At the heart of Dante's poem is humanity's recognition of its sins and ascent to spiritual life and to God. According to the poet, in order to find peace of mind, it is necessary to go through all the circles of hell and renounce 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”. Summary makes it possible to comprehend the main idea of the poem.
Dante Alighieri created the poem during the years of exile, shortly before his death. It is recognized in world literature as brilliant creation. The author himself gave it the name “Comedy”. In those days it was customary to call any work that had a happy ending. Boccaccio called it “Divine”, thus giving it the highest rating.
Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy", a summary of which schoolchildren study in the 9th grade, is difficult for modern teenagers to perceive. Detailed analysis some songs cannot give a complete picture of the work, especially taking into account today's attitude towards religion and human sins. However, acquaintance, albeit only a review, with Dante’s work is necessary to create a complete understanding of world fiction.
"Divine Comedy". Summary of the chapter "Hell"
The main character of the work is Dante himself, to whom the shadow appears famous poet Virgil’s proposal to travel through Dante is at first doubtful, but agrees after Virgil informs him that Beatrice (the author’s beloved, long dead by that time) asked the poet to become his guide.
Path characters starts from hell. Before entering it there are pitiful souls who during their lifetime did neither good nor evil. The Acheron River flows outside the gates, through which Charon transports the dead. The heroes are approaching the circles of hell:
Having gone through all the circles of hell, Dante and his companion went up and saw the stars.
"Divine Comedy". Brief summary of the part "Purgatory"
The main character and his guide end up in purgatory. Here they are met by the guard Cato, who sends them to the sea to wash themselves. The companions go to the water, where Virgil washes the soot of the underworld from Dante’s face. At this time, a boat sails up to the travelers, ruled by an angel. He lands on shore the souls of the dead who did not go to hell. With them, the heroes travel 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 his sleep is transported to the gates of purgatory. Here the angel writes seven letters on the poet’s forehead, indicating the Hero goes through all the circles of purgatory, cleansing himself of sins. After completing each circle, the angel erases the letter of the overcome sin from Dante’s forehead. On the last lap, the poet must pass through the flames of fire. Dante is afraid, but Virgil convinces him. The poet passes the test by fire and goes to heaven, where Beatrice is waiting for him. Virgil falls silent and disappears forever. The beloved washes Dante in the sacred river, and the poet feels strength pouring into his body.
"Divine Comedy". Summary of the part "Paradise"
Beloved ones ascend to heaven. To the surprise of the main character, he was able to take off. Beatrice explained to him that souls not burdened with sins are light. Lovers pass through all the heavenly skies:
- the first sky of the Moon, where the souls of nuns are located;
- the second - Mercury for ambitious righteous people;
- third - Venus, here the souls of the loving rest;
- the fourth - the Sun, intended for sages;
- fifth - Mars, which receives warriors;
- sixth - Jupiter, for just souls;
- the seventh is Saturn, where the souls of contemplators are located;
- the eighth - for the spirits of the great righteous;
- ninth - here are 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 raises his head up into the bright and blinding light and finds the highest truth. He sees divinity in its trinity.
Medieval literature contributed to the strengthening of church power throughout the Old World. Many authors praised God and bowed before the greatness of his creations. But a few geniuses managed to dig a little deeper. Today we will find out what is the “Divine Comedy” about, who wrote this masterpiece, let's reveal the truth through the abundance of lines.
Master's Immortal Feather
Dante Alighieri - an outstanding thinker, theologian, writer and public figure. Not preserved exact date his birth, but Giovanni Boccaccio states that it is May 1265. One of them mentions that main character born under the sign of Gemini, starting on May 21st. On March 25, 1266, at baptism, the poet was given a new name - Durante.
It is not known exactly where the young man received his education, but he knew the literature of Antiquity and the Middle Ages very well, knew the natural sciences perfectly, and studied the works of heretical authors.
The first documentary mentions of him are by 1296-1297. During this period the author was actively involved social activities, was elected prior of the Florentine Republic. Quite early he joined the White Guelphs, for which he was subsequently expelled from his native Florence.
Years of wandering were accompanied by active literary activity. In the difficult conditions of constant travel, Dante conceived the idea of writing the work of his life. At that time parts " Divine Comedy» were completed in Ravenna. Paris incredibly impressed Alighieri with such enlightenment.
The year 1321 cut short the life of the greatest representative of medieval literature. As the ambassador of Ravenna, he went to Venice to make peace, but on the way he fell ill with malaria and died suddenly. The body was buried in its final resting place.
Important! Contemporary portraits of the Italian figure cannot be trusted. The same Boccaccio depicts Dante as bearded, while the chronicles speak of a clean-shaven man. In general, the surviving evidence is consistent with the established view.
The deep meaning of the name
“Divine Comedy” - this phrase can be viewed from several angles. In the literal sense of the word, this is a description of mental wanderings across the expanses of the afterlife.
The righteous and the sinners exist in different planes of existence after death. Purgatory serves as a place for the correction of human souls; those who end up here get a chance to be cleansed of earthly sins for the sake of a future life.
We see the clear meaning of the work - the mortal life of a person determines future fate his soul.
The poem abounds allegorical inserts, for example:
- three beasts symbolize human vices - insidiousness, gluttony, pride;
- the journey itself is presented as a search spiritual path for every person surrounded by vices and sinfulness;
- “Paradise” reveals the main goal of life - the desire for an all-consuming and forgiving love.
Time of creation and structure of “Comedy”
The writer managed to create an extremely symmetrical work, which consists of three parts (edges) - “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”. Each section has 33 songs, which is equal to the number 100 (with an introductory chant).
The Divine Comedy is filled with the magic of numbers:
- the names of the numbers played a large role in the structure of the work, the author gave them a mystical interpretation;
- the number "3" is associated with Christian beliefs about God's Trinity;
- “nine” is formed from “three” squared;
- 33 – symbolizes the time of the earthly life of Jesus Christ;
- 100 is the number of perfection and universal harmony.
Now let's see during the years of writing The Divine Comedy and publication of each part of the poem:
- From 1306 to 1309 The process of writing “Hell” was underway, editing lasted until 1314. Published a year later.
- “Purgatory” (1315) lasted for four years (1308-1312).
- "Paradise" was published after the poet's death (1315-1321).
Attention! The storytelling process is possible thanks to specific lines - terzas. They consist of three lines, all parts ending with the word “stars”.
Characters of the poem
A striking feature of the writing is identification of the afterlife with the mortal existence of man. Hell is raging with political passions, here eternal torment awaits Dante's enemies and enemies. It is not for nothing that the papal cardinals are in Gehenna of Fire, and Henry VII is on unprecedented heights blooming Paradise.
Among the most bright characters can be distinguished:
- Dante- a genuine one, whose soul is forced to wander through the expanses of the afterlife. He is the one who longs for atonement for his sins, tries to find the right path, to cleanse himself for a new life. Throughout the journey, he observes a host of vices, the sinfulness of human nature.
- Virgil– a faithful guide and assistant to the main character. He is an inhabitant of Limbo, so he accompanies Dante only through Purgatory and Hell. From a historical point of view, Publius Virgil Maro is the Roman poet most beloved by the author. Dante's Virgil is such an island of Reason and philosophical Rationalism, following him to the end.
- Nicholas III- Catholic prelate, served as Pope. Despite his education and bright mind, he was condemned by his contemporaries for nepotism (he promoted his grandchildren career ladder). Dante's holy father is an inhabitant of the eighth circle of Hell (as a holy merchant).
- Beatrice- Alighieri's secret lover and literary muse. She personifies all-consuming and all-forgiving love. The desire to become happy through sacred love makes the hero move along thorny path, through the abundance of vices and temptations of the afterlife.
