The action of the Divine Comedy begins from the moment when the lyrical hero (or Dante himself), shocked by the death of his beloved Beatrice, tries to survive his grief, setting it out in verse in order to fix it as concretely as possible and thereby preserve the unique image of his beloved. But here it turns out that her immaculate personality is already immune to death and oblivion. She becomes a guide, the savior of the poet from inevitable death.
Beatrice, with the help of Virgil, the ancient Roman poet, accompanies the living lyrical hero - Dante - bypassing all the horrors of Hell, making an almost sacred journey from existence to non-existence, when the poet, just like the mythological Orpheus, descends into the underworld to save his Eurydice. On the gates of Hell it is written “Abandon all hope”, but Virgil advises Dante to get rid of fear and trembling before the unknown, because only with open eyes can a person comprehend the source of evil.
Sandro Botticelli, "Portrait of Dante"
Hell for Dante is not a materialized place, but the state of the soul of a sinning person, constantly tormented by remorse. Dante inhabited the circles of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, guided by his likes and dislikes, his ideals and ideas. For him, for his friends, love was the highest expression of the independence and unpredictability of the freedom of the human person: it is freedom from traditions and dogmas, and freedom from the authorities of the Church Fathers, and freedom from various universal models of human existence.
Love comes to the fore capital letter, directed not to a realistic (in the medieval sense) absorption of individuality by a ruthless collective integrity, but to a unique image of a truly existing Beatrice. For Dante, Beatrice is the embodiment of the entire universe in the most concrete and colorful way. And what could be more attractive for a poet than the figure of a young Florentine, accidentally met on a narrow street ancient city? So Dante realizes the synthesis of thought and concrete, artistic, emotional comprehension of the world. In the first song of "Paradise", Dante listens to the concept of reality from the lips of Beatrice and cannot take his eyes off her emerald eyes. This scene is the embodiment of deep ideological and psychological shifts, when artistic comprehension of reality tends to become intellectual.
Illustration for The Divine Comedy, 1827
The afterlife appears before the reader in the form of an integral building, the architecture of which is calculated in the smallest details, and the coordinates of space and time are distinguished by mathematical and astronomical accuracy, full of numerological and esoteric context.
Most often in the text of a comedy there is the number three and its derivative - nine: a three-line stanza (tertsina), which became the poetic basis of the work, which in turn is divided into three parts - canticles. Excluding the first, introductory song, 33 songs are allotted for the image of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, and each of the parts of the text ends with the same word - stars (stelle). To the same mystical digital series can be attributed the three colors of the clothes in which Beatrice is clothed, three symbolic animals, the three mouths of Lucifer and the same number of sinners devoured by him, the tripartite distribution of Hell with nine circles. All this clearly built system gives rise to a surprisingly harmonious and coherent hierarchy of the world, created according to unwritten divine laws.
The Tuscan dialect became the basis of the literary Italian language
Speaking of Dante and his Divine Comedy, one cannot fail to note the special status that the birthplace of the great poet, Florence, had in the host of other cities of the Apennine Peninsula. Florence is not only the city where the Accademia del Cimento raised the banner of experimental knowledge of the world. It is a place where nature has been looked at as closely as anywhere else, a place of passionate artistic sensationalism, where rational vision has replaced religion. They looked at the world through the eyes of an artist, with spiritual upliftment, with the worship of beauty.
The initial collection of ancient manuscripts reflected the transfer of the center of gravity of intellectual interests to the structure of the inner world and the creativity of the person himself. Space ceased to be the dwelling place of God, and they began to treat nature from the point of view of earthly existence, in it they looked for answers to questions understandable to man, and took them in earthly, applied mechanics. A new way of thinking - natural philosophy - humanized nature itself.
The topography of Dante's Hell and the structure of Purgatory and Paradise stem from the recognition of loyalty and courage as the highest virtues: in the center of Hell, in the teeth of Satan, there are traitors, and the distribution of places in Purgatory and Paradise directly correspond moral ideals Florentine exile.
By the way, everything that we know about Dante's life is known to us from his own memoirs, set out in the Divine Comedy. He was born in 1265 in Florence and remained faithful to his native city all his life. Dante wrote about his teacher Brunetto Latini and about his talented friend Guido Cavalcanti. The life of the great poet and philosopher took place in the circumstances of a very long conflict between the emperor and the Pope. Latini, Dante's mentor, was a man with encyclopedic knowledge and based in his views on the sayings of Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle and, of course, on the Bible - general ledger Middle Ages. It was Latini who most of all influenced the formation of the personality of Bud current Renaissance humanist.
Dante's path was full of obstacles when the poet faced the need for a difficult choice: for example, he was forced to contribute to the expulsion of his friend Guido from Florence. Reflecting on the theme of the ups and downs of his fate, Dante in the poem "New Life" devotes many fragments to his friend Cavalcanti. Here Dante brought out the unforgettable image of his first youthful love - Beatrice. Biographers identify Dante's beloved with Beatrice Portinari, who died at the age of 25 in Florence in 1290. Dante and Beatrice have become the same textbook embodiment of true lovers, like Petrarch and Laura, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet.
