Italian literature

Dante Alighieri

Biography

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet. Born in mid-May 1265 in Florence. His parents were respectable citizens of modest means and belonged to the Guelph party, which opposed the power of the German emperors in Italy. They were able to pay for their son's education at school, and subsequently allowed him, without worrying about the means, to improve in the art of versification. An idea of ​​the poet's youth is given by his autobiographical story in verse and prose New Life (La vita nuova, 1293), which tells about Dante's love for Beatrice (it is believed that this was Bice, daughter of Folco Portinari) from the moment of the first meeting, when Dante was nine years old , and she is eight, and until the death of Beatrice in June 1290. The poems are accompanied by prose inserts explaining how this or that poem appeared. In this work, Dante develops the theory of courtly love for a woman, reconciling it with the Christian love for God. After the death of Beatrice, Dante turned to the consolation of philosophy and created several allegorical poems in praise of this new "lady". Over the years of scientific studies, his literary horizons have also expanded significantly. The decisive role in the fate and further work of Dante was played by the expulsion of the poet from his native Florence.

At that time, power in Florence belonged to the Guelph party, torn apart by the internal party struggle between the white Guelphs (who advocated the independence of Florence from the pope) and the black Guelphs (supporters of papal power). Dante's sympathies were on the side of the White Guelphs. In 1295-1296 he was called up several times for public service, including participation in the Council of the Hundred. In 1300, he traveled as ambassador to San Gimignano calling on the citizens of the city to unite with Florence against Pope Boniface VIII, and in the same year he was elected a member of the governing council of priors - he held this position from June 15 to August 15. From April to September 1301 he was again a member of the Council of the Hundred. In the autumn of the same year, Dante joined the embassy sent to Pope Boniface in connection with the attack on Florence by Prince Charles of Valois. In his absence, on November 1, 1301, with the advent of Charles, power in the city passed to the black Guelphs, and the white Guelphs were repressed. In January 1302, Dante learned that he had been sentenced in absentia to exile on trumped-up charges of bribery, malfeasance, and resistance to the pope and Charles of Valois, and never returned to Florence.

In 1310, Emperor Henry VII invaded Italy with a "peacekeeping" purpose. To this event, Dante, who by that time had found temporary shelter in Casentino, responded with an ardent letter to the rulers and peoples of Italy, urging them to support Henry. In another letter, entitled Dante Alighieri the Florentine, unjustly expelled, to the worthless Florentines who remained in the city, he condemned the resistance offered by Florence to the emperor. Probably at the same time he wrote a treatise on the monarchy (De monarchia, 1312−1313). However, in August 1313, after an unsuccessful three-year campaign, Henry VII died suddenly in Buonconvento. In 1314, after the death of Pope Clement V in France, Dante issued another letter addressed to the conclave of Italian cardinals in the city of Carpentras, in which he urged them to elect an Italian pope and return the papacy from Avignon to Rome.

For some time, Dante took refuge with the ruler of Verona, Can Grande della Scala, to whom he dedicated the final part of the Divine Comedy - Paradise. The poet spent the last years of his life under the patronage of Guido da Polenta in Ravenna, where he died in September 1321, having completed the Divine Comedy shortly before his death.

Only a part of Dante's early poems entered the New Life. In addition to these, he wrote several allegorical canzones, which he probably intended to include in the Feast, as well as many lyric poems. Subsequently, all these poems were published under the title Poems (Rime), or Canzoniere (Canzoniere), although Dante himself did not compile such a collection. This should also include the playfully swearing sonnets (tenzones) that Dante exchanged with his friend Forese Donati.

According to Dante himself, he wrote the treatise Pir (Il convivio, 1304−1307) to declare himself as a poet who moved from singing courtly love to philosophical topics. It was assumed that the Feast would include fourteen poems (kanzon), each of which would be provided with an extensive gloss, interpreting its allegorical and philosophical meaning. However, having written interpretations of the three canzones, Dante abandoned work on the treatise. In Pir's first book, which serves as a prologue, he passionately defends the right of the Italian language to be the language of literature. The treatise in Latin On popular eloquence (De vulgari eloquentia, 1304−1307) was also not completed: Dante wrote only the first book and part of the second. In it, Dante speaks of Italian as a means of poetic expression, expounds his theory of language, and expresses his hope for the creation in Italy of a new literary language that would rise above dialectal differences and would be worthy of being called great poetry.

