Dante Alighieri. Dante: biography, briefly about life and work: Dante Dante poet

Dante Alighieri is the greatest Italian poet, literary critic, thinker, theologian, politician, author of the famous “Divine Comedy”. Very little reliable information about the life of this man has been preserved; their main source is the artistic autobiography written by him, which describes only a certain period.

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, in 1265, on May 26, into a well-born and wealthy family. It is not known where the future poet studied, but he himself considered the education he received insufficient, so he devoted a lot of time to independent education, in particular, studying foreign languages, the works of ancient poets, among whom he gave particular preference to Virgil, considering him his teacher and “leader.”

When Dante was only 9 years old, in 1274, an event occurred that became significant in his life, including his creative life. At the holiday, his attention was attracted by a peer, a neighbor's daughter, Beatrice Portinari. Ten years later, being a married lady, she became for Dante that beautiful Beatrice, whose image illuminated his entire life and poetry. A book called “New Life” (1292), in which he spoke in poetic and prose lines about his love for this young woman, who died untimely in 1290, is considered the first autobiography in world literature. The book made the author famous, although this was not his first literary experience; he began writing back in the 80s.

The death of his beloved woman forced him to immerse himself in science; he studied philosophy, astronomy, theology, and became one of the most educated people of his time, although his knowledge did not go beyond the medieval tradition based on theology.

In 1295-1296 Dante Alighieri made a name for himself as a public and political figure and participated in the work of the city council. In 1300 he was elected a member of the college of six priors that governed Florence. In 1298, he married Gemma Donati, who was his wife until her death, but this woman always played a modest role in his destiny.

Active political activity became the reason for the expulsion of Dante Alighieri from Florence. The split of the Guelph party, in which he was a member, led to the fact that the so-called whites, in whose ranks the poet was, were subjected to repression. Charges of bribery were brought against Dante, after which he was forced, leaving his wife and children, to leave his hometown in order to never return to it. This happened in 1302.

From that time on, Dante constantly wandered around cities and traveled to other countries. So, it is known that in 1308-1309. he visited Paris, where he participated in open debates organized by the university. Alighieri's name was twice included in the lists of persons subject to amnesty, but both times it was crossed out. In 1316, he was allowed to return to his native Florence, but on the condition that he publicly admit that his views were wrong and repent, but the proud poet did not do this.

From 1316 he settled in Ravenna, where he was invited by Guido da Polenta, the ruler of the city. Here, in the company of his sons, his beloved daughter Beatrice, admirers, friends, they passed last years poet. It was during the period of exile that Dante wrote a work that made him famous for centuries - “Comedy”, to the title of which several centuries later, in 1555, the word “Divine” was added in the Venetian edition. The beginning of work on the poem dates back to approximately 1307, and Dante wrote the last of the three (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) parts shortly before his death.

He dreamed of becoming famous with the help of “Comedy” and returning home with honors, but his hopes were not destined to come true. Having contracted malaria while returning from a trip to Venice on a diplomatic mission, the poet died on September 14, 1321. “The Divine Comedy” was the pinnacle of his literary activity, but his rich and diverse creative heritage is not exhausted by it and includes, in particular, philosophical treatises, journalism, and lyrics.

Dante Alighieri - the greatest and famous person, born in the Middle Ages. His contribution to the development of not only Italian, but also all world literature cannot be assessed. Today, people often search for the biography of Dante Alighieri in summary. But to be so superficially interested in the life of such a great man who made a huge contribution to the development of languages ​​is not entirely correct.

Biography of Dante Alighieri

Speaking about the life and work of Dante Alighieri, it is not enough to say that he was a poet. The area of ​​his activity was very extensive and multifaceted. He was interested not only in literature, but also in politics. Today Dante Alighieri, whose biography is filled the most interesting events, is called a theologian.

