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Dante biography. Dante Alighieri - short biography. Biography score

The famous poet, author of the well-known “Divine Comedy” Alighieri Dante was born in Florence in 1265 into a noble family. There are several versions of the poet's true date of birth, but the authenticity of none of them has been established.

He devoted a lot of time to self-development, in particular he studied ancient literature and foreign languages. His first mentor was Brunetto Latini, a famous poet and scientist at the time.

At the age of 9, Dante meets his main muse in life. Beatrice Portinari, that was the name of the young lady, was his contemporary and lived next door. Being just a child, the poet was not aware of his feelings, and the next meeting between them occurred only 9 years later. It was then that he realized that he loved her, but it was too late, Beatrice was married. And the young man’s shyness did not allow him to admit his feelings. The girl did not suspect anything and completely considered Dante arrogant, since he did not talk to her. In 1290, his beloved died, this was a serious blow for the poet. A few years later, he married the daughter of the party leader Donati, with whom his family was at enmity. Of course, this alliance was created out of convenience. Beatrice remained his only love for the rest of his life. In the book “New Life,” he talked about his feelings for the woman who passed away so early in life, and it was this book that brought fame to the author.

In 1296, he began to actively participate in the political life of Florence, and 4 years later he became a member of the college of six priors governing Florence. It was his active political activity in 1302, as well as a fictitious story of bribery, that served as the reasons for his expulsion from his hometown. His property was seized, and later he was sentenced to death.

After such events, he was forced to wander around cities and countries. Once in Paris, he spoke at public debates. In 1316 he was allowed to return to his hometown, but on the condition that he accepted the wrongness of his views. Of course, the poet’s pride did not allow him to do this. From 1316 to 1317 he lived in Ravenna, at the invitation of the lord of the city.

It was during the period of exile that the work that glorified him for centuries appeared. Even at that moment, he thought only about his muse, because the Comedy was written in glorification of Beatrice. With the help of The Divine Comedy, he wanted to gain fame and return home, but this dream was not destined to come true. He completed the third part of the work shortly before his death.

In 1321, Alighieri went to Venice as an ambassador to conclude a peace treaty. On the way back he falls ill with malaria. The poet died on the night of September 13-14.

Biography 2

Dante Alighieri is an Italian writer and thinker born on June 1, 1265, whose full name is Durante degli Alighieri. He was born in the city of Florence into a Roman family. His great-grandfather went to the crusades, in one of which he died, and his grandfather was expelled from Florence due to political reasons, but Dante’s father was not a politician, so he had no problems in Florence.

Dante was a very well-read and intelligent man. He studied and studied natural sciences, even read the teachings of the “heretics” of that time. It is unknown at what period Dante Alighieri began to write his own works, but his first work is considered to be “New Life,” which was written in 1292. “New Life” was a collection of poems and prose that the writer accumulated during this time. Some poetry and prose refer to a friend of the author, but experts consider this work to be the first autobiography in the history of literature.

During the conflict between the two sides of power - the Pope and the Emperor, Dante chose the side of the Emperor. At first this was a success, but soon the Pope was in power, and Dante was expelled from the city. All his life he lived, moving from place to place, even visiting Paris. Philosophical works were written in 1304, but Dante never finished them, as he began working on his most popular work, The Divine Comedy. By the way, Dante himself called this work “Comedy”, and the word “divine” was already added by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Dante's first love was Beatrice Portinari. He had known her since she was 9 years old, but 9 years later he met her again, when she was already married, and realized what he had lost. But Beatrice died at the age of 24, but it is not known exactly why. There are versions that she died during childbirth, and there are versions. That she died of the plague. Dante later married Gemma Donati. It was a marriage of convenience, because the families represented different political parties and were constantly at odds. This marriage produced 2 boys and a girl.

Dante Alighieri died on the night of September 13-14, 1921 from malaria. He was buried, but in 1329 the cardinal ordered the monks of the monastery in the city of Ravenna, where Dante lived last years, publicly burn the remains of the writer, but no one did this. Currently, this church has been restored and converted into the mausoleum of Dante Alighieri.

Biography by dates and Interesting Facts. The most important.

Biography

Dante Alighieri (Italian: Dante Alighieri), full name Durante degli Alighieri (second half of May 1265 - on the night of September 13-14, 1321) - the greatest Italian poet, thinker, theologian, one of the founders of literary Italian language, political figure. The creator of the “Comedy” (later receiving the epithet “Divine”, introduced by Boccaccio), which provided a synthesis of late medieval culture.

In Florence

According to family tradition, Dante's ancestors came from the Roman family of Elisei, who participated in the founding of Florence. Cacciaguida, Dante's great-great-grandfather, participated in the crusade of Conrad III (1147-1149), was knighted by him and died in battle with the Muslims. Cacciaguida was married to a lady from the Lombard family of Aldighieri da Fontana. The name "Aldighieri" was transformed into "Alighieri"; This is how one of the sons of Kachchagvida was named. The son of this Alighieri, Bellincione, Dante's grandfather, expelled from Florence during the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, returned to his hometown in 1266, after the defeat of Manfred of Sicily at Benevento. Alighieri II, Dante's father, apparently did not take part in the political struggle and remained in Florence.

Exact date of birth Dante unknown. According to Boccaccio, Dante was born in May 1265. Dante himself reports about himself (Comedy, Paradise, 22) that he was born under the sign of Gemini. Modern sources most often give dates for the second half of May 1265. It is also known that Dante was baptized on May 26, 1265 (on the first Holy Saturday after his birth) under the name Durante.

Dante's first mentor was the then famous poet and the scientist Brunetto Latini. The place where Dante studied is unknown, but he gained extensive knowledge of ancient and medieval literature, natural sciences and was familiar with the heretical teachings of the time. Dante's closest friend was the poet Guido Cavalcanti. Dante dedicated many poems and fragments of the poem “New Life” to him.

The first official mention of Dante Alighieri as a public figure dates back to 1296 and 1297; already in 1300 or 1301 he was elected prior. In 1302 he was expelled along with his party of white Guelphs and never saw Florence again, dying in exile.

Years of exile

The years of exile were years of wandering for Dante. Already at that time he was a lyric poet among the Tuscan poets of the “new style” - Cino from Pistoia, Guido Cavalcanti and others. His “La Vita Nuova (New Life)” had already been written; his exile made him more serious and strict. He starts his “Feast” (“Convivio”), an allegorical scholastic commentary on the fourteen canzones. But “Convivio” was never finished: only the introduction and interpretation to the three canzones were written. The Latin treatise on the popular language, or eloquence (“De vulgari eloquentia”), is also unfinished, ending at the 14th chapter of the second book.

