Bibliography
(1265-1321)
Born in the middle of May 1265 in Florence. His parents were respectable citizens modest means and belonged to the Guelph party, which opposes the power Germanic emperors in Italy. They were able to pay for training her son at school, and later allowed him, not caring about the means, to perfect the art of versification
. Presentation of the youth of the poet gives his autobiographical novel in verse and prose of the New Life (La vita nuova, . 1293), . telling about the love of
Dante for Beatrice (considered, . it was Beach, . daughter of Folco Portinari) since the first meeting, . when
Dante was nine years, . and her eight, . until the death of Beatrice in June 1290,
. Lyrics accompanied by prose insertions, explaining how this or that appeared poem. In this work,
Dante develops the theory of courtly love to a woman reconciling it with Christian love for God. After the death of
Dante's Beatrice turned to the consolation of philosophy and created several allegorical poem in praise of this new 'Ladies'. Over the years of scientific studies significantly expanded his literary horizons. Decisive role in the fate and future work of the poet
Dante played exile from his native Florence.
While power in Florence, belonged to the Guelph party, riven by inner struggle between the white Guelphs (pro-independence Florence from the Pope) and the black Guelphs (supporters of papal authority).
Dante's sympathies were with the White Guelphs. In 1295-1296 he had several times called on the public service, including participation in the Council of a Hundred. In 1300 he went as an ambassador to San Gimignano calling on citizens to join with the city of Florence against Pope Boniface VIII and in the same year was elected a member of the Governing Board of priors - a post he held from June 15 to August 15,
. From April to September 1301 he again entered the Council of a Hundred. In the autumn of that year,
Dante joined the embassy sent to Pope Boniface in connection with the attack on Florence, Prince Charles of Valois. In his absence, 1 November 1301, with the arrival of Karl power in the city turned to the black Guelphs and White Guelphs were repressed. In January 1302
Dante learned that in absentia was sentenced to exile on trumped-up charges of bribery, malfeasance, and resistance to the Pope and Charles of Valois, and did not return to Florence.
In 1310 Emperor Henry VII entered Italy with 'peace' to. In the event of
Dante, who found that time a temporary shelter in Kazentino, responded passionate letter to the governor and people of Italy, calling for support of Henry. In another letter, entitled Florentine
Dante, unjustly exiled, wicked Florentines, remaining in the city, he condemned the resistance shown to Florence Caesar. Probably, at the same time, he wrote a treatise on monarchy (De monarchia, 1312-1313). However, in August 1313, after an unsuccessful three-year campaign, Henry VII died suddenly in Buonkonvento. In 1314 after the death of Pope Clement V in France,
Dante made a further letter addressed to the Italian cardinals conclave in Carpentras, which urged them to elect an Italian pope, and return the papacy from Avignon to Rome.
For some time,
Dante found refuge with the ruler of Verona Kang Grande della Scala, who has devoted the final part of the Divine Comedy - Paradise. The last years of his life the poet lived under the patronage of Guido da Polenta in Ravenna, where he died in September 1321, completed shortly before his death Divine Comedy.
Only part of his early poems of
Dante entered into a new life. Besides these, he wrote several allegorical canzone, which is probably intended to include in the feast, as well as many lyrical poems. Subsequently, all these poems were published under the title Poems (Rime), or Kantsonere (Canzoniere), though
Dante himself was not such a compendium. This also should include the playfully insulting sonnets (tentsony), whom
Dante exchanged with his friend Forese Donati.
