Dante Alighieri - the greatest and famous person, born in the Middle Ages. His contribution to the development of not only Italian, but also the entire world literature cannot be estimated. To date, people often search for Dante Alighieri's biography in summary. But to be interested in such a superficial interest in the life of such a great man who made a huge contribution to the development of languages is not entirely correct.
Biography of Dante Alighieri
Speaking about the life and work of Dante Alighieri, it is not enough to say that he was a poet. The area of his activity was very extensive and multifaceted. He was interested not only in literature, but also in politics. Today Dante Alighieri, whose biography is filled with interesting events is called a theologian.
Beginning of life
The biography of Dante Alighieri began in Florence. Family legend, which for a long time was the basis of the Alighieri family, said that Dante, like all his relatives, was a descendant of a great Roman family, which laid the foundation for the founding of Florence itself. Everyone considered this legend true, because the grandfather of Dante's father was in the ranks of the army that participated in the Crusade under the command of the Great Conrad the Third. It was this ancestor of Dante who was knighted, and soon died tragically during the battle against the Muslims.
It was this relative of Dante, whose name was Kachchagvida, who was married to a woman who came from a very rich and noble family - Aldigieri. Over time, the name of a well-known family began to sound a little different - "Alighieri". One of the children of Cacchagvid, who later became Dante's grandfather, often endured persecution from the lands of Florence in those years when the Guelphs constantly fought battles with the peoples of the Ghibellines.
Biography Highlights
Today you can find many sources that briefly talk about the biography and work of Dante Alighieri. However, such a study of the personality of Dante will not be entirely correct. A brief biography of Dante Alighieri will not be able to convey all those seemingly unimportant biographical elements that so strongly influenced his life.
Speaking about the date of birth of Dante Alighieri, no one can say the exact date, month and year. However, it is generally accepted that the main date of birth is the time that Bocaccio named, being a friend of Dante, - May 1265. The writer Dante himself wrote about himself that he was born under the Gemini zodiac, which suggests that the time of Alighieri's birth is the end of May - the beginning of June. What is known about his baptism is that this event took place in 1266, in March, and his name at baptism sounded like Durante.
Education Dante Alighieri
Another important fact that is mentioned in all short biographies Dante Alighieri, was his education. The first teacher and mentor of the young and still unknown Dante was a popular writer, poet and at the same time a scientist - Brunetto Latini. It was he who laid the first poetic knowledge in the young head of Alighieri.
And today the fact remains unknown where Dante received his further education. Scientists studying history unanimously say that Dante Alighieri was very educated, knew a lot about the literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages, was well versed in various sciences, and even studied heretical teachings. Where could Dante Alighieri get such wide knowledge? In the biography of the poet, this has become another mystery that is almost impossible to solve.
For a long time scientists from all over the world tried to find the answer to this question. Many facts indicate that Dante Alighieri could have received such extensive knowledge at the university, which was located in the city of Bologna, since it was there that he lived for some time. But, since there is no direct evidence of this theory, it remains only to assume that it is so.
The first steps in creativity and tests
Like all people, the poet had friends. His closest friend was Guido Cavalcanti, who was also a poet. It was to him that Dante devoted a huge number of works and lines of his poem " New life».
At the same time, Dante Alighieri is known as a fairly young public and political figure. In 1300 he was elected to the post of prior, but soon the poet was expelled from Florence along with his comrades. Already on his deathbed, Dante dreamed of being on his native land. However, throughout his life after his exile, he was never allowed to visit the city, which the poet considered his homeland.
Years spent in exile
The expulsion of their hometown made Dante Alighieri, whose biography and books are filled with bitterness from separation from his native land, a wanderer. At the time of such large-scale persecutions in Florence, Dante was already one of the famous lyric poets. His poem "New Life" had already been written by this time, and he himself worked hard on the creation of "Feast". Changes in the poet himself were very noticeable in his further work. Exile and long wandering left an indelible imprint on Alighieri. His great work "The Feast" was supposed to be the answer to the 14 canzones already accepted in society, but it was never completed.
Development in the literary path
It was during his exile that Alighieri wrote his most famous work, Comedy, which began to be called "divine" only years later. Alighieri's friend, Boccaccio, greatly contributed to the change of name.
