The philosophical meaning of Dante's divine comedy. "Divine Comedy" Analysis
The Divine Comedy took almost fourteen years to write. The very name "Comedy" goes back to purely medieval meanings: in the poetics of that time, any work with a sad beginning and a happy, happy ending was called tragedy, and not the dramatic specificity of the genre with the installation of a laughable perception. For Dante, it was a "comedy" (understood outside of connection with the dramatic canon - as a combination of the sublime with the ordinary and trivial), and besides, "swarm sacra" is a sacred poem that treats the revelations of unearthly existence. The epithet "Divine" was first used by Boccaccio, emphasizing her poetic perfection, and not at all religious content. It is under this name, which was established for the poem in the 16th century, shortly after Dante's death, that we get acquainted with the great work of the poet.
Commentators have worked hard to determine firm dates for the writing of the three cantiques of the Comedy. They are still controversial. There are only general considerations, prompted by the content of both "Hell" and "Purgatory".
When Hell was being written, Dante was completely impressed by the events associated with the exile. Even Beatrice, fleetingly named at the beginning of the poem and then mentioned 2-3 times more in connection with various episodes of wandering through the underworld, seemed to recede into the background. At that time, Dante was interested in politics, regarded from the point of view of the Italian commune. "Hell" saw off the poet's past, his Florentine happiness, his Florentine struggle, his Florentine catastrophe. Therefore, I somehow especially persistently want to look for the date of writing "Hell" in the period when Dante sheathed the sword raised against his hometown, broke with emigrants and went deep into thinking about what he experienced in the last two years of Florentine life and in the first five-year exile. Hell was supposed to be conceived around 1307 and would take 2 or 3 years of work.
Between "Hell" and "Purgatory" lay a large streak of scientific studies, which opened up the world of science and philosophy for Dante in a different way. While working on Purgatory, the identity of Emperor Henry VII was revealed. However, it was impossible to delay the interweaving of Beatrice's storyline. After all, the poem was intended as a glorification of her memory. It was in "Purgatory" that Beatrice was supposed to appear, bringing with her all the burden of complex theological symbolism, in order to take the place of Virgil, a pagan who was ordered to go to heaven. These three themes: political, scientific-philosophical and the theological-symbolic connected with Beatrice, determine, again approximately, the years of the emergence of the second kantika. It was to be started no later than 1313 and no earlier than 1311 and completed before 1317.
The first two kantiki were published when "Paradise" was not yet finished. It was completed shortly before the poet's death, but had not yet been published at the time of his death. The appearance of the lists of all three parts of the poem, consisting of 100 songs, refers to the years following the death of the poet.
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Federal Agency for Education
State educational institution
Higher professional education
Kama State Engineering and Economic Academy
Department "RiSo"
Test
in the discipline "History of World Literature"
on the topic: " Renaissance literature.
Dante Alighieri Divine Comedy ".
Completed: student of group 4197s
correspondence department
Nevmatullina R.S.
Checked by: teacher
department "RiSo"
Meshcherina E.V.
Naberezhnye Chelny 2008
Chapter 2. Dante Alighieri Divine Comedy
2.3 Purgatory
2.5 Dante's Way
Chapter 1. Literature of the Renaissance
The end of medieval civilization in the history of mankind is associated with a brilliant period of culture and literature, which is called the Renaissance. This is a much shorter era than antiquity or the Middle Ages. It is of a transitional nature, but it is the cultural achievements of this time that make us single out it as a special stage of the late Middle Ages. The revival gives the history of culture a huge constellation of true masters who left behind the greatest creations in science and art - painting, music, architecture - and in literature. Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci, Rabelais and Copernicus, Botticelli and Shakespeare are just a few random names of the geniuses of this era, often rightly called titans.
The intensive flowering of literature is largely associated with this period with a special attitude towards the ancient heritage. Hence the very name of the era, which sets itself the task of recreating, “reviving” the cultural ideals and values allegedly lost in the Middle Ages. In fact, the rise of Western European culture does not arise at all against the background of the previous decline. But in the life of the culture of the late Middle Ages, so much changes that it feels itself to belong to another time and feels dissatisfaction with the previous state of the arts and literature. The past seems to the Renaissance man as oblivion of the remarkable achievements of antiquity, and he undertakes to restore them. This is expressed in the work of the writers of this era, and in their very way of life.
Renaissance is a time when science is intensively developing and the secular worldview begins, to a certain extent, to suppress the religious worldview, or significantly changes it, prepares the church reformation. But the most important thing is the period when a person begins to feel himself and the world around him in a new way, often in a completely different way to answer the questions that have always worried him, or to pose other, difficult questions. Medieval asceticism has no place in the new spiritual atmosphere, enjoying the freedom and power of man as an earthly, natural being. From an optimistic conviction in a person's power, his ability to improve, there arises a desire and even a need to correlate the behavior of an individual, his own behavior with a kind of "ideal personality", a thirst for self-improvement is born. This is how a very important, central movement of this culture, which received the name "humanism", is formed in the Western European culture of the Renaissance.
It is especially important that the humanities at this time began to be valued as the most universal, that in the process of forming the spiritual image of a person, the main importance was attached to "literature", and not any other, perhaps more "practical" branch of knowledge. As the remarkable Italian poet of the Renaissance Francesco Petrarca wrote, it is “through the word that a human face becomes beautiful”.
In the Renaissance, the very way of thinking of a person also changes. Not a medieval scholastic dispute, but a humanistic dialogue, including different points of view, demonstrating the unity and opposition, the complex diversity of truths about the world and man, becomes a way of thinking and a form of communication for people of this time. It is no coincidence that dialogue is one of the popular literary genres of the Renaissance. The flowering of this genre, like the flowering of tragedy and comedy, is one of the manifestations of the attention of Renaissance literature to the ancient genre tradition. But the Renaissance also knows new genre formations: a sonnet in poetry, a short story, an essay in prose. Writers of this era do not repeat ancient authors, but on the basis of their artistic experience create, in essence, a different and new world of literary images, plots and problems.