In three books of carefully substantiated research on the monarchy (De monarchia, 1312-1313), Dante seeks to prove the truth of the following statements: 1) only under the rule of a universal monarch can humanity come to a peaceful existence and fulfill its destiny; 2) The Lord chose the Roman people to rule the world (therefore, this monarch must be the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire); 3) the emperor and the pope receive power directly from God (therefore, the first is not subordinate to the second). These views were expressed even before Dante, but he brought into them the ardor of conviction. The church immediately condemned the treatise and, according to Boccaccio, sentenced the book to be burned.

In the last two years of his life, Dante wrote two eclogues in Latin hexameter. This was an answer to the professor of poetry at the University of Bologna, Giovanni del Virgilio, who urged him to write in Latin and come to Bologna to be crowned with a laurel wreath. The study The Question of Water and Land (Questio de aqua et terra), devoted to the controversial issue of the ratio of water and land on the surface of the Earth, Dante may have read publicly in Verona. Of the letters to Dante, eleven are recognized as authentic, all in Latin (some have been mentioned).

It is believed that Dante took up the Divine Comedy around 1307, interrupting work on the treatises Feast (Il convivio, 1304−1307) and On popular eloquence (De vulgari eloquentia, 1304−1307). In this work, he wanted to present a double vision of the socio-political structure: on the one hand, as divinely pre-established, on the other, as having reached unprecedented decomposition in his contemporary society (“the current world has gone astray” - Purgatory, XVI, 82). The main theme of the Divine Comedy can be called justice in this life and the afterlife, as well as the means to restore it, given, by God's providence, into the hands of man himself.

Dante called his poem a Comedy, because 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, of tragedy), on folk 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 cants - 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, tercine, invented by Dante himself, who put a deep meaning into it. The Divine Comedy is an unsurpassed example of art as imitation; Dante takes as a model everything that exists, both material and spiritual, created by the triune God, who left the imprint of his trinity on everything. Therefore, the structure of the poem is based on the number three, and the amazing symmetry of its structure is rooted in imitation of the measure and order that the Lord gave to all things.

In a letter to Can Grande, Dante explains that his poem is ambiguous, it is an allegory like the Bible. Indeed, the poem has a complex allegorical structure, and although the narrative can almost always be based on a mere literal sense, this is far from the only level of perception. The author of the poem is presented in it as a person who has received God's special mercy - to make a journey to the Lord through the three kingdoms of the underworld, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. This journey is presented in the poem as real, performed by Dante in the flesh and in reality, and not in a dream or vision. In the afterlife, the poet sees various states of souls after death, in accordance with the retribution determined by the Lord.

The sins that are punished in Hell fall into three main categories: promiscuity, violence, and lying; these are the three sinful tendencies stemming from Adam's sin. The ethical principles on which Dante's Hell is built, as well as his vision of the world and man in general, are a fusion of Christian theology and pagan ethics based on Aristotle's Ethics. Dante's views are not original, they were common in an era when the main works of Aristotle were rediscovered and diligently studied.

After passing through the nine circles of Hell and the center of the Earth, Dante and his guide Virgil come to the surface at the foot of Mount Purgatory, located in the southern hemisphere, on the opposite edge of the Earth from Jerusalem. Their descent into Hell took them exactly the same amount of time as elapsed between the position of Christ in the tomb and his resurrection, and the opening songs of Purgatory are replete with indications of how the action of the poem echoes the feat of Christ - another example of imitation from Dante, now in habitual form of imitatio Christi.

Ascending the Mount of Purgatory, where the seven deadly sins are redeemed on seven ledges, Dante purifies himself and, having reached the top, finds himself in an earthly Paradise. Thus, climbing the mountain is a "return to Eden", finding the lost Paradise. From that moment on, Beatrice becomes Dante's guide. Her appearance is the culmination of the whole journey, moreover, the poet draws an underlined analogy between the arrival of Beatrice and the coming of Christ - in history, in the soul and at the end of time. Here is an imitation of the Christian concept of history as a linear progressive movement, the center of which forms the coming of Christ.

With Beatrice, Dante ascends through nine concentric celestial spheres (according to the structure of the sky in Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology), where the souls of the righteous dwell, to the tenth - Empyrean, the abode of the Lord. There Beatrice replaces St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who shows the poet saints and angels tasting the highest bliss: the direct contemplation of the Lord, which quenches all desires.