Beginning of life

The biography of Dante Alighieri began in Florence. A family legend that for a long time was the basis of the Alighieri family, said that Dante, like all his relatives, was a descendant of the great Roman family, which laid the preconditions for the founding of Florence itself. Everyone considered this legend to be true, because Dante’s father’s grandfather was in the ranks of the army that participated in the Crusade under the command of the Great Conrad the Third. It was this ancestor of Dante who was knighted, and soon died tragically during the battle against the Muslims.

It was this relative of Dante, whose name was Cacciaguida, who was married to a woman who came from a very rich and noble family - Aldighieri. Over time, the name of a famous family began to sound a little different - “Alighieri”. One of the children of Cacciaguida, who later became Dante's grandfather, often suffered persecution from the lands of Florence in those years when the Guelphs were constantly fighting with the Ghibelline peoples.

Biography highlights

Today you can find many sources that briefly talk about the biography and work of Dante Alighieri. However, such a study of Dante’s personality will not be entirely correct. short biography Dante Alighieri will not be able to convey all those seemingly unimportant biographical elements that so greatly influenced his life.

Speaking about the date of birth of Dante Alighieri, no one can say the exact date, month and year. However, it is generally accepted that the main date of birth is the time that Boccaccio named, being a friend of Dante, - May 1265. The writer Dante himself wrote about himself that he was born under the zodiac of Gemini, which suggests that Alighieri’s birth time was the end of May - the beginning of June. What is known about his baptism is that this event took place in 1266, in March, and his baptismal name sounded like Durante.

Education of Dante Alighieri

Another important fact that is mentioned in all short biographies of Dante Alighieri was his education. The first teacher and mentor of the young and still unknown Dante was the popular writer, poet and at the same time scientist - Brunetto Latini. It was he who laid the first poetic knowledge in Alighieri’s young head.

And today the fact remains unknown where Dante received his further education. Scientists who study history unanimously say that Dante Alighieri was very educated, knew a lot about the literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages, was well versed in various sciences and even studied heretical teachings. Where could Dante Alighieri have acquired such extensive knowledge? In the poet’s biography, this became another mystery that is almost impossible to solve.

For a long time, scientists from all over the world tried to find the answer to this question. Many facts suggest that Dante Alighieri could have acquired such extensive knowledge at the university, which was located in the city of Bologna, since it was there that he lived for some time. But, since there is no direct evidence of this theory, we can only assume that this is so.

First steps in creativity and trials

Like all people, the poet had friends. His closest friend was Guido Cavalcanti, who was also a poet. It was to him that Dante dedicated a huge number of works and lines of his poem “New Life”.

At the same time, Dante Alighieri became known as a fairly young public and political figure. In 1300 he was elected to the post of prior, but soon the poet was expelled from Florence along with his comrades. Already on his deathbed, Dante dreamed of being on native land. However, throughout his entire life after the expulsion, he was never allowed to visit the city, which the poet considered his homeland.

Years spent in exile

The expulsion of their hometown made Dante Alighieri, whose biography and books are filled with bitterness from separation from his native land, a wanderer. At the time of such large-scale persecution in Florence, Dante was already among the famous lyric poets. His poem “New Life” had already been written by this time, and he himself worked hard to create “The Feast”. Changes in the poet himself were very noticeable in his further work. Exile and long wandering left an indelible mark on Alighieri. His great work “The Feast” was supposed to be a response to the 14 canzones already accepted in society, but it was never completed.

Development in the literary path

It was during his exile that Alighieri wrote his most famous work, “Comedy,” which began to be called “divine” only years later. Alighieri's friend Boccaccio greatly contributed to the name change.

There are still many legends about Dante's Divine Comedy. Boccaccio himself claimed that all three cants were written in different cities. The last part, “Paradise,” was written in Ravenna. It was Boccaccio who said that after the poet died, his children for a very long time could not find the last thirteen songs that were written by the hand of the great Dante Alighieri. This part of the “Comedy” was discovered only after one of Alighieri’s sons dreamed of the poet himself, who told where the manuscripts were located. Such a beautiful legend is actually not refuted by scientists today, because there are a lot of oddities and mysteries surrounding the personality of this creator.