The stylistic appearance of the Renaissance has a novelty and originality. Although cultural figures of this time initially sought to revive the ancient principle of art as “imitation of nature”, in their creative competition with the ancients they discovered new ways and means of such “imitation”, and later entered into polemics with this principle. In literature, in addition to the stylistic trend that bears the name of "Renaissance classicism" and which sets as its task to create "according to the rules" of ancient authors, "grotesque realism" is also developing based on the heritage of the humorous folk culture. Both the clear, free, figurative-stylistic flexible style of the Renaissance, and - at the later stages of the Renaissance - whimsical, sophisticated, deliberately complicated and emphatically mannered "mannerism". This variety of styles naturally deepens as the culture of the Renaissance evolves from its origins to its end.
In the process of historical development, the reality of the late Renaissance becomes more and more turbulent and restless. The economic and political rivalry of European countries is growing, the movement of the religious Reformation is growing, leading more and more often to direct military clashes between Catholics and Protestants. All this makes the contemporaries of the Renaissance more acutely feel the utopianism of the optimistic hopes of the Renaissance thinkers. No wonder the very word “utopia” (it can be translated from Greek as “a place that is nowhere”) was born in the Renaissance - in the title of the famous novel by the English writer Thomas More. A growing sense of disharmony in life, its contradictory nature, understanding of the difficulties of embodying the ideals of harmony, freedom, reason in it, ultimately leads to a crisis of the Renaissance culture. A presentiment of this crisis already appears in the works of the writers of the late Renaissance.
The development of the Renaissance culture takes place in different countries of Western Europe in different ways.
Revival in Italy. It was Italy that turned out to be the first country in which the classical culture of the Renaissance was born, which had a great influence on other European countries. This was also caused by socio-economic factors (the existence of independent, economically powerful city-states, the rapid development of trade at the crossroads between the West and the East), and the national cultural tradition: Italy was historically and geographically especially closely connected with ancient Roman antiquity. The culture of the Renaissance in Italy went through several stages: the early Renaissance of the XIV century. - this is the period of creativity of Petrarch - a scientist, humanist, but above all in the minds of a wide reader, a wonderful lyric poet, and Boccaccio - a poet and famous novelist. Mature and high Renaissance of the 15th century. - This is mainly the stage of "learned" humanism, the development of Renaissance philosophy, ethics, pedagogy. The literary works created during this period are now known most of all to specialists, but this is the time of the widespread dissemination of the ideas and books of Italian humanists throughout Europe. Late Renaissance - XVI century. - marked by the process of crisis of humanistic ideas. This is the time of realizing the tragedy of human life, the conflict between the aspirations and abilities of a person and the real difficulties of their embodiment, the time of a change in styles, a clear increase in manneristic tendencies. Among the most significant works of this time is Ariosto's poem Furious Orlando.
Revival in France. Humanistic ideas began to penetrate into France from Italy at the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. But the Renaissance in France was a natural, internal process. For this country, the ancient heritage was an organic part of its own culture. And yet, French literature acquired Renaissance features only in the second half of the 15th century, when socio-historical conditions arose for the development of the Renaissance. Early Renaissance in France - 70s XV century - 20s. XVI century This is the time of the formation in France of a new education system, the creation of humanistic circles, the publication and study of books by ancient authors. Mature Renaissance - 20-60s XVI century - the period of the creation of the collection of short stories by Margaret Navarskaya "Heptameron" (based on the "Decameron" by Boccaccio), the publication of the famous novel by Francois Rabelais "Gargantua" and "Pantagruel". Late Renaissance - late 16th century - this is, as in Italy, the time of the crisis of the Renaissance, the spread of Mannerism, but this is also the time for the work of the remarkable writers of the late Renaissance - the poets P. Ronsard, Waiting for Bellay, the philosopher and essayist M. Montaigne.
Revival in Germany and the Netherlands. In these countries, the Renaissance is not only distinguished by a later moment of birth than in Italy, but also by a special character: the “northern” humanists (as they usually call Renaissance figures in countries north of Italy) are distinguished by a greater interest in religious problems, a desire for direct participation in church reform activities. Printing and the development of the "university reformation" played a very important role in the development of the Renaissance culture in these countries. On the other hand, religious discussions and the movement of "Christian humanism" formed in the course of these discussions were no less important. Both German literature and the literature of the Netherlands sought to combine satire and edification, journalism and allegorism in their artistic appearance. Both literatures are also united by the figure of the remarkable humanist writer Erasmus of Rotterdam.
The English Renaissance began later than in other European countries, but it was extremely intense. For England, this was a time of both political and economic upsurge, important military victories and the strengthening of national identity. English culture actively absorbed the achievements of the Renaissance literature of other countries: they translate a lot here - both ancient authors and works of Italian, French, English writers, enthusiastically develop and transform national poetry and drama. The English culture of the Renaissance experienced a special rise in the so-called Elizabethan period - the years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603). During this period, a whole constellation of English writers appeared - the poets Spencer and Sidney, the prose writers Lily, Deloney and Nash, the playwrights Kid, Green, Marlowe. But the main brightest phenomenon of the theater of this era is the work of William Shakespeare, simultaneously the culmination of the English Renaissance and the beginning of the crisis of humanism, the harbinger of a new era.
Dante Divine Comedy Alighieri
Chapter 2. Dante Alighieri “Divine Comedy
Dante's majestic poem, which arose at the turn of two eras, captured the culture of the Western Middle Ages in its eternal images. She reflects all his "knowledge" with such completeness that contemporaries saw in her primarily a scholarly work. All the "passions" of humanity of that time breathe in the verses of "Comedies": both the passions of the inhabitants of the afterlife kingdoms, even after death, not extinguished, and the great passion of the poet himself, his love and hatred.