With his beloved Beatrice, Dante spoke twice in his life
In 1295, Dante entered the guild, membership in which opened the way for him into politics. Just at that time, the struggle between the emperor and the Pope escalated, so that Florence was divided into two opposing factions - the "black" Guelphs, led by Corso Donati, and the "white" Guelphs, to whose camp Dante himself belonged. The "Whites" won and drove the opponents out of the city. In 1300, Dante was elected to the city council - it was here that the brilliant oratorical abilities of the poet were fully manifested.
Dante increasingly began to oppose himself to the Pope, participating in various anti-clerical coalitions. By that time, the “blacks” had stepped up their activities, broke into the city and dealt with their political opponents. Dante was called several times to testify to the city council, but each time he ignored these requirements, so on March 10, 1302, Dante and 14 other members of the "white" party were sentenced to death in absentia. To save himself, the poet was forced to leave native city. Disillusioned with the possibility of changing the political state of affairs, he began to write the work of his life - the Divine Comedy.
Sandro Botticelli "Hell, Canto XVIII"
In the 14th century, in the Divine Comedy, the truth revealed to the poet who visited Hell, Purgatory and Paradise is no longer canonical, it appears to him as a result of his own, individual efforts, his emotional and intellectual impulse, he hears the truth from the lips of Beatrice . For Dante, the idea is the “thought of God”: “Everything that dies and everything that does not die is / Only a reflection of the Thought, to which the Almighty / with His Love gives life.”
Dante's path of love is the path of perception of divine light, a force that simultaneously elevates and destroys a person. In The Divine Comedy, Dante emphasized color symbolism the universe they represent. If Hell is characterized by dark tones, then the path from Hell to Paradise is a transition from dark and gloomy to light and shining, while in Purgatory there is a change in lighting. For the three steps at the gates of Purgatory, symbolic colors stand out: white - the innocence of a baby, crimson - the sinfulness of an earthly being, red - redemption, the blood of which whitens so that, closing this color range, white reappears as a harmonic combination of previous symbols.
“We do not live in this world for death to catch us in blissful laziness”
In November 1308, Henry VII becomes king of Germany, and in July 1309 new dad Clement V declares him king of Italy and invites him to Rome, where the magnificent coronation of the new emperor of the Holy Roman Empire takes place. Dante, who was an ally of Henry, returned to politics again, where he could productively use his literary experience, writing many pamphlets and speaking publicly. In 1316, Dante finally moved to Ravenna, where he was invited to spend the rest of his days by the signor of the city, philanthropist and patron of the arts, Guido da Polenta.
In the summer of 1321, Dante, as ambassador of Ravenna, went to Venice on a mission to make peace with the Doge's Republic. Having completed a responsible assignment, on the way home, Dante falls ill with malaria (like his late friend Guido) and suddenly dies on the night of September 13-14, 1321.
On the night before Good Friday in 1300, Dante, who at that time was only 35 years old, got lost in the forest, from which he was in great fright. From there, he has a view of the mountains, and he tries to climb them, but a lion, a she-wolf and a leopard get in his way and Dante has to return back to the dense thicket. In the forest, he meets with the spirit Virgil, who says that he can lead him to Paradise through the circles of purgatory and Hell. The hero agrees and follows Virgil through Hell.
Behind the walls of Hell a groan is heard lost souls which during their existence were neither good nor evil. From there you can see the Acheron River. It is a place for the transportation of the dead by the demon Charon to the first circle of hell, which is called Limbo. In Limba they keep the souls of the wise, writers, and babies who were not baptized. They suffer because there is no way to heaven for them. Here Dante, together with Virgil, was able to pass and talk to famous writers and meets Homer.
Going down to the next circle of hell, the heroes observe the demon Minos, who is busy determining which sinner where to send. Here they see how the souls of voluptuaries are carried away somewhere. Among them are Elena the Beautiful and Cleopatra, who died as a result of their own passion.
On the third circle of hell, travelers meet Cerberus - a dog. On this circle in the mud in the rain are the souls of those whose sin is gluttony. Here Dante meets his countryman - Chacko, who asks the hero to make a reminder to those living on earth about him. On the fourth circle, executions take place for the stingy and those who were too wasteful, they are guarded by the demon Plutos. The fifth circle is a place of torment for those who were lazy and angry.
After the fifth circle, travelers find themselves near the tower, which is surrounded by a reservoir. Through it they move with the help of the demon Phlegius. Having crossed the reservoir, Dante and Virgil find themselves in the infernal city of Dit, but they cannot get into it, since the city is guarded by dead evil spirits. A heavenly messenger helped them to go further, who suddenly appeared at the entrance to the city and curbed the anger of the dead. In the city, tombs on fire appeared before the travelers, from where the groans of heretics were heard. Before descending from the sixth circle to the next circle, Virgil tells the hero about how the remaining three circles are arranged, which begin to narrow towards the center of the earth.
The seventh circle is located in the middle of the mountains, guarded by the Minotaur. In the middle of this circle there is a seething blood stream, in it those who were a robber or a tyrant are terribly tormented. There are thickets around, these are the souls of those who committed suicide.