Personal life of the poet

In the personal life of Dante Alighieri, everything was far from ideal. His first and last love was the Florentine girl Beatrice Portinari. Having met his love in Florence, as a child, he did not understand his feelings for her. Having met Beatrice nine years later, when she was already married, Dante realized how much he loved her. She became the love of his life, inspiration and hope for a better future. The poet was shy all his life. During his life, he spoke only twice with his beloved, but this did not become an obstacle for him in his love for her. Beatrice did not understand, did not know about the poet’s feelings, she believed that he was simply arrogant, so he did not talk to her. This was precisely the reason that Portinari one day felt very resentful towards Alighieri and soon stopped talking to him altogether.

For the poet this was a strong blow, because it was under the influence of the very love that he felt for Beatrice that he wrote most of his works. Dante Alighieri's poem “New Life” was created under the influence of Portinari’s words of greeting, which the poet regarded as a successful attempt to attract the attention of his beloved. And Alighieri completely dedicated his “Divine Comedy” to his only and unrequited love for Beatrice.

Tragic loss

Alighieri's life changed greatly with the death of his beloved. Since at twenty-one, Biche, as the girl’s relatives affectionately called her, was married to a rich and influential man, it remains surprising that exactly three years after her marriage, Portinari suddenly died. There are two main versions of the death: the first is that Biche died during a difficult birth, and the second is that she was very ill, which ultimately led to death.

For Alighieri, this loss was very great. For a long time, not finding his place in this world, he could no longer feel sympathy for anyone. Based on the awareness of his precarious position, a few years after the loss of his beloved woman, Dante Alighieri married a very rich lady. This marriage was created solely for convenience, and the poet himself treated his wife absolutely coldly and indifferently. Despite this, in this marriage Alighieri had three children, two of whom eventually followed the path of their father and became seriously interested in literature.

Death of a great writer

Death overtook Dante Alighieri suddenly. In late summer 1321, Dante went to Venice to finally make peace with the famous Church of St. Mark. During his return to his native land, Alighieri suddenly fell ill with malaria, which killed him. Already in September, on the night of the 13th to 14th, Alighieri died in Ravenna without saying goodbye to his children.

Alighieri was buried there, in Ravenna. The famous architect Guido da Polenta wanted to build a very beautiful and rich mausoleum for Dante Alighieri, but the authorities did not allow this, because the poet spent a huge part of his life in exile.

Today, Dante Alighieri is buried in a beautiful tomb, which was built only in 1780.

The most interesting fact remains that the familiar portrait of the poet has no historical basis and reliability. This is how Boccaccio imagined him.

Dan Brown in his book "Inferno" writes a lot of biographical facts about Alighieri's life, which are actually recognized as reliable.

Many scientists believe that the beloved Beatrice was invented and created by time, that such a person never existed. However, no one can explain how, in this case, Dante and Beatrice could become a symbol of enormous and unhappy love, standing on the same level as Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde.

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 political life Florence, and after 4 years he becomes 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 June 1, 1265. full name which 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 very well read and smart person. 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 in his last years, to 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.

Italian literature

Dante Alighieri

Biography

Dante Alighieri (1265−1321), Italian poet. Born in mid-May 1265 in Florence. His parents were respectable townspeople 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 schooling, and subsequently allowed him, without worrying about money, 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 Biche, daughter of Folco Portinari) from the moment of their first meeting, when Dante was nine years old , and she is eight, and until Beatrice’s death in June 1290. The poems are accompanied by prose inserts explaining how a particular poem appeared. In this work, Dante develops the theory of courtly love for a woman, reconciling it with 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 expanded significantly. The poet’s expulsion from his native Florence played a decisive role in the fate and further work of Dante.

