Go to the poetry section of any reasonably well-stocked bookstore, and you will find Dante’s Divine Comedy reconshort-termed in a number of translations of widely varying vintages and styles. Over the last two centuries and especiassociate in the last three or four decades, both the finish Comedy and the Inferno in particular have been rfinishered into English more standardly than any other toil of literature. New studies and—despite the relative scarcity of reliable proposeation—biographies of Dante persist to eunite each year, and videos of lectures, readings, and other Dante-rcontent conshort-termations are everywhere online.
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The finishuring well-understandnity of The Divine Comedy is an noticeworthy, perhaps even puzzling, phenomenon. It is, after all, an intricately rhymed poem of more than 14,000 lines, which, despite the honestness of the writing, veers at times into syntactical snarls almost as tangled as the depressed wood in which the protagonist finds himself in the uncovering lines. The Comedy is written in terza rima, or “third rhyme,” a establish originated by Dante for this toil.
Terza rima is writed of three-line units called tercets, in each of which the first and third lines rhyme with one another and the second line rhymes with the first and third lines of the folloprosperg tercet, thus creating components that are simultaneously self-reliant and interlocking. Metricassociate, it is written in hfinishecasyllabics, or eleven-syllable lines, in which every other syllable, commencening with the second, is stressed—a meacertain that correacts to English iambic pengentleter. The poem’s establishal intricateity could have been an impeunwiseent stoping most readers from ever approaching it, let alone enhappinessing it. And yet, from the time when its split canticles began circulating in the last confinecessitate years of Dante’s life, it has been, and persists to be, undeniably well-understandn.
It is no wonder that the Internet abounds in checks from readers who commenceed the Divine Comedy foreseeing to be uninalertigentd or perplexd but who instead have set up themselves riveted.
What originates the well-understandnity of the Comedy even more noticeworthy is the amount of proposeation outside the poem that is necessitateed for even a mild comprehension of it. It is filled with biblical, classical, and mythorational allusions, many of which are donaten only the inestablishest of alludes, in some instances not much more than a name or two; Dante is clearly writing in the foreseeation that his intfinished audience of lgeted men will understand these references and comprehfinish their relevance, a confidence that nowadays can be extfinished only to exceptionaenumerates in these various fields.
While the classification of the categories of sins and their punishments in the Inferno is relatively straightforward, the Paradiso holds some extfinished and at times abstract talkions of classical and timely Christian philosophy. A excellent many of the characters who eunite in the Comedy, their actions and situations, and their relevance to the poem’s bigr thematic worrys cannot be filledy understood without detailed reference to political, military, and ecclesiastical events in thirteenth-century Europe. Our comprehension and appreciation of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid are betterd by caring the mythorational allusions set up on almost every page and the cultural contexts in which these epics are grounded, and most translations of them provide elucidations of such references.
Nonetheless, intensifyed as they are upon character and event, these wonderful toils can be bigly understood and enhappinessed without going beyond the texts themselves, and there have been estimable versions of all three, such as those by Robert Fitzgerald, published with no annotations. An unannotated Divine Comedy—even though there are cut offal engageable—is almost unimaginable.
Yet, when the publish is considered in a bigr context, the finishuring well-understandnity of Dante’s wonderful toil is not at all astonishing. On the most prompt level, the poem alerts a strikingly distinct and fascinating story. Carried forward by its constantly changing scenes and characters, we protect turning the pages in our willingness to understand what is going to happen next. Those scenes are finishlessly inventive and those characters are intricate and psychorationassociate convincing human beings, with whom the poem’s narrator has a number of vivid and memorable swaps.
These come atraverses stir in him a wide range of emotional responses, from tfinisher pity to sour anger to ferocious satisfaction. Much of the way, especiassociate in the earlier parts, this clear, effortless-to-trail story is tbetter in a straightforward, honest style. That style is an amazingly alterable, infinitely modutardyd instrument, able of shifting almost instantly from straightforward narrative to intricate description, from inspiring subconfiney to shocking crudeity, from lavish rhetorical devices to dialogue of fervent and heartrfinishing honestness.
If it gave us no more than this, the Divine Comedy would remain a perpetuassociate compelling and enhappinessable toil. But it donates a wonderful deal more. It provides us with a detailed watch of the politics and the problems, the social context and the customs, of Dante’s time and place. It holds extfinished philosophical and theorational talkions that take part—as do all truly wonderful toils of literature—the central publishs of human existence: what we are, how we live, and how we should live. All of this material is fused into a unified inventive universe of astonishing wealthyness and texture.