Despite such a variety of posthumous destinies, one principle can be distinguished that operates throughout the entire poem: retribution corresponds to the nature of sin or virtue inherent in a person during life. This is especially clearly seen in Hell (the instigators of discord and schismatics are cut in two there). In Purgatory, the purification of the soul is subject to a slightly different, “correcting” principle (the eyes of envious people are tightly sewn up). In Paradise, the souls of the righteous appear first in that heaven, or celestial sphere, which better symbolizes the degree and nature of their merits (the souls of warriors dwell on Mars).

Two dimensions can be distinguished in the structure of the Divine Comedy: the afterlife as such and Dante's journey through it, which enriches the poem with a new deep meaning and carries the main allegorical load. Theology in the days of Dante, as before, believed that a mystical journey to God is possible even during a person's life, if the Lord, by His grace, will give him this opportunity. Dante builds his journey through the afterlife in such a way that it symbolically reflects the "journey" of the soul in the earthly world. In doing so, he follows patterns already developed in contemporary theology. In particular, it was believed that on the way to God, the mind passes through three stages, led by three different types of light: the Light of Natural Reason, the Light of Grace and the Light of Glory. It is this role that Dante's three guides play in the Divine Comedy.

The Christian concept of time is not only at the center of the poem: its entire action, up to the appearance of Beatrice, is intended to reflect what Dante understood as the path of redemption, destined by the Lord for mankind after the fall. The same understanding of history was found in Dante's treatise On Monarchy and was expressed by Christian historians and poets (for example, Orsisius and Prudentius) a thousand years before Dante. According to this concept, the Lord chose the Roman people to lead mankind to justice, in which he achieved perfection under Emperor Augustus. It was at this time, when peace and justice reigned over the whole earth, for the first time after the fall, that the Lord wished to incarnate and send his beloved son to people. With the advent of Christ, thus, the movement of mankind towards justice is completed. It is not difficult to trace the allegorical reflection of this concept in the Divine Comedy. Just as the Romans under Augustus led the human race to justice, so Virgil, on the top of the Mount of Purgatory, leads Dante to gain an inner sense of justice and, saying goodbye, addresses the poet as if he were an emperor at a coronation: “I crown you with a miter and a crown over you yourself.” Now, when justice has reigned in Dante's soul, as once in the world, Beatrice appears, and her arrival is a reflection of the coming of Christ, as it was, is and will be. Thus, the path traversed by the soul of the individual, achieving justice, and then - purifying grace, symbolically repeats the path of redemption traversed by mankind in the course of history. This allegory of the Divine Comedy is clearly intended for the Christian reader, who will be interested in both the description of the afterlife and Dante's journey to God. But the image of earthly life in Dante does not become ghostly and incorporeal from this. The poem contains a whole gallery of lively and vivid portraits, and the feeling of the significance of earthly life, the unity of "that" and "this" world is expressed in it firmly and unambiguously.

Dante Alighieri was born in mid-May 1265 in Florence, Italy. He came from an old noble family. His parents were modest respectable citizens. They did not support the power of the German emperors in Italy. Parents paid for Dante's schooling, and then allowed him to improve his knowledge in the art of versification, without worrying about the means. In 1293, Dante Alighieri wrote an autobiographical novel in verse and prose, The New Life. Dante develops the theory of courtly love for a woman, comparing it with Christian love for God. An important role in the fate and further work of Dante was played by his exile from Florence.

The internal strife in Florence, the wars between the Italian cities and the intrigues of the papal entourage, accompanied by a decline in the moral authority of the church - all this led Dante to place his hopes on the German emperor Henry VII, who entered Italy with his army in 1310. Henry seemed to Dante a peacemaker, heir to the Roman Empire, who was destined to revive Italy. In his political treatises, Dante defended the ideal of a world monarchy as a state that in the future was supposed to ensure the earthly well-being of people.

Dante Alighieri shows in his works an interest in earthly life and the fate of the human person. He is concerned about the fate of Italy and his native Florence. Dante settles sinners in hell in his creations, sometimes punishes them not according to the laws of the church, and sometimes treats them with great compassion and respect.

Dante is considered the creator of the Italian literary language, which is based on the Tuscan dialect. The poet in his works speaks on behalf of the entire Italian nation, expressing its historical views. He was considered the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times. The work of Dante Alighieri had a great influence on the development of Italian literature and European culture in general.