More than six centuries have passed since the appearance of The Divine Comedy. And yet Dante's poem breathes with such burning passion, such genuine humanity, that it still lives as a full-fledged creation of art, as a monument to a high genius.
National universal human unity based on disinterested fusion has passed more than six centuries since the appearance of the "Divine Comedies". And yet Dante's poem breathes with such burning passion, such genuine humanity, that it still lives as a full-fledged creation of art, as a monument to a high genius.
Dante Alighieri is a Florentine, a passionate patriot, expelled from the fatherland, slandered by triumphant enemies, unshakably convinced that he was right on the day of exile, and then, when, during his wanderings, having comprehended, as it seemed to him, the highest truth, he called to his Florence punishing thunder. This feeling determines the pathos of his poem, and much in it will remain dark for us if we do not know at least briefly the fate of its creator and the historical background against which his life passed.
National universal human unity, based on the disinterested fusion of individual wills and generating universal peace and personal freedom - this was the social ideal of the creator of the "Divine Comedy". And nothing contradicted this ideal so much as the historical reality that surrounded Dante Alighieri.
After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, swept away by waves of barbarian invasions, the Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Lombards, Frankish and German emperors, Saracens, Normans, French fought for the possession of Italy, replacing each other. As a result of this eight-century struggle, reflecting in different ways on the fate of individual regions of the Apennine Peninsula, Italy, by the time of Dante, lay shattered into pieces, engulfed in a fire of incessant wars and bloody feuds.
Italy, slave, hearth of sorrows,
In a great storm, a ship without a helm,
Not the lady of the peoples, but a tavern!
("Purgatory")
Italy, dismembered in this way, where individual parts competed and feuded with each other and civil strife raged in each city, continued to be the arena of a wider struggle, which has long been waged by the two main political forces of the Western Middle Ages - the empire and the papacy. As early as the 9th century, the papacy opposed the idea of the primacy of the church over the state to the claims of the empire for world domination, which in reality never materialized, proclaiming that the Roman high priest was higher than the emperor and kings and that they received their power from him. To substantiate their rights to secular domination, the pope referred to the forged letter of Constantine the Great, which the emperor, having adopted Christianity and transferring the capital to Byzantium, allegedly ceded Rome and the Western countries to Pope Sylvester. In the Middle Ages, there was no doubt about the authenticity of the "Gift of Constantine", and Dante considered it the greatest historical misfortune that gave rise to innumerable calamities.
The struggle between the empire and the papacy, which filled five centuries, reached particular acuteness in the 8th century, and all of Italy was divided into two hostile camps: the Ghibellines (adherents of the empire) and the Guelphs (supporters of the papacy).
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence. Like most of the poor nobles, the Alighieri were Guelphs, they went into exile twice, when the Ghibellines prevailed, they returned twice. Until his last hour, Dante lived as an exile.
The poet learned how woeful the lips are
A foreign hunk, how hard it is in a foreign land
Descend and ascend the stairs.
By this time, the great Florentine changed his mind and felt a lot. In his exile, as if from a lonely peak, he gazed wide distances: with sad eyes he looked from this height both at his native Florence, and at all of Italy, this "noblest region of Europe", and at the neighboring countries. Evil reigns everywhere, enmity blazes everywhere.
Pride, envy, greed are in our hearts
Three burning sparks that never sleep.
Dante went into exile as a White Guelph, but he soon saw that both the Guelphs, be they White or Black, and the Ghibellines only multiplied discord and confusion, putting their personal interests above the national and state interests:
Whose sin is worse cannot be weighed on the scales.
Dante thought his mournful thought on the threshold of the 14th century, that he saw around him only the political chaos of contemporary Italy, that, brought up on Virgil's "Aeneid", he childishly believed the tale of the world-power "golden Rome" and that at the same time he was a devout Catholic, but the Catholic is an idealist, deeply outraged by the order of the Roman church. The solution to the problem that arose before Dante was purely abstract, detached from historical reality and from historical possibilities. But such was the mentality of the great poet.
The years passed, the strife between the Whites and the Blacks faded into the past, and Florence saw in Dante no longer a renegade, but a great son, whom she was proud of. Enduring new storms, changing its way of life, it entered the Renaissance, in order to become for a long time the center of culture for all of Europe, the capital of arts and sciences.
The Divine Comedy contains all the knowledge available to the Western Middle Ages. Dante kept in his memory almost all the books that the scientific world of that time had at his disposal. The main sources of his erudition were: the Bible, church fathers, mystical and scholastic theologians, first of all Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle (in Latin translations from Arabic and Greek); philosophers and naturalists Arab and Western - Averroes, Avicenna, Albert the Great; Roman poets and prose writers - Virgil, whose "Aeneid" Dante knew by heart, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Cicero, Boethius, historians - Titus Livy, Orosius. Although for Dante Homer is “the head of the singers”, he did not read either him or other Greeks, because almost none of the then learned people knew the Greek language, and there were no translations yet. Dante got his astronomical knowledge mainly from Alfragan, the Arabic exponent of Ptolemy, of course, also in Latin translation.
In general, and in its parts, and in design, and in execution, "The Divine Comedy" is a completely original work, the only one in literature.
In his poem Dante creates a judgment on modernity, expounds the doctrine of the ideal social order, speaks as a politician, theologian, moralist, philosopher, historian, physiologist, psychologist, astronomer.
Thus, for the last time calling to the earth a past that never happened, "The Divine Comedy" ends the Middle Ages. It is fully embodied in it. Religion, science, and Dante's social ideal belong to the Middle Ages. His poem arose on the last facet of that era, which is reflected in it.
