In what city was Dante Alighieri born? Dante Alighieri - a short biography. The maturation of a dazzling genius

Dante Alighieri is an Italian poet and writer, theologian, politician. His contribution to the development of not only Italian but also world literature is invaluable. He is the author of The Divine Comedy and the creator of the nine circles of hell, heaven and purgatory.

Childhood and youth

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence. His full name is Durante degli Alighieri. The exact date of the poet's birth is unknown; presumably, he was born between May 21 and June 1, 1265.

According to family tradition, his ancestors were from the Roman family of the Elisei. They took part in the founding of Florence. His great-great-grandfather Kachchagvida was a knight under Konrad III, went with him to Crusades and died in battle with the Muslims.

His great-great-grandmother was Aldigieri da Fontana, a woman from a wealthy family. She named her son Alighieri. Later, this name turned into a well-known surname.

Dante's grandfather was expelled from Florence during the confrontation between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. He returned to his homeland only in 1266. His father Alighieri II was far from politics, so he remained in Florence all the time.

Dante was an educated man, he had knowledge in the natural sciences, in medieval literature. He also studied the heretical teachings of that era. Where he got this knowledge is unknown. But his first mentor was at that time the popular scientist and poet Brunetto Latini.

Literature

It is not known for certain when Dante became interested in writing, but the creation of the work "New Life" dates back to 1292. Not all poems written by that time were included in it. The book alternated between poetry and prose. This is a kind of confession written by Dante after the death of Beatrice. Also in the "New Life" many poems were dedicated to his friend Guido Cavalcanti, by the way, also a poet. Scholars later called this book the first autobiography in literary history.

Like his grandfather, Dante became interested in politics at a young age. At the end of the 13th century, Florence was involved in a conflict between the Emperor and the Pope. Alighieri took the side of the opponents of papal power. At first, luck “smiled” at the poet, and soon his party managed to rise above the enemy. In 1300 he was elected to the post of prior.

However, a year later the political situation changed dramatically - power passed into the hands of the supporters of the Pope. He was expelled from Florence in a fictitious case of bribery. He was also accused of anti-state activities. Dante was fined - 5,000 florins, and his property was arrested, and later he was sentenced to death. At that time, he was outside of Florence, therefore, having learned about this, he decided not to return to the city. So he began to live in exile.

For the rest of his life, Dante wandered around cities and countries, found shelter in Verona, Bologna, Ravenna, and even lived in Paris. All subsequent works after the "New Life" were written already in exile.

In 1304 he began to write philosophical books"Feast" and "On popular eloquence". Unfortunately, both works remained unfinished. This is due to the fact that Dante began work on his main work - The Divine Comedy.

It is noteworthy that the poet originally called his work simply “Comedy”. The word "divine" was added to the title by Giovanni Boccaccio, Alighieri's first biographer.

He has been writing this work for 15 years. Dante personified himself with the main lyrical hero. The poem is based on his journey through the afterlife, to which he goes after the death of his beloved Beatrice.

The work consists of three parts. The first is "Hell", consisting of nine circles, where sinners are ranked according to the severity of their fall. Here Dante placed political and personal enemies. Also in "Hell" the poet left those who, as he believed, lived un-Christianly and immorally.

"Purgatory" he described with seven circles that correspond to the seven deadly sins. "Paradise" is performed in nine circles, which are named after the main planets of the solar system.

This work is still shrouded in legends. For example, Boccaccio claimed that after his death, Dante's children could not find the last 13 songs of "Paradise". And they discovered them only after the father himself came to his son Jacopo in a dream and told him where they were hidden.

Personal life

The main muse of Dante was Beatrice Portinari. He first saw her when he was only 9 years old. Of course, at such a young age, he did not realize his feelings. He met the girl only nine years later, when she had already married another man. Only then did he realize how much he loved her. Beatrice was for the poet the only love of his life.

He was such a shy and shy young man that in all the time he only spoke to his beloved twice. And the girl did not even suspect about his feelings for herself. On the contrary, Dante seemed arrogant to her, since he did not talk to her.

Beatrice died in 1290. She was only 24 years old. The exact cause of her death is unknown. According to one version, she died during childbirth, according to another, she became a victim of the plague. For Dante, this was a blow. Until the end of his days, he loved only her and cherished her image.

A couple of years later he married Gemma Donati. She was the daughter of the leader of the Florentine party, Donati, with whom the Alighieri family was at enmity. Of course, it was a marriage of convenience, and, most likely, political. True, later the couple had three children - sons Pietro and Jacopo and daughter Antonia.

Despite this, when Dante set about creating the Comedy, he thought only of Beatrice, and it was written in the glorification of this girl.

Death

The last years of his life, Dante lived in Ravenna under the auspices of Guido da Polenta, he was his ambassador. One day he went to Venice to conclude a peace treaty with the Republic of St. Mark. On the way back, the poet fell ill. Dante died on the night of September 13-14, 1321. The cause of his death was malaria.