Next comes the eighth circle, which consists of 10 ditches, which are called Spiteful. In each of them, seducers of women, flatterers, sorcerers, soothsayers, bribe-takers, thieves, insidious advisers and sowers of discord are tormented. At the tenth ditch, the travelers descended through the well and ended up at the center of the globe. There they appeared in front of an icy lake, where those who betrayed their relatives stand frozen. In the center of the lake was Lucifer, the king of hell. A small passage passes from it, which leads to the other hemisphere of the earth. Travelers passed through it, and came to purgatory.
Purgatory
Once in purgatory, the travelers washed themselves in the water, and saw how a boat with souls that did not go to hell swam up to them, it was controlled by an angel. Travelers on it swam to the foot of the mountain of Purgatory. Here they managed to talk with those who, before dying, managed to sincerely repent of their sins and therefore did not go to hell. Then the hero falls asleep, and he is transferred to the gates of purgatory.
In purgatory, the proud, envious, obsessed with anger, lazy, those who were too wasteful and stingy, gluttons and voluptuaries are cleansed of their sins. After passing through the circles of this place, Dante comes to a wall that is on fire, through which he must pass in order to enter Paradise. Having passed this wall, Dante enters Paradise. He meets the elders in snow-white clothes, everyone is dancing and having fun. Here he notices his beloved Beatrice, and then loses his senses. A moment later, Dante wakes up in the river of oblivion of sins - Fly. The hero comes to the Evnoe, the river, which helps to strengthen the memory of the good done, he washes himself in it and now he is worthy to rise to the stars.
The hero's journey now continues with his beloved as they ascend into the circles of heaven. Immediately they meet the nuns, their souls, who were forcibly married off. Then they saw the shining souls of the righteous. In the third heaven are the souls of the loving. The fourth heaven is the dwelling place of the souls of the sages. Next dwell the souls of the righteous.
Travelers have risen, at last, to the seventh heaven and have appeared on Saturn.
Then the hero got up and began to talk with the spirits of the righteous about such concepts as love, faith and hope. On the ninth circle, the first thing that was revealed to the travelers was the solar point, which represented a deity. Further, Dante ascended to the Empyrean, the highest point in the universe, where he saw an old man, then they sent him even higher. The elder, whose name was Bernard, became Dante's teacher, and together they stayed here, where the souls of babies shine. Here, Dante saw the deity and found the highest truth.
The Divine Comedy, Dante's pinnacle, began to take shape when the great poet had just experienced his exile from Florence. "Hell" was conceived around 1307 and was created over the course of three years of wandering. This was followed by the composition of "Purgatory", in which Beatrice occupied a special place (the entire work of the poet is dedicated to her).
And in last years the life of the creator, when Dante lived in Verona and Ravenna, "Paradise" was written. The plot basis of the poem-vision was the afterlife journey - a favorite motif of medieval literature, under the pen of Dante, received its artistic transformation.
Once upon a time, the ancient Roman poet Virgil depicted the descent of the mythological Third Ney into the underworld, and now Dante takes the author of the famous Aeneid as his guide through hell and purgatory. The poem has been called a "comedy" and, unlike a tragedy, it begins anxiously and gloomily, but ends with a happy ending.
In one of the songs of "Paradise", Dante called his creation a "sacred poem", and after the death of its author, the descendants gave it the name "Divine Comedy".
We will not present the content of the poem in this article, but dwell on some features of its artistic originality and poetics.
It is written in terza, that is, three-line stanzas in which the first verse rhymes with the third, and the second with the first and third lines of the next terza. The poet relies on Christian eschatology and the doctrine of hell and heaven, but with his creation significantly enriches these ideas.
In collaboration with Virgil, Dante steps beyond the threshold of a deep abyss, above the gates of which he reads an ominous inscription: "Abandon hope, everyone who enters here." But despite this grim warning, the satellites continue their march. They will soon be surrounded by crowds of shadows, which will be of particular interest to Dante, since they were once people. And for the creator, born of the new time, man is the most fascinating object of knowledge.
Having crossed in the boat of Heron across the infernal river Acheron, the satellites enter Limbo, where the shadows of the great pagan poets rank Dante among their circle, declaring the sixth after Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Lucan.
One of the remarkable signs of the poetics of a great work is the rare recreation of the artistic space, and within its limits, the poetic landscape, that component, which, before Dante, in European literature didn't exist. Under the pen of the creator of the Divine Comedy, the forest, the swampy steppe, the icy lake, and the steep cliffs were recreated.
Dante's landscapes are characterized, firstly, by their vivid depiction, secondly, by their permeation with light, thirdly, by their lyrical coloring, and fourthly, by natural variability.
If we compare the description of the forest in "Hell" and "Purgatory", we will see how a terrible, frightening picture of him in the first songs is replaced by a joyful, bright image, permeated with the greenery of trees and the blueness of the air. The landscape in the poem is extremely laconic: "The day was leaving, And the dark air of the sky / The earthly creatures were taken to sleep." It is very reminiscent of earthly pictures, which is facilitated by detailed comparisons:
Like a peasant, resting on a hill, -
When he hides his eyes for a while
The one with whom the earthly country is illuminated,
and mosquitoes, replacing flies, circle, -
The valley sees full of fireflies
Where he reaps, where he cuts grapes.