- Gaius Cassius Longinus- Roman leader, conspirator and direct participant in the assassination of Julius Caesar. Being of a noble plebeian family, he youth subject to lust and vice. He is given the place of a conspirator in the ninth circle of Hell, which is what Dante’s “Divine Comedy” speaks about.
- Guido de Montefeltro- mercenary soldier and politician. He entered his name into history thanks to the fame of a talented commander, a cunning, insidious politician. A summary of his “atrocities” is told in verses 43 and 44 of the eighth den.
Plot
Christian teachings say that eternally condemned sinners go to Hell, souls who atone for guilt go to Purgatory, and blessed souls go to Paradise. The author of The Divine Comedy gives a surprisingly detailed picture of the afterlife and its internal structure.
So, let's begin to carefully analyze each part of the poem.
Introductory part
The story is told in the first person and tells about the lost in a dense forest, a man who miraculously managed to escape from three wild animals.
His deliverer Virgil offers help on his further journey.
We learn about the motives for such an act from the lips of the poet himself.
He names the three women who patronize Dante in heaven: Virgin Mary, Beatrice, Saint Lucia.
The role of the first two characters is clear, and the appearance of Lucia symbolizes the author's painful vision.
Hell
According to Alighieri, the stronghold of sinners is shaped like a titanic funnel, which gradually narrows. For better understanding structure, we will briefly describe each of the parts of the “Divine Comedy”:
- The vestibule - here rest the souls of insignificant and petty people who were not remembered for anything during their lives.
- Limbo is the first circle where virtuous pagans suffer. The hero sees the outstanding thinkers of Antiquity (Homer, Aristotle).
- Lust is the second level, which has become home to harlots and passionate lovers. The sinfulness of all-consuming passion, clouding the mind, is punished by torture in pitch darkness. Example from real life by Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta.
- Gluttony is the third circle, punishing gluttons and gourmets. Sinners are forced to rot forever under the scorching sun and freezing rain (analogous to the circles of Purgatory).
- Greed - spendthrifts and misers are doomed to endless disputes with their own kind. The guardian is Plutos.
- Wrath - Lazy and intemperate souls are forced to roll huge boulders through the Styk Swamp, constantly getting bogged down, fighting with each other.
- The walls of the city of Dita - here, in the red-hot graves, heretics and false prophets are destined to reside.
- The characters of The Divine Comedy are boiling in a bloody river in the middle of the 7th circle of Hell. There are also rapists, tyrants, suicides, blasphemers, and covetous people here. Representatives of each category have their own torturers: harpies, centaurs, hounds.
- Sinisters await bribe-takers, sorcerers and seducers. They are subjected to reptile bites, evisceration, immersion in feces, and scourging by demons.
- Ice Lake Katsit is a “warm” place for traitors. Judas, Cassius and Brutus are forced to rest in the ice until the end of time. Here is the gate to the circles of Purgatory.
Purgatory
Place of atonement for sins presented in the form of a truncated mountain.
The entrance is guarded by an angel who draws 7 R on Dante's forehead, a symbol of the seven deadly sins.
The circles of Purgatory are filled with the souls of the proud, careless, greedy and angry.
After completing each level, the hero is ready to enter the heavenly palaces.
The narrative of The Divine Comedy is coming to its logical conclusion.
Paradise
The meaning of the “Divine Comedy” comes down to the passage of the last seven spheres (planets) encircling. Here the hero sees Beatrice, who convinces the poet to repent and unite with the Creator.
Throughout the journey, Dante meets Emperor Justinian, sees the Virgin Mary and Christ, angels and martyrs for the faith. Ultimately, the “heavenly Rose” is revealed to the main character, where the souls of the blessed rest.
Dante's Divine Comedy brief overview, analysis
The richness of colors and realistic descriptions make this work stand out from others.
We must not forget about in a deeper sense works - the search for a spiritual path is important not so much in the afterlife as in earthly life. According to Dante's worldview, every person must realize that the moral principles and principles that are sacredly revered during life will become exemplary virtues in Hell, Paradise and Purgatory.
In the famous "Divine Comedy" the poet Dante depicted his own journey into other world. The work is based on Christian mythology, on the doctrine of heaven and hell, but is artistically reinterpreted. The hero finds himself in various fantastic places: hell, which has nine circles, purgatory, heaven. Dante sees amazing miracles, meets with angels, with the righteous, with the souls of sinners, with God, with Lucifer and his minions, with heroes ancient myths. His guide is the soul of his beloved Beatrice, who has become an angel, and the poet is led through hell by the soul of the ancient poet Virgil.
The moral meaning of Dante's journey in what he sees: the place where souls go after death is determined by their earthly actions, earthly life. The righteous go to Paradise, closer to God, to the “world of eternity.” Sinners go to hell, but neither God nor the devil decides where exactly to send a person. Sinners threw themselves into hell. Souls who strive for purification and hope for new life, are in purgatory. Dante's work is a trial of human vices, but a trial of the highest harmony, fair trial, which gives hope to everyone. With these paintings, Dante urged people to live correctly, to pay more attention to their earthly life, morality and spirituality.
The spiritual meaning of Dante's journey– show a person on the path of knowledge of good and evil, the search for the meaning of life, spiritual guidelines in order to live correctly. The entire journey takes place in the poet’s soul and reveals to him the truths of the universe. In the finale, the hero achieves the knowledge that love will save the world. Divine love, which should settle in the soul of every earthly person and guide it in earthly life. The allegorical symbol of this forgiving love, purity and joy in the work is Beatrice.
Composition of the “Divine Comedy” built extremely symbolically. It consists of three parts. Part one – “Hell” consists of 34 songs. The first two of them are introductory parts, where the hero wanders through allegorical forest thickets. This symbolizes his search for truth, where he eventually loses his bearings in a sea of knowledge and feelings. In the thickets, he meets animals that symbolize human vices: a lion, which is the personification of vanity and pride, a lynx, which personifies passion, as well as a she-wolf, which personifies greed, thirst for profit, avarice. In such a society, the poet cannot find the right path. Coming out of the forest here represents the right life path, which is not so easy to find.
What follows are 32 songs about hell. Hell is in an abyss with nine circles. The deeper the circle, the more terrible the sinners are there. This structure represents the depth of people's fall. In the last circle, at the lowest point of the world of the Divine Comedy, sits the devil, Lucifer.
The other two parts of the work, called “Purgatory” and “Paradise,” each contain 33 songs. For Dante 33 has symbolic meaning: This is the age of Jesus Christ, the number of harmony. The “Hell” part has a different number of songs because there is no harmony in hell. And there are 100 songs in total, because this number symbolizes perfection.
Purgatory is located on a mountain and has seven circles. This is no coincidence - in circles people are cleansed of seven major sins. The higher the circle, the purer the soul is in it. At the top of the mountain is Paradise, where the righteous enjoy life surrounded by angels. Even higher is the empyrean, where the hero meets God surrounded by divine beings. Higher powers, like the forces of evil, are at the extreme point, only now at the highest. The symmetrical construction of the work emphasizes this semantic contrast.
The structure of the Divine Comedy fully corresponds to the main idea of the work - this is a person’s path from delusion and suffering - through purification - to spiritual harmony and divine enlightenment. In the composition of the work, this is a symbolic path from the forest thickets through hell to purgatory, from which one can reach Paradise and the heavenly palaces.
Dante Alighieri "The Divine Comedy"
The very name “Comedy” goes back to purely medieval meanings: in the poetics of that time, tragedy was called any work with a sad beginning and a prosperous, happy ending, and not the dramatic specificity of the genre with a focus on laughter. The epithet “Divine” was established for the poem after Dante’s death, not earlier than the 16th century. as an expression of its poetic perfection, and not at all of religious content.
“The Divine Comedy” is distinguished by a clear and thoughtful composition: it is divided into three parts (“cantics”), each of which depicts one of the three parts of the afterlife, according to Catholic teaching - hell, purgatory or heaven. Each part consists of 33 songs, and another prologue song is added to the first cantika, so that in total there are 100 songs with ternary division: the entire poem is written in three-line stanzas - terzas.
