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Dante Alighieri
1265-1321
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, political thinker and one of the great figures of world literature, who was admired for the depth of his spiritual vision and for the range of his intellectual accomplishment.
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Dante was born in Florence between late May and early June 1265, into a family
of the lower nobility. His mother died in his childhood, his father when
Dante was 18 years old.
The most significant event of his youth, according to his own account, was his meeting in 1274 with Beatrice, the woman whom he loved, and whom he exalted as the symbol of divine grace, first in La Vita Nuova (The New Life) and later in his greatest work La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy). Scholars have identified Beatrice with the Florentine noblewoman Beatrice Portinari, who died in 1290 aged barely 20. Dante caught sight of her on three occasions, but never spoke to her.
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Little is known about Dante's education, although his works reveal an erudition that encompassed nearly all the learning of his age. He was greatly influenced by the works of the Florentine philosopher and rhetorician Brunetto Latini, who appears as an important figure in The Divine Comedy.
| Dante is known to have been in Bologna about 1285, and he may have studied at the university there. During the political struggles that occurred in Italy at this time he initially supported the faction known as the Guelphs against the party known as the Ghibellines.
In 1289 he was with the Guelph army of Florence at the Battle of Campaldino, in which the Florentines triumphed decisively over the Ghibelline armies of Pisa and Arezzo. About this time he married Gemma Donati, a member of a prominent Florentine Guelph family.
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La Vita Nuova
Dante's first important literary work, La Vita Nuova, was written not long after
the death of Beatrice. It is composed of sonnets and canzoni woven
together with a prose commentary. The work narrates the course of Dante's
love for Beatrice, his premonition of her death in a dream, her actual death,
and his ultimate resolve to write a work that would be a worthy monument to her
memory. La Vita Nuova clearly exhibits the influence of the love poetry of
the Provençal troubadours and represents the finest work of the Dolce Stil Nuovo ("sweet new style") of contemporary Florentine vernacular
poetry. It transcends the Provençal tradition in that it not only
describes the poet's love in terms of a lofty idealism but suggests a spiritual
significance in the object of his adoration. La Vita Nuova, in its sustained
intensity of feeling, is one of the greatest verse sequences in European
literature.
During the next few years Dante was active in the turbulent political life of Florence. Records dating from 1295 indicate that he held several local offices in that year. He was sent on a diplomatic mission to San Gimignano in 1300 and later the same year was elected one of the six priors, or magistrates, of Florence, a post in which he served for only two months. The rivalry between the two factions within the Guelph Party of Florence, the Blacks, who saw in the pope an ally against imperial power, and the Whites, who were determined to remain independent of both pope and the Holy Roman emperor, became intense during Dante's tenure. At his urging, the leaders of both factions were exiled in order to preserve peace in the city.
Through the influence of Pope Boniface VIII, however, the leaders of the Blacks returned to Florence in 1301 and seized power. In 1302 they banned Dante from the city for a period of two years and fined him heavily. Failing to make payment, he was condemned to death should he ever return to Florence.
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Dante's exile was spent partly in Verona and partly in other northern Italian cities; he reached Paris between 1307 and 1309. His political beliefs underwent a pronounced conversion during this period.
Eventually embracing the cause of the Ghibellines, he hoped for the unification of Europe under the reign of an enlightened emperor.
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During the early years of his exile Dante wrote two important works in Latin. De Vulgari Eloquentia (Concerning the Common Speech, 1304-05) is a treatise on the uses and advantages of the Italian language. It defends the vernacular as a literary medium, attempts to establish certain criteria of good usage in written Italian, and concludes with a section devoted to criticism of Italian poetry. The unfinished Convivio (Banquet, c. 1304-07) was intended to be a digest, in 15 books, of all the knowledge of the time. The first book was to be introductory, and the remaining 14 were to take the form of commentary on 14 poems by Dante. Only the first 4 books, however, were completed.
Dante's political hopes were strongly aroused by the arrival in Italy in 1310 of Henry VII, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor. Henry's purpose was to bring Italy under his sovereignty in fact as well as in name. In a feverish burst of political activity, Dante wrote to many Italian princes and political leaders, urging them to welcome the emperor and entreating them to look upon Henry's suzerainty as a means of resolving the bitter strife among and within the Italian cities. Henry's death in Siena in 1313 brought Dante's hopes to an abrupt end. The Latin treatise De Monarchia (On Monarchy), probably written during the period of Henry's stay in Italy, is an exposition of Dante's political philosophy, including the need for a supranational Holy Roman Empire, as well as for complete separation of church and state.
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The Divine Comedy
Dante's epic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, was probably begun around 1307;
it was completed shortly before his death. The work is an allegorical narrative,
in verse of great precision and dramatic force, of the poet's imaginary journey
through hell, purgatory, and heaven. It is divided into three sections,
correspondingly named L'inferno, Il purgatorio, and Il paradiso. In each of
these three realms the poet meets with mythological, historical, and
contemporary personages. Each character is symbolic of a particular fault or
virtue, either religious or political; and the punishment or rewards meted out
to the characters further illustrate the larger meaning of their actions in the
universal scheme. Dante is guided through hell and purgatory by Virgil, who is,
to Dante, the symbol of reason. Beatrice, whom he regards as both a
manifestation and an instrument of the divine will, is his guide through
paradise.
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Vatican 1965. Dante's 700th birth anniversary.
| Each section contains 33 cantos, except for the first section,
which has, in addition, a canto serving as a general introduction. The poem is
written in terza rima (third rhyme), a three-line stanza rhyming aba, bcb, cdc,
etc.
Dante intended the poem for his contemporaries and thus wrote it in Italian rather than Latin. He named the poem La commedia (The Comedy) because it ends happily, in heaven, his journey climaxed by a vision of God and by a complete blending of his own will with that of the deity. The adjective divina (divine) was first added to the title in a 1555 edition. |
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Monaco 1966. Dante's 700th birth anniversary.
The work, which provides a summary of the political, scientific, and philosophical thought of the time, may be interpreted on four levels: the literal, allegorical, moral, and mystical. Indeed, part of the majesty of this work rests on its multiplicity of meaning even more than on its masterfully poetic and dramatic qualities.
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It is supreme as a dramatization of medieval Christian theology, but even beyond that framework, Dante's imaginary voyage can be understood as an allegory of the purification of one's soul and of the achievement of inner peace through the guidance of reason and love.
Scans by courtesy of Hans-Martin Leth. |
By the 15th century many Italian cities had established professorships for the study of The Divine Comedy; in the centuries following the invention of printing, almost 400 Italian editions were published. The poem has always inspired artists. Editions have appeared illustrated by the Italian masters Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo, the English artists John Flaxman and William Blake, and the French illustrator Gustave Doré. The Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky set parts of the poem to music, and it formed the subject of symphonies by the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and the Italian composer Giovanni Pacini. It has been translated into more than 25 languages. Among the many notable translations into English are verse renditions by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867), and, in the 20th century, by the English writer Dorothy L. Sayers and the American poet and critic John Ciardi.
Sources and links:
Microsoft Encarta 2002.
More Gothic artists on this site:
Giotto di Bondone (Italian Architect and Fresco Painter)
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