This landscape is usually inhabited by people, shadows, animals or insects, as in this example.
Another significant component of Dante is the portrait. Thanks to the portrait, people or their shadows turn out to be alive, colorful, rendered in relief, full of drama. We see the faces and figures of giants chained in stone wells, peer into facial expressions, gestures and movements former people who came to the underworld from ancient world; we contemplate both mythological characters and contemporaries of Dante from his native Florence.
The portraits sketched by the poet are distinguished by plasticity, which means tangibility. Here is one of the memorable images:
He carried me to Minos, who wrapped
Tail eight times around the mighty back,
Even biting him out of malice,
Said …
The spiritual movement reflected in the self-portrait of Dante himself is also distinguished by great expressiveness and vital truth:
So I perked up, with the courage of grief;
The fear was resolutely crushed in the heart,
And I answered boldly…
In appearance Virgil and Beatrice are less dramatic and dynamic, but the attitude towards them of Dante himself, who worships them and passionately loves them, is full of expression.
One of the features of the poetics of the Divine Comedy is the abundance and significance in it of numbers that have a symbolic meaning. A symbol is a special kind of sign, which already in its external form contains the content of the representation it reveals. Like allegory and metaphor, the symbol forms the transfer of meaning, but unlike the named tropes, it is endowed with a huge variety of meanings.
The symbol, according to A.F. Losev, has meaning not in itself, but as an arena for the meeting of known constructions of consciousness with one or another possible object of this consciousness. This also applies to the symbolism of numbers with their frequent repetition and variation. Researchers of literature of the Middle Ages (S.S. Mokulsky, M.N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, N.G. Elina, G.V. Stadnikov, O.I. Fetodov and others) noted the huge role of number as a measure of things in the Divine Comedy » Dante. This is especially true for the numbers 3 and 9 and their derivatives.
However, speaking of these numbers, researchers usually see their meaning only in the composition, the architectonics of the poem and its stanza (three canticles, 33 songs in each part, 99 songs in total, three repetitions of the word stelle, the role of the xxx song "Purgatory" as a story about meeting of the poet with Beatrice, three-line stanzas).
Meanwhile, mystical symbolism, in particular trinity, is subject to the entire system of images of the poem, its narrative and description, the disclosure of plot details and detail, style and language.
Trinity is found in the episode of Dante's ascent to the hill of salvation, where he is hindered by three animals (the lynx is a symbol of voluptuousness; the lion is a symbol of power and pride; the she-wolf is the embodiment of greed and greed), while depicting the Limbo of Hell, where there are creatures of three genera (the souls of the Old Testament righteous , the souls of babies who died without baptism, and the souls of all virtuous non-Christians).
Next, we see three famous Trojans (Electra, Hector and Aeneas), a three-headed monster - Cerberus (having the features of a demon, a dog and a man). The lower Hell, consisting of three circles, is inhabited by three furies (Tisiphon, Megara and Electo), three Gorgon sisters. Here, however, three ledges are shown - steps, appearing three vices (malice, violence and deceit). The seventh circle is divided into three concentric belts: they are notable for the reproduction of three forms of violence.
In the next song, together with Dante, we notice how “three shadows suddenly separated”: these are three Florentine sinners, who “all three ran in a ring”, being on fire. Further, the poets see three instigators of bloody strife, the three-bodied and three-headed Geryon and the three-peaked Lucifer, from whose mouth three traitors stick out (Judas, Brutus and Cassius). Even individual objects in the world of Dante contain the number 3.
So, in one of the three coats of arms - three black goats, in florins - mixed 3 carats of copper. The tripartiteness is observed even in the syntax of the phrase (“Hecuba, in grief, in disasters, in captivity”).
We see a similar trinity in Purgatory, where the angels each have three radiances (wings, clothes and faces). Three holy virtues are mentioned here (Faith, Hope, Love), three stars, three bas-reliefs, three artists (Franco, Cimabue and Giotto), three varieties of love, three eyes of Wisdom, which looks with them past, present and future.
A similar phenomenon is observed in "Paradise", where three virgins (Mary, Rachel and Beatrice) are sitting in the amphitheater, forming a geometric triangle. The second song tells of the three blessed wives (including Lucia) and speaks of the three eternal creatures
(heaven, earth and angels).
Three commanders of Rome are mentioned here, the victory of Scipio Africanus over Hannibal at the age of 33, the battle of “three against three” (three Horatii against three Curiatii), it is said about the third (after Caesar) Caesar, about three angelic ranks, three lilies in the coat of arms of the French dynasty.
The named number becomes one of the complex definitions-adjectives (“triple” fruit, “triune God) is included in the structure of metaphors and comparisons.