In the name of Dante, a new era opens in the literature of Western Europe. But he is not just a pioneer who, having done his job, is giving way to those coming to replace. His poetry withstood the onslaught of centuries, it was not washed away by the sweeping waves of the Renaissance, neoclassicism, romanticism. It proceeds from such depths of human feeling and possesses such simple and powerful methods of verbal expression that it remains for us, and will remain a living and effective art for a long time to come.
The cosmography of the Divine Comedies reproduces the Ptolemaic system of the universe, supplementing it with the views of medieval Catholicism and Dante's creative imagination.
2.1 Earth
In the center of the universe rests an immovable spherical earth. Three quarters of it is covered by the waters of the Ocean. It embraces the entire southern hemisphere and half of the northern. The other half of the northern hemisphere, and even then not all, is occupied by land, the so-called "inhabited quarter", which, according to Dante himself, has "approximately the appearance of a half moon" and extends from west to east, north to the Arctic Circle, and to the south to the equator. The eastern half of the land is formed by Asia, the western half by Europe and Africa, separated by the Mediterranean Sea. In the extreme east lies India, and in the middle of its eastern coast the Ganges flows into the Ocean, flowing from west to east. The mouth of the Ganges is synonymous with the eastern land limit. The western limit of the land is the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Dante synonymously denotes the far west by names: the strait where Hercules erected his borders, Seville, Ebro, Morrocco, Hades (city of Cadiz).
I saw there, beyond Hades, crazy
Ulysses way; here is the shore on which
Europe has become a burden.
(Ulysses' way - the Atlantic Ocean, where, having passed the Pillars of Hercules, you - sailed Ulysses (Odysseus) to perish). In the very middle of the land, at an equal distance from its eastern and western extremities and at the same distance from its northern southern shores, stands Jerusalem, the center of the inhabited world. Half the way from Jerusalem to the Pillars of Hercules (pillars) is Rome, the center of the Christian world. These were the views of medieval geography, and Dante follows them exactly.
2.2 Hell
Freely reworking both medieval beliefs and ancient legends, Dante, at his own discretion, created the Hell of the Divine Comedies. He owns both the general idea and the smallest details. This also applies to the structure of the underworld, and to those laws according to which the souls of sinners are distributed and punished in it.
Somewhere not far from the symbolic forest in which the poet got lost, there is the gate of Hell. It is located in the bowels of the Earth and represents a huge funnel-shaped abyss, which, narrowing downwards, reaches the center of the globe. Its slopes are surrounded by concentric ledges. These are the circles of Hell. All circles - nine, and the ninth is formed by the icy bottom of the hellish abyss. Above the first circle, at the level of the gate, between them and Acheron, (Greek river of sorrow.) I.e. outside of Hell itself, lies the region of the insignificant, from whom "both judgment and mercy have departed. Thus, there are ten of all sections of the underworld, as in the other two afterlife. The first circle of Hell is not a place of torment, but of eternal longing, Limb where babies who died without baptism and righteous people who did not know the Christian faith stay. In circles from the second to the fifth, those who sinned by not restraint are punished: voluptuous, gluttonous, miser (along with wasteful) and angry; in the sixth, heretics; in the seventh, rapists; in the eighth, the deceivers placed in ten "Evil Crevices"; in the ninth, the most vile of deceivers, traitors. Each category of sinners suffers a special punishment, which symbolically corresponds to his guilt. Each circle has its own guard or guardians; these are images of ancient myths, sometimes deliberately distorted by the poet: 1 - Charon, 2 - Minos, 3 - Cerberus, 4 - Plutos, 5 - Phlegius, 6 Furies and Medusa, 7 Minotaur, 8 Herion, 9 giants. In some areas - their own karktels: demons, centaurs, harpies, snakes, black bitches.
In the middle of the ninth circle, from the icy lake of Cocytus, the “tormenting power of the sovereign” rises up to his chest, the terrible Lucifer, once the most beautiful of the angels, who rose up against God and was cast down from heaven. He fell to the center of the Universe, i.e. to the center of the still uninhabited Earth from its southern hemisphere. The land that rose here, frightened by his approach, disappeared under the water and emerged from the waves in the northern hemisphere. Falling headlong, he pierced the thickness of the Earth and got stuck in its center. Above his head, gaping, expanding, is the hellish abyss formed at the moment of his fall, and above its gloomy vault, on the earth's surface, rises Mount Zion, Jerusalem, the place of redemption of mankind seduced by him. Lucifer's torso is sandwiched by stone and ice, and his legs, sticking out in an empty cave, face the southern hemisphere, where, just above his feet, the mountain of Purgatory rises from the ocean waves, the antipode of Zion, created from the earth, recoiling upward so as not to come into contact with the overthrown.
Here from heaven he once stuck;
The land that used to bloom above
Frozen by the sea, embraced by horror,
And passed into our hemisphere;
And here, perhaps, she jumped up the mountain,
And he remained in the hollow emptiness.
An underground passage winds from this cave to the foot of the saving mountain. Dante and Virgil will use it to ascend to "see the stars", but the inhabitants of Hell have no access here. The torment of sinners who have died without repentance lasts forever.
2.3 Purgatory
The doctrine of purgatory, which took shape in the Catholic Church by the 6th century, said that the most serious sin can be forgiven if the sinner repented of it; that the souls of such repentant sinners end up in purgatory, where they atone for their guilt in torment in order to gain access to paradise; and that the duration of their torment can be reduced by the prayers of pious people. It was believed that purgatory is located in the bowels of the Earth, next to hell, but not so deep. It was drawn to the imagination of believers in the most general outline, most often in the form of a cleansing fire.