During the years of exile, three cants of the Divine Comedy were created gradually and under the same working conditions. The time at which each of them was written can only be approximately determined. Paradise was completed in Ravenna, and there is nothing incredible in Boccaccio’s story that after the death of Dante Alighieri, his sons for a long time could not find the last thirteen songs, until, according to legend, Dante dreamed of his son Jacopo and told him where they lay.

There is very little factual information about the fate of Dante Alighieri; his trace has been lost over the years. At first, he found shelter with the ruler of Verona, Bartolomeo della Scala; The defeat in 1304 of his party, which tried by force to achieve installation in Florence, doomed him to a long wandering around Italy. He later arrived in Bologna, in Lunigiana and Casentino, in 1308-1309. ended up in Paris, where he spoke with honor at public debates, common in universities of that time. It was in Paris that Dante received the news that Emperor Henry VII was going to Italy. The ideal dreams of his “Monarchy” were resurrected in him with renewed vigor; he returned to Italy (probably in 1310 or early 1311), seeking renewal for her and the return of civil rights for himself. His “message to the peoples and rulers of Italy” is full of these hopes and enthusiastic confidence, however, the idealistic emperor died suddenly (1313), and on November 6, 1315, Ranieri di Zaccaria of Orvietto, King Robert’s viceroy in Florence, confirmed the decree of exile regarding Dante Alighieri, his sons and many others, condemning them to execution if they fell into the hands of the Florentines.

From 1316-1317 he settled in Ravenna, where he was summoned to retire by the lord of the city, Guido da Polenta. Here, in the circle of children, among friends and fans, the songs of Paradise were created.

Death

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. On the way back, Dante fell ill with malaria and died in Ravenna on the night of September 13-14, 1321.

Dante was buried in Ravenna; the magnificent mausoleum that Guido da Polenta prepared for him was not erected. The modern tomb (also called the “mausoleum”) was built in 1780. The familiar portrait of Dante Alighieri lacks authenticity: Boccaccio depicts him with a beard instead of the legendary clean-shaven one, however, in general, his image corresponds to our traditional idea: an elongated face with an aquiline nose, large eyes , wide cheekbones and a prominent lower lip; always sad and thoughtfully focused.

Brief chronology of life and creativity

1265 - Dante is born.
1274 - first meeting with Beatrice.
1283 - second meeting with Beatrice.
1290 - death of Beatrice.
1292 - creation of the story “New Life” (“La Vita Nuova”).
1296/97 - the first mention of Dante as a public figure.
1298 - Dante's marriage to Gemma Donati.
1300/01 - Prior of Florence.
1302 - expelled from Florence.
1304-1307 - “Feast”.
1304-1306 - treatise “On Popular Eloquence.”
1306-1321 - creation of the Divine Comedy.
1308/09 - Paris.
1310/11 - return to Italy.
1315 - confirmation of the expulsion of Dante and his sons from Florence.
1316-1317 - settled in Ravenna.
1321 - how the ambassador of Ravenna goes to Venice.
On the night of September 13 to September 14, 1321, he dies on the way to Ravenna.

Personal life

In the poem “New Life,” Dante sang his first youthful love, Beatrice Portinari, who died in 1290 at the age of 24. Dante and Beatrice became a symbol of love, like Petrarch and Laura, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet.

In 1274, nine-year-old Dante fell in love with a girl of eight years old, the daughter of a neighbor, Beatrice Portinari, at a May festival - this is his first biographical memory. He had seen her before, but the impression from this meeting was renewed in him when nine years later (in 1283) he saw her again as a married woman and this time became interested in her. Beatrice becomes the “mistress of his thoughts” for the rest of his life, a wonderful symbol of that morally uplifting feeling that he continued to cherish in her image, when Beatrice had already died (in 1290), and he himself entered into one of those business marriages, according to political calculation , which were accepted at that time.

Dante Alighieri's family sided with the Florentine Cerchi party, which was at war with the Donati party. However, Dante Alighieri married Gemma Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati. The exact date of his marriage is unknown, the only information is that in 1301 he already had three children (Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia). When Dante Alighieri was expelled from Florence, Gemma remained in the city with her children, preserving the remnants of her father's property.

Later, when Dante Alighieri composed his “Comedy” in glorification of Beatrice, Gemma was not mentioned in it even a single word. In recent years he lived in Ravenna; his sons, Jacopo and Pietro, poets, his future commentators, and his daughter Antonia gathered around him; only Gemma lived away from the whole family. Boccaccio, one of the first biographers of Dante Alighieri, summarized all this: as if Dante Alighieri married under coercion and persuasion, and therefore, during the long years of exile, he never thought of calling his wife to him. Beatrice determined the tone of his feelings, the experience of exile - his social and Political Views and their archaism.

Creation

Dante Alighieri, a thinker and poet, constantly looking for a fundamental basis for everything that happened in himself and around him, it was this thoughtfulness, thirst for general principles, certainty, internal integrity, passion of the soul and boundless imagination that determined the qualities of his poetry, style, imagery and abstractness .

Love for Beatrice acquired a mysterious meaning for him; he filled every work with it. Her idealized image occupies a significant place in Dante's poetry. Dante's first works date back to the 1280s. In 1292, he wrote a story about the love that renewed him: “The New Life” (“La Vita Nuova”), composed of sonnets, canzones and a prose story-commentary about his love for Beatrice. “A New Life” is considered the first autobiography in the history of world literature. Already in exile, Dante writes the treatise “The Feast” (Il convivio, 1304–1307).

Alighieri also created political treatises. Later, Dante found himself in a whirlpool of parties, and was even an inveterate municipalist; but he had a need to understand the basic principles political activity, so he writes his Latin treatise “On the Monarchy” (“De Monarchia”). This work is a kind of apotheosis of the humanitarian emperor, next to which he would like to place an equally ideal papacy. Dante Alighieri the politician spoke in his treatise “On the Monarchy”. Dante the poet was reflected in the works “New Life”, “The Feast” and “The Divine Comedy”.