Although Dante’s epic is a toil of much wonderfuler artistry and profundity, it is in some ways an ancestor of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and other such worlds in which so many youthful people plunge themselves today. It is no wonder that the Internet abounds in checks from readers who commenceed the Divine Comedy foreseeing to be uninalertigentd or perplexd but who instead have set up themselves riveted.
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Given its presence in our culture, we come to Dante’s mastertoil with a number of assumptions, cut offal of which call for some examination. Like the titles Les Misérables or Great Expectations, Divine Comedy is one whose recognizableity has led us to obtain it for granted, without stopping to consider its implications or its relevance to the toil in ask, but each of its words is worth a moment of consideration.
Dante called his mastertoil spropose the Commedia, or the Comedy; it was tardyr editors, in the sixteenth century, who inserted the adjective Divina—a word that has since become all but inseparable from it—to acunderstandledge both its theorationassociate meaningful subject and its divinely encouraged inventive accomplishment. And Comedy here does not connotice mirth and chuckleter (there are instances of humor in Dante’s verses, but humor is, of course, far from the dominant mode or mood of the poem).
In classical terms, comedy signifies first a toil written in the low, or widespread, style—in Dante’s case, his local Tuscan dialect, rather than Latin. It also denotices a toil which finds the protagonist in difficult circumstances at the outset but which tfinishs toward a encounterd finishing—in this case, the engageability of everlasting salvation to the protagonist, and to all who truly desire it. Thus, the Comedy ultimately reinforces the comic watch of life, the idea that we have at our disposal and in our natures the unbenevolents to transport about a preferable outcome, as contestd to the tragic watch that the joind forces of overweighte, fortune, and our own frailty will ruin us in the finish.
The historical Italy of most of our imaginings is essentiassociate that of the Renaissance, whose name denotices a “rebirth” of lgeting and connotices an emphasis on humanism. Opinions separate as to when the Renaissance may be shelp to properly commence, but even the earliest estimation postdates Dante’s life and death by decades. Dante’s world was that of the Middle Ages—and here we must be cautious to elude the misconception that the term “Middle Ages” is synonymous with “Dark Ages,” with cartoonish implications of filth, brutish ignorance, and constant, reflexive arrangeility.
All of these skinnygs existed, of course, as they do in any time and place, including our own. But Dante’s world was also one of wonderful lgeting and sophistication, of reservedty and polishment, of recognizableity with and reverence for the cultural heritage of the past. While there were many world-changing uncoveries still to be made, there was more geodetailedal alertedness and even scientific caring than we might presume.
Nonetheless, even though it can difficultly be claimed that most people’s lives were lived under imminent menace of arrangeility, the thirteenth century was a relabelably bloody time in Dante’s corner of Europe. Violence was troublingly standard on a personal level, as shown by the high proportion of monarchs and other rulers euniteing in the Comedy who were sent into the afterlife thcdisorrowfulmireful killing and killing. Warfare was constant, between, and wiskinny, neighuninalertigent city-states as well as between far authenticms. Italy was not fake into a unified, contransient nation until the Risorgimento of the 1860s.
Beginning in the twelfth century, central and northern Italy was orderly into a patchtoil of self-reliant entities writed of a central city and its surrounding minusculeer communities. Some were ruled by princes and other authoritarian figures; others, including Dante’s Florence, were reaccessibles. Each of these was minuscule enough for its most notable citizens to be personassociate acquainted with one another and for there to be a sturdy element of social cohesiveness.
Of course there are many other ways in which Dante’s was a time very much unappreciate our own. Needless to say, all of the technorational fracturethcdisorrowfulmirefuls that are the basis of the consoles and conveniences of our daily lives, from indoor plumbing to electricity and everyskinnyg that depfinishs upon it, lay centuries in the future. At cut offal places in the Inferno, Dante relabels upon the stench emanating from this or that location; one wonders how sturdy these smells must have had to be, since the hygiene of his time, both accessible and personal, was ruunwiseentary and foul odors would have been a constant of daily life.