Dante Alighieri was buried in the church of San Francesco in Ravenna, on the territory of the monastery. In 1329, the cardinal demanded that the monks commit the poet's body to public burning. How the monks were able to "get out" of the current situation is unknown, but no one touched the remains of the poet.

On the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the birth of Dante Alighieri, it was decided to restore the church. In 1865, builders found a wooden box in the wall, on which the inscription was carved - "Dante's bones were placed here by Antonio Santi in 1677." This find became an international sensation. No one knew who this Antonio was, but some suggested that it could well be a relative of the artist.

Dante's remains were transferred to the poet's mausoleum in Ravenna, where they remain to this day.

Bibliography

• 1292 - "New Life"
• 1300 - "Monarchy"
• 1305 - "On popular eloquence"
• 1307 - "Feast"
• 1320 - "Eclogues"
• 1321 - "The Divine Comedy"

Florence is sometimes called the "city of Dante" - one way or another, the poet left his mark on this city. Traces of reverence for the author of The Divine Comedy are found at almost every step: a church named after him, commemorative plaques on the houses where he lived ... But at the same time, the life and death of the famous Florentine are still fraught with many mysteries and secrets.

Some little-known facts about Alighieri

• The real date of Dante's birth has not yet been revealed. In church documents, only a record of baptism was found, and even then under the name Durante (the full name of the poet is Durante degli Alighieri). Previously, the surname sounded like Aldigieri, but later it was shortened.



• The story of Dante and Beatrice is familiar to every romantic. As an 8-year-old boy, he fell in love with the fair-haired neighbor Beatrice Portinari, and he carried this feeling through his whole life. Love was purely platonic, but this did not stop Alighieri from deifying his beloved and dedicating his literary works to her.

  In their entire lives, Dante and Beatrice communicated live only twice., but these impressions were enough for Dante to carry love through his whole life. Not wanting to be revealed in his feelings, Durante showed signs of attention to other women, and this did not escape Beatrice's gaze. They both experienced because of their shyness and the inability to be together.

  When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante's relatives seriously feared for his sanity - the poet spent days crying, grieving and writing sonnets, dedicating them to his deceased beloved.

• Despite my love for Beatrice, Dante married another- but it was more a political move than a dictate of the heart. His chosen one and companion for many years was Gemma Donati, who bore the poet three children (Jacopo, Pietro and Antonia). However, the poet did not dedicate any of his sonnets to his wife.
• In 1302, Durante degli Alighieri was expelled from the city in disgrace. on a fabricated anti-state case against him (due to Alighieri's belonging to the White Guelph party), as well as in cases of bribery and financial forgery. In addition to the fact that the Dante family paid a huge fine for those times, the poet's property was also arrested.

  The family couldn't follow him Gemma stayed with the children. Unfortunately, Dante never saw his hometown again. Wandering around different cities, the poet was forced to stop in Ravenna, where he spent the rest of his life.

  The paradox is that over time, the authorities of Florence forgave him his deserved and undeserved sins and allowed him to return to his homeland, but Dante did not do this.



• Before his death, Dante Alighieri completed his most famous creation, The Divine Comedy. On one of his trips to Venice, the poet caught malaria, which weakened his already exhausted body. Dante had only enough strength to fight the disease, but he could not resist it - in 1321 Dante died.

  Two parts of the Divine Comedy - "Hell" and "Purgatory" - were already distributed at that time, the poet was finishing the last part - "Paradise" - already a few days before his death. When, after the funeral, the poet's children arrived in Ravenna, they could not find the last, final verses of "Paradise". They were hidden by Dante himself, who lived in eternal fear of arrest, and therefore constantly hid what was written. The sons wanted to find the manuscript in order to sell it and help out at least some money. The family was in great need and lived in poverty for many years.

  

  The eldest son Jacopo wrote later in his memoirs that the poems could not be found for eight months, until one night Dante himself in snow-white clothes appeared to him in a dream.

  The father pointed to the wall in one of the rooms to his son and said: “here you will find something that you cannot find for a long time.” Waking up, Jacopo immediately rushed to the indicated wall and found the desired manuscript in an inconspicuous niche.

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Where is the poet buried?

A lot of mystical is also connected with the burial of Alighieri.. He was buried in the church of San Francesco in Ravenna. A few years later, the Florentine authorities decided to return the ashes of the eminent citizen to the city and sent people to Ravenna to bring the marble sarcophagus with the body of the poet.

However, everyone was in for a big surprise.: when the sarcophagus was brought to Florence, it turned out that it was empty. The Pope was presented with two versions of what happened: the first version said that the remains were stolen by unknown persons, and according to the second, Durante himself appeared for his own body. Oddly enough, but Pope Leo the Tenth believed the latest version.