"New life"

When Beatrice died, Dante Alighieri was inconsolable: she had nurtured his feelings for so long, she became so close to his the best sides . He recalls the story of his short-lived love; her last idealistic moments, on which death left its mark, involuntarily drown out the rest: in the choice of lyrical plays, inspired at different times by love for Beatrice and giving the outline of the Renewed Life, there is an unconscious intentionality; everything really playful is eliminated, such as sonnet about a good wizard; it didn't fit with the general tone of the memories. “Renewed Life” consists of several sonnets and canzones, interspersed with a short story, like a biographical thread. There are no facts as such in this biography; but every sensation, every meeting with Beatrice, her smile, refusal of greetings - everything receives serious significance, which the poet thinks about as a secret that has happened to him; and not over him alone, for Beatrice is generally love, lofty, uplifting. After the first spring dates, the thread of reality begins to get lost in the world of aspirations and expectations, mysterious correspondences of the numbers three and nine and prophetic visions, lovingly and sadly, as if in an anxious consciousness that all this will not last long. Thoughts of death that came to him during his illness involuntarily take him to Beatrice; he closed his eyes and delirium begins: he sees women, they walk with their hair down and say: you too will die! Terrible images whisper: you are dead. The delirium intensifies, Dante Alighieri no longer knows where he is: new visions: women walk, grief-stricken and crying; the sun darkened and the stars appeared, pale, dim: they, too, shed tears; birds fall dead in flight, the earth trembles, someone passes by and says: don’t you really know anything? your sweetheart has left this world. Dante Alighieri cries, a host of angels appears to him, they rush to heaven with the words: “Hosanna in the highest”; there is a light cloud in front of them. And at the same time, his heart tells him: your sweetheart has really died. And it seems to him that he is going to look at her; women cover it with a white veil; her face is calm, as if it says: I have been honored to contemplate the source of the world (§ XXIII). One day, Dante Alighieri began writing a canzone in which he wanted to depict the beneficial influence of Beatrice on him. He began and probably did not finish, at least he reports only a fragment from it (§ XXVIII): at this time the news of Beatrice’s death was brought to him, and the next paragraph of the “Renewed Life” begins with the words of Jeremiah (Lamentations I): “how lonely the once crowded city stands! He became like a widow; the great among the nations, the prince over the regions, became a tributary.” In his affect, the loss of Beatrice seems to him public; he notifies eminent people of Florence about it and also begins with the words of Jeremiah (§ XXXI). On the anniversary of her death, he sits and draws on a tablet: the figure of an angel comes out (§ XXXV).

Another year has passed: Dante is sad, but at the same time seeks consolation in the serious work of thought, reads with difficulty Boethius’s “On the Consolation of Philosophy”, hears for the first time that Cicero wrote about the same thing in his discussion “On Friendship” (Convivio II, 13 ). His grief subsided so much that when one young beautiful lady looked at him with compassion, condoling with him, some new, unclear feeling awoke in him, full of compromises with the old, not yet forgotten. He begins to assure himself that the same love that makes him shed tears resides in that beauty. Every time she met him, she looked at him in the same way, turning pale, as if under the influence of love; it reminded him of Beatrice: after all, she was just as pale. He feels that he is beginning to look at the stranger and that, whereas before her compassion brought tears to him, now he does not cry. And he comes to his senses, reproaches himself for the unfaithfulness of his heart; he is hurt and ashamed. Beatrice appeared to him in a dream, dressed in the same way as the first time he saw her as a girl. It was the time of year when pilgrims passed through Florence in droves, heading to Rome to venerate the miraculous image. Dante returned to his old love with all the passion of mystical passion; he addresses the pilgrims: they go thinking, perhaps about the fact that they left their homes in their homeland; from their appearance one can conclude that they are from afar. And it must be from afar: they walk through an unknown city and do not cry, as if they do not know the reasons for the common grief. “If you stop and listen to me, you will leave in tears; so my yearning heart tells me, Florence has lost its Beatrice, and what a person can say about her will make everyone cry” (§XLI). And “Renewed Life” ends with the poet’s promise to himself not to speak anymore about her, the blessed one, until he is able to do it in a manner worthy of her.

"Feast"

Dante’s feeling for Beatrice appeared so highly elevated and pure in the final melodies of “The Renewed Life” that it seems to prepare the definition of love in his “Feast”: “this is the spiritual unity of the soul with the beloved object (III, 2); rational love, characteristic only of man (as opposed to other related affects); this is the desire for truth and virtue” (III, 3). Not everyone was privy to this intimate understanding: for most, Dante was simply an amorous poet who dressed ordinary earthly passion with its delights and downfalls in mystical colors; he turned out to be unfaithful to the lady of his heart, he could be reproached for inconstancy (III, 1), and he felt this reproach as a heavy reproach, as a shame (I, 1).

The treatise “The Feast” (Il convivio, 1304–1307) became the poet’s transition from the chanting of love to philosophical themes. Dante Alighieri was a religious man and did not experience those acute moral and mental fluctuations, reflected in the “Symposium”. This treatise occupies a middle place in the chronological sense in the development of Dante's consciousness, between the New Life and the Divine Comedy. The connection and object of development is Beatrice, at the same time a feeling, an idea, a memory, and a principle, united in one image.

Dante's philosophical studies coincided with the period of his grief over Beatrice: he lived in a world of abstractions and allegorical images that expressed them; It is not for nothing that the compassionate beauty raises the question in him: is it not in her that love that makes him suffer for Beatrice. This fold of thoughts explains the unconscious process by which the real biography of the Renewed Life was transformed: the Madonna of Philosophy prepared the way, returned to the apparently forgotten Beatrice.

"The Divine Comedy"

Analysis of the work

When, in the 35th year (“halfway through his life”), questions of practice surrounded Dante with their disappointments and inevitable betrayal of the ideal, and he himself found himself in their whirlpool, the boundaries of his introspection expanded, and questions of public morality took place in him along with questions of personal prosperity. Considering himself, he considers his society. It seems to him that everyone is lost in the dark forest of delusions, like he himself in the first song of the Divine Comedy, and everyone’s path to the light is blocked by the same symbolic animals: the lynx - voluptuousness, the lion - pride, the she-wolf - greed. The latter in particular has taken over the world; maybe someday a liberator will appear, a saint, a non-covetous one, who, like a greyhound dog (Veltro), will drive her into the bowels of hell; this will be the salvation of poor Italy. But the paths of personal salvation are open to everyone; reason, self-knowledge, science lead a person to an understanding of the truth revealed by faith, to divine grace and love.

This is the same formula as in the "Renewed Life", corrected by the Convivio worldview. Beatrice was already ready to become a symbol of active grace; but reason and science will now be presented not in the scholastic image of the “Madonna of Philosophy”, but in the image of Virgil. He led his Aeneas into the kingdom of shadows; now he will be Dante's guide while he, a pagan, is allowed to go to deliver him into the hands of the poet Statius, who in the Middle Ages was considered a Christian; he will lead him to Beatrice. So, in addition to wandering in the dark forest, walking through the three afterlife kingdoms is added. The connection between one and the other motive is somewhat external, educational: wandering through the abodes of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise is not a way out of the vale of earthly delusions, but edification by examples of those who found this way out, or did not find it, or stopped halfway. In an allegorical sense, the plot of the “Divine Comedy” is a person, since, acting righteously or unrighteously by virtue of his free will, he is subject to rewarding or punishing Justice; the purpose of the poem is to "lead people from their distressed state to a state of bliss." This is what it says in the message to Can Grande della Scala, the ruler of Verona, to whom Dante allegedly dedicated the last part of his comedy, interpreting its literal and hidden allegorical meaning. This message is suspected of being Dantean; but already the oldest commentators on comedy, including Dante’s son, used it, although without naming the author; one way or another, the views of the message were formed in the immediate vicinity of Dante, in a circle of people close to him.