This dominance of the number 3 in the compositional and semantic structure of the poem goes back to the Christian idea of the Trinity and the mystical meaning of the number 3. The entire architectonics of the afterlife of the “Divine Comedy”, thought out by the poet to the smallest detail, is based on this number. The symbolization does not end there: each song ends with the same word “stars”; the name of Christ rhymes only with itself; in hell the name of Christ is not mentioned anywhere, nor is the name of Mary, etc.
For all its originality, Dante's poem has various medieval sources. The plot of the poem reproduces the scheme of the popular genre of “visions” or “walking through torment” in medieval literature - about the secrets of the afterlife. The theme of afterlife “visions” was developed in a similar direction in medieval literature and outside Western Europe (the ancient Russian apocrypha “The Virgin Mary’s Walk through the Torment”, 12th century, the Muslim legend about the vision of Mohammed, who contemplated in a prophetic dream the torment of sinners in hell and the heavenly bliss of the righteous. The 12th century Arab mystic poet Abenarabi has an essay in which he gives pictures of hell and heaven, similar to Dante’s, and their parallel independent emergence (for Dante did not know Arabic, and Abenarabi was not translated into languages known to him) indicates a general trend in the evolution of these ideas in various regions remote from each other.
In his poem, Dante also reflected medieval ideas about hell and heaven, time and eternity, sin and punishment.
As S. Averintsev notes: "A systematized "model" of hell in the "Divine Comedy" with all its components - a clear sequence of nine circles, giving an "overturned", negative image of the heavenly hierarchy, a detailed classification of the categories of sinners, a logical-allegorical connection between the image of guilt and the image of punishment, visual detailing of the pictures the despair of those tormented by the executioner's rudeness of demons - represents a brilliant poetic generalization and transformation of medieval ideas about hell"
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The idea of medieval dualism, which sharply divided the world into polar pairs of opposites, grouped along a vertical axis (top: heaven, God, good, spirit; bottom - earthly, devil, evil, matter) is expressed in Dante in the figurative image of ascent and descent. “Not only the structure of the other world, in which matter and evil are concentrated in the lower layers of hell, and spirit and goodness crown the heights of paradise, but also every movement depicted in the Comedy is verticalized: the steeps and dips of the hellish abyss, the fall of bodies drawn by gravity sins, gestures and glances, Dante’s very vocabulary - everything draws attention to the categories of “top” and “bottom”, to the polar transitions from the sublime to the base - the defining coordinates of the medieval picture of the world."
Dante also expressed the medieval perception of time with the greatest force. "The contrast between the time of man's fleeting earthly life and eternity,
- notes A.Ya. Gurevich, - and the ascent from the first to the second defines the “space-time continuum” of the Comedy. The entire history of the human race appears in it as synchronous. Time stands still, it is all - the present, the past, and the future - in modernity..."
. According to O. Mandelstam, history is understood by Dante “as a single synchronistic act.” The earthly history that Dante lives influences the otherworldly world he depicts, forming a specific form of space-time. The images and ideas that fill the “vertical world” of the poem, as M. Bakhtin puts it, are driven by the desire to break out of it and "to reach a productive historical horizon"
. Hence the extreme tension of Dante's entire world. The conflict of times, the intersection of time and eternity expresses the leading idea of the Comedy. Figuratively speaking, The Divine Comedy turns time into the tragic embodiment of eternity, while at the same time establishing a complex dialectical connection with it.
1 Having completed half of my earthly life,
I found myself in a dark forest,
Having lost the right path in the darkness of the valley.
4 What he was like, oh, as I say,
That wild forest, dense and threatening,
Whose old horror I carry in my memory!
7 He is so bitter that death is almost sweeter.
But, having found goodness in it forever,
I’ll tell you about everything I saw in this place more often.
The dark forest in which the poet got lost also means the anarchic state of the world, and especially Italy. In the prologue: the beginning is simple on the one hand, but very complex on the other. Dante is in the middle of his life. In the Middle Ages it was 35 years. So it's around 1300. He is lost, and believes that all of humanity is also lost. The time of year is spring, because at the moment of his descent into hell he says that he fell under the same stars as when he met Beatrice, and he met her in the spring. God's world was created in the spring. Spring is the beginning.
33 And behold, at the bottom of a steep slope,
Agile and curly lynx,
All in bright spots of a motley pattern.
34 She, circling, blocked the heights for me,
And I’ve been on a dangerous slope more than once
I was thinking of saving myself by going back.
37 It was early, and the sun was clear in the firmament
Accompanied by the same stars again,
What is the first time when their host is beautiful
40 Divine Love moved.
Trusting the happy hour and time,
The blood in my heart was no longer so tight
43 At the sight of a beast with fancy fur;
But, horror again constrains him,
A lion with his mane raised came out to meet him.
46 It was as if he was stepping on me,
Growling with hunger and becoming furious
And the very air is filled with fear.
49 And with him a she-wolf, whose thin body
It seemed that he carried all the greed within himself;
Many souls grieved because of her.
52 I was shackled by such a heavy oppression,
Before her horrified gaze,
That I have lost my desire for heights.
55 And like a miser who accumulated treasure after treasure,
When the time of loss approaches,
Grieves and cries for past joys,
58 So I too was overcome with confusion,
Step by step, like an irrepressible she-wolf
There, crowded, where the rays are silent.
The panther, lion and she-wolf, blocking the path to the sunny hill, represent the three dominant vices that were then considered prevalent in the world, namely: voluptuousness, pride and greed. In these three vices lies the cause of human depravity, so they thought in the Middle Ages, and numerous indications about this have been preserved. On his way, three symbolic beasts interfere with him - the three most terrible sins according to Dante. These are a panther (lynx), a lion and a wolf. The lynx is voluptuous, the panther is the personification of oligarchic power in Florence. He goes around the lynx. The lion is the pride, as well as the political tyranny of the monarch and the state, it was on the coat of arms of Florence. He goes around him too. The worst thing is greed, the she-wolf. IN in a broad sense. By the way, the story in the “Golden Legend” about the vision of St. Dominic in Rome, where he arrived on business of organizing the order he founded. He dreamed of the Son of God, who from the heights of heaven directed three swords to the earth. The Holy Mother of God, full of mercy, asks Her Son what he intends to do, and Christ replies that the earth is so filled with three vices - voluptuousness, pride and greed, that he wants to destroy it with the sword. The gentle Virgin softens her Son with Her prayers and expresses hope for the correction of the human race through the planting of new orders: the Dominicans and Franciscans.
64 Having seen Him in the middle of that desert:
Be a ghost, be a living person!"
67 He answered: “Not a man; I was one;
This is Virgil. The poet's election of Virgil as leader is also not without allegorical meaning. In the Middle Ages there was something like the cult of Virgil. In folk legends, Virgil is something of a magician, a sorcerer and the greatest sage in the world. But also the Fathers of the Church, for example St. Augustine, at that time considered him the best and most worthy of all poets and looked at him as a harbinger of the coming of Christ, based on the prediction in one of his eclogues, namely the fourth, of the birth of the Child Savior, with whose appearance the Iron Age would end and a golden age will begin throughout the universe, and the description of this golden age has great similarities with the prophecy of Isaiah. Mainly, Virgil personifies in Dante reason, the highest ability of understanding, which a person can achieve without divine revelation. And since the author of the Aeneid is not only the national poet of Rome, the national historian of ancient Italy, but also the singer of Roman history, the singer who most glorified the Roman state, he portrays himself in the Divine Comedy as a symbol of the Ghibelline idea - the idea of the Roman universal monarchy, and prophesies for Italy a political messiah who will drive the she-wolf back to Hell, that is, the cause of all injustice on earth. The belief about the coming savior and liberator was then a popular belief, such as, for example, “The Tale of the Returning Emperor.” The general psychic motive is that nothing great or significant, once it appears in life, disappears without a trace, but only hides its powers for a while in order to manifest them again in moments of extreme danger.
