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Early
Years
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.
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 in 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
(see Guelphs and 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. At about this
time he married Gemma Donati, a
member of a prominent Florentine
Guelph family.
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.
Dante's
Political Life
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 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.
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.
During
the early years of his exile
Dante wrote two important works
in Latin. De vulgari eloquentia
(Concerning the Common Speech,
1304-1305) 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 Il
convivio (The Banquet, c.
1304-1307) 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 (c. 1313,
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.
Last
Years
In
1316 the city of Florence invited
Dante to return, but the terms
offered him were those generally
reserved for pardoned criminals.
Dante rejected the invitation,
maintaining that he would never
return unless he were accorded
full dignity and honour. He
continued to live in exile,
spending his last years in
Ravenna, where he died on
September 13 or 14, 1321, and was
buried. His remains have been
kept there despite appeals over
the centuries from the
Florentines, who have maintained
a cenotaph for him in the Church
of Santa Croce.
Among
the minor works written during
the last years of Dante's life
are the Quaestio de acqua et
terra (Question of Water and of
Earth) and two Latin eclogues.
The former is a cosmological
treatise, in Latin, dealing with
a matter of great concern to
contemporary thinkers: whether
the surface of the sea or of any
body of water is higher at any
point than the surface of the
Earth. The eclogues are modelled
after those of the Roman poet
Virgil, whom Dante considered one
of the most important influences
on his thought.
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.
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. (see
Versification). 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.
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. 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.
Influence
and Inspiration
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 Italian
composer Gioacchino Antonio
Rossini and the German composer
Robert Schumann set parts of the
poem to music, and it formed the
subject of a symphonic poem by
the Hungarian composer Franz
Liszt. 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.
The
work of modern poets throughout
the world has been inspired by
Dante and imbued with Dantean
imagery, especially that of Ezra
Pound and T. S. Eliot, Gabriele
D'Annunzio, Paul Claudel, and
Anna Akhmatova.
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