According to
Dante, the treatise Feast (Il convivio, 1304-1307), he wrote to express himself as a poet, moved from singing to the courtly love of philosophical topics. It was assumed that the feast will consist of fourteen poems (canzone), each of which will be supplied with an extensive glossa, pushing her allegorical and philosophical significance. However, writing the interpretation of the three canzoni,
Dante left work on the treatise. In the first book, Feast, which serves the prologue, he passionately defends the right of the Italian language be the language of literature. A treatise in Latin on national rhetoric (De vulgari eloquentia, 1304-1307) also was not finished:
Dante only wrote the first book and part of the second. It speaks of
Dante in Italian as a means of poetic expression, . expounds his theory of language and hopes to create a new literary language of Italy, . who would stand up over the dialectal differences and would be worthy to be called great poetry,
. In three books carefully informed about the study of the monarchy (De monarchia, . 1312-1313)
Dante seeks to prove the truth of the following statements: 1) only under the authority of the monarch of the universal humanity can come to a peaceful existence and fulfill his destiny, and 2) God has chosen the Roman people, . that he ruled the world (hence, . that the monarch must be Holy Roman Emperor), and 3) the emperor and the pope receive power directly from God (and therefore, . the first is not subordinated to the second),
. These views were expressed to
Dante, but he has brought to their passion of belief. Church immediately condemned the treatise and, according to Boccaccio, was sentenced to a book burning.
In the last two years of life of
Dante wrote in Latin hexameters two eclogues. This answer was Professor of Poetry at the University of Bologna, Giovanni del Virgilio, who urged him to write in Latin, and come to Bologna for the crowning with a laurel wreath. A study on water and land (Questio de aqua et terra), dedicated to the deeply controversial issue of the relationship between water and land on the surface of the Earth,
Dante, perhaps publicly read in Verona. Letters
Dante authentic recognized eleven, all in Latin (some were mentioned).
It is believed that
Dante's Divine Comedy set to about 1307, interrupting his work on the treatises Feast (Il convivio, 1304-1307) and on the national rhetoric (De vulgari eloquentia, 1304-1307). In this work he wanted to present a dual thou shalt put the socio-political system: on the one hand, . as a divinely pre -, . the other - both reached the unprecedented expansion in contemporary society ( 'the present 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 funds for its restoration, cast, according to God's providence, in the hands of the man himself
.
Dante called his poem a comedy, . because it has a dismal start (Hell) and a joyful end (Paradise and the contemplation of the divine essence), . and, . besides, . written in simple style (in contrast to the sublime style, . inherent, . in the understanding of
Dante, . tragedy), . in the vernacular, . 'some say women',
. Divine Epithet "in the title is not invented by
Dante, the first time he appeared in an edition in 1555 in Venice.
The poem consists of one hundred songs about the same length (130-150 lines) and is divided into three edging - Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, for thirty-three songs each, the first song of Hell is the prologue to the entire poem. The size of the Divine Comedy - odinnadtsatislozhnik, rhyme scheme, terza rima, invented by
Dante, invested in her a deep sense. The Divine Comedy - an unsurpassed example of art as imitation, for example
Dante takes all things, both material and spiritual, created the triune God, which left its imprint on all of its trinity. Therefore, based on the structure of the poem is the number three, and a wonderful symmetry of its structure rooted in the imitation degree and order, which the Lord has given all things.
In a letter to Can Grande,
Dante explains that his poem ambiguous, it is like an allegory of the Bible. Indeed, the poem has a complex allegorical structure, and although the story is almost always able to keep only one literal sense, this is not the only level of perception. The author of the poem is presented in it like a man who received special grace of God - a journey to the Lord through the three kingdoms of the world beyond the grave, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. This journey is represented in the poem as a real, committed by
Dante in the flesh and in reality, and not in a dream or vision. In the world beyond the poet sees a variety of state of souls after death, in accordance with the reward, a certain Lord.
The sins for which you are punished in Hell, are divided into three main categories: lack of discipline, violence and lies: it is three sinful inclinations, derived from the sin of Adam. Ethical principles on which the
Dante's Inferno, as in general, his vision of the world and man, is a fusion of Christian theology and pagan ethics based on Aristotle's Ethics.
Dante's views are not original, they were circulated in an era when the major works of Aristotle were rediscovered and diligently studied.