From 1316 Alighieri lived in Ravenna. The poet died of malaria in September 1321.

Durante deli Alighieri (May 26, 1265 - September 14, 1321) was a world-famous Italian thinker, poet, writer and theologian. Dante is considered not only a great writer of his time, who created the famous Divine Comedy, but also the founder of the Italian literary language, since it was he who first began to use stable literary expressions in his works.

Childhood

It is not known for certain to what a noble and aristocratic family Dante belonged, since only a few manuscripts of that time have survived, and scientists still cannot determine the origin of the writer. The only known fact is that the ancestors of Alighieri, most likely, were the founders of Florence. In the manuscripts that have survived to this day, there is a mention of Dante's great-grandfather - Kachchagvide, ─ who was knighted and participated in the crusade of Conrad III.

He died in one of the battles against the Muslims, after which he was posthumously ranked among the aristocrats. Little is known about the personal life of Kachchagvida. According to scientists, the surname "Alighieri" was taken precisely from his wife, who belonged to a family of Lombard aristocrats. Initially, the surname was in the form "Aldigieri", but later, most likely due to difficulty in pronunciation, it was transformed into "Alighieri".

The exact date of Durante's birth is also unknown. According to Boccaccio, the great writer and thinker was born on the night of May 13-14. Nevertheless, Alighieri himself never indicated the exact date of birth, but only casually mentioned that at birth he was under the sign of Gemini. That is why only the name given to the child at birth, Durante, is accurate.

From childhood, the child was taught everything necessary by the parents. At the age of five, a special teacher was hired - Brunetto Latini - who began to teach Dante not only reading and writing, but also a number of exact sciences. In addition to home schooling, Durante most likely attended ancient schools and adopted the experience of several teachers at once. But, unfortunately, it is also unknown what educational institutions the boy went to and who was his teacher.

Youth and early career as a public figure

In 1286, Dante, leaving his family, leaves for Bologna, where he settles in a small house with his best friend, the poet Guido Cavalcati. Initially, it remained a mystery how Alighieri was able to leave the family, which for many years cared for and patronized him.

However, then Durante's notes were found that in 1285 a friend asked him to move with him to Bologna, where he planned to enter the university. In order to keep up with his friend, the future poet decided not to notify his family of his departure, and on a summer night he simply disappeared from home, setting off on his first independent journey.

After graduating from university in 1296, Dante decides to become a public figure. At that time, he already had sufficient connections and repeatedly spoke to the general public, calling for certain actions. Many of Durante's friends testified that the young man had an exceptional talent for oratory, despite the fact that he himself never recognized such a gift. However, the violent and stubborn nature of Alighieri very often became the cause of conflicts between the speaker and the local authorities, which subsequently ended for Dante in exile from Florence, where he could no longer return.

In 1300, Dante Alighieri was elected prior. From that moment on, he receives quite extensive powers up to the writing of his own laws. The enthusiast decides to get down to business seriously and "slightly" alter the system that has existed for many years in Florence. Alighieri issues several decrees and laws, begins to actively collect complaints from the townspeople, which, of course, does not go unnoticed by the local authorities. A couple of months after the appointment, Dante and his party of white Guelphs, which consisted mainly of true friends and comrades of the writer, are expelled in disgrace and forbidden to return to the city.

Writing career

After Dante said goodbye to the career of a public leader and orator, the most difficult and depressing period in his biography begins. Being in exile, Dante feels not only humiliated, but also unnecessary to mankind. His poetry, which was previously light, airy and positive, acquires bitter notes of captivity, hatred and sadness for his native city (and even family).

At this time, an allegorical-scholastic commentary on the fourteen canons under the name "Feast" appears. In it, Dante not only openly criticizes the government system existing in Florence, but also blames the authorities for all the troubles of the people, mocking the stupidity and arrogance of officials. But, unfortunately, "Convivio" - that's how it was translated into Italian "Feast" ─ was never completed, since Alighieri considered it excessively pretentious and rude. The work ends at the 14th chapter, after which there are only a few lines and ellipsis.