Afterlife visions and walks are one of the favorite subjects of the old apocrypha and medieval legend. They mysteriously tuned up the imagination, frightened and beckoned with the rough realism of torment and the monotonous luxury of heavenly dishes and shining round dances. This literature is familiar to Dante, but he read Virgil, thought about the Aristotelian distribution of passions, the church ladder of sins and virtues - and his sinners, hopeful and blessed, settled down in a harmonious, logically thought-out system; his psychological instinct told him the correspondence of crime and righteous punishment, poetic tact - real images that far left behind the dilapidated images of legendary visions.

The entire afterlife turned out to be a complete building, the architecture of which was calculated in every detail, the definitions of space and time are distinguished by mathematical and astronomical accuracy; the name of Christ rhymes only with itself or is not mentioned at all, as well as the name of Mary, in the abode of sinners. There is conscious, mysterious symbolism throughout, as in “Renewed Life”; the number three and its derivative, nine, reign unchallenged: a three-line stanza (terza), three edges of the Comedy; excluding the first, introductory song, there are 33 songs for Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, and each of the cants ends with the same word: stars (stelle); three symbolic wives, three colors in which Beatrice is clothed, three symbolic beasts, three mouths of Lucifer and the same number of sinners devoured by him; threefold distribution of Hell with nine circles, etc.; seven ledges of Purgatory and nine celestial spheres. All this may seem petty if you don’t think about the worldview of time, a brightly conscious, to the point of pedantry, feature of Dante’s worldview; all this can only stop an attentive reader from reading the poem coherently, and all this is connected with another, this time poetic sequence, which makes us admire the sculptural certainty of Hell, the picturesque, deliberately pale tones of Purgatory and the geometric outlines of Paradise, turning into the harmony of heaven.

This is how the scheme of the afterlife was transformed in the hands of Dante, perhaps the only medieval poet who mastered a ready-made plot not for external literary purposes, but to express his personal content. He himself got lost halfway through his life; before him, a living person, not before the spirit seer of the old legend, not before the writer of the edifying story or the parodist of the fabliaux, the regions of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise unfolded, which he populated not only with traditional images of the legend, but also with faces of living modernity and recent times. He carries out judgment over them, which he carried out over himself from the height of his personal and social criteria: relations of knowledge and faith, empire and papacy; he executes their representatives if they are unfaithful to his ideal. Dissatisfied with modernity, he seeks its renewal in the moral and social norms of the past; in this sense, he is laudator temporis acti in the conditions and relationships of life, which Boccaccio sums up in his Decameron: some thirty years separate him from the last songs of the Divine Comedy. But Dante needs principles; look at them and walk past! - Virgil tells him when they pass by people who have not left a memory on earth, on whom Divine Justice and Mercy will not look, because they were cowardly, unprincipled (Hell, III, 51). No matter how highly tuned Dante’s worldview may be, the title of “singer of justice” that he gives himself (De Vulg. El. II, 2) was self-delusion: he wanted to be an unwashed judge, but passion and partisanship carried him away, and his afterlife is full of injustice condemned or exalted beyond measure. Boccaccio talks about him, shaking his head, how he used to get so angry in Ravenna when some woman or child scolded the Ghibellines that he was ready to throw stones at them. This may be an anecdote, but in Canto XXXII of the Inferno, Dante pulls the traitor Bocca’s hair to find out his name; promises another under a terrible oath (“may I fall into the depths of the hellish glacier,” Hell XXXIII. 117) to cleanse his frozen eyes, and when he identified himself, he does not fulfill the promise with conscious malice (loc. cit. v. 150 et seq. Hell VIII, 44 et seq.). Sometimes the poet gained an advantage in him over the bearer of the principle, or personal memories took possession of him, and the principle was forgotten; the best flowers of Dante's poetry grew in moments of such oblivion. Dante himself apparently admires the grandiose image of Capaneus, silently and gloomily prostrated under the fiery rain and in his torment challenging Zeus to battle (Hell, p. XIV). Dante punished him for pride, Francesca and Paolo (Hell, V) - for the sin of voluptuousness; but he surrounded them with such poetry, was so deeply moved by their story, that participation bordered on sympathy. Pride and love are passions that he himself recognizes as his own, from which he is cleansed, ascending along the ledges of the Purgatory Mountain to Beatrice; she has become spiritualized into a symbol, but in her reproaches to Dante in the midst of the earthly paradise one can feel the human note of “Renewed Life” and the infidelity of the heart caused by a real beauty, not by Madonna-philosophy. And pride did not leave him: the self-awareness of a poet and a convinced thinker is natural. “Follow your star and you will achieve a glorious goal,” Brunetto Latini tells him (Inferno, XV, 55); “The world will listen to your broadcasts,” Kachchiagvida tells him (Paradise, XVII, 130 et seq.), and he himself assures himself that they will still call him, having withdrawn from the parties, because they will need him (Hell, XV, 70).

Throughout the work, Dante repeatedly mentioned emperors and kings: Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, his cousin William II of Sicily, Manfred of Sicily, Charles I of Anjou, etc.

Impact on culture

The Divine Comedy program covered the whole life and general issues knowledge and gave answers to them: this is a poetic encyclopedia of the medieval worldview. On this pedestal grew the image of the poet himself, early surrounded by legend, in the mysterious light of his Comedy, which he himself called a sacred poem, meaning its goals and objectives; The name Divine is accidental and belongs to a later time. Immediately after his death, commentators and imitators appear, descending to semi-popular forms of “visions”; terzino comedies were sung already in the 14th century. in the squares. This comedy is simply Dante's book, el Dante. Boccaccio reveals a number of his public interpreters. Since then it has continued to be read and explained; the rise and fall of Italian popular consciousness was expressed by the same fluctuations in the interest that Dante aroused in literature. Outside Italy, this interest coincided with the idealistic currents of society, but it also corresponded to the goals of school erudition and subjective criticism, which saw in the Comedy whatever it wanted: in the imperialist Dante - something like a Carbonara, in Dante the Catholic - a heresiarch, a Protestant, a man tormented by doubts. The newest exegesis promises to turn towards the only possible path, lovingly addressing commentators close to Dante in time, who lived in the zone of his worldview or who assimilated it. Where Dante is a poet, he is accessible to everyone; but the poet is mixed in him with the thinker. As indicated in the Newest Philosophical Dictionary, Dante’s poetry “played a large role in the formation of Renaissance humanism and in the development of the European cultural tradition as a whole, having a significant impact not only on the poetic-artistic, but also on the philosophical spheres of culture (from the lyrics of Petrarch and the Pleiades poets to sophiology of V.S. Solovyov)".

When writing this article, material was used from the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron (1890-1907).