Depicting the fate of humanity in the Divine Comedy, Dante simultaneously gives us the story of his personal, inner life - a majestic, stunning addition to that autobiography, the beginning of which we saw in Vita Nuova. He is the hero of his poem; he himself falls, despairs, struggles and resurrects. After the death of Beatrice, the poet found himself in the forest of youthful delusions, but little by little he got out of there by studying philosophy and finally found peace and hope of eternal salvation in faith and theology.
46 It is impossible for fear to command the mind;
Otherwise, we move away from accomplishments,
Like a beast when he imagines it.
1 I WILL TAKE TO THE OUTJOYED VILLAGES,
I LEAD THROUGH THE ETERNAL MOAN,
I LEAVE TO THE LOST GENERATIONS.
4 WAS MY ARCHITECT INSPIRED BY THE TRUTH:
I AM THE HIGHEST POWER, THE COMPLETENESS OF ALL-KNOWLEDGE
AND CREATED BY FIRST LOVE.
7 ANCIENT ME ARE ONLY ETERNAL CREATIONS,
AND WILL BE EQUAL WITH ETERNITY.
INCOMING, LEAVE YOUR HOPE.
Proverb: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Sinners in the highest circles of hell most often end up there for good intentions. The lower classes are hardened criminals, but there are exceptions. In higher circles there is hope for forgiveness.
10 I, having read above the entrance, on high,
Such signs of gloomy color,
He said: “Teacher, their meaning is scary to me.”
19 Having given me your hand so that I would not have doubts,
And turning his calm face towards me,
He led me into a mysterious passage.
Dante loses confidence. Only thanks to the wisdom of Virgil and his authority in the eyes of Dante, their path continues.
31 And I, with my head oppressed with horror:
“Whose cry is this?” he barely dared to ask.
What crowd, defeated by suffering?"
34 And the leader answered: “This is a woeful lot
Those pathetic souls who lived without knowing
Neither the glory nor the shame of mortal affairs.
37 And with them a bad flock of angels,
That, without rebelling, she was also not faithful
To the Almighty, observing the middle.
40 Heaven cast them down, not tolerating the stain;
And the abyss of Hell does not accept them,
Otherwise guilt would become proud."
43 And I: “Teacher, why is it that they are tormented so much?
And forces you to make such complaints?”
And he: “A short answer is appropriate.
46 And the hour of death is unattainable for them,
And this life is so unbearable
That everything else would be easier for them.
49 Their memory on earth cannot be resurrected;
Both justice and mercy departed from them.
They are not worth words: take a look and you’ll pass by!”
Before the gates of hell, Dante is met by sleepy crowds of sinners. Virgil says that these are pitiful souls, that they are not worth words. These people did neither good nor evil. Epithets: insignificant and pitiful, there are no such epithets anywhere else in comedy.
13 "Now we will descend to the world of the blind, -
Thus began the poet, turning deathly pale. -
I should go first, you should go second."
16 And I said, noticing this color:
"How will I go when my leader and friend
Fear rules, and I have no support?
19 "Sorrow for those who are shackled by the inner circle -
He answered, “it lay on my face,
And you considered compassion as fear.
31 “Why don’t you ask,” said my counselor,
What spirits have found refuge here?
Know, before you continue the path you started,
34 That these did not sin; they won't save you
Only merits, if there is no baptism,
Who go to true faith;
37 Who lived before Christian teaching,
He didn’t honor God the way we should.
So am I. For these omissions,
40 For no other reason are we condemned,
And here, by the verdict of the highest will,
We are thirsty and without hope."
The first circle is Limb (border). According to the traditional version, pagans born before the appearance of Christ were tortured there. Dante revised this version; he does not want to torture unbaptized babies and the righteous. No one suffers here. He collects separately the best poets - 6 names: Homer, Horace, Ovid, Virgil (who alone is granted the privilege of moving through all the circles of hell), Lucan and Dante himself. The biblical elders are also here; Christ later takes many to heaven.
4 Here Minos waits, baring his terrible mouth;
Interrogation and trial take place at the doorstep
And with swishes of his tail he sends to the flour.
7 As soon as a soul has fallen away from God,
He will appear before him with his story,
He, strictly distinguishing sins,
10 The Abode of Hell appoints her,
The tail curls around the body so many times,
How many steps should she go down?
In front of the second circle of hell stands Minos, the half-dragon. He judges sinners, wraps his tail around himself, how many turns - this is the circle of hell that Dante tries to correlate sin and punishment.
37 And I learned that this is a circle of torment
For those whom earthly flesh called,
Who betrayed the mind to the power of lust.
103 Love, commanding loved ones to love,
I was so powerfully attracted to him,
That you see this captivity as indestructible.
106 Love led us together to destruction;
In Cain there will be an extinguisher of our days."
Such speech flowed from their lips.
2nd circle - voluptuaries, punishment for a whirlwind of passions - a black whirlwind in which the soul suffers.
118 But tell me: between the sighs of tender days,
What was the science of love for you,
Revealing to the ear the secret call of passions?
121 And to me she: " He suffers the highest torment,
Who remembers joyful times
In misfortune; your leader is your guarantee.
127 In our leisure time we once read
There is a sweet story about Launcelot;
We were alone, everyone was careless.
130 Over the book, our eyes met more than once,
And we turned pale with a secret shudder;
133 We just read about how he kissed
I clung to the smile of my dear mouth,
The one with whom I am forever shackled by torment,
136 He kissed, trembling, my lips.
And the book became our Galeot!
None of us finished reading the page."
Figures of tragic hell - Francesca Darimini and Paolo. Their story was well known, so the book does not explain who it is. These are the only souls that Dante does not share. Their story touched Dante as a human being, although he condemns them. Personal attitude. Two Florentine families had been feuding for so long that they forgot what started the feud and decided to make peace. Reconciliation was usually sealed by marriage. It was supposed to be Francesca and Gianciotto, the eldest son in the family. Gianciotto was very ugly. They decided to deceive Francesca. Then, due to long distances, it was possible to get married with a receipt. At the altar stood Gianciotto’s trusted younger brother Paolo; Francesca thought that this was her husband. They fell in love with each other, when Gianciotto arrived, he found them together in the bedroom. He rushed with his sword at Paolo, but Francesca stood in front of him, and he pierced both of them with one sword. Their story has inspired many.
There are many aphorisms, for example, “Love commands loved ones to love.” Francesca falls in love with Paolo when they read a galliot novel, the so-called chivalric novels about the squire Lancelot, who carried love notes to Genevra.
52 The citizens nicknamed me Chacko.
Because I indulged in gluttony,
I'm decaying, groaning in the rain.
55 And, poor soul, I found myself
Not alone: they are all punished here
For the same sin." His story was interrupted.
3rd circle – gluttons, Cerberus. Virgil covers his mouth with a lump of dirt. Figures of comic hell - for example, the recently deceased glutton Chacko. Florentine. He rushes to Dante with a hug, although they do not know each other. The physical suffering of sinners is not as terrible as the spiritual. The dead do not know how earthly affairs end.
64 And he answered: "After much quarreling
Blood will be shed and power will be delivered to the forest,
And their enemies - exile and shame.
67 When the sun shows his face three times,
They will fall, and they will help them get up
The hand of one who is deceitful these days.
70 They will crush them and they will know
What's on again long term lift up
Judging the besieged to cry and murmur.
73 There are two righteous people, but they are not heeded.
Pride, envy, greed - that's in the hearts
Three burning sparks that never sleep."