That purgatory, which we read about in the "Divine Comedy", was completely created by the fantasy of Dante, who gave him a peculiar place in the Medieval system of the world. In the southern hemisphere, at a point diametrically opposite Jerusalem, the mountain of Purgatory rises from the ocean, the highest of the earthly mountains, inaccessible to the living. It looks like a truncated cone. The coastal strip and the lower part of the mountain form the Precleaning Place, where the souls of those who died under church excommunication and the souls of the negligent, who were slow to repentance, await access to the atoning torments. Above, there is a gate, guarded by an angel - a cleric, and above them - seven concentric ledges, encircling the upper part of the mountain. These are the seven circles of Purgatory proper, according to the number of deadly sins. These were considered: pride, envy, anger, despondency, avarice (along with extravagance), gluttony, voluptuousness. The punishment is proportionate to sin and consists in the implementation of the corresponding virtue. In every circle, the souls of sinners see, hear, or themselves recall edifying examples of the virtue that they neglected, and frightening examples of the sin of which they were guilty. Positive examples are always led by some act of the Virgin Mary. A steep staircase leads from each circle to the next, guarded by a radiant angel who admonishes the ascending soul by singing one of the Gospel Beatitudes.
On the flat top of the mountain, the desert forest of Earthly Paradise is green. Medieval geographers diligently dealt with the question of its location. It was believed that it is located somewhere in the extreme east, in an inaccessible country, beyond the mountains, seas or hot deserts. Dante is quite original, combining him with Purgatory and placing him in the southern hemisphere, at the top of the island opposite to Zion. The steep slopes of this island have become Purgatory since the time when Christ atoned for original sin by his death. Then the Heavenly Paradise first opened for righteous souls. Until that time, they stayed in Limbe, from where they were liberated by Christ. The souls of those who needed purification also stayed in the underworld: perhaps in Limbo, waiting for access to salvific torments, perhaps in the underground Purgatory. Dante does not explain this detail.
Earthly Paradise, after the fall of the first people, remained uninhabited. But here purified souls ascend from the ledges of the mountain, here they plunge into the waves of Lethe, washing away the memory of the good deed, and from here they ascend to Heavenly Paradise.
Thus, as in Hell, in Purgatory there are ten sections: the coastal strip, the Prehistory, the seven circles and the Earthly Paradise. After the Last Judgment over the living and the dead, Purgatory will become empty. Only Hell and Heavenly Paradise will last forever.
2.4 Paradise
In depicting above-ground spaces, Dante follows the views of the Middle Ages.
The motionless globe is surrounded by an atmosphere, which in turn is surrounded by a sphere of fire. Above the sphere of fire, there are nine revolving heavens concentric. Of these, the first seven are the heavens of the planets: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The eighth sky is the sky of stars. Each of these heavens is a transparent sphere, together with which the planet fortified in it moves or, as in the eighth heaven, the whole multitude of stars
These eight heavens are encompassed by the ninth, the Crystal sky, or the Prime Mover (more precisely: the first movable one), which carries them along in its rotation and endows them with the power of influence on earthly life.
Above the nine heavens of the Ptolemaic system, Dante, in accordance with church teaching, places the tenth, immobile Empyrean (Greek fiery), the radiant abode of God, angels and blessed souls, "the supreme temple of the world, in which the whole world is enclosed and outside of which there is nothing." Thus, in Paradise there are ten spheres, just as in Hell and in Purgatory there are ten circles each.
If in Hell and Purgatory Dante's journey, for all its extraordinary, resembled earthly wanderings, then in Paradise it is already taking place in a completely miraculous way. The poet, looking into the eyes of Beatrice, facing the height, ascends from sky to sky, and does not feel the flight itself, but only sees every time that the face of his companion has become even more beautiful.
Dante was about nine years old when he met little Beatrice Portinari, who also entered her ninth year. His whole life is illuminated by this name. He loved her with reverent love, and great was his grief when, already a married woman, she died at the age of twenty-five. The image of the "glorious mistress of his memories" was transformed into a mystical symbol, and on the pages of the "Divine Comedy" the transformed Beatrice, as the Highest Wisdom, as the Blessed Revelation, raises the poet to the comprehension of universal love.
Dante and Beatrice plunge into the bowels of each of the planets, and here the poet's eyes are one or another category of blessed souls: in the bowels of the Moon and Mercury - still retaining human outlines, and in other planets and in the stars - in the sky - in the form of radiant lights expressing their joy by the intensification of the light.
On the Moon he sees the righteous who have broken their vow, on Mercury - ambitious figures; on Venus - loving; on the Sun - wise men; on Mars - warriors for their faith; on Jupiter - fair; on Saturn - contemplators; in the starry sky - triumphant.
This does not mean that this or that planet is a permanent place of residence for these souls. They all live in Empyrean, contemplating God, and in Empyrean Dante will see them again, first in the form of fragrant flowers, and then sitting in white robes on the steps of the paradise amphitheater. On the planets, they appear to him only in order to, in relation to his human understanding, clearly show the degree of bliss bestowed upon them and tell about the secrets of Heaven and the fate of the Earth. Such a compositional technique allows the poet to imagine each of the heavenly spheres inhabited, like the circles of Hell and the ledges of Purgatory, and to give the description of the above-ground spaces a great variety.
Rising from the top of Mount Purgatory and circling the globe in his flight through the nine heavens, Dante ascends to Empyrean. Here, at the zenith of the Earthly Paradise, in the heart of the mystical Rose, his path ends.
2.5 Dante's Way
When the poet got lost in the dark forest of a sinful world, Beatrice descended from Empyrean to the hellish Limbus and asked Virgil to come to his aid. In order to know good and evil and find the way of salvation, Dante must go through three kingdoms beyond the grave, see the posthumous fate of people: the torment of sinners, the redemption of the repentant and the bliss of the righteous. The message with which he will return to Earth will be salutary for humanity. Virgil, the philosophical mind, will lead him through Hell and Purgatory up to Earthly Paradise, and further, in Heavenly Paradise, Beatrice, the Divine revelation, will become the poet's companion.
