read every line of Dante's treatises, especially because they belong to the author of the Divine Comedy.
The study of Dante's worldview is essential not only for the history of Italy, but also for the history of world literature.
Bibliography:
Batkin, L. M. Dante and his time. Poet and politics / L. M. Batkin. - M. : Nauka, 1965. - 197 p.
Dante Alighieri. Divine Comedy / Dante Alighieri. - M. : Folio, 2001. - 608 p.
Dante Alighieri. Collected Works: In 2 vols. Vol. 2 / Dante Alighieri. - M. : Literature, Veche, 2001. - 608 p.
Dante, Petrarch / Translation. from Italian, foreword. and comment. E. Solonovich. - M.: Children's literature, 1983. - 207 p., ill.
History of world literature. In 9 vols. T. 3. - M .: Nauka, 1985. - 816 p.
History of foreign literature. Early Middle Ages and Renaissance / ed. Zhirmunsky V. M. - M .: State. study.-teacher. ed. Min. Enlightenment of the RSFSR, 1959. - 560 p.
Encyclopedia of literary heroes. Foreign literature. Antiquity. Middle Ages. In 2 books. Book 2. - M.: Olimp, AST, 1998. - 480 p.
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Dante Alighieri - the largest Italian poet, literary critic, thinker, theologian, politician, author of the famous "Divine Comedy". There is very little reliable information about the life of this person; their main source is an artistic autobiography written by him, in which only a certain period is described.
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, in 1265, on May 26, in a well-born and wealthy family. It is not known where the future poet studied, but he himself considered the education received insufficient, therefore he devoted a lot of time to independent education, in particular, the study of foreign languages, the work of ancient poets, among which he gave special preference to Virgil, considering him his teacher and "leader".
When Dante was only 9 years old, in 1274, an event occurred that became a landmark in his life, including his creative one. At the celebration, his attention was attracted by a peer, a neighbor's daughter - Beatrice Portinari. Ten years later, as a married lady, she became for Dante that beautiful Beatrice, whose image illuminated his whole life and poetry. The book entitled A New Life (1292), in which he spoke in poetic and prose lines about his love for this young woman who died untimely in 1290, is considered the first autobiography in world literature. The book glorified the author, although this was not his first literary experience, he began to write in the 80s.
The death of his beloved woman forced him to go headlong into science, he studied philosophy, astronomy, theology, turned into one of the most educated people of his time, although at the same time the baggage of knowledge did not go beyond the medieval tradition based on theology.
In 1295-1296. Dante Alighieri declared himself and as a public, political figure, participated in the work of the city council. In 1300 he was elected a member of the college of six priors that governed Florence. In 1298 he married Gemma Donati, who was his wife until his death, but this woman always played a modest role in his fate.
Active political activity was the reason for the expulsion of Dante Alighieri from Florence. The split in the Guelph party, in which he was a member, led to the fact that the so-called whites, in whose ranks the poet was, were subjected to repression. A charge of bribery was brought against Dante, after which he was forced, leaving his wife and children, to leave his native city so as not to return to it ever again. It happened in 1302.
Since that time, Dante constantly wandered around the cities, traveled to other countries. So, it is known that in 1308-1309. he visited Paris, where he participated in open debates organized by the university. The name of Alighieri was twice included in the list of persons subject to amnesty, but both times it was deleted from there. In 1316, he was allowed to return to his native Florence, but on condition that he publicly admits the wrongness of his views and repents, but the proud poet did not do this.
Since 1316, he settled in Ravenna, where he was invited by Guido da Polenta, the ruler of the city. Here, in the company of his sons, the daughter of his beloved Beatrice, admirers, friends, the last years of the poet passed. It was during the period of exile that Dante wrote a work that glorified him for centuries - "Comedy", to the name of which several centuries later, in 1555, the word "Divine" will be added in the Venetian edition. The beginning of work on the poem dates back to about 1307, and Dante wrote the last of the three parts ("Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise") shortly before his death.
He dreamed of becoming famous with the help of the Comedy and returning home with honors, but his hopes were not destined to come true. Having fallen ill with malaria, returning from a trip to Venice on a diplomatic mission, the poet died on September 14, 1321. The Divine Comedy was the pinnacle of his literary activity, but his rich and versatile creative heritage is not limited to it alone and includes, in particular, philosophical treatises, journalism, and lyrics.