It turned out that when the inhabitants of Ravenna realized that the dream of the noble Florentine Lorenzo Medici (who later became Pope Leo X) was about to be fulfilled, they made a hole in the marble sarcophagus and simply stole the body of the eminent Italian.

The remains were reburied in a secret place that only a small group of Franciscan friars knew about. Soon the burial place was lost.

The remains of the poet were discovered by accident, during restoration work in the old Braccioforte chapel (in 1865): workers stumbled in one of the walls on a niche where a simple wooden coffin rested. When the coffin was opened to make sure that it was not empty, in addition to the body, a note by a certain Antonio Santi was found enclosed in the coffin - "Dante's bones were placed here by Antonio Santi in 1677." Who this Antonio Santi was and how he was able to discover the remains remains a mystery to science.

The found remains were buried with great honors, and until now the body of the Florentine exile rests in a small chapel in Ravenna.

But the mysticism didn't end there.. During reconstruction work in one of the libraries in Florence (1999), workers stumbled upon a book from which an envelope fell out.

The envelope contained ashes and stamped paper in a black frame, announcing that the envelope contained the ashes of Dante. This news shocked the entire scientific and literary community.

Where will the ashes come from if Dante's body was not burned? Certainly, Florentine authorities in the 14th century demanded that the monks burn Dante- as a punishment for apostate and anti-state activities, but (according to a number of sources) this did not happen. Later it turned out that the burning took place, but not Durante, but the carpet on which his coffin stood. The carpet was burned, and the notary did not come up with anything better than putting the ashes in an envelope, writing a note and sending a message to Florence.

Guided tour of famous places in Florence

Traveling around Florence, you can create your own tourist route, one way or another connected with the author of the Divine Comedy.

• Palace (Old Palace). It was built by Duke Cosimo de' Medici as the main residence of the Duke. Subsequently, the Medici moved to a larger building of the Palazzo Pitti. In this palace, the Palazzo Vecchio, on the ground floor there is a posthumous cast of the face of the author of the Divine Comedy, made in the 14th century.



• Church of Dante Alighieri. In fact, the church bears the name of Saint Margherita di Cerri, but the inhabitants of Florence unofficially renamed the Church of Dante because of its proximity to the house where the poet lived. The church is located in the courtyards, not far from the Duomo Cathedral.

  This church is very unpretentious both externally and internally., in its decoration there is no wall painting and some decorations. By the way, it is in this church that the grave of Dante's only love, Beatrice, is located.

  Entrepreneurial locals say that Florence (similar to Verona) has its own romantic tradition - to bring love notes to Beatrice's grave asking for help in matters of the heart.



• Dante Alighieri House Museum. A simple two-story building. However, this house is not original - in the middle of the 19th century, the square where the house of the Alighieri family stood was reconstructed, and the houses on it were demolished or moved to another place. Due to the fact that Dante was very popular in Florence, with the help of numerous archival sources, it was possible to establish the exact place where the house of the Alighieri family stood. In 1911, a copy of Dante's house was built.

  Historians and architects have recreated the house of that era, many items (coins, household items, weapons) really belong to the Middle Ages, but, alas, they have nothing to do with the poet himself. But there are numerous copies of his manuscripts, illustrations made by him personally for a number of chapters of the Divine Comedy.



You can visit it on any day except Monday, from 10 am to 5 pm.

Museum house address: Via Santa Margherita, 50122 Firenze

The entrance ticket costs 4 euros, for children and preferential categories of citizens - 2 euros.

• Baptistery of San Giovanni. This is the green and white marble building in the movie where Professor Langdon found the stolen mask in the baptismal font. By the way, the very one where Durante himself was once baptized is a historical fact.

To one degree or another, all these places were mentioned in Dan Brown's book "Inferno" and in the feature film of the same name.

A posthumous cast of Dante's face is located in Florence, in the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace). This luxurious building on Piazza della Signoria keeps many historical rarities, and the mask is one of them.

The death mask of Dante Alighieri was made immediately after the death of the poet, in the 14th century. Although some historians still doubt its authenticity, since death masks at that time were made only for rulers, and even then from the 15th century.

The death mask of Alighieri was made of plaster by order of the ruler of Ravenna.

For some time after Dante's funeral, it was kept in the chapel of Ravenna, where his marble sarcophagus was placed.

But since the poet loved Florence with all his heart and aspired to it, despite the prohibition of the authorities, it was decided to transfer the death mask to his hometown. This was done in 1520.

The owners of Dante's death mask were different people- First, the mask came to the sculptor Giambologna, who later handed it over to the students of the sculptor Pietro Tacca.

Until 1830, the owner of the mask was the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini., who presented it to the English artist Seymour Kirkup. Kirkup is known for being the author of a copy of the fresco depicting Dante (a copy is kept today in the Borgello Museum). After the death of Seymour Kirkap, his widow gave the mask to Italian Senator Alessandro D'Ancona. In 1911, Senator D'Ancona donated Alighieri's death mask to the Palazzo Vecchio, where it remains to this day.