There are still many legends about Dante's Divine Comedy. Boccaccio himself claimed that all three canticles were written in different cities. The last part, "Paradise", was written in Ravenna. It was Boccaccio who said that after the poet died, his children for a very long time could not find the last thirteen songs that were written by the hand of the great Dante Alighieri. This part of the "Comedy" was discovered only after one of the sons of Alighieri dreamed of the poet himself, who told where the manuscripts were. Such a beautiful legend is actually not refuted by scientists today, because there are a lot of oddities and mysteries around the personality of this creator.
The personal life of the poet
In the personal life of Dante Alighieri, everything was far from ideal. His first and last love was the Florentine girl Beatrice Portinari. Having met his love back in Florence, as a child, he did not understand his feelings for her. Meeting Beatrice nine years later, when she was already married, Dante realized how much he loved her. She became for him the love of his life, inspiration and hope for a better future. The poet was shy all his life. During his life, he spoke only twice with his beloved, but this did not become an obstacle for him in love for her. Beatrice did not understand, did not know about the feelings of the poet, she believed that he was simply arrogant, therefore he did not talk to her. This was precisely the reason that Portinari once felt a strong resentment towards Alighieri and soon stopped talking to him at all.
For the poet, this was a strong blow, because it was under the influence of the very love that he felt for Beatrice that he wrote most of his works. Dante Alighieri's poem "New Life" was created under the influence of Portinari's words of greeting, which the poet regarded as a successful attempt to attract the attention of his beloved. And Alighieri completely devoted his “Divine Comedy” to his only and unrequited love for Beatrice.
tragic loss
Alighieri's life changed a lot with the death of his beloved. Since at the age of twenty-one Bice, as the girl was affectionately called by her relatives, was married to a rich and influential person, it remains surprising that exactly three years after her marriage, Portinari died suddenly. There are two main versions of death: the first is that Bice died during a difficult childbirth, and the second is that she was very ill, which eventually led to her death.
For Alighieri, this loss was very big. For a long time without finding his place in this world, he could no longer feel sympathy for anyone. Based on the awareness of his precarious position, a few years after the loss of the woman he loved, Dante Alighieri married a very rich lady. This marriage was created solely by calculation, and the poet himself treated his wife absolutely coldly and indifferently. Despite this, in this marriage, Alighieri had three children, two of whom eventually followed the path of their father and became seriously interested in literature.
Death of a great writer
Death overtook Dante Alighieri suddenly. In 1321, at the end of the summer, Dante went to Venice to finally make peace with the famous church of St. Mark. During his return to his native land, Alighieri suddenly fell ill with malaria, which killed him. Already in September, on the night of the 13th to the 14th, Alighieri died in Ravenna, without saying goodbye to his children.
There, in Ravenna, Alighieri was buried. The famous architect Guido da Polenta wanted to build a very beautiful and rich mausoleum for Dante Alighieri, but the authorities did not allow this, because the poet spent a huge part of his life in exile.
To date, Dante Alighieri is buried in a beautiful tomb, which was built only in 1780.
The most interesting fact remains that the well-known portrait of the poet has no historical basis and authenticity. This is how Bocaccio represented him.
Dan Brown in his book "Inferno" writes a lot of biographical facts about the life of Alighieri, which are really recognized as reliable.
Many scholars believe that Beatrice's beloved was invented and created by time, that such a person never existed. However, no one can explain how, in this case, Dante and Beatrice could become a symbol of great and unhappy love, standing on the same level as Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde, no one can.
The first love in the biography of Dante Alighieri was Beatrice Portinari. But she died in 1290. After that, Alighieri married Gemma Donati. One of the first stories of Dante Alighieri was "New Life". In 1300-1301, Alighieri held the title of prior of Florence, and was expelled the following year. At the same time, his wife remained to live in the old place, he did not call Gemma to accompany him. For the rest of his life, Alighieri never again came to Florence.
The next work in Alighieri's biography was The Feast, written in exile. It was followed by the treatise "On popular eloquence". Forced to leave Florence, Alighieri traveled to Italy and France. Then he was active. public figure- lectured, took part in debates. by the most famous work in the biography of Dante Alighieri became " The Divine Comedy”, which the writer created from 1306 until the end of his life. The work consists of three parts - Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. Among other works of Alighieri: "Eclogues", "Messages", the poem "Flower", the treatise "Monarchy".
In 1316 he began to live in Ravenna. Dante Alighieri died in September 1321 from malaria.