Ciacco predicts the immediate fate of Florence, torn apart by enmity between the Black Guelphs (supporters of the Roman Curia), led by the noble Donati family, and the White Guelphs, led by the Cerchi family (who defended the independence of Florence against the encroachments of Pope Boniface VIII). After long quarrels, blood will be shed - during a clash between Whites and Blacks at the holiday of May 1, 1300. Power will go to the foresters (the Whites are so named because the Cherks came from the village), and many Blacks will be expelled (in the summer of 1301, after their conspiracy was discovered in the Church of Santa Trinita). When the sun shows its face three times, that is, in 1302, they (Whites) will fall, and those (Blacks) will be helped to rise by the hand of the tog (Pope Boniface VIII), who in our days (in 1300) is disingenuous in their behavior duplicitous. They (Blacks) will crush them (Whites) and will triumph for a long time (many Whites, including Dante, will be expelled. There are two righteous ones, but they are not heeded. - There is no evidence to establish whether Dante had certain things in mind here Perhaps he simply wanted to say that in Florence there are not even three righteous people who, according to the proverbial biblical expression, alone would be saved from God’s wrath.
88 But I ask: returning to the sweet light,
Remind people that I lived among them.
This is my last word and my answer."
Idea: the human soul is alive as long as the person is remembered. Therefore, Chacko asks Dante to remind people of his existence.
40 And he: “All those whom the eye sees here,
The mind was so crooked in life,
That they didn’t know how to spend in moderation.
When they stand face to face
They are wicked in spite of each other.
46 Those are clerics, with shaved hair;
Here you will meet the pope, you will meet the cardinal,
Not surpassed by any miser."
4th circle – misers and spendthrifts. Big wallet.
34 And I: “I came, but my trace will disappear.
And who are you, so disgustingly ugly?"
“I am the one who cries,” was his answer.
37 And I: “Cry, lament in the swamp that cannot be climbed out,
Damned spirit, drink the eternal wave!
I know you, you’re so dirty.”
40 Then he stretched out his hands to the canoe;
But the leader pushed the one who was clinging in anger,
Having said: “Go to the same dogs, to the bottom!”
46 He was proud in the world and dry in heart;
People will not glorify His deeds;
And here he is, blind and deaf from anger.
Circle 5 – Styx swamp. Sinners are compared to frogs that stick out their snouts. Angry. Neither Virgil nor Dante feels pity for sinners. Their sins are too great. Here, through Dit, the descent into lower hell begins. Dit is the city of devils.
13 Here is a cemetery for those who once believed,
Like Epicurus and all who are with him,
That souls with flesh perish without return
6th circle – heretics and all their political opponents, even living ones. They burn alive in fiery tombs. Exception: one of the leaders of the Ghibelline party, Farinato Delio Uberti, is not in the tomb, but he falls there after a conversation with Dante.
37 Murderers, those who wound, out of anger,
The thugs and robbers are coming
Into the outer belt, distributed in it.
40 Others bring death to themselves
And to your good; but it hurts so much
They curse themselves in the middle belt
46 Violence offends the deity,
Blaspheming him and denying him with my heart,
Having despised the Creator's love and nature.
49 For this the belt, curling along the edge,
Brands Kaorsa and Sodom with fire
And those who grumble, rejecting God.
55 The last way breaks the bond of love,
But only a natural connection;
And the execution of the second round torments those
58 He who is a hypocrite, who flatters, who takes in secret,
Volshbu, forgery, bargaining of a church position,
Mzdoimtsev, and other dirt has been brought down.
61 And the first method, destroying the blood
The union of love, in addition, does not spare
A union of trust, highest and spiritual.
64 And the smallest circle in which Dit
Erected a throne and where is the core of the universe,
The betrayer will be consumed forever."
79 Don't you remember the saying
From Ethics, what is most destructive
Three heaven-hating attractions:
82 Incontinence, anger, violent bestiality?
And that incontinence is a lesser sin before God
And that’s not how he punishes him?
7th circle – killers. In front of him is a minotaur. Three belts. You have to swim across the ditch of blood, transported by centaurs. 1st belt - real murderers - rapists against their neighbor and his property, they burn in a boiling ditch of blood. 2nd belt – suicides, deprived human form- trees. 3rd belt – rapists against nature. Burning sand, rain and snakes. The narrower the funnel, the more people there are.
97 Here my teacher is looking at me
Over the right shoulder and says:
"He who notices hears intelligently".
85 How full he is of the majesty of the past!
That is a wise and brave ruler,
Jason, gold-acquirer rune.
88 Sailing to Lemnos in the depths of the sea,
Where are the women, having abandoned everything that is sacred,
They put all their men to death,
91 He deceived, decorating his speech richly,
Young Hypsipyle, in turn
A product that once deceived me.
94 He left her there bearing fruit;
For this, we scourge him viciously,
And Medea also bears the penalty.
Alessio Interminelli is mired."
124 And he, hitting himself over the head:
"I came here because of flattering speech,
Which I wore on my tongue."
127 Then my leader: “Bend your shoulders a little,”
He said to me, and lean forward,
And you will see: here, not far
130 Scratching himself with dirty nails
Shaggy and vile bastard
And then he sits down, then he jumps up again.
133 This Faida, who lived in the midst of fornication,
She once said in response to a friend’s question:
"Are you satisfied with me?" - “No, you’re just a miracle!”
8th circle – deceivers. By church canons they, along with the traitors, are in purgatory. 10 slits. 1rov Jason. 2 flatterers 3 indulgence sellers and all the popes. False advisers Ulysses. 9 ditch - Bertrand de Born.
61 "The one above, who suffers worst of all, -
The leader said, “Judas Iscariot;
Head inward and heels outward.
64 And these - you see - head first:
Here is Brutus, hanging from a black mouth;
He writhes and won’t open his lips!
But night comes; it's time to go;
You saw everything that was in our power."
9 circle traitors. Overpopulated. Otsero Katsit, in the middle is Satan-Lucifer. 3 belts. It's called Giudecca. Frozen, tragic and comic effect. Bokko from Guelph. Count Ugolino. In the mouth of Lucifer are Brutus, Judas and Cassius.
The deeper we descend into Hell, the more real, rougher Dante’s syllable becomes. The poet is not afraid to call things by their name and even draws very disgusting objects. But in the ninth circle everything becomes silent - there is ice all around, and there are numb sinners in it. Here the evil of the universe is executed; the greatest, blackest sin, according to Dante, is treason. The poet does not feel any compassion for the traitors; he has only cruel hatred for them and tramples them underfoot. But even here, in this icy desert, where, apparently, all feeling has died, the poetic elements that were so abundant in the first circles of Hell awaken once again. The scene with Ugolino is the height of horror and at the same time touches our soul. Count Ugolino, once a powerful podestà of the city of Pisa, who treacherously betrayed the fortress of Castro in Sardinia to his enemies, soon suffered a punishment more severe than his crime. Thanks to Archbishop Ruggeri, captured with his sons and grandsons, he is imprisoned with them in the tower of Gwalandi. Despite the desperate cries of the prisoners loudly begging for mercy, Ruggeri ordered them to be locked in a tower and the keys thrown into the Arno. After eight days, they opened the tower and buried those who had died by starvation, with shackles on their feet. And here before us is a spectacle more terrible than which no poet has ever depicted: the justice of heaven has made the victim an instrument of execution for the criminal, and has given the villain into the hands of his victim so that she can avenge herself. Ugolino satisfies his boundless rage by tirelessly gnawing on the skull of Archbishop Ruggeri. Asked by the poet, he tells him his story, again out of a desire for revenge. From this story we see that the father’s tender feelings, outraged in a brutal manner, became the cause of brutal revenge. The meaning of this image of Ugolino, forever gnawing the skull of his enemy, is that in Ruggeri’s mind, as soon as his conscience awoke in him, the terrible image of Ugolino, killed by hunger, is constantly drawn, and the latter constantly sees the shadow of his hated traitor and constantly harbors hatred and thirst for it revenge.