The mask is stored in a wooden case, against the background of red fabric. The case with the mask is located in a small room, between the Priors' Hall and Eleanor's apartments.

Palace address: Palazzo Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria, 50122 Firenze, Italy

The mask can be viewed along with other attractions of the palace daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. In the summer (high season), the opening hours of the palace for tourists are extended to 23 hours.

The best time to visit the palace is from 18:00 to 21:00 (in summer). At this time, there are practically no visitors in the palace, and you can slowly stroll through the palace halls in silence, enjoying acquaintance with rarities.

The cost of a ticket to the palace is 10 euros.

During a tour of the palace, you can take an audio guide, its cost is 5 euros.

You can get to Palazzo Vecchio by bus C1(stop "Uffizi Gallery" or C2 (stop "via Condotta").

In contact with

DANTE Alighieri (Dante Alighieri) (1265-1321), Italian poet, creator of the Italian literary language. In his youth, he joined the school "Dolce style Nuovo" (sonnets in praise of Beatrice, the autobiographical story "New Life", 1292-93, edition 1576); philosophical and political treatises ("Feast", not finished; "On the People's Speech", 1304-07, edition 1529), "Messages" (1304-16). The pinnacle of Dante's work is the poem "The Divine Comedy" (1307-21, edition 1472) in 3 parts ("Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise") and 100 songs, a poetic encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. He had a great influence on the development of European culture.

DANTE Alighieri(May or June 1265, Florence - September 14, 1321, Ravenna), Italian poet, one of the greatest geniuses of world literature.

Biography

The Dante family belonged to the urban nobility of Florence. The family name Alighieri (in a different voicing of Alagieri) was the first to be worn by the poet's grandfather. Dante was educated at a municipal school, then, presumably, studied at the University of Bologna (according to even less reliable information, he also attended the University of Paris during his exile). He took an active part in the political life of Florence; from June 15 to August 15, 1300, he was a member of the government (he was elected to the post of prior), trying, while acting, to prevent the aggravation of the struggle between the parties of the White and Black Guelphs (see Guelphs and Ghibellines). After an armed coup in Florence and the coming to power of the Black Guelphs, on January 27, 1302, he was sentenced to exile and deprived of civil rights; On March 10, he was sentenced to death for failing to pay a fine. The first years of Dante's exile - among the leaders of the White Guelphs, takes part in the armed and diplomatic struggle with the winning party. The last episode in his political biography is connected with the Italian campaign of Emperor Henry VII (1310-13), whose efforts to establish civil peace in Italy he gave ideological support in a number of public messages and in the treatise "Monarchy". Dante never returned to Florence, spent several years in Verona at the court of Can Grande della Scala, the last years of his life enjoyed the hospitality of the ruler of Ravenna, Guido da Polenta. Died of malaria.

Lyrics

The main part of Dante's lyrical poems was created in the 80-90s. 13th century; with the beginning of the new century, small poetic forms gradually disappear from his work. Dante began by imitating the most influential lyric poet in Italy at that time, Gwittone d'Arezzo, but soon changed poetics and, together with his older friend Guido Cavalcanti, became the founder of a special poetic school, which Dante himself called the school of the "sweet new style" ("Dolce style nuovo" ). Its main distinguishing feature is the ultimate spiritualization of love feeling. Poems dedicated to his beloved Beatrice Portinari, Dante, having provided biographical and poetic commentary, collected in a book called "New Life" (c. 1293-95). : two meetings, the first in childhood, the second in adolescence, denoting the beginning of love, the death of Beatrice's father, the death of Beatrice herself, the temptation of a new love and overcoming it.The biography appears as a series of mental states leading to an ever more complete mastery of the meaning of the hero of feeling that has befallen: in as a result, the feeling of love acquires the features and signs of religious worship.

In addition to the "New Life", about fifty more poems by Dante have come down to us: poems in the manner of the "sweet new style" (but not always addressed to Beatrice); the love cycle, known as the "stone" (after the name of the addressee, Donna Pietra) and characterized by an excess of sensuality; comic poetry (poetic squabble with Forese Donati and the poem "Flower", the attribution of which remains doubtful); a group of doctrinal poems (dedicated to the themes of nobility, generosity, justice, etc.).

Treatises

Poems of philosophical content became the subject of commentary in the unfinished treatise "Feast" (c. 1304-07), which is one of the first experiments in Italy to create scientific prose in the vernacular and at the same time the rationale for this attempt - a kind of educational program along with the defense of the vernacular. language. In the unfinished Latin treatise "On Popular Eloquence", written in the same years, the apology of the Italian language is accompanied by the theory and history of literature in it - both of which are absolute innovations. In the Latin treatise "Monarchy" (c. 1312-13), Dante (also for the first time) proclaims the principle of separation of spiritual and secular power and insists on the full sovereignty of the latter.