At that time, power in Florence belonged to the Guelph party, torn apart by an 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 with the white Guelphs. In 1295-1296 he was called up several times to public service, including participation in the Council of Art. In 1300, as an ambassador, he traveled to San Gimignano with an appeal to the citizens of the city to unite with Florence against Pope Boniface VIII and in the same year was elected a member of the governing council of priors, a position he held from June 15 to August 15. From April to September 1301 he again served on the Council of the Sta. In the autumn of the same year, Dante became part of 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 arrival of Charles, power in the city passed to the black Guelphs, and the white Guelphs were subjected to repression. In January 1302, Dante learned that he had been sentenced to exile in absentia 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 for “peacekeeping” purposes. Dante, who by that time had found temporary shelter in Casentino, responded to this event with an ardent letter to the rulers and peoples of Italy, calling for support for Henry. In another letter, entitled Florentine Dante Alighieri, unjustly expelled, to the wicked Florentines who remained in the city, he condemned the resistance shown 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 at 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 Carpentra, in which he urged them to elect an Italian as pope and return the papal throne from Avignon to Rome.

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

According to Dante himself, he wrote the treatise The Feast (Il convivio, 1304−1307) to declare himself as a poet who had moved from the glorification of courtly love to philosophical themes. It was assumed that the Symposium would include fourteen poems (canzones), each of which would be equipped with an extensive gloss interpreting its allegorical and philosophical meaning. However, having written interpretations of the three canzones, Dante left work on the treatise. In Pir's first book, which serves as a prologue, he ardently defends the right Italian language 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 talks about the Italian language as a means of poetic expression, sets out his theory of language and expresses hope for the creation of a new one in Italy literary language, which would rise above dialectal differences and would be worthy of being called great poetry.

In three books of a carefully substantiated study 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) God chose the Roman people to rule the world (hence this monarch should be the Holy Roman Emperor); 3) the emperor and pope receive power directly from God (hence, the first is not subordinate to the second). These views were expressed before Dante, but he brought to them the fervor of conviction. The Church immediately condemned the treatise and, according to Boccaccio, condemned the book to be burned.

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

It is believed that Dante began writing the Divine Comedy around 1307, interrupting work on the treatises The 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 system: on the one hand, as divinely pre-established, on the other, as having reached unprecedented decay in his contemporary society (“the current world has lost its way” - Purgatory, XVI, 82). The main theme of the Divine Comedy can be called justice in this life and in 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 Comedy because it has a dark beginning (Hell) and a joyful end (Paradise and the contemplation of the Divine essence), and, in addition, is written in a simple style (as opposed to the sublime style inherent, in Dante’s understanding, of tragedy), on the vernacular language “as women speak.” The epithet Divine in the title was not invented by Dante; it first appeared in a publication 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 cantics - Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, thirty-three songs in each; The first song of Hell serves as a prologue to the entire poem. The meter of the Divine Comedy is eleven syllables, the rhyme scheme, terza, was invented by Dante himself, who put deep meaning into it. The Divine Comedy is an unsurpassed example of art as an 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 God gave to all things.

In a letter to Can Grande, Dante explains that his poem has multiple meanings, 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 the literal sense alone, this is far from the only level of perception. The author of the poem is presented in it as a person who has been awarded special grace from God - to travel to the Lord through the three kingdoms of the underworld, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. This journey is presented in the poem as real, accomplished 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 reward determined by the Lord.

The sins punishable in Hell fall into three main categories: licentiousness, violence and lies; these are the three sinful tendencies that stem from Adam's sin. The ethical principles on which Dante's Hell is built, as well as his overall vision of the world and man, 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 Aristotle's major works were rediscovered and diligently studied.

Having passed through the nine circles of Hell and the center of the Earth, Dante and his guide Virgil emerge on 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 passed between Christ's placement 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 by Dante, now in the usual form of imitatio Christi.

Climbing the Mount of Purgatory, where the seven deadly sins are atoned for on seven ledges, Dante purifies himself and, having reached the top, finds himself in earthly Paradise. Thus, climbing the mountain is a “return to Eden,” the discovery of the lost Paradise. From this moment on, Beatrice becomes Dante's guide. Her appearance is the culmination of the entire journey; moreover, the poet draws an emphatic 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 forward movement, the center of which is the coming of Christ.