In constructing the picture of Hell, Dante proceeded from the Christian model of the world.
According to Dante, Hell is a funnel-shaped abyss that, narrowing, reaches the center of the earth. Its slopes are surrounded by concentric ledges, the “circles” of Hell. Rivers of the underworld (Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon) - Lethe, the river of ablution and oblivion, stands apart, although its waters also flow to the center of the earth - this is, in essence, one stream formed by the tears of the Cretan Elder and penetrating into the bowels of the earth: first he appears as Acheron (in Greek, “river of sorrow”) and encircles the first circle of Hell, then, flowing down, forms the swamp of Styx (in Greek, “hated”), which washes the walls of the city of Dita, bordering the abyss of lower Hell; even lower it becomes Phlegethon (in Greek, “scorching”), a ring-shaped river of boiling blood, then, in the form of a bloody stream, it crosses the forest of suicides and the desert, from where a noisy waterfall falls deep into the depths to turn into the icy Lake Cocytus in the center of the earth. Dante calls Lucifer (aka Beelzebub, the devil) Dit (Dis), this is the Latin name of King Hades, or Pluto, the son of Kronos and Rhea, brother of Zeus and Poseidon. In Latin, Lucifer means Light Bearer. The most beautiful of the angels, he was punished with ugliness for rebellion against God.
The origin of Hell according to Dante is as follows: An angel (Lucifer, Satan) who rebelled against God, together with his supporters (demons), was thrown from the ninth heaven to Earth and, plunging into it, hollowed out a depression - a funnel to the very center - the center of the Earth, the Universe and universal gravity : There is nowhere to fall further. Stuck there in the eternal ice. The resulting funnel - the underground kingdom - is Hell, waiting for sinners who at that time had not yet been born, since the Earth was lifeless. The gaping wound of the Earth immediately healed. Shifted as a result of the collision caused by the fall of Lucifer, the earth's crust closed the base of the cone-shaped funnel, swelling in the middle of this base with Mount Golgotha, and on the opposite side of the funnel - Mount Purgatory. The entrance to the dungeon of Hell remained on the side, near the edge of the depression, on the territory of future Italy. As you can see, many images (the rivers of the underworld, the entrance to it, topology) were taken by Dante from ancient sources (Homer, Virgil).
Dante's appeal to ancient writers (and above all Virgil, whose figure is directly depicted in the poem as Dante's guide through hell) is one of the main symptoms of the preparation of the Renaissance in his work. Dante's "Divine Comedy" is not a divinely inspired text, but an attempt to express a certain experience, a revelation. And since it is the poet who discovers the way of expression upper world, then he is chosen as a guide to the other world. The influence of Virgil’s “Aeneid” was reflected in the borrowing from Virgil of certain plot details and images described in the scene of Aeneas’s descent into Tartarus in order to see his late father.
Renaissance elements are felt both in the very rethinking of the role and figure of a guide through the afterlife, and in the rethinking of the content and function of “visions”.
What are these differences?
Firstly, the pagan Virgil receives from Dante the role of an angel-guide of medieval “visions”. True, Virgil, as a result of the interpretation of his 4th eclogue as a prediction of the advent of a new “golden age of justice,” was ranked among the heralds of Christianity, so he was not a completely pagan figure, but still such a step by Dante could be called quite bold at that time.
The second significant difference was that the task of medieval “visions” was to distract a person from worldly vanity, show him the sinfulness of earthly life and encourage him to turn his thoughts to the afterlife. In Dante, the form of “visions” is used in order to most fully reflect real earthly life. He judges human vices and crimes not for the sake of denying earthly life as such, but in the name of correcting it, in order to force people to live more correctly. It does not take a person away from reality, but, on the contrary, immerses him in it.
Unlike medieval “visions”, which aimed to turn a person from worldly vanity to thoughts beyond the grave, Dante uses the form of “visions” to most fully reflect real earthly life and, above all, to judge human vices and crimes in the name of not denying earthly life, but its corrections.
The third difference is the life-affirming principle that permeates the entire poem, optimism, bodily richness (materiality) of scenes and images.
In fact, the entire “Comedy” was shaped by the desire for absolute harmony and the belief that it is practically achievable. Hence the deep optimistic meaning of the supermaterial, mathematically clear geometry of hell, which consisted in the fact that the strict geometric proportionality of the “Comedy” and Hell itself, the symbolism of numbers that prevails in them are a reflection of faith, ideas and the desire for world absolute harmony, merging with God (in Dante’s “Paradise,” for example, also melts away the beingness of bodies, but there it dissolves in the divine light of union, which, overcoming bodily impenetrability and mixing its rays, expresses outwardly this interpenetration of souls).
Dante shows a whole gallery of living people endowed with various passions, and he is perhaps the first in Western European literature to make the depiction of passions materialized in the guise of sinners the subject of poetry. Even his hell itself is endowed with personal awareness:
"I take you to the outcast villages,
I lead through the eternal groan,
I am taking you to lost generations,
My architect was inspired by the truth,"
"Per me si va ne la citta dolente,
per me si va ne l "etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perdutta gente"
(Il Inferno, canto III).
With one or two strokes, Dante outlines deeply different images from each other, differing in reality, both everyday and historical, since the poet operates with material taken from living Italian reality.
Materialization also affects the spiritual aspect. Thus, all sins punished in hell entail a form of punishment that allegorically depicts the mental state of people susceptible to this vice: the voluptuous are condemned to forever swirl in the hellish whirlwind of their passion; the angry are immersed in a stinking swamp, where they fiercely fight each other; tyrants wallow in boiling blood; moneylenders bend under the weight of heavy wallets hanging around their necks; sorcerers and soothsayers have their heads turned back; the hypocrites wear lead robes, gilded on top; Traitors and traitors are subjected to various cold tortures, symbolizing their cold hearts. The desire for materialization is also manifested in the preservation in most circles of the unchanged bodily appearance of sinners. The descent into hell is a descent into the realm of spiritless matter, which lies much lower than the materiality of everyday life. The closer to Satan in the Comedy, the less human the sinners become in their essence. Fr. De Sanctis writes about it this way: “The human appearance disappears: instead there is a caricature, obscenely distorted bodies... Man and animals are mixed in them, and the deepest idea embedded in “Evil Crevices” consists precisely in this reincarnation of man into an animal and an animal into a human..."
“The very distribution of executions,” writes I.N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, “in which the most serious ones are located lower from the surface of the earth, indicates that Dante considered the easiest vices to be those that stem from intemperance, such as voluptuousness, gluttony, anger, and the most serious - deception and betrayal. In the first, passions are still raging, they are characterized by human feelings, they are in a state of eternal movement, immersed in the Stygian swamp, they have not yet completely lost their human appearance. In the city of Dite, sinners lie in stone coffins. they rise up and predict the future, retaining all the passion of the living. The ancient centaurs torment the inhabitants of the upper circles; they turn into trees bleeding, marching under the eternal fiery rain, but are able to transport their thoughts into the past, talk about their earthly fate in the lowest of the hellish abysses. there is no fire, no movement, everything has frozen under the wind generated by the six wings of Lucifer, turned into lifeless matter, where consciousness dimly glimmers. Above the permafrost, only the voice of revenge sounds, eternal, hopeless - the voice of Count Ugolino..."
“We were there,” I’m scared of these lines, “
where are the shadows in the depths of the ice layer
penetrates deeply, like a knot in glass.
Some are lying; others froze while standing..."
(song 34, 10-13).
Contradictions between the medieval and Renaissance worldview and artistic systems are also observed in the interpretation of the purpose and functions of hell. Even there, Dante’s man is, first of all, a personality, with his own voice, history, opinion, destiny.