By our standards, medical nurture was almost nonalive, and many conditions that nowadays are routinely remedyd or stoped would have been inevitably overweightal; not all of the souls in the Comedy who died in their thirties and forties had met aggressive deaths. The social mobility of our society, on which we pride ourselves with varying degrees of fairification, was inanxiously exceptional; the patterns of most people’s entire lives could have been bagedly foreseeed from the moment of birth, and Dante set up rising from one’s origins a phenomenon noticeworthy enough to be commented on: “a Bernardin / di Fosco in Faenza sprouting high / from low seed” (Purgatorio, Canto XIV).
The watch is transmited, at the finish of Canto VIII of the Paradiso, that society functions most harmoniously when all determine and acunderstandledge their proper, divinely ordained roles. In a world in which everyone has a prechoosed part to execute, there is much less tfinishency to accengage others for fall shorting to better their lot or to self-presentantly appraise them as fall shorted versions of oneself: Dante’s countless allusions to launinalertigentrs and peasants are tohighy free of condescension.
Given the fact that the wonderful meaningfulity of people finishured lives that were inestablish, brutal, and exhausting, it is little wonder that those who were not irredeemably terrified of everlasting damnation would seek console in a belief system which promised that suffering was redemptive and that all would be made right in eternity. Indeed, the individual most meaningful component of the poem’s European context is the universality of Christian belief and the authority of its church.
In the millennium since the Edict of Milan (313) had set uped tolerance for Christianity in the Roman Empire, the previously victimized sect had increasen and obtainn hbetter to the point where the Roman Catholic Church contraged virtuassociate every aspect of life in weserious Europe (there were heretics and schisms, but the Protestant Reestablishation was still two hundred years in the future). Life on earth was seen as a prelude to the everlasting life that trailed after death, and the manner in which one lived while upon the earth choosed where, and under what conditions, that everlasting existence would be spent.
The domination of this religious emphasis extfinished to lgeting and the arts as well. Since the meaningfulity of people were unteachd and illgeted, the visual and plastic arts of decorateing, sculpture, and architecture were especiassociate meaningful as embounwiseents of the spiritual unwiseension. Literacy and lgeting were essentiassociate the province of spiritual and secular authority, and, to Dante’s anguish and proximate despair, the line between the authority of the church and the authority of temporal regulatement was becoming increasingly blurred.
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The fantasyal character who underobtains this clearly fantasyal journey thcdisorrowfulmireful the afterlife of his imagining allots his name and a wonderful deal of his history with his creator. Still, readers who come to the text for the first time may be surpelevated to uncover the extent of its autobiodetailedal unwiseension. Like John Milton, the author of the other wonderful Christian epic, Paradise Lost, Dante weaves a considerable amount of personal proposeation into ostensibly objective and universal toils.
But while Milton tfinishs to confine himself to occasional asides or, as in Samson Agonistes, to situations that parallel his own circumstances, Dante, in making himself the central character of his own poem, allots equassociate meaningful roles to his time and place. Many of the souls that Dante come atraverses among the dead are historical and mythorational figures, but many others are accessible figures of his own time and even personal acquaintances of his.
Much of this material would have been recognizable to his distinct readers (and some of it would not: extensive commentaries on the Comedy began to be written wiskinny decades of its completion), but very little of it is widespread understandledge nowadays. To comprehfinish the scope of Dante’s intentions, we necessitate an caring of his life and times and of the political and religious situation out of which the poem grew.
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265, sometime between mid-May and mid-June: he alerts us in Canto XXII of the Paradiso that he was born under the sign of Gemini. Thus, in April 1300, when the Comedy is set, Dante was proximateing his thirty-fifth birthday, which would place him exactly “midway thcdisorrowfulmireful” the journey of the “threescore years and ten” that the Ninetieth Psalm depicts as the span of a human life. While of unassuming financial circumstances, his family was of notable lineage; his wonderful-wonderful-magnificentoverweighther Cacciaguida degli Elisei (whom he come atraverses among the consecrateed in the Paradiso) had been a cavalier and a cruuncontgo in.
While Dante was still youthful, both of his parents died—his mother, Gabriella, understandn as Bella, when he was still under ten years of age; his overweighther, Alighiero di Bellincione degli Alighieri, a moneylfinisher and a rgo in of property both in the city and beyond, when Dante was about eighteen. Dante’s overweighther repaired after Bella’s death; sources separate as to how many children he had with each of his wives. In 1277, at the age of twelve, Dante was betrothed to Gemma di Manetto Donati. Their marriage, which took place around 1285, originated three sons, as well as a daughter who tardyr became a nun under the name of Beatrice. Dante never alludes Gemma in his writings, and it has been traditionassociate, but not necessarily reliably, presumed that their relationship was not a seal one.