Passing through the nine circles of Hell and the center of the Earth,
Dante and his guide Virgil emerges at the foot of Mount Purgatory, located in the southern hemisphere, on the opposite edge of the Earth from Jerusalem. Convergence in the hell took them exactly the same time, . how much has passed between the position of Christ in the tomb and his resurrection, . and the initial songs Purgatory abound indications, . how the action of the poem echoes the feat of Christ, . - Another example of imitation of
Dante, . now in the usual form of imitatio Christi,
.
Sunrise on the mountain of Purgatory, where the seven terraces will swim the seven deadly sins,
Dante cleared himself, and reaching the top, is in an earthly paradise. Thus, the ascent of the mountain - is 'return to Eden', finding a lost paradise. Since then, becomes a conductor
Dante Beatrix. Her appearance is the culmination of the trip, moreover, a poet shall emphasize the analogy between the arrival of Beatrice and the coming of Christ - in history, in soul and in the end times. Here is an imitation of the Christian concept of history as a linear translational motion, the center of which forms the coming of Christ.
From
Dante's Beatrice rises through the nine concentric celestial spheres (according to the device of the sky in the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology), which inhabit the souls of the righteous, to the tenth - Emporium, abode of Lord. It replaces Beatrice St.. Bernard of Clairvaux, which shows the poet saints and angels, partaking of the highest bliss: the direct contemplation of the Lord, soothes all desires.
Despite this diversity of postmortem fate, you can select one principle, operating throughout the poem: reward corresponds to the nature of sin or virtue inherent in human life. This is seen most clearly in Hell (instigators of discord and the schismatics had cut it in half). Purification of the soul in Purgatory is subject to somewhat different, 'correcting' principle (envious eyes tightly sewn). In Paradise the souls of the righteous first appear on the sky or the celestial sphere that best symbolizes the extent and nature of their services (the souls of warriors live on Mars).
Within the Divine Comedy are two dimensions: the afterlife, as such, and the trip to her
Dante, enriches the poem to new depth and meaning of bearing the main burden allegorical. Theology in the days of
Dante, as before, believed that a mystical journey to God possible, and if a person's life, if God in His mercy will give him this opportunity.
Dante builds his journey through the world beyond the grave so that it is emblematic of 'journey' of the soul in the earthly world. He should be the models have already worked out in contemporary theology. In particular, it was thought that the way to God the mind goes through three stages, driven by three different types of light: The light of natural reason, the Light of Grace and Light of Glory. It is this role in the Divine Comedy by
Dante, three wire.
The Christian concept of time lies not only in the center of the poem: all of the action until the arrival of Beatrice is intended to reflect the fact that
Dante understood as a way of redemption, God predestined for humanity after the Fall. This same understanding of history meets
Dante in his treatise on monarchy and expressed by Christian historians and poets (eg, Orsisiem and Prudentius) is a thousand years before
Dante. According to this concept, God has chosen the Roman people to make that led humanity to justice, what he has achieved perfection under Augustus. It was at this time when the whole earth, for the first time since the fall, there was peace and justice, God became man and wished to send to the people of his beloved son. With the advent of Christ, thus, concludes the movement of humanity for justice. It is easy to trace an allegorical reflection of this concept in the Divine Comedy. As the Romans under Augustus led the human race for justice, . so Virgil on top of Mount Purgatory,
Dante leads to the attainment of inner sense of justice and, . farewell, . drawn to the poet, . as to the emperor at his coronation: 'I'm over by you and you are crowned with a miter crown',
. Now, when the soul of
Dante, as once the world, justice prevailed, there is Beatrice, and her appearance is a reflection of Christ's coming, as it was, is and will. So the path traversed by the soul of the individuals reaching justice, and then - the cleansing grace, symbolically repeats the path of redemption, traversed by mankind throughout history.
This allegory of the Divine Comedy obviously intended for the readers of the Christian, whose interest as a description of the afterlife, and
Dante's journey to God. But the image of the earthly life of
Dante is not from this ghostly and ethereal. The poem is given a gallery of living and vivid portraits, a sense of the importance of earthly life, unity 'that' and 'this' world expressed in her firmly and unequivocally.