With Beatrice Dante rises through nine concentric celestial spheres(according to the structure of heaven in Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology), where the souls of the righteous live, to the tenth - the Empyrean, the abode of the Lord. There Beatrice is replaced by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who shows the poet saints and angels tasting the highest bliss: the direct contemplation of the Lord, satisfying all desires.

Despite such a variety of posthumous destinies, one principle can be identified that operates throughout the entire poem: retribution corresponds to the nature of sin or virtue inherent in a person during life. This can be seen especially clearly 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, “corrective” principle (the eyes of envious people are tightly sewn up). In Paradise, the souls of the righteous appear first in that sky, or celestial sphere, which better symbolizes the degree and nature of their merits (the souls of warriors live on Mars).

In the structure of the Divine Comedy, two dimensions can be distinguished: the afterlife as such and Dante’s journey through it, enriching the poem with a new deep meaning and bearing the main allegorical load. Theology in Dante's day, as before, believed that the mystical journey to God is possible during a person's lifetime, if the Lord, by His grace, gives him this opportunity. Dante builds his journey through the afterlife so that it symbolically reflects the “journey” of the soul in the earthly world. At the same time, he follows the patterns already developed in contemporary theology. In particular, it was believed that on the path to God the mind goes through three stages, guided by three various types light: the Light of Natural Intelligence, the Light of Grace and the Light of Glory. This is precisely the role played by Dante's three guides 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 intended by the Lord for humanity after the Fall. The same understanding of history was found in Dante’s treatise On the Monarchy and was expressed by Christian historians and poets (for example, Orsisius and Prudentius) a thousand years before Dante. According to this concept, God chose the Roman people to lead humanity towards justice, in which they achieved perfection under Emperor Augustus. It was at this time, when peace and justice reigned throughout the entire earth for the first time after the Fall, that the Lord wished to incarnate and send his beloved son to the people. With the appearance of Christ, the movement of humanity towards justice is thus 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 towards justice, so Virgil on the top of Mount Purgatory leads Dante to gain an inner sense of justice and, saying goodbye, addresses the poet as an emperor at a coronation: “I crown you with a miter and a crown.” Now, when justice has reigned in Dante’s soul, as it once was 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 an individual, achieving justice and then purifying grace, symbolically repeats the path of redemption traversed by humanity 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 Dante’s depiction of earthly life does not become ghostly and insubstantial because of this. The poem contains a whole gallery of living and vivid portraits, and the sense of the significance of earthly life, the unity of “this” and “this” world is expressed firmly and unambiguously in it.

Dante Alighieri was born in mid-May 1265 in Florence, Italy. He came from an old noble family. His parents were modest, respectable townspeople. They did not support the power of the German emperors in Italy. Parents paid schooling Dante, 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 story 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 expulsion from Florence.

Internal struggle in Florence, wars between Italian cities and intrigues of the papal entourage, accompanied by a decline in the moral authority of the church - all this led to Dante placing his hopes on the German emperor Henry VII, who entered Italy with his army in 1310. Henry seemed to Dante a peacemaker, the 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 places 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 Italian literature and European culture in general.

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

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 the 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 crusade 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, the natural sciences, and was familiar with the heretical teachings of that 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 new strength; 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 “ 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 (“at half life path") 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 a place in him along with questions of personal success. 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.

All afterworld turned out to be a completed building, the architecture of which was calculated in all details, 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.; the seven ledges of Purgatory and the 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 became spiritualized into a symbol, but in her reproaches to Dante among 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 program of the “Divine Comedy” covered the whole life and general questions of 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 way, lovingly addressing commentators close to Dante in time, who lived in the zone of his worldview or who adopted 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 Dictionary of Philosophy, Dante’s poetry “played big role in the design 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 the sophiology of V.S. Solovyov).”

When writing this article, material from Encyclopedic Dictionary 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).