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Brief biography of the poet, the main facts of life and work:
Dante ALIGIERI (1265-1321)
The great Italian poet of the Early Renaissance Dante Alighieri was born in mid-May 1265 in Florence. Dante's parents were native Florentines and belonged to a poor and not very noble feudal family.
From the documents preserved in the archives, it is known that the Alighieri owned houses and plots of land in Florence and its environs and were considered a middle-class family.
Father Dante Alighiero Alighieri, probably a lawyer, did not disdain usury and, according to the Florentine custom, gave money on interest. He was married twice. Dante's mother died when the poet was still a child. Her name was Bella full name Isabel. Dante's father died before 1283.
Eighteen years old, Dante became the eldest in the family. He had two sisters - one was called Tana (full name Gaetana), the name of the second history has not been preserved. Subsequently, with Dante's nephew from his second sister, Andrea di Poggio was a sign of Boccaccio, who received from Andrea and wrote down valuable information about the Alighieri family. Dante also had a younger brother, Francesco, who was also expelled from Florence in 1302, but later returned and even helped Dante financially.
Since the life and work of Dante were largely determined by the political situation in his homeland, it is necessary to briefly talk about what happened in Italy in the 13th century.
The country was fragmented into many feudal states, including the so-called commune cities. The Pope, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (the empire included mainly German territories) and the French king fought for supreme power over them. In the process of this struggle, the population of Italy was divided into political parties. The Guelphs supported the power of the pope, the Ghibellines supported the power of the emperor. Florentine merchants, who played a decisive role in the life of the city, traded mainly with Catholic France, the main Florentine banking families were also associated with it. Commercial Florence was Guelphian, otherwise one could incur excommunication by the pope from the church and lose ties with France. Among other things, the Guelph party was divided into white Guelphs, who advocated the independence of Florence from the pope, and black Guelphs, supporters of papal power. The Dante family traditionally belonged to the Guelph party, and Dante himself eventually became a white Guelph.
It is believed that Dante studied at the school of law in Bologna, where he got acquainted with the work of the local poet Guido Gvinicelli, the founder of a new “sweet style” in poetry. The genius of Dante was largely formed under the influence of Guinicelli.
Dante and Beatrice. First meeting
You can learn about the young years of the poet from his autobiographical story in verse and prose "New Life". Here the young poet told the story of his love for Beatrice. According to Boccaccio, Beatrice was the daughter of a wealthy and respected citizen, Folco Portinari (died in 1289), and later became the wife of Simone de'Bardi from an influential family of Florentine bankers. Dante first saw the girl when he was nine years old and she was eight. For medieval Italy, when the marriage of a twelve-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy was in the order of things, the age of their meeting was quite consistent with the timing of puberty. (It is curious that in Dante's work the number 9 became a symbol of Beatrice. Whenever the number 9 appears in his work, one must look for a secret meaning in the text.) The poet's deeply hidden love was fed only by rare chance meetings, fleeting glances of her beloved, her cursory bow. In June 1290, Beatrice died. She was twenty-four years old.
"New Life" glorified the name of Dante. This book became the first lyrical confession in world literature, a book that for the first time spoke sincerely, reverently and with inspiration about great love and great sorrow of the living human heart.
Shortly after the death of Beatrice, Dante married Gemma, from the influential Donati family of magnates. The marriage was arranged as early as 1277 between the parents. The poet himself never mentioned Gemma in his works. We only know that the wife's family belonged to the party of Black Guelphs - Dante's worst enemies. From this marriage, the poet had sons Pietro, Jacopo and, presumably, John (the name of the latter is found in documents only once - in 1308), as well as a daughter, Anthony, who later became a nun in the Ravenna monastery of San Stefano degli Olivi under the name Beatrice.
The decisive role in the fate and further work of Dante was played by the expulsion of the poet from his native Florence. Dante's sympathies were on the side of the White Guelphs, and from 1295 to 1301 the poet took Active participation V political life cities, he even participated in the military campaigns of the Florentines against the neighboring cities of the Ghibellines. The Black Guelphs of Florence under Dante were led by the Donati family, the White Guelphs by the Cherki bankers.