"The Divine Comedy"

Over the poem "The Divine Comedy" Dante began to work during the years of exile and finished it shortly before his death. Written in tercini, containing 14,233 verses, it is divided into three parts (or canticles) and one hundred cantos (each canticle contains thirty-three songs, and one more is introductory to the entire poem). It was called a comedy by the author, who proceeded from the classification of genres worked out by medieval poetics. The definition of "divine" was given to her by her descendants. The poem tells about Dante's journey through the realm of the dead: the right to see the afterlife during his lifetime is a special favor that saves him from philosophical and moral delusions and imposes on him a certain high mission. Dante, lost in the "gloomy forest" (which symbolizes a specific, although not directly named sin of the author himself, and at the same time - the sins of all mankind, experiencing a critical moment in its history), comes to the aid of the Roman poet Virgil (who symbolizes the human mind, unfamiliar with divine revelation) and leads him through the first two kingdoms beyond the grave - the kingdom of retribution and the kingdom of redemption. Hell is a funnel-shaped failure ending in the center of the earth, it is divided into nine circles, in each of which an execution is performed on a special category of sinners (only the inhabitants of the first circle - the souls of unbaptized babies and righteous pagans - are spared from torment). Among the souls that Dante met and entered into a conversation with him, there are those who are personally familiar to him and there are known to everyone - characters of ancient history and myths, or heroes of our time. In The Divine Comedy they are not turned into direct and flat illustrations of their sins; the evil for which they are condemned is difficult to combine with their human nature, sometimes not devoid of nobility and greatness of spirit (among the most famous episodes of this kind are meetings with Paolo and Francesca in the circle of voluptuaries, with Farinata degli Uberti in the circle of heretics, with Brunetto Latini in circle of rapists, with Ulysses in the circle of deceivers, with Ugolino in the circle of traitors). Purgatory is a huge mountain in the center of the uninhabited ocean-occupied southern hemisphere, it is divided by ledges into seven circles, where the souls of the dead atone for the sins of pride, envy, anger, despondency, avarice and extravagance, gluttony, voluptuousness. After each of the circles, one of the seven signs of sin inscribed by the gatekeeper angel is erased from the forehead of Dante (and any of the souls of purgatory) - in this part of the "Comedy" it is sharper than in others, it is felt that Dante's path for him is not only acquainting but also redemptive. On a mountaintop, in an earthly paradise, Dante meets Beatrice (symbolizing divine revelation) and parted ways with Virgil; here, Dante is fully aware of his personal guilt and is completely cleared of it. Together with Beatrice, he ascends to paradise, in each of the eight heavens surrounding the earth (in seven planetary and in the eighth starry) he gets acquainted with a certain category of blessed souls and becomes stronger in faith and knowledge. In the ninth heaven of the Prime Mover, and in the Empyrean, where Beatrice replaces St. Bernard, he is honored with initiation into the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Both plans of the poem finally merge, in one of which the path of a person to truth and goodness through the abyss of sin, despair and doubt is presented, in the other - the path of history, which has come to the last frontier and opens towards a new era. And the Divine Comedy itself, being a kind of synthesis of medieval culture, turns out to be the final work for it.

Born in mid-May 1265 in Florence. His parents were respectable citizens of modest means and belonged to the Guelph party, which opposed the power of the German emperors in Italy. They were able to pay for their son's education at school, and subsequently allowed him, without worrying about the means, to improve in the art of versification. An idea of ​​the poet’s youth is given by his autobiographical story in verse and prose New Life (La vita nuova, 1293), which tells about Dante’s love for Beatrice (it is believed that it was Bice, daughter of Folco Portinari) from the moment they first met when Dante was nine years old , and she is eight, and until the death of Beatrice in June 1290. The poems are accompanied by prose inserts explaining how this or that poem appeared. In this work, Dante develops the theory of courtly love for a woman, reconciling it with the Christian love for God. After the death of Beatrice, Dante turned to the consolation of philosophy and created several allegorical poems in praise of this new "lady". Over the years scientific studies his literary horizons also broadened considerably. The decisive role in the fate and further work of Dante was played by the expulsion of the poet from his native Florence.

At that time, the power in Florence belonged to the Guelph party, torn apart by the inner-party struggle between the white Guelphs (who advocated the independence of Florence from the pope) and the black Guelphs (supporters of papal power). Dante's sympathies were on the side of the White Guelphs. In 1295-1296 he was called several times to public service, including participation in the Council of the Hundred. In 1300, he traveled as ambassador to San Gimignano, calling on the citizens of the city to unite with Florence against Pope Boniface VIII, and in the same year he was elected a member of the governing council of priors - he held this position from June 15 to August 15. From April to September 1301 he was again a member of the Council of the Hundred. In the autumn of the same year, Dante joined the embassy sent to Pope Boniface in connection with the attack on Florence by Prince Charles of Valois. In his absence, on November 1, 1301, with the advent of Charles, power in the city passed to the black Guelphs, and the white Guelphs were repressed. In January 1302, Dante learned that he had been sentenced in absentia to exile on trumped-up charges of bribery, malfeasance, and resistance to the pope and Charles of Valois, and never returned to Florence.