In exile, the most famous work of the thinker, The Divine Comedy, was written. According to Boccaccio, Dante created it for a very long time, so there is no exact information and dating. The fact is that at that time Alighieri was forced to constantly travel around Italy in search of a better life. It is known that he created the beginning of the Comedy in Verona, under the auspices of Bartolomeo dei Scala, then moved to Bologna, where he heard good news for himself: Henry VII was going to Italy. Deciding that now his life will improve, Alighieri returns to his hometown and even manages to appear to the local authorities, declaring that now he will be able to return all his civil rights. However, in 1313, Henry VII suddenly dies, and the authorities, taking advantage of the situation, confirm Durante's exile, adding to it the death penalty for the repeated return to his homeland not only of the poet himself, but also of all his relatives.

Since 1316, Dante Alighieri has been under the patronage of the signor of the city of Ravenna. Here, the poet is allowed not only to create and create new songs of the Divine Comedy, but also to act as a public figure (naturally, under the supervision of the signor himself). Life begins to slowly improve, but in 1321, having gone as an ambassador to Venice to conclude a peace treaty with the Republic of St. Mark, Durante becomes very ill. Upon arrival in Ravenna, it turns out that the poet is ill with malaria, and on the night of September 13-14 of the same year, he suddenly dies.

Personal life

In 1274, at the age of nine, Dante Alighieri saw in the garden of the house the incredible beauty of Beatrice Portinari, the daughter of a gardener. The aspiring poet fell in love with the young beauty so much that he even dedicated poems to her, but all this remained the strictest secret, and the lovers met only nine years later, when Durante saw Peatrice already in the status of a married woman. Boccace often mentioned young lovers in his treatises, calling them Romeo and Juliet of his time.

Already at a more mature age, Alighieri married the daughter of his political opponent, Gemma Donati. The exact date of their marriage is unknown, so scientists do not undertake to claim that the couple has been married for many years. However, it is known that Gemma gave birth to three children to the poet, whom he loved very much, unlike his own wife (his wife was never even indirectly mentioned in Dante's works).

Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321)

An outstanding Italian poet, whose huge figure, according to F. Engels, determines the end of the feudal Middle Ages, 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 focused on the pope. The second influential party was the Ghibelline party, which defended the interests of the feudal lords and was guided by the emperor. Since Florence at that time was the most developed and wealthy 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.

Dante from a young age 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, while studying law at the University of Bologna, he was fond of Dante's poetry. He was especially influenced by the school of the “sweet new style”, founded by Guido Guinicelli, teacher of literature at the University of Bologna. It was him that Dante called his teacher and father. The lyrics of the "sweet new style" school combined the experience of Provencal chivalric poetry with its refined cult of service to the Lady and the tradition of Sicilian poetry, saturated with reflections and philosophical examination of beauty.

Dante's early works (30 poems, of which 25 sonnets, 4 canzones and one stanza), united by a prose text, made up a collection called "New Life" (Vita nuova). The works of this collection carry all the elements of the "sweet new style" - philosophy, rhetoric, mystical symbolism and elegance of form. But at the same time, the assembly becomes the first achievement of the new Renaissance literature - a real hymn to life and love. Its very name is symbolic. It can be interpreted as "new", "updated", "young" and can have several semantic meanings. Firstly, the change of one period of life by another (real plan). Secondly, an update associated with the cult of the lady of the heart and meaningful in accordance with the norms of love etiquette characteristic of Provencal 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 (higher, 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, he, based on the symbolism of the number nine , proves that she was "a miracle whose root is in a strange trinity." This semantic ambiguity, this unceasing movement of the soul from the earthly to the heavenly, the divine, will signify 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 integrity and strong passions, a man with a developed civic consciousness, becomes a prominent 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 context of the intensification of the 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 be burned. 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 hope of the defeat of the "blacks", tries to establish ties with the deaths, but quickly disillusioned with them, proclaims that from now on he himself "creates a party" by himself. 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 learns how bitter another's bread is and how difficult it is to climb the stairs of strangers. He has to live in patrons - like-minded people, sort out their libraries, serve as a secretary, for some time (approximately 1308-1310) he moves to Paris.

Florence offers Dante to return to his native city, subject to the fulfillment of a humiliating image of repentance, which Dante resolutely refuses. In 1315, the Florentine lordship again sentences him to death, and Dante forever loses hope of returning to Florence, but does not stop his social and 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 the world of truth to them, to contribute to the moral improvement of the world with his works. His poetry is filled with moral maxims, fabulous knowledge, and eloquence. In general, journalistic motives and genres prevail.