On November 5, 1301, with the active support of the army of the brother of the French king Philip IV the Handsome - Charles of Valois - and Pope Boniface VIII, the Black Guelphs seized power in Florence, and the White Guelphs were executed and exiled. Dante was not in the city these days, and he learned about the sentence of exile in absentia on the road in January 1302. Due to the fact that the poet's wife was from the Donati family, most of Dante's property passed to her and her children, that is, it remained with the poet's family, but later Dante's case was reviewed - he was sentenced to "burn by fire until he dies." Dante never returned to Florence.
During the first years of his exile, Dante found shelter near Florence in the city of Arezzo, which at that time was the refuge of the Ghibellines expelled from Florence. The Ghibelline emigrants were preparing a military invasion of Florence and tried to involve Dante in preparing an intervention. Dante - a white Guelph - was brought closer to the Ghibellines by the similarity of political slogans. But soon the poet realized that the Ghibelline emigration was a bunch of political adventurers, overwhelmed only with ambition and a thirst for revenge. Dante broke with them, henceforth he rejected civil strife and became "his own party."
The poet settled in Verona, but, having quarreled with the local authorities, he was forced to wander around the Italian cities. He visited Brescia, Treviso, Bologna, Padua. Over time, Dante managed to secure the patronage of the supreme captain of the Guelph League of Tuscany, Marquis Moroello Malaspina of Lunigiana. The cycle of his poems "About the Stone Lady" belongs to this period. It is assumed that they are dedicated to the new beloved Dante - Pietra from the Malaspina clan.
This infatuation did not last long. Biographers say that in 1307 or 1308 the poet traveled to Paris to improve his knowledge and spoke at debates, surprising the audience with his erudition and resourcefulness.
It is believed that Dante set to work on the main work of his life, the Divine Comedy, around 1307. The main theme of the conceived work was to be justice - in earthly life and in the afterlife. Dante called his poem a comedy, since 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, tragedy), in folk the 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, tercina, invented by Dante himself, who put a deep meaning into it.
In 1307, as a result of the long intrigues of the French king, the Frenchman Bertrand was elected to the papacy under the name Clement V, who transferred the papacy from Rome to Avignon. The so-called "Avignon captivity of the popes" (1307-1378) began.
On November 27, 1308, Henry VII became Holy Roman Emperor. In 1310, he invaded Italy with the aim of "reconciling everyone." Thousands of Italian exiles rushed to meet the emperor, who announced that he did not distinguish the Guelphs from the Ghibellines and promised his patronage to everyone. Among them was Dante. Many cities - Milan, Genoa, Pisa - opened their gates to the emperor, but the Guelph League in central Italy did not want to recognize Henry. Florence led the resistance.
During these days, Dante wrote a treatise "On the Monarchy", in which he sought to prove that: a) only under the rule of a universal monarch can humanity come to a peaceful life; b) The Lord chose the Roman people to rule the world, and therefore, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire should be the universal monarch; c) the emperor and the pope receive power directly from God, therefore, the first is not subordinate to the second.
In August 1313, after an unsuccessful three-year campaign, Henry VII died suddenly. The death of the emperor caused joy in Florence and deep sorrow for Dante and other exiles.
After these tragic events, Dante temporarily disappeared from the field of view of biographers. It is only known that he lived in Assisi and in the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellano, where he was completely absorbed in work on the Divine Omedia. Then the poet moved to Lucca, to some lady named Gentukka.
During these years, Dante was invited to return to Florence on the condition that he would agree to undergo a humiliating rite of repentance. The poet refused, and on October 15, 1315, again, together with his sons, he was condemned in absentia by the Florentine lordship to a shameful execution.
Dante settled in Verona under the auspices of Can Grande della Scala, the leader of the northern Italian Ghibellines, whom he glorified in The Divine Comedy. In his youth, Can Grande de Scala (1291-1329) received the title of imperial vicar in Verona and became the head of the Ghibelline League in Lombardy, "one of the most powerful and never changed his champions of the imperial power in Italy."
One can only guess about the reasons that prompted Dante to leave the court of Can Grande and move to Ravenna. The ruler of Ravenna, Guido da Polenta, was a lover of poetry and even wrote poetry himself. It was he who invited Dante to his city.
It was happiest time in Dante's life. The poet liked to walk with his students from Ravenna in the forest of pine trees between Ravenna and the Adriatic. This forest, later sung by Byron, resembled both the garden of paradise on earth and the shepherd's Sicily from Virgil's eclogue. Here Dante finished the third part of the Divine Comedy. There is a legend that the last songs of "Paradise" were lost, but one night the shadow of Dante appeared to the son of the poet Jacopo and pointed to a hiding place in the wall where the manuscript was hidden.