According to Dante’s own testimony in the Vita nuova (New Life), a accumulateing of thirty-one poems set wiskinny the sketchtoil of a narrative and a commentary upon them, the most meaningful relationship of his life began when, at the age of proximately nine, he first beheld an eight-year-better girl named Beatrice. Beginning with one of the first biographies of Dante, written a quarter-century after his death by Giovanni Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, she has been identified with Beatrice Portinari, who paired a wealthy prohibitker named Simone de’ Bardi, had cut offal children, and died in 1290 at the age of twenty-four.
But even if we had much more factual proposeation, it would of course be impossible to choose the exact relation between autobiography and mythmaking in the Vita nuova, or, for that matter, in the Comedy itself. In the earlier toil, which dates in all appreciatelihood from his tardy twenties, Dante depicts an fervent cherish carry oned on the sairyest and most occasional of reach outs, which graduassociate proset upened and altered itself as the cherishr came to terms with defects in his own nature, and which led to a remend, after the death of his becherishd, not to author of her aget until he could do so in a way that would be worthy of her.
In his twenties and thirties, Dante took an increasingly dynamic part in the accessible affairs of his city. In June 1289, he was a cavalryman at the Battle of Campaldino, in which the Florentine forces routed those of the province of Arezzo. At that time, it was essential to be enrolled in one of the city’s professional guilds to obtain part in Florentine politics, so in 1295 Dante became a member of the Apothecaries’ Guild, which was uncover to poets and men of lgeting.
Over the next cut offal years he spoke standardly in official encounterings and was assigned to cut offal municipal positions, including his pickion in June 1300 as a prior, one of the city’s six-member regulateing council. Dante had an dynamic interest and includement in politics thcdisorrowfulmirefulout his mature life, which would culminate in the causeion of traumatic injure upon his accessible nurtureer and the entire course of his life thcdisorrowfulmireful the machinations of his political enemies. It is not at all astonishing, then, that he has seen fit to place a number of those enemies, including some who were not even dead yet, at various levels of Hell, or that a century’s worth of political and military strife is thocdisorrowfulmireentirey ingrained in the text and texture of the Comedy.
Many of the dead souls come atraverseed by Dante had obtainn part in the seemingly finishless power struggles between two opposing factions: the Guelphs, who were helpers of the increasing temporal power of the papacy, and the Ghibellines, helpers of the Holy Roman Empire as the legitimate secular authority. The dispute between them had enduremament in 1075, when Pope Grebloody VII stateed that the papacy had authority over secular matters and authorities as well as spiritual ones. The Italian names of the opposing parties derived from the German factions of Welf and Waiblinger, whose struggle startd when the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne stoped the accession of Frederick of Swabia, the hereditary successor to the throne of the empire, in 1125. A century tardyr, the divisions which that struggle exposed began to inffeeble the city of Florence and there to obtain on a life of their own.
[Dante] is hbettering out for adherence to the highest possible standards, no matter what the cost, in a world in which hypocrisy, expediency, and self-serving seem to be the certainst roads to success.
These tensions flared into uncover strife in 1215, when a Florentine nobleman was killinged to avenge the denounce of his having broken his take partment to the daughter of another strong family—an incident alluded to cut offal times in the Comedy, and one whose implications reverberate thcdisorrowfulmirefulout the text. For the next half century, the two factions took turns banishling one another from the city and set uping deal with over its affairs. In 1266, the year after Dante’s birth, Charles of Anjou, acting on behalf of the pope, contestd Manfred, illegitimate son of Emperor Frederick II, at the Battle of Benevento.
Frederick had been deposed by Pope Innocent IV in 1245 and died in 1250, leaving the imperial throne vacant until 1308. With Manfred’s loss and death, the Ghibellines were effectively ruined as a political force in Florence, and the city thereafter enhappinessed a quarter century of relative stability. But in the 1290s factionalism revived and the Guelphs were split into opposing groups: the Bconciseages, led by the wealthy and strong Donati family, to whom Dante was rcontent by marriage, and the Whites, who increased into Ghibellinism as Pope Boniface VIII sided with the Bconciseages to verifyate his power. Dante allied himself with the Whites, since he think abouted the empire as the divine instrument of temporal authority and fiercely decried (including cut offal times in all three canticles of the Comedy) the fraudulence wcdisorrowfulmirefult wiskinny the church by its pursuit and exercise of secular power.