What explains this trinity? Firstly, the teaching of the Catholic Church about the existence of three forms of other being (hell, purgatory and paradise). Secondly, the symbolization of the Trinity (with its three hypostases), the most important hour of Christian teaching. Thirdly, the influence of the chapter of the Knights Templar, where numerical symbolism was of paramount importance, affected. Fourthly, as the philosopher and mathematician P.A. Florensky showed in his works “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” and “Imaginary in Geometry”, trinity is the most general characteristic of being.
The number "three", wrote the thinker. manifests itself everywhere as some basic category of life and thinking. These are, for example, the three main categories of time (past, present and future), the three-dimensionality of space, the presence of three grammatical persons, minimum size complete family (father, mother and child), (thesis, antithesis and synthesis), three basic coordinates of the human psyche (mind, will and feelings), the simplest expression of asymmetry in integers (3 = 2 + 1).
Three phases of development are distinguished in a person's life (childhood, adolescence and youth or youth, maturity and old age). Let us also recall the aesthetic regularity that prompts the creators to create a triptych, a trilogy, three portals in a Gothic cathedral (for example, Notre Dame in Paris), built three tiers on the facade (ibid.), three parts of the arcade, divide the walls of the naves into three parts, etc. Dante took all this into account when creating his own model of the universe in the poem.
But in the Divine Comedy, subordination is found not only to the number 3, but also to the number 7, another magical symbol in Christianity. Recall that the duration of Dante's unusual journey is 7 days, they begin on the 7th and end on April 14 (14 = 7 + 7). In the IV song, Jacob is remembered, who served Laban for 7 years and then another 7 years.
In the thirteenth song of "Hell" Minos sends the soul into the "seventh abyss". In the XIV song, 7 kings who besieged Thebes are mentioned, and in xx - Tirisei, who survived the transformation into a woman and then - after 7 years - the reverse metamorphosis from a woman to a man.
The week is reproduced most thoroughly in Purgatory, where 7 circles (“seven kingdoms”), seven stripes are shown; it speaks of the seven deadly sins (seven "R" on the forehead of the hero of the poem), seven choirs, seven sons and seven daughters of Niobe; a mystical procession with seven lamps is reproduced, 7 virtues are characterized.
And in "Paradise" the seventh radiance of the planet Saturn, the seven-star Ursa Major, is transmitted; it speaks of the seven heavens of the planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) in accordance with the cosmogonic ideas of the era.
This preference for the week is explained by the ideas prevailing in the time of Dante about the presence of seven deadly sins (pride, envy, anger, despondency, stinginess, gluttony and voluptuousness), about the desire for seven virtues that are acquired by purification in the corresponding part of the afterlife.
Life observations also affected the seven colors of the rainbow and the seven stars of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the seven days of the week, etc.
An important role was played by biblical stories associated with the seven days of the creation of the world, Christian legends, for example, about the seven sleeping youths, ancient stories about the seven wonders of the world, the seven wise men, the seven cities arguing for the honor of being the homeland of Homer, about the seven fighting against Thebes. The impact on consciousness and thinking was provided by images
ancient folklore, numerous tales about the seven heroes, proverbs like “seven troubles - one answer”, “seven are spacious, and two are cramped”, sayings like “seven spans in the forehead”, “sip jelly for seven miles”, “a book with seven seals "," seven sweats came down.
All this is reflected in literary works. For comparison, let's take later examples: playing around with the number "seven". In the "Legend of Ulenspiegep" by C. de Coster and especially in Nekrasov's poem“Who in Russia should live well” (with her seven wanderers,
seven owls, seven large trees, etc.). A similar impact of ideas about the magic and symbolism of the number 7 is found in the Divine Comedy.
The number 9 also acquires a symbolic meaning in the poem. After all, this is the number of celestial spheres. In addition, at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, there was a cult of nine fearless ones: Hector, Caesar, Alexander, Joshua Navi, David, Judas Maccabee, Arthur, Charlemagne and Gottfried of Bouillon.
It is no coincidence that there are 99 songs in the poem, before the top xxx song "Purgatory" - 63 songs (6 + 3 = 9), and after it 36 songs (3 + 6 = 9). It is curious that the name Beatrice is mentioned 63 times in the poem. The addition of these two numbers (6 + 3) also forms 9. Yes, and this special name - Beatrice - rhymes - 9 times. It is noteworthy that V. Favorsky, creating a portrait of Dante, placed a huge number 9 over his manuscript, thus emphasizing its symbolic and magical role in the New Life and the Divine Comedy.
As a result, numerical symbolism helps to fasten the framework of the Divine Comedy with its multi-layered and multi-population.
It contributes to the birth of poetic "discipline" and harmony, forms a rigid "mathematical construction", saturated with the brightest imagery, ethical richness and deep philosophical meaning.
The immortal creation of Dante strikes with very common metaphors. Their abundance is closely related to the peculiarities of the poet's worldview and artistic thinking.
Starting from the concept of the Universe, which was based on the Ptolemaic system, from Christian eschatology and ideas about hell, purgatory and paradise, pushing the tragic darkness and the bright light of the kingdoms beyond the grave, Dante had to broadly and at the same time succinctly recreate worlds full of sharp contradictions, contrasts and antinomies, containing a grandiose encyclopedism of knowledge, their comparisons, connections and their synthesis. Therefore, movements, transfers and convergence of compared objects and phenomena have become natural and logical in the poetics of “comedy”.