Justice triumphs in Dante's hell. Dante honors the highest justice, which condemned sinners to torment in the underworld, but at the same time, free will reigns there in the right to one’s own assessment, reaction to the verdict, and personal attitude towards sinners. Dante brings his own human individuality to hell, and it is this that transforms the medieval comic style previously adopted in the description of hellish scenes and the inhabitants of hell in accordance with the aesthetic system of medieval laughter culture. In Dante, the comedy of hellish scenes is of a special kind: the poet consciously strived for absolute comedy, excluding all humor, and his lack of condescension and gentleness towards the inhabitants of hell does not deny his ability to possess a comic gift. It's amazingly different. Without encroaching on the highest justice, Dante depicts hell and its inhabitants, relying on personal life experience and guided by his own feelings, even if they run counter to the norms of medieval morality. That is, his hell is not allegories, but experiences of events; and symbols are psychological characters.
Dante's description of Hell is permeated with emotional involvement, aimed at feeling the sinfulness, and not the abstractness of hell. That is why every sin is given a figurative expression.
It is amazing that Dante, through empathy, restores humanity to the worst sinners. The ability to sympathize with sinners even in the circle of traitors - the most terrible sin, according to Dante - modifies the comic style even in the very depths of the underworld - where the comic that denies man would seem to have reached its absoluteness.
In contrast to the medieval “visions”, which gave the most general schematic representation of sinners, Dante concretizes and individualizes their images and sins, bringing them to pure realism. “The afterlife is not opposed to real life, but continues it, reflects the relationships existing in it. In Dante’s hell, political passions rage, just as on earth,” writes S. Mokulsky.
Here is an example of a combination of Renaissance (brightly realistic) and medieval (allegorical) features in the description:
“His eyes are purple, his belly is swollen,
Fat in the black beard, clawed hands;
He torments souls, tears skin and flesh,
And they howl like bitches in the rain.”
(canto VI, 16).
The very idea of afterlife retribution receives political overtones from Dante. Therefore, in addition to the moral and religious meaning and allegories that bring comedy closer to the literature of the early Middle Ages, many images and situations have a political meaning (for example, a dense forest is the personification of man’s earthly existence and at the same time a symbol of the anarchy reigning in Italy; Virgil is earthly wisdom and a symbol of Gibbelinism). the ideas of a universal monarchy; the three kingdoms of the afterlife symbolize the earthly world, transformed in accordance with the idea of strict justice). All this gives the comedy a secular touch.
Further, Dante’s artistic method itself acts as a connecting bridge between aesthetic systems antiquity and the Middle Ages. If in ancient tragedy the most unusual things happen quite naturally, then in the medieval tradition an important place is occupied by the supernatural, the miraculousness of what is happening. In Dante, the medieval motif of martyrdom is still strong, but the second pillar of the aesthetic system of the Middle Ages is missing - supernaturalism, magic. In Dante's "Divine Comedy" there is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal (the geography of hell and the hellish whirlwind carrying lovers are real) that are inherent in ancient tragedy. Thus, he accurately indicates the distance from one step of the mountain of purgatory to another, equal to the height of three people; when describing the unusual, he makes a comparison with well-known things for clarity; he compares the gardens of Eden with the blooming gardens of his homeland.
Precise topographical specifics are present in the descriptions of mythical areas:
“There is a place in the underworld - Evil Crevices.
All stone, cast iron color,
Like the circles that weigh down all around.
There's a hole in the middle
A wide and dark well..."
(canto XVIII, 1-4)
“And that ledge that remains
lies like a ring between the abyss and the rock,
and ten cavities are discernible in it...”
(canto XVIII, 7),
“...from the foot of the stone heights
there were ridges of rocks through ditches and rifts,
to stop your progress at the well”
(canto XVIII, 16).
Dante often illustrates the described torment of sinners with pictures of nature, alien to medieval descriptions, and the dead element of hell itself with phenomena of the living world. For example, traitors immersed in an icy lake are compared to frogs that “hunt to croak, snouts from the pond” (canto XXXII), and the punishment of crafty advisers imprisoned in tongues of fire reminds the poet of a valley filled with fireflies on a quiet evening in Italy (canto XXVI). The hellish whirlwind in the 5th song is compared to the flight of starlings:
“And like starlings, their wings carry them away,
on cold days, in a thick and long formation,
there this storm swirls the spirits of evil,
there, here, down, up, in a huge swarm”
(canto V, 43).
“An unusually developed sense of nature,” concludes S. Mokulsky, “the ability to convey its beauty and originality makes Dante already a man of modern times, because intense interest in the external, material world was alien to medieval man.”
The same interest characterizes Dante’s picturesque palette, rich in all kinds of colors. Each of the three edgings of the poem has its own colorful background: “Hell” has a gloomy coloring, thick ominous colors with a predominance of red and black:
And over the desert it slowly fell
Rain of flames, wide scarves
Like snow in the windless mountain rocks..."
(canto XIV, 28),
“So the fiery blizzard descended
And the dust burned like tinder under a flint..."
(canto XIV, 37),
“Everyone had fire snaking over their feet...”
(canto XIX, 25);
“Purgatory” - soft, pale and misty colors characteristic of the living nature that appears there (sea, rocks, green meadows, trees):
The road here is not covered with carvings;
the slope wall and the ledge below it -
Solid stone gray color
(“Purgatory”, canto XIII, 7);
“Paradise” – dazzling brilliance and transparency, radiant colors of the purest light. Similarly, each of the parts has its own musical edging: in hell there is growling, roaring, groaning, in heaven the music of the spheres sounds. The Renaissance vision is also distinguished by the plastic sculptural depiction of figures. Each image is presented in a memorable plastic pose, as if sculpted and at the same time full of movement.
Dante's realism in showing the torment of sinners finds adequate expression in the vocabulary of the poem, in its imagery and style. The style of the poem is distinguished by its conciseness, energy, weight, as one critic put it, “noble roughness.” He adapts his verse to the description of phenomena, complaining that it is not yet “hoarse and creaky enough, as required by the ominous crater into which all other steep slopes fall.”
All the noted features of the “Divine Comedy” connect it with the art of the Renaissance, one of the main features of which was an intense interest in the earthly world and man. However, realistic tendencies here still contradictively coexist with purely medieval aspirations, for example, with allegorism that permeates the entire poem, as well as purely Catholic symbolism, so that each plot point in the poem is interpreted in several senses: moral-religious, biographical, political, symbolic, etc. .d.
For example, the dense forest from the first song of the poem, in which the poet got lost and was almost torn to pieces by three terrible animals - a lion, a she-wolf and a panther - in religious and moral terms symbolizes the earthly existence of man, full of sinful delusions, and the three animals - the three main vices : pride (lion), greed (she-wolf), voluptuousness (panther); in the political aspect, it symbolizes the anarchy reigning in Italy, giving rise to three vices.
“He spoke, but our step did not cease,
and all the time we walked in a great thicket,
I mean - more than a thicket of human souls"
(canto IV, 64).
From a moral and religious point of view, the image of Virgil symbolizes earthly wisdom, and from a political point of view, the Ghibelline idea of a universal monarchy, which alone has the power to establish peace on earth. Beatrice symbolizes heavenly wisdom, and from a biographical point of view, Dante's love. Etc.
Symbolism permeates the other two edges. In the mystical procession that meets Dante at the entrance to paradise, 12 lamps “are the seven spirits of God” (according to the Apocalypse), 12 elders - 24 books of the Old Testament, 4 beasts - 4 gospels, a cart - a Christian church, a griffin - the god-man Christ, 1 elder – Apocalypse, “the humble four” – “Epistle” of the apostles, etc.
Moral and religious allegories bring the “Divine Comedy” closer to the literature of the early Middle Ages, and political allegories give it a secular imprint, not typical for medieval literature.