Dante timed his otherworldly journey to the spring of 1300. In the "gloomy forest" he is overtaken by the night from Holy Thursday to Friday, ie. from 7 to 8 April. On the evening of Good Friday, he enters the gates of Hell and the evening of Good Saturday reaches the center of the Earth, having spent twenty-four hours in Hell. As soon as he passed the center of the Earth and found himself in the bowels of the southern hemisphere, the time for him moved back twelve hours, and again the morning of Holy Saturday came. It took about a day to rise from the center of the Earth to the surface of the southern hemisphere, and Dante found himself at the foot of Mount Purgatory on Easter morning, April 10, before sunrise. The stay on the mountain of Purgatory lasted about three and a half days. On Wednesday, Easter week, April 13, at noon, Dante ascended from Earthly Paradise to the heavenly realms and reached Empyrean by noon Thursday, April 14. Thus, the total duration of his extraordinary journey can be considered equal to seven days.
Italian prose is no older than poetry. It arose shortly before the birth of Dante, in the sixties of the 13th century, and the same Dante should be considered its true founder. In "Novaya Zhizn" and in "The Pir" he gave samples of Italian prose speech, which determined its further development.
"Comedy" is the main fruit of Dante's genius. It is written in terzina - a three-line stanza. The plot scheme of "Comedy" is an afterlife wandering, as it was a very popular artistic motive among the classics: Lucan, Statius, Ovid, Virgil and others. The plot of the poem is literally understood - the state of mind after death; understood allegorically - this is a person who, by virtue of his inherent free will, is subject to justice, rewarding or punishing. If we talk about construction, the poem consists of three cantikas: "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise". Each kantika is divided into songs, and each song into terzins. The Comedy is a grandiose allegory. The magic of numbers, originating from the Pythagoreans, reinterpreted by scholastics and mystics, shines over its wonderful, almost incredible construction by precise calculation. The numbers 3 and 10 are given special meaning, and the poem is an infinitely varied version of numerical symbolism. The poem is divided into three parts. Each of them has 33 songs, 99 in total, along with 100 introductory songs; all numbers are multiples of 3 and 10. The stanza is a terzina, that is, a three-line verse, in which the first line rhymes with the third, and the second with the first and third lines of the next verse. Each edge ends with the same word - "luminaries". From the point of view of the initial meaning of the "Comedy", conceived as a poetic monument to Beatrice, the central point of the poem was to be the song where Dante first meets the "noblest". This is XXX Canto of Purgatory. The number 30 is simultaneously a multiple of 3 and 10. If you count in a row from the beginning, this song will be in order 64th; 6 + 4 = 10. Before her, 63 songs; 6 + 3 = 9. There are 145 verses in the song; 1 + 4 + 5 = 10. It has two central points. The first, when Beatrice, referring to the poet, calls him "Dante" - the only place in the whole poem where the poet put his name. This is verse 55; 5 + 5 = 10. Before him 54 verses; 5 + 4 = 9. After him 90 verses; 9 + 0 = 9. The second place, just as important for Dante, is where Beatrice first calls herself: “Look at me. This is me, this is me - Beatrice. " This is the 73rd verse; 7 + 3 = 10. And besides, this is the middle verse of the whole song. Before him and after him 72 verses each; 7 + 2 = 9. This game of numbers still baffles many commentators who tried to understand what secret meaning Dante put into it. There is no need to cite here various hypotheses of this mystery, it is worth mentioning only the main plot allegory of the poem.
"Halfway through earthly existence", on Good Friday of the "Jubilee" year 1300 - such is the fictitious date of the beginning of the wandering, which allowed Dante to become a prophet, where more, where less than ten years - the poet got lost in a dense forest. There, three animals attack him: a panther, a lion and a she-wolf. Virgil saves him from them, who was sent by Beatrice, who descended from paradise to limbo for this, so Dante fearlessly follows him everywhere. He leads him through the underground funnels of hell to the opposite surface of the globe, where the mountain of purgatory rises, and on the threshold of the earthly paradise transfers it to Beatrice herself. Together with her, the poet ascends higher and higher in the heavenly spheres and, finally, is rewarded with the beholding of the deity. A dense forest is a life complication of a person. Animals are his passions: the panther is sensuality, the lion is lust for power or pride, the she-wolf is greed. Virgil, saving from the beasts, is the mind. Beatrice is a divine science. The meaning of the poem is the moral life of a person: reason saves him from passions, and knowledge of theology gives eternal bliss. On the path to moral rebirth, a person passes through the consciousness of his sinfulness (hell), purification (purgatory) and ascension to bliss (paradise). In the poem, Dante's fantasy was based on Christian eschatology, so he draws the landscapes of hell and paradise on a canvas, and the landscapes of purgatory is the creation of his own imagination. Dante depicts hell as a huge funnel going to the center of the earth. Hell is divided into nine concentric circles. Purgatory is a mountain surrounded by the sea with seven ledges. In accordance with the Catholic doctrine of the posthumous fate of people, Dante portrays hell as a place of punishment for unrepentant sinners. In purgatory there are sinners who had time to repent before death. After cleansing trials, they move from purgatory to paradise - the abode of pure souls.
For posterity, "Comedy" is a grandiose synthesis of the feudal-Catholic worldview and an equally grandiose insight into a new culture. Dante's poem is a whole world, and this world lives, this world is real. The extraordinary formal organization of "Comedy" is the result of the use of experience, both classical and medieval poetics. The Comedy is primarily a very personal work. There is not the slightest objectivity in it. From the first verse, the poet talks about himself and does not leave the reader without himself for more than one moment. In the poem Dante is the main character, he, a man full of love, hate and passions. Dante's passion is what makes him close and understandable to people of all time. Describing the other world, Dante talks about nature and about people. The most characteristic feature of the rest of the images of "Comedy" is their drama. Each of the inhabitants of the underworld has its own drama, not yet outlived. They died long ago, but none of them forgot about the land. Dante's images of sinners are especially vivid. The poet is especially sympathetic to sinners condemned for sensual love. Grieving over the souls of Paolo and Francesca, Dante says:
"Oh, did anyone know
What a bliss and a dream, what a
They were led down this path!