To solve the tasks set, the metaphor was best suited, connecting the concreteness of reality and the poetic fantasy of a person, bringing together the phenomena of the cosmic world, nature, objective world and the spiritual life of man according to the similarity and affinity to each other. That is why the language of the poem is so powerfully based on metaphorization, which contributes to the knowledge of life.
Metaphors in three edging are unusually diverse. Being poetic tropes, they often carry a significant philosophical meaning, as, for example, “the hemisphere of darkness” And “enmity is wicked” (in “Hell”), “joy rings”, “souls ascend” (in “Purgatory”) or “the morning flared up” and “the song rang” (in “Paradise "). These metaphors combine different semantic plans, but at the same time each of them creates a single indissoluble image.
Showing the afterlife journey as often encountered in medieval literature plot, using necessarily theological dogma and colloquial style, Dante sometimes introduces commonly used language metaphors into his text
(“warmed heart”, “fixed eyes”, “Mars is burning”, “thirst to speak”, “waves are beating”, “golden ray”, “day is leaving”, etc.).
But much more often the author uses poetic metaphors, which are distinguished by novelty and great expression, which are so essential in the poem. They reflect the variety of fresh impressions of the "first poet of the New Age" and are designed to awaken the recreative and creative imagination of readers.
These are the phrases “the depth howls”, “weeping hit me”, “a rumble broke in” (in “Hell”), “the firmament rejoices”, “smile of rays” (in “Purgatory”), “I want to ask for light”, “work of nature (in Paradise).
True, sometimes we meet a surprising combination of old ideas and new views. In the neighborhood of two judgments ("art ... God's grandson" and "art ... follows nature-") we are faced with a paradoxical combination of traditional reference to the Divine principle and the interweaving of truths, previously learned and newly acquired, characteristic of "comedy".
But it is important to emphasize that the above metaphors are distinguished by their ability to enrich concepts, enliven the text, compare similar phenomena, transfer names by analogy, collide the direct and figurative meanings of the same word (“cry”, “smile”, “art”), identify the main, permanent feature of the characterized object.
In Dante's metaphor, as well as in comparison, signs are compared or contrasted ("overlook" and "peeps"), but there are no comparative connectives (conjunctions "as", "as if", "as if") in it. Instead of a binary comparison, a single, tightly fused image appears (“the light is silent”, “cries fly up”, “plea of the eyes”, “the sea beats”, “enter my chest”, “four circles run”).
The metaphors encountered in the Divine Comedy can be conditionally divided into three main groups depending on the nature of the relationship of cosmic and natural objects with living beings. The first group should include personifying metaphors, in which cosmic and natural phenomena, objects and abstract concepts are likened to the properties of animated beings.
Such are Dante’s “a friendly spring ran”, “the earthly flesh called”, “the sun will show”, “vanity will reject”, “the sun ignites. and others. The second group should include metaphors (for the author of the “comedy” these are “splashing hands”, “building towers”, “mountain shoulders”, “Virgil is a bottomless spring”, “beacon of love”, “seal of embarrassment”, “fetters evil").
In these cases, the properties of living beings are likened to natural phenomena or objects. The third group is made up of metaphors that unite multidirectional comparisons (“the face of truth”, “words bring help”, “light shone through”, “wave of hair”, “thought will sink”, “evening has fallen”, “distance caught fire”, etc.).
It is important for the reader to see that in the phrases of all groups there is often author's assessment, which allows you to see the attitude of Dante to the phenomena he captures. Everything that has to do with truth, freedom, honor, light, he certainly welcomes and approves (“he will taste honor”, “the brilliance has grown wonderfully”, “the light of truth”).
The metaphors of the author of The Divine Comedy convey various properties of the captured objects and phenomena: their shape (“the circle lay at the top”), color (“accumulated color”, “black air is tormented”), sounds (“a rumble burst in”, “the chant will rise again”, “the rays are silent”) the location of the parts (“into the depths of my slumber”, “the heel of the cliff”) lighting (“the dawn overcame”, “the gaze of the luminaries”, “the light rests the firmament”), the action of an object or phenomena (“the icon lamp rises”, “ the mind soars”, “the story flowed”).
Dante uses metaphors of different construction and composition: simple, consisting of one word (“petrified”); forming phrases (of the one who moves the universe”, “the flame from the clouds that fell”): deployed (a metaphor for the forest in the first song of “Hell”).
"The Divine Comedy" - greatest work Middle Ages on the threshold of the Renaissance. Dante created a guide to the afterlife in such detail (especially in the first part) that his contemporaries were afraid of the poet: they were sure that he really was in the next world. Exactly one hundred chapters tell about an unusual journey to God. The work contains many references to antiquity, so it will not be easy to read this book without basic knowledge of myths. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with a brief retelling of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and we also recommend that you read it in order to understand and comprehend everything for sure.