In the summer of 1321, Dante, as the ambassador of the ruler of Ravenna, went to Venice to conclude peace with the Republic of St. Mark. Returning along the road between the banks of the Adria and the swamps of Po, Dante fell ill with malaria and died on the night of September 13-14, 1321.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
There are names in world literature that will always be pillars, beacons, symbols of greatness and divinity of talent. These are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin… The very building of civilization stands on these geniuses.
Italy of the XIII century was a field of constant strife and battles. The country was fragmented, there was a fierce struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Florence, the birthplace of Dante, considered herself a Guelph. All those who left the power of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, preferring the protectorate of the pope, as well as the kings and princes of French blood, became Guelphs. Feudal lords and urban patricians, as well as entire cities, like Pisa, who traded with the East and competed with Florence, became Ghibellins. Heretical movements that hated the pope became allies of the Ghibellines.
On September 4, 1260, the Ghibellines utterly defeated the armed forces of the Guelphs. The traitorous Florentine Bocca degli Abati cut off the hand of his standard-bearer, and the Florentines fled. The river, crimson from the blood of the Florentines, people remembered later for decades. Dante, as a child, heard many stories about this insidious betrayal and about the bloody river. Then, in The Divine Comedy, he will place the traitor in the deepest abysses of hell: the poet touches his head frozen into the ice with his foot - the traitor del Abati is condemned to eternal torment in an icy grave.
Dante was born in May 1265. Florence at this time was under papal interdict (excommunication). Not a single bell rang in the city.
From childhood, Dante was proud that he comes from the Elisei family, the founders of Florence. The ancestor, the crusader of Kachagvid, fought against the Saracens under the banner of Emperor Conrad. Dante believed that it was from him that he inherited militancy and intransigence. From the Bollincione family, a fanatical Guelph, the poet inherited political passion.
Dante's father was a lawyer. The future poet lost his mother in infancy. His father died when Dante was eighteen years old. He first received a classical education in Florence, then in Bologna at the university he studied higher sciences- the ethics of Aristotle, the rhetoric of Cicero, the poetics of Horace and Virgil, and languages.
At eleven, he was engaged to six-year-old Gemma Donati. He married her only after the death of Beatrice, the famous beloved of the Poet.
Beatrice - "giving bliss" - was she really or is it a poetic fiction? Biographers of Dante found information in the archives of Florence that the rich banker Folco Portinari lived in Florence at that time and had a daughter, whom Dante sang. She died in 1290. That's all we know about her. The poet himself reports only that he first saw her when the girl was nine years old. She was several months younger than him. But Dante talks a lot about his feelings: “in the innermost depths of the heart,” love for the girl was born in him. She was dressed "in the noblest blood-red, modest and decorous, adorned and girded as befitted her young age." "Lord of love - Amor" took possession of the boy's heart. “Often he ordered me to go in search of this young angel; and in my teenage years I went out to behold her. And I saw her, so noble and worthy of praise in all matters, that, of course, one could say about her in the words of Homer: “She seemed to be the daughter not of a mortal, but of God.”
It was the secret life of the boy's soul, it made him go "into himself", live in his inner world - all this developed his poetic talent in him.
Dante's love for Beatrice in nine years will take on an almost cosmic scale. He will see God's providence in it and will find a special meaning in the numbers surrounding their meeting. “The number three is the root of nine, so without the help of another number it produces nine; for it is evident that three times three is nine. Thus, if three are able to work nine, and the Trinity is the creator of miracles in itself, that is, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three in one, then it should be concluded that this lady (Beatrice) was accompanied by the number nine, so that everyone would understand that she herself is nine, that is, a miracle, and that the root of this miracle is the only miraculous Trinity.
These scholarly-scholastic arguments reflect the spirit of that time, but they are also bold enough - after all, the poet compares a mere mortal with the divine Trinity.
Nine years later, Dante saw Beatrice, "dressed in clothes of dazzling white." “As she passed, she turned her eyes in the direction where I was in confusion ... she greeted me so kindly that it seemed to me that I see all the facets of bliss ... when I heard her sweet greeting ... I was filled with such joy that, as intoxicated, retired from people, secluding himself in one of my rooms ... "
At this age, the poet began the real pangs of love. Everyone saw that he was in love. It was impossible to hide it, day and night he thought about his beloved. This feeling found its way out in poetry.