In 1310, Emperor Henry VII invaded Italy with a "peacekeeping" purpose. To this event, Dante, who by that time had found temporary shelter in Casentino, responded with an ardent letter to the rulers and peoples of Italy, urging them to support Henry. In another letter, entitled Dante Alighieri the Florentine, unjustly expelled, to the worthless Florentines who remained in the city, he denounced the resistance offered by Florence to the emperor. Probably at the same time he wrote a treatise on the monarchy (De monarchia, 1312-1313). However, in August 1313, after an unsuccessful three-year campaign, Henry VII died suddenly in Buonconvento. In 1314, after the death of Pope Clement V in France, Dante issued another letter addressed to the conclave of Italian cardinals in the city of Carpentras, in which he urged them to elect an Italian pope and return the papacy from Avignon to Rome.

For some time, Dante took refuge with the ruler of Verona, Can Grande della Scala, to whom he dedicated the final part of the Divine Comedy - Paradise. The poet spent the last years of his life under the patronage of Guido da Polenta in Ravenna, where he died in September 1321, having completed the Divine Comedy shortly before his death.

Only a part of Dante's early poems entered the New Life. In addition to these, he wrote several allegorical canzones, which he probably intended to include in the Feast, as well as many lyric poems. Subsequently, all these poems were published under the title Poems (Rime), or Canzoniere (Canzoniere), although Dante himself did not compile such a collection. This should also include the playfully swearing sonnets (tenzones) that Dante exchanged with his friend Forese Donati.

According to Dante himself, he wrote the treatise Pir (Il convivio, 1304-1307) to declare himself as a poet who moved from singing courtly love to philosophical topics. It was assumed that the Feast would include fourteen poems (kanzon), each of which would be provided with an extensive gloss, interpreting its allegorical and philosophical meaning. However, having written interpretations of the three canzones, Dante abandoned work on the treatise. In Pir's first book, which serves as a prologue, he passionately defends the right of the Italian language to be the language of literature. Treatise on Latin On popular eloquence (De vulgarieloquentia, 1304-1307) was also not completed: Dante wrote only the first book and part of the second. In it, Dante speaks of Italian as a means of poetic expression, expounds his theory of language, and expresses his hope for the creation in Italy of a new literary language that would rise above dialectal differences and would be worthy of being called great poetry.

In three books of carefully substantiated study On the Monarchy (Demonarchia, 1312-1313), Dante seeks to prove the truth of the following statements: 1) only under the rule of a universal monarch can humanity come to a peaceful existence and fulfill its destiny; 2) The Lord chose the Roman people to rule the world (therefore, this monarch must be the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire); 3) the emperor and the pope receive power directly from God (therefore, the first is not subordinate to the second). These views were expressed even before Dante, but he brought into them the ardor of conviction. The church immediately condemned the treatise and, according to Boccaccio, sentenced the book to be burned.

In the last two years of his life, Dante wrote two eclogues in Latin hexameter. This was an answer to the professor of poetry at the University of Bologna, Giovanni del Virgilio, who urged him to write in Latin and come to Bologna to be crowned with a laurel wreath. The study The Question of Water and Land (Questio de aqua et terra), devoted to the controversial issue of the ratio of water and land on the surface of the Earth, Dante may have read publicly in Verona. Of the letters to Dante, eleven are recognized as authentic, all in Latin (some have been mentioned).

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It is believed that Dante took up the Divine Comedy around 1307, interrupting work on the treatises Feast (Il convivio, 1304–1307) and On popular eloquence (De vulgari eloquentia, 1304–1307). In this work, he wanted to present a double view of the socio-political structure: on the one hand, as divinely pre-established, on the other, as having reached unprecedented decomposition in his contemporary society (“the current world has gone astray” - Purgatory, X VI, 82). The main theme of the Divine Comedy can be called justice in this life and in the afterlife, as well as the means to restore it, given, by the providence of God, into the hands of man himself.

Dante called his poem a Comedy, because it has a gloomy beginning (Hell) and a joyful end (Paradise and contemplation of the Divine Essence), and, moreover, is written in a simple style (as opposed to the sublime style inherent, in Dante's understanding, of tragedy), on folk language, "as women speak." The epithet Divine in the title was not invented by Dante; it first appeared in an edition published in 1555 in Venice.