The inconsistency of Dante's poem, standing at the turn of two historical eras, is not limited to the contradiction between moral, religious and political meanings. Elements of the old and new worldviews are intertwined throughout the poem in a variety of scenes and layers. Carrying out the idea that earthly life there is preparation for a future, eternal life, Dante at the same time shows a keen interest in earthly life. He also praises other human qualities condemned by the church, such as the thirst for knowledge, the inquisitiveness of the mind, the desire for the unknown, an example of which is the confession of Ulysses, who was executed among the crafty advisers for his desire to travel.
At the same time, the vices of the clergy and its very spirit are subject to criticism, and they are branded even in heaven. Dante's attacks on the greed of the churchmen are also the harbingers of a new worldview and will later become one of the main motives of anti-clerical literature of modern times.
“Silver and gold are now a god for you;
and even those who pray to the idol,
honor one, you honor a hundred at once”
(canto XIX, 112)
The rigid logical determination of hell that he derived and the free sensual poetic perception also come into conflict in Dante’s poem. The narrowing funnel of Dante's Inferno, movement through which, with each circle becoming more and more difficult and destined, in the end leads to a stop, freezing into the interstellar cold, eternal stuckness in the Crack of Being, like the entire deterministic representation of the topology of hell, goes back to the polar one, characteristic of the medieval views, ideas of good and evil.
Renaissance trends manifest themselves to a much greater extent in the third edging - “Paradise”. And this is due to the very nature of the subject being described.
The heavy supermateriality of Hell is opposed by transcendence, luminous lightness, and the elusive spiritual radiance of Paradise. And the rigid limitations of the constraining hellish geometry are the spatial multidimensionality of the celestial spheres with increasing degrees of freedom. The freedom to independently construct space and the world, that is, the freedom to create, is what distinguishes Dante’s geometrically sophisticated definition of Hell from the indefinability, vagueness, and topological vagueness of Paradise.
According to Dante, Hell is expressible, but Paradise does not have a visual plan, it is something, a shadow, contemplation, light, meditation, it is personal, that is, everyone must walk this path alone, waiting for grace; it is deprived of collective experience and perception, therefore, it is inexpressible verbally, but can only be imagined in its own way in the imagination of everyone. In Hell, someone else's will reigns, man is forced, dependent, mute, and this alien will is clearly visible, and its manifestations are colorful; in Paradise - only your own, personal will; an extension arises, which Hell lacks: in space, consciousness, will, time. In Hell there is bare geometry, there is no time there, it is not eternity (that is, an infinite length of time), but time equal to zero, that is, nothing. Space divided into circles is flat and of the same type in each circle. It is dead, timeless and empty. Its artificial complexity is imaginary, apparent; it is the complexity (geometry) of emptiness. In Paradise it acquires volume, diversity, variability, pulsation, it spreads, imbued with heavenly twinkling, complemented, created by every will, and therefore incomprehensible.
“After all, this is why our esse (being - author) is blessed,
that God's will guides him
and ours is not in opposition to her” (“Paradise”, canto III, 79).
The importance of Dante's poem in the formation of a new system of artistic values, called the Renaissance, can hardly be overestimated. Its significance is also great in moral and religious terms. Thus, it was after Dante that specific images of the devil and various demons appeared in church teaching, which previously existed only speculatively. It was Dante who gave them flesh and a sensual image. The very principle of constructing Dante's Hell, the scenes of which are an expression of the essence of sin itself, is a disturbed perception of the world, placing in the center of what is not the center. The essence of his Hell is that a person, suffering from his sin, still succumbs to it. That is, not external forces, and the person himself plunges himself into hell. Those who are able to overcome sin end up in purgatory. Thus, a journey through the afterlife is a journey through the human soul; these are the objectified passions of every person.
T. Altizer calls Dante (as well as Luther, Milton, Blake and Hegel) apocalyptic thinkers. “An example of an oppositional apocalyptic movement is the radical Franciscan movement, supported by Dante in Paradise. Being too harsh in his assessments, he declares that just as “Homer destroyed religious world antiquity, and Virgil - the world of classical pre-Hellenistic religion, Dante completely destroyed the historical authority and position of the Catholic Church..."
Dante himself, in a letter to Can Grande della Scala, argued that his “Comedy” should be subjected to a “multiple interpretation,” meaning the fourfold interpretation of Scripture accepted in the Middle Ages: 1) “historical,” i.e. factual interpretation; 2) “allegorical”; 3) “tropological” (“moral”), 4) “anagogical” (sublime, sacramental).
Volumes of commentary and hundreds of books, dissertations and monographs have been written about Dante's poem. From year to year, a huge number of new articles are published (the “Reading Dante” series, etc.), and scientific conferences are dedicated to him.
And in 1989, the popular science film “Dante’s Inferno” (Great Britain) was shot about one of the parts of Dante’s immortal work, but the most mysterious (directed by Peter Greenaway).
The compositional structure of Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy"
"The Divine Comedy" by Dante written at the beginning of the 14th century. It combined the achievements of philosophical, religious, artistic thought the Middle Ages and new look on a person, his uniqueness and unlimited possibilities.
The author himself called his poem a “comedy,” for in medieval poetics every work with a sad beginning and a happy ending was called a comedy. But the epithet “Divine” was added in 1360 by Giovanni Boccaccio, the poet’s first biographer.
The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam said that to read the Comedy you should stock up on “a pair of shoes with nails.” So he warned the reader about how much mental strength must be expended in order to follow Dante into the other world and comprehend the meaning of the poem.
Dante's image is based on the Universe, in the center of which is a motionless ball - the Earth. Dante supplemented the Universe with three regions: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. Hell is a funnel in the Northern Hemisphere, reaching to the center of the Earth and arose from the fall of Lucifer. A part of the land pushed to the surface of the earth in the Southern Hemisphere formed Mount Purgatory, and the earthly Paradise is located slightly above the “cut off” peak of Purgatory.
The composition of the poem is striking in its grandeur and at the same time harmony. "Comedy" consists of three large parts. The number three has a mystical meaning for the poet. This, first of all, embodies the idea of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. You can also remember fairy tales, where there are three brothers, where the heroes find themselves at the crossroads of three roads and where they have to pass three tests.
Each part of the poem consists of 33 songs written in three-line stanzas. And, including additional introductory song“Hell”, their number is 100. To find yourself in Paradise, you need to go down and go through nine circles of Hell, where sinners are. On the gates of hell there is a terrible inscription: “Abandon hope, all who enter here.” In the first circle, the souls of unbaptized infants languish, as well as famous pagans: Greek poets, philosophers. The lower we go, the more terrible the punishment of sinners. At the very bottom, in the icy lake, Lucifer holds three traitors in his mouth: Judas, who betrayed Jesus Christ, Brutus and Cassius, who killed Julius Caesar. Having gone through all the circles of Hell, Purgatory and the nine shining heavens of Paradise, where the righteous are placed depending on their merits, Dante finds himself in the abode of God - the empyrean.
The symbolism of numbers is hidden not only in the composition of the poem, but also in the story itself. The poet has three guides in the other world: Virgil, who symbolizes earthly wisdom, Beatrice - heavenly wisdom, and the medieval philosopher - Bernard of Clairvaux. Dante meets three animals at the beginning of his journey: a lion (symbol of lust for power), a panther (lust), a she-wolf (pride).
Despite the fact that the work was written in the genre of vision, contemporaries were sure that the poet had really visited the other world. The reliability of this fact did not raise the slightest doubt among the medieval reader.
Dante himself proposed to interpret the poem “from four different positions" The first is literal, i.e. the text is perceived and understood as it is written. The second is allegorical, when the text must be compared with events outside world. The third is moral, when the text is perceived as a description of experiences and passions human soul. The third is mystical, because the author’s goal is to present the reader’s soul, distract him from sin and attract him to God.