Everything in the confused memory dies -
I see you in the glow of the dawn
And at that moment the god of love tells me:
"Run away from here or burn in the flames!"
My face reflects the color of my heart.
Seeking support, shocked inside;
And drunkenness gives rise to awe,
It seems to me that the stones are screaming: "Die!"
And whose soul froze in insensibility,
He will not understand my suppressed cry.
Dante will write many such piercing sonnets about his love. His love will outlive Beatrice. Some sources report that Beatrice married a banker. But the poet's love did not diminish from this. On the contrary, she inspired him to new beautiful sonnets. Beatrice died in 1290 - for Dante, her death was tantamount to a cosmic catastrophe. Dante wept for a year after Beatrice's death. He poured out all his feelings in the book "New Life".
After the death of Beatrice, contemporaries did not see the poet smiling.
The poet did not finish the university in Bologna where he studied - the reason for this could be the situation in the family, and love for Beatrice, and something else.
Further, Dante's life developed dramatically. The Guelphs, to which the poet's family belonged, were divided into whites and blacks: the whites stood in opposition to the pope and involuntarily became close to the Ghibellines, while the blacks were supporters of the pope and became close to the Neapolitan king. A fiery tail of a comet appeared over Florence, resembling a cross. Everyone considered this an omen of wars, misfortunes, ruin.
White will lose political struggle- and Dante belonged to the whites - Pope Boniface VIII will set himself the goal of subjugating Italy and bending emperors and kings before the throne. Dante will then call him "the prince of the new Pharisees" and throw him into the lower abysses of hell.
Pope Boniface VIII appointed Prince Charles, brother of the French King Philip the Handsome, as governor of the Church's dominions in Florence. Persecution of whites, robberies and arson of houses began in the city. The Black Guelphs formed their own government. Dante was included in the lists of political criminals. He was accused of embezzlement, illegal income, resisting the Pope and Karl. The city herald, to the sound of silver trumpets in front of Dante's house, announced that Alighieri was sentenced to exile and confiscation of property. And if he returns, then "let them burn him with fire until he dies."
Dante will never return to Florence, his wife Gemma will be left alone with three children in her arms.
Dante retired from political life. “You will become your own party,” he decided. Friends accused him of betrayal. Soon he became a stranger to almost everyone.
The twenty-year exile life was given to the poet hard:
... how mournful to the lips
Someone else's chunk, how difficult it is in a foreign land
Go down and up the stairs.
In 1303, the poet moved to Verona, then wandered around the north of Italy, then lived in Paris, where he served as a bachelor at the University of Paris. He writes the treatises "Feast", "On Popular Eloquence", "Monarchy" ...
And most importantly, during these years he creates a work that will glorify his name through the ages, the Divine Comedy. He writes a significant part of this work in a mountain Benedictine monastery. Then he will again live in Verona, and the poet will end his days on earth in Ravenna, where the ruler of Ravenna will lay a laurel wreath on Dante's head.
Dante died of malaria on the night of September 13-14, 1321. He is buried in a Greek marble sarcophagus, preserved from ancient times. A hundred and fifty years later, the architect Lombardo will build a mausoleum over it, which still towers in Ravenna. The folk trail will not overgrow to it - people from all over the world come to honor the memory of the creator of the great "Divine Comedy".
Dante called his poetic work a "comedy" according to the norms of ancient poetics - it was the name of a work with a happy and joyful denouement. Dante's work begins with "Hell" and ends with "Paradise"
Pushkin said that "the unified plan of (Dante's) "Hell" is already the fruit of a lofty genius." The plan of the poem is three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise". Each has thirty-three songs. Hell is a huge, deep funnel, divided into nine circles. There sinners suffer. At the very bottom of Lucifer. Purgatory is a powerful, cone-shaped mountain, surrounded by the ocean. There are seven steps in the mountain. Climbing them, the sinner is freed from sins. Heaven has nine heavens. The last one is Empyrean.
Dante's poem begins with the fact that in the middle of his life's journey ("Having passed his earthly life to half") he got lost in the forest, and three terrible beasts appeared before him - a she-wolf, a lion and a panther. All these are allegories. The forest is life, animals are human passions, the lion is lust for power, the she-wolf is self-interest, the panther - from the point of view of Christian morality, this is a passion for bodily pleasures, for carnal sins.