Russian translations

A. S. Norova, “Excerpt from the 3rd song of the poem Hell” (“Son of the Fatherland”, 1823, No. 30);
his, “Predictions of D.” (from the XVII song of the poem Paradise.
“Literary sheets”, 1824, L "IV, 175);
his, “Count Ugodin” (“News Liter.”, 1825, book XII, June).
"Hell", trans. from Italian F. Fan-Dim (E. V. Kologrivova; St. Petersburg. 1842-48; prose).
"Hell", trans. from Italian the size of the original by D. Mina (M., 1856).
D. Min, “The First Song of Purgatory” (Russian Vest., 1865, 9).
V. A. Petrova, “The Divine Comedy” (translated with Italian terzas, St. Petersburg, 1871, 3rd ed. 1872; translated only Hell).
D. Minaev, “The Divine Comedy” (LPts. and St. Petersburg. 1874, 1875, 1876, 1879, translated not from the original, in terzas).
"Hell", canto 3, trans. P. Weinberg (“Vestn. Evr.”, 1875, No. 5).
“Paolo and Francesca” (Hell, wood. A. Orlov, “Vestn. Evr.” 1875, No. 8); “The Divine Comedy” (“Hell”, presentation by S. Zarudny, with explanations and additions, St. Petersburg, 1887).
"Purgatory", trans. A. Solomon (“Russian Review”, 1892, in blank verse, but in the form of terza).
Translation and retelling of Vita Nuova in the book by S., “Triumphs of a Woman” (St. Petersburg, 1892).
Golovanov N. N. “The Divine Comedy” (1899-1902).
M. L. Lozinsky “The Divine Comedy” (1946 Stalin Prize).
Ilyushin, Alexander Anatolyevich. (“The Divine Comedy”) (1995).
Lemport Vladimir Sergeevich “The Divine Comedy” (1996-1997).

Dante in art

In 1822, Eugene Delacroix painted the painting “Dante’s Boat” (“Dante and Virgil in Hell”). In 1860, Gustave Doré illustrated Hell and Heaven. The illustrations for The Divine Comedy were done by William Blake and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

In the work of A. A. Akhmatova, the image of Dante occupied a significant place. In the poem “Muse”, Dante and the first part of the “Divine Comedy” (“Hell”) are mentioned. In 1936, Akhmatova wrote the poem “Dante”, in which the image of Dante the exile appears. In 1965, at a ceremonial meeting dedicated to the 700th anniversary of the birth of Dante Alighieri, Anna Akhmatova read “The Tale of Dante”, where, in addition to Alighieri’s own perception, she cites mention of Dante in the poetry of N. S. Gumilyov and the treatise of O. E. Mandelstam "Conversation about Dante" (1933).

The Aldighieri da Fontana family. The name "Aldighieri" was transformed into "Alighieri"; This is how one of the sons of Kachchagvida was named. The son of this Alighieri, Bellincione, Dante's grandfather, expelled from Florence during the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, returned to his hometown in 1266, after the defeat of Manfred of Sicily at Benevento. Alighieri II, Dante's father, apparently did not take part in the political struggle and remained in Florence.

Dante was born on May 26, 1265 in Florence. Dante's first mentor was the then famous poet and scientist Brunetto Latini. The place where Dante studied is not known, but he gained extensive knowledge of ancient and medieval literature, the natural sciences, and was familiar with the heretical teachings of that time.

Brief chronology

  • - birth of Dante
  • - second meeting with Beatrice
  • - death of Beatrice
  • - creation of the story “New Life” (“La Vita Nuova”)
  • / - the first mention of Dante as a public figure
  • - Dante's marriage to Gemma Donati
  • / - Prior of Florence
  • - expelled from Florence
  • - - "Feast"
  • 1304- - treatise “On Popular Eloquence”
  • 1306- - creation of the “Divine Comedy”
  • - confirmation of the expulsion of Dante and his sons from Florence
  • On the night of September 13 to September 14, 1321 - dies on the way to Ravenna

Essays

  • - “The Divine Comedy" - (Italian: Divina Commedia):
  • - “Feast” (Italian: Convivio)
  • - “On popular eloquence”, treatise (dubia lat. De vulgari eloquentia libri duo )
  • "Eclogues" (lat. Egloghe)
  • "Epistle" (lat. Epistulae)
  • "The Flower" (Italian: Il fiore)), a poem of 232 sonnets based on "The Romance of the Rose" ( Roman de la Rose) fr. 13th-century allegorical novel
  • - “Monarchy”, treatise (lat. Monarchia)
  • "Detto d'Amore" is a poem also based on "The Romance of the Rose" (fr. Roman de la Rose)
  • “The Question of Water and Land”, treatise (dubia lat. Quaestio de aqua et de terra)
  • "New Life" (Italian: Vita nuova)
  • "Poems" (Italian: Rime (Canzoniere))
    • Poems of the Florentine period:
    • Sonnets
    • Canzone
    • Ballatas and stanzas
    • Poems written in exile:
    • Sonnets
    • Canzone
    • Poems about the stone lady
  • Letters

Russian translations

  • A. S. Norova, “Excerpt from the 3rd song of the poem Hell” (“Son of the Fatherland”, 1823, No. 30);
  • his, “Predictions of D.” (from the XVII song of the poem Paradise;
  • “Literary sheets”, 1824, L "IV, 175);
  • his, “Count Ugodin” (“News Liter.”, 1825, book XII, June);
  • "Hell", trans. from Italian F. Fan-Dim (E. V. Kologrivova; St. Petersburg. 1842-48; prose);
  • "Hell", trans. from Italian the size of the original by D. Mina (M., 1856);
  • D. Min, “The First Song of Purgatory” (Russian Vest., 1865, 9);
  • V. A. Petrova, “The Divine Comedy” (translated with Italian terzas, St. Petersburg, 1871, 3rd ed. 1872; translated only Hell);
  • D. Minaev, “The Divine Comedy” (Lpts. and St. Petersburg. 1874, 1875, 1876, 1879, translated not from the original, in terzas);
  • "Hell", canto 3, trans. P. Weinberg (“Vestn. Evr.”, 1875, No. 5);
  • “Paolo and Francesca” (Hell, wood. A. Orlov, “Vestn. Evr.” 1875, No. 8); “The Divine Comedy” (“Hell”, presentation by S. Zarudny, with explanations and additions, St. Petersburg, 1887);
  • "Purgatory", trans. A. Solomon (“Russian Review”, 1892, in blank verse, but in the form of terza);
  • Translation and retelling of Vita Nuova in the book by S., “Triumphs of a Woman” (St. Petersburg, 1892).
  • Golovanov N. N. “The Divine Comedy” (1899-1902)
  • M. L. Lozinsky “The Divine Comedy” (Stalin Prize)
  • Ilyushin, Alexander Anatolyevich. (“The Divine Comedy”) (1995).
  • Lemport Vladimir Sergeevich “The Divine Comedy.” (1996-1997)