Then turning a word to the silenced,
Said, "Francesca, your complaint
I will listen with tears, with compassion. "
Dante's skill is simplicity and tangibility, thanks to these poetic techniques we are attracted to "Comedy".
Dante placed the popes and cardinals in hell, among the covetous, deceivers, traitors. In Dante's denunciations of the papacy, the traditions of anti-clerical satire of the Renaissance were born, which will become a smashing weapon of humanists in the struggle against the authority of the Catholic Church. No wonder the church censorship now and then banned certain parts of the "Divine Comedy", and to this day, many of her poems cause the wrath of the Vatican.
Also in the "Divine Comedy" glimpses of a new view of ethics and morality are visible. Making his way through the deep thicket of theological casuistry, Dante is moving towards understanding the relationship between ethical and social. The ponderous scholastic reasoning of the philosophical parts of the poem is now and then illuminated by flashes of bold realistic thought. Dante calls money-grubbing "greed." The motive of denouncing greed sounded both in popular satire and in the accusatory sermons of the lower clergy. But Dante not only denounces. He tries to comprehend the social meaning and roots of this vice. “The Mother of Wickedness and Shame” calls Dante greed. Greed brings cruel social calamities: eternal strife, political anarchy, bloody wars. The poet denounces the servants of greed, seeks them for sophisticated torture. Reflecting in the denunciations of "greed" the protest of the poor, destitute people against the acquisitiveness of the mighty of the world, Dante looked deep into this vice and saw in it a sign of his era.
People were not always slaves to greed, she is the god of the new time, she was given rise to growing wealth, the thirst for possession of it. She reigns in the papal palace, built a nest for herself in the city republics, and settled in feudal castles. The image of a skinny she-wolf with a red-hot gaze - a symbol of greed - appears in The Divine Comedy from its very first lines and passes through the entire poem as an ominous ghost.
In the allegorical image of a lion, Dante condemns pride, calling it "the damned pride of Satan," agreeing with the Christian interpretation of this trait.
“... A lion with a raised mane came out to meet.
He stepped on as if on me,
From hunger, growling, furious
And the very air is numb with fear. "
While denouncing Satan's pride, Dante nevertheless accepts the proud self-consciousness of man. So, the theologian Capaneus evokes Dante's sympathy:
“Who is this, tall, so gloomy lies,
Disdaining the fire scorching from everywhere.
And the rain, I see, does not soften him.
And he, realizing that I wonder how miracle,
His pride, he answered shouting:
"As I lived, so in death I will be!"
Such attention and sympathy for pride marks a new approach to personality, its emancipation from the spiritual tyranny of the church. The proud spirit of the ball is inherent in all the great artists of the Renaissance and Dante himself in the first place.
But not only betrayal, greed, deceit, sinfulness and ruin affects "Comedy", but also love, because the poem is dedicated to Beatrice. Her image lives in "Comedy" as a bright memory of the great, unique love, of its purity and inspiring power. In this image, the poet embodied his quest for truth and moral perfection.
Also "Comedy" is called a kind of chronicle of Italian life. The history of Italy appears in the "Divine Comedy", first of all, as the history of the political life of the poet's homeland, in deeply dramatic pictures of the struggle of warring parties, camps, groups and in the amazing human tragedies generated by this struggle. From song to song, a tragic scroll of Italian history unfolds in the poem: urban communes on fire of civil wars; the age-old enmity between Guelphs and Ghibellines, traced back to its very origins; the whole history of the Florentine feud between "whites" and "blacks" from the moment of its inception until the day when the poet became a homeless exile ... Fiery, indignant passion is irresistibly torn from every line. The poet brought to the kingdom of shadows everything that burned him in life - love for Italy, irreconcilable hatred for political opponents, contempt for those who doomed his homeland to shame and ruin. In the poem, the tragic image of Italy appears, seen through the eyes of a wanderer, who proceeded to all her land, scorched by the fire of bloody wars:
Italy, slave, hearth of sorrows,
In a great storm, a ship without a helm,
Not the lady of the peoples, but a tavern!
And you can't live without war
Yours are alive, and they squabble,
They are surrounded by one wall and a moat.
You, unhappy, should look back.
To your shores and cities:
Where are peaceful abodes to be found?
(Purgatory, Canto VI)
And yet interest in a person; to its position in nature and society; understanding of his spiritual impulses, recognition and justification of them - the main thing in "Comedy". Dante's judgments about man are free from intolerance, dogmatism, and one-sided scholastic thinking. The poet did not come from dogma, but from life, and his person is not an abstraction, not a scheme, somehow it was in medieval writers, but a living personality, complex and contradictory. His sinner can be righteous at the same time. In the "Divine Comedy" there are many such "righteous sinners", and these are the most lively, most humane images of the poem. They embodied a broad, truly humane view of people - the view of a poet who cherishes everything human, who knows how to admire the strength and freedom of the individual, the inquisitiveness of the human mind, who understands the thirst for earthly joy and the torment of earthly love.
The basis of Dante's poem is the recognition by humanity of their sins and the ascent to spiritual life and to God. According to the poet, in order to gain peace of mind, it is necessary to go through all the circles of hell and abandon the blessings, and atone for sins with suffering. Each of the three chapters of the poem includes 33 songs. "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise" are the eloquent names of the parts that make up the "Divine Comedy". The summary makes it possible to comprehend the main idea of the poem.