Who will lead out of the forest of life's delusions? Intelligence. Reason appeared to Dante in the form of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who shows him what threatens a person with his passions - they go to Hell, then to Purgatory, so that Dante, cleansed of vices, appears before his pure beloved Beatrice in Paradise, so that she brings the poet to the throne of God , which personifies the highest moral perfection.
Such a brilliant plan, such a composition.
Along the way, Virgil and Dante see a lot: at the very entrance to Hell, a crowd of moaning people. Who are they? They are indifferent. They did neither good nor evil. "They are not worth the words: look, and by!" Here are all those who lived before Christ. They didn't know God's grace. In the second circle of Hell whirlwinds and storms. Here those who indulged in bodily pleasures are tormented. Here Semiramis, "the sinful harlot Cleopatra", Elena the Beautiful - "the culprit of painful times." After all, because of her satanic beauty, there was a long-term Trojan War. Here is Achilles, the great warrior, he succumbed to love temptations ...
Voluptuaries, gluttons, stingers and squanderers, heretics, rapists of neighbors and their property, rapists of nature (sodomites), covetous men, panders and seducers, flatterers, soothsayers, bribe-takers, hypocrites, thieves, instigators of strife, traitors to the motherland ... - all sins are represented in hell.
Here is how Dante describes the torment of alchemists, forgers of metals:
I was pierced by screams and curses,
Like arrows sharpened by longing;
I had to pinch my ears from the pain.
What a moan would be if in the summer heat
Gather the hospitals of Valdichiana in a herd,
Maremma and Sardinia and in one
To pile up a hole - so this moat is filthy
Shouted below, and the stench hung over him,
How festering wounds stink.
My leader and I went down to the extreme rampart,
Turning, as before, to the left of the spur,
And here my gaze penetrated more vividly
To the depths, where, the servant of God,
Severe Punishes Righteousness
Forgers who are strictly numbered.
Hardly any bitter flour is spilled
Was over the dying Aegina,
When the infection became so fierce,
That all living creatures to a single
Beat the pestilence, and the former people
Was recreated by an ant breed,
As one of the singers conveys, -
Than here, where the spirits along the bottom of the blind
Now they languished in heaps, then at random.
Who is on the stomach, who is on the shoulders of another
Falling, lying, and who crawling, in the dust,
On mournful moved home.
Step by step, we silently walked,
Bowing eyes and ears in the crowd of the sick,
Powerless to rise from the ground.
I saw two, sitting back to back,
Like two frying pans on top of a fire
And from the feet to the top of the head are aggravated.
Hasty groom does not scrape the horse,
When he knows - the master is waiting,
Or tired at the end of the day,
What did this and that bite into itself
Nails to calm the overthrow for a moment,
Which only made it easier.
Their nails peeled off the skin completely,
Like scales from a large-scaled fish
Or a knife scrapes off a bream.
"O you, whose curves are all torn apart,
And fingers, like ticks, tear the meat, -
The leader said to one, - could not
We'll hear from you, isn't it here
What Latins? Don't break
Forever nails that carry this work!
He sobbed like this: “You are now looking
For two Latins and for their misfortune.
But who are you that you ask?
And the leader said: "I'm going with him, alive,
From circle to circle in the dark expanse,
So that he can see everything that is in Hell."
(Translated by M. Lozinsky)
In one of the last circles they meet the teacher Dante Bruneto Latini, who is here as a criminal against nature, that is, a sodomite. Dante exclaimed:
Bitter me now
Your paternal image, sweet and cordial,
The one who taught me more than once.
Among the tyrants, the poet placed Alexander the Great. There is Attila. Tyrants are tormented in the seething stream.
In the ninth circle, the most terrible, there are traitors to the motherland, traitors to friends. Among them, the first murderer on earth is Cain. They all froze into the icy lake Cocytus.
With the help of the heavenly angel and the dragon Gerion, travelers reach the center of Hell - here is the center of the world's evil and ugliness - Lucifer.
Lucifer has three heads, in each of which there is a sinner, the three most terrible criminals: Judas, who betrayed Christ, Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Julius Caesar.
The ascent through Purgatory begins. To Ray. Here, too, specific people, specific destinies.
In Paradise, Dante meets Beatrice. Through the lips of his beloved, he reproaches himself for the fact that he sometimes walked the “bad path”, that he rushed to “deceitful” benefits.