see also

Literature

  • Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional ones). - St. Petersburg. : 1890-1907.
  • Barenboim P. D. “Constitutional ideas of Dante”, Legislation and Economics, No. 6, 2005, pp. 64-69
  • Guenon R. Esotericism of Dante // Philosophical Sciences. - 1991. - No. 8. - P. 132-170.
  • Golenishchev-Kutuzov I. N. Dante's work and world culture / Edited and with an afterword by Academician V. M. Zhirmunsky. - M.: Science, 1971.
  • Dante and world literature. M., 1967.
  • Dzhivelegov A.K. Dante, 1933. - 176 p. (Life of wonderful people)
  • Dobrokhotov A. L. Dante Alighieri. - M.: Mysl, 1990. - 207, p. - (Thinkers of the past) ISBN 5-244-00261-9
  • Elina N. G. Dante. M., 1965.
  • Zaitsev B.K. Dante and his poem. M., 1922.
  • Rabinovich V.L. “The Divine Comedy” and the myth of the philosopher’s stone // Dante’s readings. M., 1985.

Links

Dante Alighieri in Wikiquote
in Wikisource
Dante Alighieri on Wikimedia Commons
  • 2011.02.09. 21-25. Russia-K. Academy-4. Academia. Mikhail Andreev. Ascent to Dante. 1 lecture
  • 2011.02.10. 21-25. Russia-K. Academy-4. Academia. Mikhail Andreev. Ascent to Dante. Lecture 2
  • The Divine Comedy with comments by Lozinsky and illustrations by Gustave Doré in the library mobook.ru

DANTE ALIGHIERI
(1265-1321)

An outstanding Italian poet, whose enormous figure, in the words of F. Engels, determines the end of the feudal Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern capitalist era. He entered the history of world literature as “the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times” (F. Engels), the author of “New Life” (1292-1293) and “The Divine Comedy” (1313-1321).

Dante was born in Florence into a noble family that belonged to the Guelph party, one of the most influential Florentine political parties. She expressed the interests of the urban bourgeoisie and was guided by the pope. The second influential party was the Ghibelline party, which defended the interests of the feudal lords and focused on the emperor. Since Florence at that time was the most developed and rich city of fragmented Italy, it was here that a fierce struggle took place between the bourgeoisie, which was gradually gaining strength, and supporters of feudal society.

From a young age, Dante participated in the political struggle on the side of the Guelphs, which influenced the formation of his active and active nature. At the same time, studying law in University of Bologna, is interested in Dante's poetry. He was particularly influenced by the school of the “sweet new style”, founded by Guido Guinizelli, a literature teacher at the University of Bologna. It was him who Dante called his teacher and father. The lyricism of the school of the “sweet new style” combined the experience of Provençal chivalric poetry with its refined cult of service to the Lady and the tradition of Sicilian poetry, full of reflections and philosophical considerations of beauty.

Dante's early works (30 poems, of which 25 sonnets, 4 canzones and one stanza), combined with prose text, formed a collection called “New Life” (Vita nuova). The works in this collection contain all the elements of the “sweet new style” - philosophy, rhetoric, mystical symbolism and elegance of form. But at the same time, the collection also becomes the first achievement of the new Renaissance literature - a real hymn to life and love. Its name itself is symbolic. It can be interpreted as “new”, “updated”, “young” and can have several semantic meanings. Firstly, the change from one period of life to another (real plan). Secondly, a renewal associated with the cult of the lady of the heart and interpreted in accordance with the norms of love etiquette characteristic of Provençal culture (a plan for stylizing life events: “New Life” is an autobiographical story about Dante’s love story for Beatrice). And thirdly, spiritual rebirth in the religious sense (the highest, philosophical plane).
It is interesting to note that already in Dante’s debut work the renewal has a stepwise system - from earthly reality (the first meeting of nine-year-old Dante with eight-year-old Beatrice in the first chapter) through purification to the contemplation of paradise in the last chapters, where, after the death of Beatrice, relying on the symbolism of the number nine , proves that she was "a miracle whose root is in a strange trinity." This semantic polysemy, this non-stop movement of the soul from the earthly to the heavenly, the divine, denotes the content and structure already in the years of exile.

The fact is that Dante not only loves in poetry, but also, being a man of solid character and strong passions, a person with a developed civic consciousness, becomes a noticeable political figure. The Guelphs came to power in Florence, and in 1300 Dante was elected one of the seven members of the college of priors, which ruled the city commune. However, in the face of intensified social struggle, the unity of the Guelph party did not last long, and it split into two warring groups - the “whites”, who defended the independence of the commune from the papal curia, and the “blacks” - supporters of the pope.
With the help of papal power, the “black” Guelphs defeated the “whites” and began to massacre them. Dante's house was destroyed, and he himself was sentenced to burning. Saving his life, Dante leaves Florence in 1302, to which he will never be able to return. During the first years of exile, he lives in the hope of the defeat of the “blacks”, tries to establish connections with the Ghibilins, but quickly becomes disillusioned with them, proclaiming that from now on he is “creating a party on his own.” Remaining a supporter of a united Italy, Dante pins his hopes on the German Emperor Henry VII, who soon dies.

In exile, the poet fully understands how bitter other people’s bread can be and how difficult it is to climb other people’s stairs.” He had to live with like-minded patrons of the arts, sort out their libraries, serve as a secretary, and for some time (approximately 1308-1310) he moved to Paris.

Florence offers Dante to return to his hometown on condition of performing a humiliating form of penance, which Dante resolutely refuses. In 1315, the Florentine lordship again sentenced him to death, and Dante forever lost hope of returning to Florence, but did not stop his socio-political activities for Italy without wars and without papal power.

He does not stop his literary activity. In his work of the period of recognition, new features appear, in particular, passionate didacticism. Dante acts as a philosopher and thinker, driven by the desire to teach people, to open to them the world of truth, and to contribute through his works to the moral improvement of the world. His poetry is filled with moral maxims, fabulous knowledge, and techniques of eloquence. In general, journalistic motifs and genres prevail.

Until 1313, when he began to write the Divine Comedy, Dante wrote the moral and philosophical treatise “The Symposium” (1304-1307) and two treatises in Latin, “On the Vernacular” and “The Monarchy”. “The Feast,” like “New Life,” combines prose texts and poetry. Grandiose in concept (14 philosophical canzones and 15 prose treatises and commentaries on them), unfortunately, it remained unfinished: 3 canzones and 4 treatises were written. Already in the first canzone, Dante proclaims that his goal is to make knowledge accessible to a wide range of people, and therefore “The Feast” was written not in the Latin language traditional for the people of that time, but in the Italian language, Volgare, accessible to all people. He calls it “bread for all,” bread “with which thousands will be satisfied... It will be a new light, a new sun that will rise where the familiar has set; and it gives light to those who are in darkness, since the old sun no longer shines on them.”