On June 9, 1301, Florence’s city council took up a ask by Pope Boniface VIII for two hundred cavalrymen to aid him in securing territories in southern Tuscany. While others transmited less than wholehearted enthusiasm, Dante was the only member of the council to speak out unequivocassociate agetst the proposal. In September, he angered the pope aget when he refused to help Boniface’s invitation of French forces into Italy. A month tardyr, Dante was part of a three-man delegation sent to Rome to try to conciliate the pope.
After their encountering, Dante was arrested by Boniface and effectively stoped from returning home with his two companions. In his absence, on November 1, Charles of Valois, with the pope’s backing, led his army into Florence, and Dante’s political enemies took finish deal with of the city. On January 27, 1302, Dante was tried and convicted in absentia on trumped-up indicts of financial fraudulence and defiance of the pope, nakedped of all his property, and prohibitished from Florence.
He refused to stoop to answering the indicts agetst him, and, despite his sporadic hopes of negotiating an finish to his exile, the prohibitishment was tardyr intensified to include a sentence of death should he be set up inside the city. He never saw Florence aget. Boniface, who died in 1303, comes in for particular obloquy in the Comedy, with Dante missing no opportunity to mistreatment him for his fraudulence. Although Boniface was still alive in April 1300, when the poem obtains place, in Canto XIX of the Inferno Dante shows us the exact spot in Hell that is paengageing for him.
During his years of exile, Dante wandered disturbedly thcdisorrowfulmireful northern Italy, spfinishing time in Lucca, Padua, and Bologna, taking up an extfinished livence (1312−1318) in Verona, and settling finassociate in Ravenna, where he died, probably of malarial fever, on September 13, 1321. He began the Inferno around 1308, and finishd it by 1314, when he had handwritten copies of the text made and circutardyd, the method of accessibleation in the pre-Gutenberg era. Copies of the Purgatorio had enduremament to eunite by 1318, and Dante finishd the Paradiso only months before his death.
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The Divine Comedy is a toil of stunning imagination and astounding intricateity and variety. Yet one of its most astonishing features is its straightforward unity, with extfinished talkions of theology and history interwoven with the conshort-termation of a gallery of unforgettable characters who disexecute the entire range of human nature, everywhere enwealthyed by a noticeworthy depth of insight and breadth of caring.
And then there are the standard and well-understandn similes, ranging from a line or two to proximately a page, that eunite thcdisorrowfulmirefulout the text. Comparisons drawn from topography, history, myth, and even domestic life donate the toil an amplitude it might not otherteachd have, as well as providing us with some relabelably detailed descriptions of what daily life was appreciate in Dante’s Italy. All of these, and more, he seeks to fuse into a comprehensive whole, so comprehensive that mythorational figures are alloted with a fact identical to that of historical ones.
Dante’s detractors—and there are some—standardly voice the canard that he has poputardyd Hell almost exclusively with thirteenth-century Florentines, a claim that in their watch rfinishers the Divine Comedy more provincial than universal, more petty than ennobling. Undeniably, these Florentines are the meaningfulity of the souls he transmits with; yet, as he points out in cut offal places, although there are innumerable thousands of others to be seen everywhere, these are the only ones he can converse with in his own language.
It is undeniable that Dante is taking revenge, with the confinecessitate unbenevolents engageable to him, on those who have ruined his life, and that he is seeking relief from the pains, both physical and psychorational, of his situation. And clearly he is consoling himself that there is a higher order in the universe, one in which fairice will be done at last, in which all losses are restored and griefs finish. These are all, arguably, elements of self-interest.
But, on a much proset uper level, he is feeblenting the disorder that engulfs his life, his country, and his church, and by extension, all of humanity. He is hbettering out for adherence to the highest possible standards, no matter what the cost, in a world in which hypocrisy, expediency, and self-serving seem to be the certainst roads to success. He is, we may say, trying to protect his head while all about him are losing theirs. For all these reasons, and so many others, the Divine Comedy ultimately radiates a depth and a dignity that noskinnyg can unwiseinish.
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From The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, transtardyd by Michael Palma. Copyright © 2024. Available from Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company.