Dante reaches the Empyrean, the summit of Paradise. God and angels and blessed souls live here. Everything here is immaterial, God cannot be seen. The image of God is the thought of God in its radiance, omnipotence and immensity.
First of all, "Hell" makes an indelible impression on readers. There were legends about Dante, women were afraid of his face and beard, allegedly covered with the ashes of hell.
Thousands of artists painted on Dante's subjects. And our great compatriots were influenced by Dante.
They rejoice, these animals,
Meanwhile, looking down,
Poor exile, Alighieri,
Step unhurriedly descends into hell.
(Nikolai Gumilyov)
Michelangelo never parted with Dante's poem - he read and re-read all his life. Pushkin read and reread:
Zorya is beaten. From my hands
Old Dante drops out.
On the lips of the last verse
Unread silence...
The spirit flies away.
(A. Pushkin)
* * *
You read the biography (facts and years of life) in a biographical article dedicated to the life and work of the great poet.
Thank you for reading. ............................................
Copyright: biographies of the lives of great poets
Dante Alighieri - the largest Italian poet, literary critic, thinker, theologian, politician, author of the famous "Divine Comedy". There is very little reliable information about the life of this person; their main source is an artistic autobiography written by him, in which only a certain period is described.
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, in 1265, on May 26, in a well-born and wealthy family. It is not known where the future poet studied, but he himself considered the education received insufficient, therefore he devoted a lot of time to independent education, in particular, the study of foreign languages, the work of ancient poets, among which he gave special preference to Virgil, considering him his teacher and "leader".
When Dante was only 9 years old, in 1274, an event occurred that became a landmark in his life, including his creative one. At the celebration, his attention was attracted by a peer, a neighbor's daughter - Beatrice Portinari. Ten years later, as a married lady, she became for Dante that beautiful Beatrice, whose image illuminated his whole life and poetry. The book entitled A New Life (1292), in which he spoke in poetic and prose lines about his love for this young woman who died untimely in 1290, is considered the first autobiography in world literature. The book glorified the author, although it was not his first literary experience He started writing back in the 80s.
The death of his beloved woman forced him to go headlong into science, he studied philosophy, astronomy, theology, turned into one of the most educated people of his time, although at the same time the baggage of knowledge did not go beyond the medieval tradition based on theology.
In 1295-1296. Dante Alighieri declared himself and as a public, political figure, participated in the work of the city council. In 1300 he was elected a member of the college of six priors that governed Florence. In 1298 he married Gemma Donati, who was his wife until his death, but this woman always played a modest role in his fate.
Active political activity caused the expulsion of Dante Alighieri from Florence. The split in the Guelph party, in which he was a member, led to the fact that the so-called whites, in whose ranks the poet was, were subjected to repression. A charge of bribery was brought against Dante, after which he was forced, leaving his wife and children, to leave his native city so as not to return to it ever again. It happened in 1302.
Since that time, Dante constantly wandered around the cities, traveled to other countries. So, it is known that in 1308-1309. he visited Paris, where he participated in open debates organized by the university. The name of Alighieri was twice included in the list of persons subject to amnesty, but both times it was deleted from there. In 1316, he was allowed to return to his native Florence, but on the condition that he publicly admits the wrongness of his views and repents, but the proud poet did not do this.
Since 1316, he settled in Ravenna, where he was invited by Guido da Polenta, the ruler of the city. Here, in the company of his sons, the daughter of his beloved Beatrice, admirers, friends, last years poet. It was during the period of exile that Dante wrote a work that glorified him for centuries - "Comedy", to the name of which several centuries later, in 1555, the word "Divine" will be added in the Venetian edition. The beginning of work on the poem dates back to about 1307, and Dante wrote the last of the three parts (“Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”) shortly before his death.
He dreamed of becoming famous with the help of the Comedy and returning home with honors, but his hopes were not destined to come true. Having fallen ill with malaria, returning from a trip to Venice on a diplomatic mission, the poet died on September 14, 1321. The Divine Comedy was the pinnacle of his literary activity, however, his rich and versatile creative heritage is not exhausted by it alone and includes, in particular, philosophical treatises, journalism, and lyrics.
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 the way back, he comes down with 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 very well read and smart person. He studied 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 were written philosophical works, 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.
Biography by dates and Interesting Facts. The most important.