The poem consists of one hundred songs of approximately the same length (130-150 lines) and is divided into three canticles - Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, thirty-three songs each; the first song of Hell serves as a prologue to the entire poem. The size of the Divine Comedy is an eleven-syllable, rhyming scheme, tercine, invented by Dante himself, who put a deep meaning into it. The Divine Comedy is an unsurpassed example of art as imitation; Dante takes as a model everything that exists, both material and spiritual, created by the triune God, who left the imprint of his trinity on everything. Therefore, the structure of the poem is based on the number three, and the amazing symmetry of its structure is rooted in imitation of the measure and order that the Lord gave to all things.

In a letter to Can Grande, Dante explains that his poem is ambiguous, it is an allegory like the Bible. Indeed, the poem has a complex allegorical structure, and although the narrative can almost always be based on a mere literal sense, this is far from the only level of perception. The author of the poem is presented in it as a person who has received God's special mercy - to make a journey to the Lord through the three kingdoms of the underworld, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. This journey is presented in the poem as real, performed by Dante in the flesh and in reality, and not in a dream or vision. In the afterlife, the poet sees various states of souls after death, in accordance with the retribution determined by the Lord.

The sins that are punished in Hell fall into three main categories: promiscuity, violence, and lying; these are the three sinful tendencies stemming from Adam's sin. The ethical principles on which Dante's Hell is built, as well as his vision of the world and man in general, are a fusion of Christian theology and pagan ethics based on Aristotle's Ethics. Dante's views are not original, they were common in an era when the main works of Aristotle were rediscovered and diligently studied.

After passing through the nine circles of Hell and the center of the Earth, Dante and his guide Virgil come to the surface at the foot of Mount Purgatory, located in the southern hemisphere, on the opposite edge of the Earth from Jerusalem. Their descent into Hell took them exactly the same amount of time as elapsed between the position of Christ in the tomb and his resurrection, and the opening songs of Purgatory are replete with indications of how the action of the poem echoes the feat of Christ - another example of imitation from Dante, now in habitual form of imitatio Christi.

Ascending the Mount of Purgatory, where the seven deadly sins are redeemed on seven ledges, Dante purifies himself and, having reached the top, finds himself in an earthly Paradise. Thus, climbing the mountain is a “return to Eden”, finding the lost Paradise. From that moment on, Beatrice becomes Dante's guide. Her appearance is the culmination of the whole journey, moreover, the poet draws an underlined analogy between the arrival of Beatrice and the coming of Christ - in history, in the soul and at the end of time. Here is an imitation of the Christian concept of history as a linear progressive movement, the center of which forms the coming of Christ.

With Beatrice, Dante ascends through nine concentric celestial spheres (according to the structure of the sky in Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology), where the souls of the righteous dwell, to the tenth - Empyrean, the abode of the Lord. There Beatrice replaces St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who shows the poet saints and angels tasting the highest bliss: the direct contemplation of the Lord, which quenches all desires.

Despite such a variety of posthumous destinies, one principle can be distinguished that operates throughout the entire poem: retribution corresponds to the nature of sin or virtue inherent in a person during life. This is especially clearly seen in Hell (the instigators of discord and schismatics are cut in two there). In Purgatory, the purification of the soul is subject to a slightly different, “correcting” principle (the eyes of envious people are tightly sewn up). In Paradise, the souls of the righteous appear first in that heaven, or celestial sphere, which better symbolizes the degree and nature of their merits (the souls of warriors dwell on Mars).

Two dimensions can be distinguished in the structure of the Divine Comedy: the afterlife as such and Dante's journey through it, which enriches the poem with a new deep meaning and carries the main allegorical load. Theology in the days of Dante, as before, believed that a mystical journey to God is possible even during a person's life, if the Lord, by His grace, will give him this opportunity. Dante builds his journey through the afterlife in such a way that it symbolically reflects the "journey" of the soul in the earthly world. In doing so, he follows patterns already developed in contemporary theology. In particular, it was believed that on the way to God, the mind goes through three stages, led by three various types light: the Light of Natural Intelligence, the Light of Grace and the Light of Glory. It is this role that Dante's three guides play in the Divine Comedy.

The Christian concept of time is not only at the center of the poem: its entire action, up to the appearance of Beatrice, is intended to reflect what Dante understood as the path of redemption, destined by the Lord for mankind after the fall. The same understanding of history was found in Dante's treatise On Monarchy and was expressed by Christian historians and poets (for example, Orsisius and Prudentius) a thousand years before Dante. According to this concept, the Lord chose the Roman people to lead mankind to justice, in which he achieved perfection under Emperor Augustus. It was at this time, when peace and justice reigned on the whole earth, for the first time after the fall, that the Lord wished to incarnate and send his beloved son to people. With the advent of Christ, thus, the movement of mankind towards justice is completed. It is not difficult to trace the allegorical reflection of this concept in the Divine Comedy. Just as the Romans under Augustus led the human race to justice, so Virgil, on the top of the Mount of Purgatory, leads Dante to gain an inner sense of justice and, saying goodbye, addresses the poet as if he were an emperor at a coronation: “I crown you with a miter and a crown over you yourself.” Now, when justice has reigned in Dante's soul, as once in the world, Beatrice appears, and her arrival is a reflection of the coming of Christ, as it was, is and will be. Thus, the path traveled by the soul of an individual, achieving justice, and then - purifying grace, symbolically repeats the path of redemption traveled by mankind in the course of history.