The story is told in the first person. Dante Alighieri lost his way in the forest halfway through his life. The poet is in danger from predatory animals personifying vices: she-wolves, lions and lynxes (in some translations, panthers). He is saved by the ghost of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, whom Dante reveres as his teacher. Virgil suggests going on a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Dante is afraid, but the ancient poet says that he is doing this at the request of Beatrice, Alighieri's deceased lover, in order to save his soul. They are on their way. Above the doors of Hell, words are inscribed that if a soul gets here, then hope will no longer help it, since there is no way out of Hell. The souls of the “insignificant” languish here, who have done neither good nor evil in their lives. They cannot go to Hell or Heaven. The mythical guardian Charon transports the heroes across the Acheron River. Dante loses consciousness, as after each transition to the next circle.
- Hell is presented in the poem as a funnel leading to the center of the Earth, under Jerusalem. In the first round Hell, called "Limb", Dante meets the souls of the righteous who died before the birth of Christ. These people were pagans and cannot be saved. Also in Limbo are the souls of unborn babies. Here, in the darkness, similar to the kingdom of Hades, lies the soul of Virgil. Dante talks with Homer, Sophocles, Euripides and other ancient poets.
- Second round represents a place of judgment over sinners at the head of the demon Minos. Like Charon, Minos is outraged that there is a living person in Hell, but Virgil explains everything to him. In the second circle, driven by the hellish wind of passions, the souls mired in the sin of voluptuousness (Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Achilles and others) are tormented.
- Sin of the third circle- gluttony. The giant three-headed dog Cerberus tears sinners wallowing in the mud many times. Among them is the hero of one of the short stories of the Decameron, the glutton Chacko. He asks Dante to tell about himself alive.
- Guardian fourth round- demon Plutos (in mythology - the god of wealth). The misers and squanderers roll stones at each other and scold. Among the first, Dante notices many priests.
- Fifth circle- The Stygian swamp into which the Acheron flows. The angry drown in it. Through it, the poets are ferried by Phlegius, the son of Ares, who destroyed the Delphic temple. The boat sails up to the tower of the city of Deet. It suffers sinners who have committed sins not out of weakness, but of their own free will. Poets are kept from demons for a long time, Virgil's exhortations do not help.
- The gate is opened by a heavenly messenger who came to the aid of the heroes on the water. Sixth circle Ada is a graveyard with burning graves, around which furies and hydras fly. Heretics lie in the fire, among which Dante notices the tombs of popes who have departed from the Catholic Church. He also recognizes the political enemy of his ancestors. The dead do not know the present, but they can see the future.
- seventh circle dedicated to violence, it is guarded by the demon Minotaur. Poets see the ruins formed by the earthquake at the time of the death of Jesus Christ. This place is divided into 3 ditches: violence against neighbor, against self and against God. In the first, a bloody river flows, in which sinners drown, and centaurs hunt everyone who tries to get out. Chiron, whose blood killed Hercules, melts down the heroes further. The second belt is filled with trees in which the souls of suicides live. Harpies are circling around, constantly attacking plants. When Dante breaks off a branch, a groan is heard and blood flows instead of resin. The souls of suicides abandoned their own bodies and will not return to them after the Last Judgment. In the third moat, Dante and Virgil pass through a deserted field, on which, under a fiery rain, relaxed God-haters lie. Virgil explains to Dante that the rivers Acheron and Styx, which flow into Lake Cocytus, are the tears of a humanity mired in vices. To descend to the eighth circle, the heroes sit on the flying monster of Gerion, personifying deceit.
- Eighth circle deceivers and thieves burns in flames. Rivers of feces flow, some sinners are deprived of limbs, one of them moves, holding his head instead of a lantern, the other changes bodies with a snake in terrible agony. The demons frighten the poets and (in order to lure them into a trap) show them the wrong path, but Virgil manages to save Dante. Ulysses, the soothsayer Tiresias, as well as Dante's contemporaries are tormented here. The heroes get to the well of the giants - Nimrod, Ephialtes and Antaeus, who carry the poets to the ninth circle.
- Last Circle of Hell represents ice cave, in which traitors are tormented, frozen to the throat in ice. Among them is Cain, who killed his brother. They are angry at their fate, not ashamed to blame God for everything. In the center of the earth, the three-headed monster Lucifer is seen from the ice. In three mouths, he endlessly chews Brutus and Cassius (traitors to Caesar), as well as Judas. The poets crawl down Lucifer's fur, but soon Dante is surprised that they are moving up, since this is already the opposite hemisphere. Poets get out to the surface of the Earth to the island on which Purgatory is located - a high mountain with a truncated top.
Purgatory
The angel transports the souls awarded Paradise to the shore. At the foot of the crowd are negligent, that is, those who repented, but at the same time were too lazy to do it. Dante and Virgil pass through the valley of earthly rulers to the gates of Purgatory, to which three steps lead: mirror, rough and fiery red. The angel imprints 7 letters "P" (sins) on Alighieri's forehead. You can climb the mountain only during the day, you can’t turn around.