The Symposium broadly presents the philosophical, theological, political and moral issues of the time. Medieval in plot and teaching style - yes, philosophy here appears in the form of a noble donna - Dante's work bears the expressive features of the Renaissance day. First of all, it is the exaltation of the human personality. According to the deep conviction of the poet, the nobility of a person does not depend on wealth or aristocratic origin, but is an expression of wisdom and spiritual perfection. The highest form of perfection of the soul is knowledge, “our highest bliss lies in it, we all naturally strive for it.”

The challenge to the Middle Ages is his call: “Love the light of knowledge!”, addressed to those in power, those who stand above the peoples. This call foreshadows the glorification of the thirst for knowledge as one of the noblest qualities of man in the Divine Comedy. In the 26th canto of “Hell”, Dante brings the legendary Odysseus (Ulysses) onto the stage and presents him as a tireless and courageous seeker of new worlds and new knowledge. In the words of the hero, addressed to his extremely tired and exhausted companions, lies the conviction of the poet himself.

His reflections on the fate of fragmented Italy and polemical attacks against her enemies and unworthy rulers are full of the Renaissance spirit; “Oh, my poor homeland, what pity for you squeezes my heart, every time I read, every time I write, something about public administration!” or (address to the now forgotten kings Charles of Naples and Frederick of Sicily): “Think about this, enemies of God, you, first one, then the other, have seized rule over all of Italy, I address you, Charles and Frederick, and before you, other rulers and tyrants... It would be better for you, like swallows, to fly low above the earth, like hawks, circling in an unattainable height, looking from there at great meanness.”

The treatise “On the People's Language” is the first linguistic work in Europe, the main idea of ​​which is the need to create a unified language for Italy literary language and his dominance over numerous dialects (Dante counts fourteen of them). Dante's civic position is reflected even in purely philological work: he introduces political meaning into his scientific judgments, connecting them with the idea of ​​the unity of the country, which is important to him. The unfinished treatise “Monarchy”, which crowns his political journalism, is also imbued with the pathos of the unity of Italy. This is a kind of political manifesto of Dante, in which he expresses his views on the possibility of building a fair and humane state, capable of ensuring universal peace and personal freedom of every citizen.

If Dante had not written anything else, his name would still have gone down in the history of world literature forever. And yet, his world fame is associated primarily with his last work - the poem “The Divine Comedy” (1313-1321). In it, Dante brought together all the experience of the mind and heart, artistically rethought the main motives and ideas of his previous works in order to say his word “for the benefit of the world where good is persecuted.” The purpose of the poem, as the poet himself noted, is “to snatch those living in this life from the state of junk and lead them to a state of bliss.”

Dante called his work “Comedy,” explaining that, according to the norms of medieval poetics, this is the effect of any work of the middle style with a terrifying beginning and a happy ending, written in the folk language. Giovanni Boccaccio, the author of the Decameron and Dante’s first biographer, called Dante’s poem “The Divine Comedy” in his book “The Life of Dante,” expressing his admiration for the artistic perfection of the form and the richness of the content of the work.

The poem consists of three parts: “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”. Each part (cantika) in turn has 33 songs, to which an introduction is attached, and the poem thus has 100 songs. The form of the verse of the poem is also determined by the number 3. Dante here canonizes the terzin form, taking it as the basis for the architectonics of the Divine Comedy. This structure, on the one hand, repeats the Christian model political world, which is divided into three spheres - Hell - Purgatory-Paradise, and on the other hand, it is subject to the mystical symbolism of the number 3.

The compositional structure perfectly corresponds to the intention of the poem: through visions, common in the religious literature of the Middle Ages, a journey in the afterlife to depict a person’s path to moral improvement. Dante here relies not only on religious literature, but also on the experience of Homer, who sent Odysseus to the kingdom of the dead, and on the most authoritative example of Virgil, in whom Aeneas also ascends to Tartarus to see his father.

At the same time, Dante goes much further than his predecessors. The most important artistic feature of his work is that the poet himself becomes a traveler in the other world. It is he who is “halfway through the earthly world”, lost in the discord of life, which he compares to a gloomy, harsh and wild forest inhabited by ferocious predators, who seeks salvation. His favorite poet Virgil comes to Dante's aid. He becomes Dante's guide and leads him through hell and purgatory, in order to further transfer him to his beloved Beatrice, in whose illuminated accompaniment Dante ascends to heaven.

A characteristic feature of the poem is its extreme semantic richness. Almost every image in it has several meanings. Direct, immediate meaning, behind which lies an allegorical one, and that, in turn, can be either purely allegorical, or moral, or analogous (spiritual). So, the predators that crossed Dante’s path in the wild forest were the usual panther, she-wolf and lion. In an allegorical sense, the panther means voluptuousness, as well as oligarchy; Leo - neglect, violence, as well as tyranny; the she-wolf - greed, as well as the worldly power of the Roman church. At the same time, they are all symbols of fear, embarrassment, confusion in front of some hostile forces. In allegorical terms, Dante is the embodiment of the soul, Virgil - the mind, Beatrice - the highest wisdom. Hell is a symbol of evil, heaven is a symbol of love, goodness and virtue, purgatory is a transition from one state to another, higher, and the journey through the afterlife itself means the path to salvation.
The combination in the poem of a purely medieval picture of the world with its established ideas about the afterlife and atonement for earthly sins with the poet’s extremely frank, passionate and emotionally charged attitude towards the images and events he painted elevates it to the level of a brilliant innovative work. Representing a grand synthesis of medieval culture, The Divine Comedy simultaneously carries within itself the powerful spirit of a new culture, a new type of thinking, which foreshadows the humanistic era of the Renaissance.

A socially active person, Dante is not content with abstract moralizing: he transports his contemporaries and predecessors into the other world with their joys and experiences, with their political preferences, with their actions and deeds - and carries out a strict and unforgiving judgment on them from the position of a sage-humanist . He acts as a comprehensively educated person, which allows him to be a politician, theologian, moralist, philosopher, historian, physiologist, psychologist and astronomer. According to the best Russian translator of Dante's poem M.L. Lozinsky, “The Divine Comedy” is a book about the Universe and, to the same extent, a book about the poet himself, which will forever remain for centuries as an ever-living example of a brilliant creation.

DANTE Alighieri (Dante Alighieri) (1265-1321), Italian poet, creator of the Italian literary language. In his youth, he joined the Dolce Style Nuovo school (sonnets praising Beatrice, autobiographical story “New Life”, 1292-93, edition 1576); philosophical and political treatises ("Feast", not completed; "On National Speech", 1304-07, edition 1529), "Epistle" (1304-16). The pinnacle of Dante's work is the poem "The Divine Comedy" (1307-21, edition 1472) in 3 parts ("Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise") and 100 songs, a poetic encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. He had a great influence on the development of European culture.