Dante Alighieri created a poem during the years of exile, shortly before his death. She is recognized in world literature as a work of genius. The author himself gave her the name "Comedy". So in those days it was customary to call any work that had a happy ending. "Divine" Boccaccio called her, thus giving the highest mark.
Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy", a summary of which schoolchildren pass in the 9th grade, is hardly perceived by modern adolescents. A detailed analysis of some of the songs cannot give a complete picture of the work, especially given the current attitude towards religion and human sins. However, acquaintance, albeit an overview, with Dante's work is necessary to create a complete picture of world fiction.
"The Divine Comedy". Summary of the chapter "Hell"
The protagonist of the work is Dante himself, to whom the shadow of the famous poet Virgil appears with a proposal to make a journey through Dante at first he doubts, but agrees after Virgil informs him that Beatrice (the author's beloved, by that time long dead ).
The characters' path begins from hell. In front of the entrance to it there are pitiful souls who during their lifetime did not do either good or evil. Outside the gate runs the Acheron River, through which Charon ferries the dead. Heroes approaching the circles of hell:
Having passed all the circles of hell, Dante and his companion went upstairs and saw the stars.
"The Divine Comedy". Summary of the "Purgatory" part
The main character and his guide end up in purgatory. Here they are met by the guardian Cato, who sends them to the sea to wash. The companions go to the water, where Virgil washes away the soot of the underworld from Dante's face. At this time, a boat comes up to the travelers, which is ruled by an angel. He lands on the shore the souls of the dead who did not go to hell. With them, the heroes make a journey to the mountain of purgatory. On the way, they meet Virgil's fellow countryman, the poet Sordello, who joins them.
Dante falls asleep and in a dream is transported to the gates of purgatory. Here the angel writes seven letters on the poet's forehead, denoting the Hero goes through all the circles of purgatory, clearing himself of sins. After passing each circle, the angel erases the letter of overcome sin from Dante's forehead. On the last lap, the poet needs to go through a flame of fire. Dante is afraid, but Virgil convinces him. The poet passes the test by fire and goes to paradise, where Beatrice awaits him. Virgil falls silent and disappears forever. The beloved washes Dante in the sacred river, and the poet feels how forces are pouring into his body.
"The Divine Comedy". Summary of the "Paradise" part
The beloved ascend to heaven. To the surprise of the protagonist, he was able to take off. Beatrice explained to him that souls not burdened by sins are light. Lovers go through all heavenly heaven:
- the first sky of the moon, where the souls of nuns are;
- the second is Mercury for the ambitious righteous;
- the third - Venus, the souls of the loving ones rest here;
- the fourth is the Sun, intended for the sages;
- fifth, Mars, which receives warriors;
- the sixth is Jupiter, for the just souls;
- seventh - Saturn, where the souls of the contemplators are;
- the eighth is for the spirits of the great righteous;
- ninth - here are the angels and archangels, seraphim and cherubim.
After ascending to the last heaven, the hero sees the Virgin Mary. She is among the shining rays. Dante lifts his head up into a bright and blinding light and finds the highest truth. He sees the deity in his trinity.
The Divine Comedy is an immortal work with a philosophical meaning. In three parts, a plot is revealed about the purpose of love, the death of a beloved and universal justice. In this article we will analyze the poem "The Divine Comedy" by Dante.
The history of the creation of the poem
Analysis of the composition of the "Divine Comedy"
The poem consists of three parts, called borders. Each such cante has thirty-three songs. One more song was added to the first part, it is a prologue. Thus, there are 100 songs in the poem. The poetic meter is tertsin.
The main character of the work is Dante himself. But, when reading the poem, it becomes clear that the image of the hero and the real person are not the same person. Dante's hero resembles a contemplator who only observes what is happening. He is different in character: irascible and compassionate, angry and helpless. This technique is used by the author in order to show the full range of emotions of a living person.
Beatrice is the supreme wisdom, a symbol of goodness. She became his guide to various areas, showing love in all forms. And Dante, being captivated by the forces of love, obediently follows her, wanting to achieve heavenly wisdom.
In the prologue, we see Dante at 35, who stands at the crossroads of his life. An associative array is created: the season is Spring, he met Beatrice in the spring too, and God's world was created in the spring. The animals he meets on his way are symbolic of human vices. For example, the lynx is voluptuousness.
Dante shows through his hero both his own tragedy and the global one. Reading the poem, we see how the hero is discouraged, resurrected and seeks consolation.
He also meets sleepy crowds. These people did not do either good or bad deeds. They look lost amid two worlds.
Description of the circles of Hell Dante
Analyzing the poem "The Divine Comedy", one can see that Dante's innovation is encountered even when he passes through the first circle of Hell. The best poets languish there together with old people and babies. Such as: Verligius, Homer, Horace, Ovid and Dante himself.
The second circle of Hell is opened by a half-dragon. How many times will he wrap a man with his tail in that circle of Hell and he will get.
The third circle of Hell is stifled torment, which is more terrible than earthly ones.
In the fourth circle, there are Jews and profligates, whom the author has endowed with the epithet "vile".
In the fifth circle, angry people are imprisoned, for whom no one feels pity. After that, the path to the city of devils opens.
Passing through the cemetery, the path opens into the sixth circle of Hell. All political haters live in it, among them there are people who burn alive.
The worst circle of Hell is the seventh. There are several stages in it. Murderers, rapists, suicides suffer there.
The eighth circle are deceivers and the ninth circle are traitors.
With each circle, Dante opens up and becomes more realistic, rough and reasonable.
We see a significant difference in the image of Paradise. It is fragrant, the music of the spheres sounds in it.
Summing up the analysis of Dante's Divine Comedy, it is worth noting that the poem is filled with allegories that allow us to call the work symbolic, biographical, philosophical.