Until 1313, when he came close to creating the Divine Comedy, Dante wrote the moral and philosophical treatise The Feast (1304-1307) and two treatises in Latin On the Folk Language and Monarchy. "Feast", like "New Life", combines prose texts and poems. Grandiose in design (14 philosophical canzones and 15 prose commentary treatises), it unfortunately 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 traditional Latin language for the people of that time, but in the Italian language-Volgara 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 usual has set; and it gives light to those who are in darkness, for the old sun no longer shines on them.”

The "Feast" widely presents the philosophical, theological, political and moral problems of that time. Medieval in plot and manner of teaching - yes, philosophy appears here 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 the perfection of the soul is knowledge, "in it lies our highest bliss, we all naturally strive for it."

The challenge of 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 human qualities in the Divine Comedy. In the 26th song of Inferno, Dante brings the legendary Odysseus (Ulysses) onto the stage and portrays 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 country, what pity for you squeezes my heart, every time I read, every time I write, something about public administration!” or (addressing the now forgotten kings Charles of Naples and Frederick of Sicily): “Think about it, enemies of God, you - first one, then the second - seized the rule over all of Italy, I appeal to you, Charles and Frederick, and before you, other rulers and tyrants ... It would be better for you, like swallows, to fly low above the ground, like hawks, circle in an unattainable height, looking from there at great meanness.

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

If Dante had not written anything else, his name would have entered the history of world literature forever anyway. And yet, his world fame is associated primarily with the 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 goodness is persecuted." The purpose of the poem, as the poet himself noted, "is to tear those living in this life out of 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, any work of the middle style with a frightening beginning and a happy ending, written in the folk language, has this effect. Giovanni Boccaccio, the author of The Decameron and Dante's first biographer, called Dante's poem "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 (kanthika) in turn has 33 songs, to which an introduction is attached, and the poem thus has 100 songs. The form of the poem's verse is also determined by the number 3. Here Dante canonizes the form of the tercine, taking it as the basis for the architectonics of the Divine Comedy. Such a structure, on the one hand, repeats the Christian model of the political world, which is divided into three spheres - Hell - Purgatory - Paradise, and on the other hand, it obeys the mystical symbolism of the number 3.

The compositional structure, on the other hand, perfectly matches the idea 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 perfection. 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 for him, Virgil, in whom Aeneas also ascends 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”, having become entangled in life’s disagreements, which he compares with a gloomy, harsh and wild forest inhabited by ferocious predators, and seeks salvation. Dante's favorite poet Virgil comes to the rescue. He becomes Dante's guide and leads him through hell and purgatory, in order to pass him on to his beloved Beatrice, in whose illumined accompaniment Dante ascends to heaven.

A characteristic feature of the poem is the extreme semantic richness. Almost every image in it has several meanings. Direct, immediate meaning, behind which lies the allegorical, and that, in turn, can be either purely allegorical, or moral, or similar (spiritual). So, predators crossed Dante's road in the wild forest, these are the usual panther, she-wolf and lion. In the allegorical sense, the panther means voluptuousness, as well as oligarchy; lion - neglect, violence, as well as tyranny; 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 is the mind, Beatrice is the highest wisdom. Hell is a symbol of evil, paradise is love, goodness and virtue, purgatory is the 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 well-established ideas about the afterlife and the atonement of earthly sins with an extremely frank, passionate and emotionally colored attitude of the poet to the images and events he painted elevates it to the level of a brilliant innovative work. Representing a grandiose synthesis of medieval culture, The Divine Comedy simultaneously carries the mighty spirit of a new culture, a new type of thinking, which heralds the humanistic era of the Renaissance.

A socially active person, Dante is not satisfied with abstract moralization: he transfers his contemporaries and predecessors to the other world with their joys and experiences, with their political preferences, with their actions and deeds, and creates a strict and inexorable judgment on them from the position of a humanist sage . 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 is the greatest medieval poet. He was born in 1265 in Florence, into a wealthy family, belonged to Guelph parties. At the age of 9, Dante fell in love with 8-year-old Beatrice (perhaps the daughter of Folco Portinari, according to Boccaccio), at the age of 18 he dedicated his first sonnet to her. From the age of 24, Dante Alighieri took an active part in the political and social life of his native city, first in military campaigns (in the battle of Campaldino, in the siege of Capron in 1289); then (having signed up for obtaining political rights to the guild of pharmacists and doctors) - in government bodies (in the Big and Small Soviets, in the Council of the Hundred). In 1300, Dante served as prior. When the Guelphs broke up into Blacks and Whites, Dante joined the latter and, together with their leaders, left Florence when the Blacks, in the course of a fierce party struggle, gained the upper hand in alliance with Pope Boniface VIII (1301). Dante was sentenced to be burned in absentia, and his property was confiscated, so that his wife, Gemma, nee Donati, had difficulty supporting her family.