DANTE Alighieri(May or June 1265, Florence - September 14, 1321, Ravenna), Italian poet, one of the greatest geniuses of world literature.

Biography

Dante's family belonged to the urban nobility of Florence. Family name Alighieri (in another vowel Alagieri) was first worn by the poet’s grandfather. Dante was educated at a municipal school, then, presumably, studied at the University of Bologna (according to even less reliable information, he also attended the University of Paris during the period of exile). He took an active part in the political life of Florence; from June 15 to August 15, 1300 he was a member of the government (he was elected to the position of prior), trying, while fulfilling the position, to prevent the aggravation of the struggle between the parties of the White and Black Guelphs (see Guelphs and Ghibellines). After an armed coup in Florence and the coming to power of the Black Guelphs, on January 27, 1302 he was sentenced to exile and deprived of civil rights; On March 10, he was sentenced to death for failing to pay a fine. The first years of Dante's exile are among the leaders of the White Guelphs, taking part in the armed and diplomatic struggle with the victorious party. The last episode in his political biography is associated with the Italian campaign of Emperor Henry VII (1310-13), to whose efforts to establish civil peace in Italy he gave ideological support in a number of public messages and in the treatise “Monarchy”. Dante never returned to Florence; he spent several years in Verona at the court of Can Grande della Scala, and in the last years of his life he enjoyed the hospitality of the ruler of Ravenna, Guido da Polenta. Died of malaria.

Lyrics

The bulk of Dante's lyric poems were created in the 80-90s. 13th century; with the beginning of the new century, small poetic forms gradually disappeared from his work. Dante began by imitating the most influential lyric poet of Italy at that time, Guittone d'Arezzo, but soon changed his poetics and, together with his older friend Guido Cavalcanti, became the founder of a special poetic school, which Dante himself called the school of the "sweet new style" ("Dolce stil Nuovo" ) Its main distinguishing feature is the extreme spiritualization of the feeling of love. Dante, providing biographical and poetic commentary, collected the poems dedicated to his beloved Beatrice Portinari in a book called “New Life" (c. 1293-95). The biographical outline itself is extremely sparse. : two meetings, the first in childhood, the second in youth, denoting the beginning of love, the death of Beatrice’s father, the death of Beatrice herself, the temptation of new love and overcoming it. The biography appears as a series of mental states leading to an increasingly complete mastery of the meaning of the feeling that befell the hero: in As a result, the feeling of love acquires the features and signs of religious worship.

In addition to the “New Life”, about fifty more poems by Dante have reached us: poems in the manner of the “sweet new style” (but not always addressed to Beatrice); a love cycle known as “stone” (after the name of the recipient, Donna Pietra) and characterized by an excess of sensuality; comic poetry (a poetic altercation with Forese Donati and the poem "Flower", the attribution of which remains doubtful); group of doctrinal poems ( dedicated to topics nobility, generosity, justice, etc.).

Treatises

Poems of philosophical content became the subject of commentary in the unfinished treatise "The Feast" (c. 1304-07), which represents one of the first experiments in Italy in creating scientific prose in the popular language and at the same time the rationale for this attempt - a kind of educational program along with the defense of the folk language. In the unfinished Latin treatise “On Popular Eloquence,” written in the same years, an apology for the Italian language is accompanied by the theory and history of literature in it - both of which are absolute innovations. In the Latin treatise "Monarchy" (c. 1312-13), Dante (also for the first time) proclaims the principle of separation of spiritual and temporal power and insists on the full sovereignty of the latter.

"The Divine Comedy"

Dante began working on the poem "The Divine Comedy" during the years of exile and completed it shortly before his death. Written in terzas, containing 14,233 verses, it is divided into three parts (or cantics) and one hundred cantos (each cantic has thirty-three cantos and another is the introductory one to the entire poem). It was called a comedy by the author, who proceeded from the classification of genres developed by medieval poetics. The definition of “divine” was assigned to her by her descendants. The poem tells about Dante's journey through the kingdom of the dead: the right to see the afterlife during his lifetime is a special favor that frees him from philosophical and moral errors and entrusts him with a certain high mission. Dante, lost in the “dark forest” (which symbolizes the specific, although not directly named, sin of the author himself, and at the same time the sins of all humanity, experiencing a critical moment in its history), comes to the aid of the Roman poet Virgil (who symbolizes the human mind, unfamiliar with divine revelation) and leads him through the first two afterlife kingdoms - the kingdom of retribution and the kingdom of redemption. Hell is a funnel-shaped hole ending in the center of the earth; it is divided into nine circles, in each of which execution is carried out on a special category of sinners (only the inhabitants of the first circle - the souls of unbaptized babies and righteous pagans - are spared from torment). Among the souls that Dante met and entered into conversation with him, there are those familiar to him personally and others known to everyone - characters from ancient history and myths or heroes of our time. In the Divine Comedy they are not turned into direct and flat illustrations of their sins; the evil for which they are condemned is difficult to combine with their human essence, sometimes not devoid of nobility and greatness of spirit (among the most famous episodes of this kind are meetings with Paolo and Francesca in the circle of voluptuaries, with Farinata degli Uberti in the circle of heretics, with Brunetto Latini in circle of rapists, with Ulysses in the circle of deceivers, with Ugolino in the circle of traitors). Purgatory is a huge mountain in the center of the uninhabited, ocean-occupied southern hemisphere, with ledges it is divided into seven circles, where the souls of the dead atone for the sins of pride, envy, anger, despondency, stinginess and extravagance, gluttony, and voluptuousness. After each of the circles, one of the seven signs of sin, inscribed by the gatekeeper angel, is erased from the forehead of Dante (and any of the souls of purgatory) - in this part of the Comedy, more acutely than in others, it is felt that Dante’s path is not only educational for him , but also redemptive. At the top of the mountain, in the earthly paradise, Dante meets Beatrice (symbolizing divine revelation) and parts with Virgil; here Dante fully realizes his personal guilt and is completely cleared of it. Together with Beatrice, he ascends to heaven, in each of the eight heavens surrounding the earth (seven planetary and eighth starry) he becomes acquainted with a certain category of blessed souls and strengthens in faith and knowledge. In the ninth, the sky of the Prime Mover, and in the Empyrean, where Beatrice is replaced by St. Bernard, he is awarded initiation into the secrets of the trinity and the incarnation. Both plans of the poem finally come together, in one of which the path of man to truth and goodness is presented through the abyss of sin, despair and doubt, in the other - the path of history, which has approached the final frontier and is opening towards a new era. And The Divine Comedy itself, being a kind of synthesis of medieval culture, turns out to be its final work.

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