This allegory of the Divine Comedy is clearly intended for the Christian reader, who will be interested as a description afterlife and Dante's journey to God. But the image of earthly life in Dante does not become ghostly and incorporeal from this. In the poem is given whole gallery lively and vivid portraits, and the sense of the significance of earthly life, the unity of "that" and "this" world is expressed in it firmly and unambiguously.

The famous poet, author of the well-known "Divine Comedy" Alighieri Dante was born in Florence in 1265 into a noble family. There are several versions of the true date of birth of the poet, but the authenticity of none of them has been established.

He devoted a lot of time to self-development, in particular, he studied ancient literature and foreign languages. His first mentor was Brunetto Latini, a famous poet and scientist at that time.

At the age of 9, Dante meets his main muse in life. Beatrice Portinari, that was the name of the young lady, was his age and lived next door. Being just a child, the poet was not aware of his feelings, and the next meeting between them took place only after 9 years. It was then that he realized that he loved her, but it was too late, Beatrice was married. Yes and shyness young man She didn't let him confess his feelings. The girl, on the other hand, did not suspect anything and completely considered Dante arrogant, since he did not talk to her. In 1290, his beloved died, this was a serious blow to the poet. A few years later, he married the daughter of the party leader Donati, with whom his family was at enmity. Of course, this union was created by calculation. Beatrice remained his only love for life. In the book "New Life" he spoke about his feelings for a woman who passed away so early and it was this book that brought fame to the author.

In 1296, he begins to actively participate in the political life of Florence, and after 4 years he becomes a member of the college of six priors governing Florence. It was the active political activity in 1302, as well as the fictional story of bribery, that served as the reasons for his expulsion from his native city. His property was arrested, and later even sentenced to death.

After such events, he was forced to wander around cities and countries. Once in Paris, he spoke at public debates. In 1316 he was allowed to return to his native city, but on the condition that he accept the wrongness of his views. Of course, the pride of the poet did not allow him to do this. From 1316 to 1317 he lived in Ravenna, at the invitation of the lord of the city.

It was during the period of exile that a work appeared that glorified him for centuries. Even at that moment, he thought only of his muse, because the Comedy was written in glorification of Beatrice. With the help of The Divine Comedy, he wanted to gain fame and return home, but this dream was not destined to come true. He completed the third part of the work shortly before his death.

In 1321, Alighieri went to Venice, as an ambassador, to conclude a peace treaty. On way back he gets malaria. The poet died on the night of September 13-14.

Biography 2

Dante Alighieri is an Italian writer and thinker, born June 1, 1265, whose full name is Durante degli Alighieri. He was born in the city of Florence to a Roman family. His great-grandfather went on crusades, in one of which he died, and his grandfather was expelled from Florence due to political reasons, but Dante's father was not a politician, so he had no problems in Florence.

Dante was a very well-read and intelligent man. He worked and studied natural Sciences, even read the teachings of the "heretics" of that time. In what period Dante Alighieri began to write his own works is unknown, but his first work is considered to be the New Life, which was written in 1292. "New Life" was a collection of poems and prose that the writer had accumulated during this time. Some poems and prose refer to the author's friend, but experts consider this work to be the first autobiography in the history of literature.

During the conflict between the two sides of power - the Pope and the emperor, Dante chose the side of the emperor. At first, this was successful, but soon the Pope was in power, and Dante was expelled from the city. All his life he lived, moving from place to place, even visiting Paris. In 1304, philosophical works were written, but Dante never finished them, as he began to work on his most popular work, The Divine Comedy. By the way, Dante himself called this work "Comedy", and the word "divine" has already been added by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Dante's first love was Beatrice Portinari. He had known her since the age of 9, but after 9 years he met her again, when she was already married, and realized that he had lost. But Beatrice died at the age of 24, but it is not known exactly from what. There are versions that she died in childbirth, but there are versions. That she died of the plague. Later, Dante had a marriage with Gemma Donati. It was a marriage of convenience, because the families represented different political parties and were constantly at odds. In this marriage, 2 boys and a girl were born.

Dante Alighieri died on the night of September 13-14, 1921 from malaria. He was buried, but in 1329 the cardinal ordered the monks of the monastery in the city of Ravenna, where Dante lived in recent years, to publicly burn the remains of the writer, but no one did. Currently, this church has been restored and converted into the mausoleum of Dante Alighieri.

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