Dante Alighieri. Drawing by Giotto, 14th century

We have little reliable information about the life of Dante Alighieri during the period of exile. First, joining the Whites (who gravitated towards Ghibellines), Dante then broke up with them, stayed with Bartolomeo della Scala in Verona, was in Bologna, in Lunigiana, maybe in Paris. When in 1310 Emperor Henry VII went on a campaign to Italy, Dante was imbued with the hope of returning to his native city, hurried the emperor to crush the ungrateful Florentines. But Henry VII died in 1313, and Dante was again doomed to the life of a wanderer, condemned "to eat someone else's bread and climb someone else's stairs." Dante found his last refuge with Guido Novello da Polenta, the nephew of Francesca da Rimini, sung by him (Hell, V), in Ravenna, where he died in 1321.

If the external biography of Dante is unknown to us in detail, then his spiritual history caused a lively and lengthy dispute among scientists. In the article "Dante's Trilogie", the researcher Witte tried to prove that the life and work of Dante Alighieri constituted a "trilogy". In his youth, Dante was a naive believer: this period was poeticized in his "New Life" ("Vita Nuova"). In his mature years, Dante moved from faith to doubt: this era was immortalized by him in The Feast (Convivio). Finally, on the slope of his life, Dante Alighieri returned to faith again, but no longer childishly naive, but enlightened by reason: this is the last phase of his spiritual development found its artistic embodiment in the "Divine Comedy" ("Divina Commedia").

Statue of Dante in Piazza Santa Croce in Florence

Witte's hypothesis caused a lively debate in the pages of the German "Dante's Yearbook", after which only its main idea survived from it. The life and work of Dante are indeed a trilogy, and moreover, in two respects. From the formal psychological side, this is a trilogy of love. The basis of the world and life is based on the philosophical teachings of Dante (Feast, III; Purgatory, XVII and XVIII), love as the main driving force. Elemental in the lower spheres, it becomes conscious in man. In the heart of the young man Dante, this love is directed to a woman. In the "New Life", consisting of a series of poems, welded together and explained by a prose commentary, the poet's Platonic passion for Beatrice is sung in mysterious and mystical tones. Some interpreters of Dante see in her, however, not an earthly woman, but only a symbol of either Catholicism (Perez) or empire (Rossetti) or eternal femininity (Bartoli). In the mature period of his life, Dante no longer turns his love to a woman, but to “philosophy”, singing in the “Feast” not the Madonna, but science, knowledge (On love, as the basis of philosophizing, see Feast, III). Finally, in his declining years, Dante's love is turned to God, to heaven (Paradise, XV).

The life and work of Dante Alighieri are, at the same time, culturally and historically a “trilogy” of a man who grew up at the turn of two successive eras. In his youth - a poet-mystic in the spirit of love lyrics troubadours, transformed in Italy by representatives of dolce stil nuovo (“New Life”), Dante in adulthood is a pioneer of the new realistic culture of the Renaissance, arguing (Pir, III, 15) that it is not the resolution of “eternal” metaphysical questions that seeks, mainly, human mind, but to the comprehension of earthly sciences. He himself goes deep into the study of scientific problems (“The Feast” is a kind of, although unfinished, encyclopedia; “De vulgari eloquentia” is the first treatise on linguistics and the theory of literature), indulges in earthly love (donna gentile passion at the end of the “New Life” , Petra, see "Canzoniere"), is fond of worldly social and political affairs. But Dante did not stop at this realistic point of view, but returned in his declining years to the medieval ascetic worldview, declaring earthly goods as dust and decay (Purgatory, XIX, Paradise, XI), focusing his thoughts on God, as on the highest goal of being. From this ascetic mood grew Dante's Comedy, so called because it opens with horror and ends in bliss (see letter to Cangrande della Scala, perhaps written by not Dante). The epithet "divine" (in the sense of "incomparable") occurs for the first time in 1555.

(Circles of Hell - La mappa dell inferno). Illustration for the "Divine Comedy" by Dante. 1480s.