The first ledge of Purgatory is occupied by the proud, carrying heavy stones on their backs. Underfoot, Dante sees images with examples of humility (for example, the Annunciation of the Virgin) and punished pride (the fall of the rebellious angels). Each ledge is guarded by angels. During the ascent to the second ledge, the first "P" disappears, and the rest become less clear.
The poets rise above. Here, along the cliff, envious people are sitting, deprived of sight. After each ascent to the next ledge, Dante sees dreams that personify his search and spiritual uplift.
The third ledge is inhabited by the wrathful. Souls wander in the fog that shrouded the mountain in this part: that is how anger clouded their eyes in life. This is not the first time Dante hears the solemn exclamations of angels.
The first three ledges were dedicated to the sins associated with the love of evil. The fourth is with insufficient love for God. The rest - with love for false goods. The fourth ledge is filled with dull ones, who are forced to endlessly run around the mountain.
On the fifth ledge lie relaxed merchants and spendthrifts. Dante kneels before the soul of the pope, but she asks not to interfere with her prayers. Everyone begins to praise God when they feel an earthquake: this happens when the soul is healed. This time the poet Statius is saved. He joins Dante and Virgil.
On the sixth ledge, emaciated from hunger, gluttons crowd around a tree with appetizing-looking fruits that are impossible to reach. It is a descendant of the tree of knowledge. Dante recognizes his friend Forese and communicates with him.
The last ledge is filled with fire, through which crowds of Sodomites and those who experienced bestial love run. Dante and Virgil go through the flames. The last letter "R" disappears. Dante loses consciousness again and has a dream about one girl picking flowers for another.
The poet wakes up in the Earthly Paradise, the place where Adam and Eve lived. Lethe (the river of forgetfulness of sin) and Evnoia (the river of good memory) flow here. Dante senses strong winds: The Prime Mover sets the heavens in motion. The poet becomes a witness to the procession going to the repentant sinner. Among them are unprecedented animals, people personifying virtues, as well as a griffin - a half-lion-half-eagle, a symbol of Christ. With the appearance of Beatrice, accompanied by a hundred angels, Virgil disappears. Dante repents of his beloved's infidelity, after which the girl Matelda dips him into oblivion. In the eyes of Beatrice, Dante sees the reflection of a griffin, constantly changing its appearance. The griffin binds the cross from the branches of the tree of knowledge, and it is covered with fruits. Dante watches visions symbolizing the fate of the Catholic Church: an eagle flies on the chariot, a fox sneaks up to it, a dragon crawls out of the ground, after which the chariot turns into a monster. Dante plunges into Evnoia.
Paradise
Dante and Beatrice rise into the sky through a sphere of fire. She looks up, he looks up at her. They reach the first sky - the Moon, penetrating inside the Earth's satellite. Here are the souls of those who break vows, which the poet takes for reflections.
Heroes rise to Mercury, where ambitious figures live. A lot of luminous souls fly out to meet them, one of them - Emperor Justinian - reflects on the history of Rome. An explanation of the need for crucifixion follows.
On Venus, in the third heaven, live the loving ones, solemnly circling in the air along with the angels.
The sun, like all the planets in the poem, revolves around the earth. The brightest star is inhabited by sages. Dances of souls sing that their light will remain after the Resurrection, but will shine inside the body. Among them, Dante notices Thomas Aquinas.
The fifth heaven is Mars, the habitat of warriors for the faith. Inside the planet, a cross is assembled from the rays, along which souls fly and sing. If Dante's father walks among the proud in Purgatory, then his great-great-grandfather deserved to be here on Mars. The soul of the ancestor predicts Dante's exile.
Dante and Beatrice ascend to Jupiter, where just rulers are blissful. Souls, among which are David, Constantine and other rulers, line up in instructive phrases, and then into a huge eagle. Those of them who lived before Christ still expected him and have the right to go to heaven.
In the seventh heaven - Saturn - dwell contemplatives, that is, monks and theologians. Beatrice asks Dante to take his mind off her, and the poet notices a staircase down which angels and luminous souls, like fires, are descending towards him.
From the starry sky, where triumphant souls live, Dante sees the Earth. From the bright light, he faints, feeling that his vision is dimming. The heroes are met by the Archangel Gabriel. The Apostle Peter asks Alighieri about faith, the Apostle James about hope, and the Apostle John about love. Dante answers everyone in the affirmative: he believes, hopes and loves. Beatrice dusts Dante's eyes. Alighieri talks to Adam, after which he sees how Peter turns purple: this is a sign that the current pope is unworthy of his title.
Dante and Beatrice reach the Prime Mover, a small point of light from which one can see how the angels set the heavens in motion. This place seems to be the smallest sky, whereas with the ascension of heroes, each sky must be larger than the previous one. Dante learns that the main task of the angels is the movement of heaven.
Finally, Dante enters the Empyrean or Windrose and sees a river of light flowing into a lake inside a giant rose that turns into an amphitheatre. Saint Bernard of Claire becomes Dante's third guide as Beatrice sits on the throne. The souls of the righteous sit on the crowded steps. On the female half - Maria, Lucia, Eve, Rachel and Beatrice. Opposite them, headed by John the Baptist, sit men. Bernard of Claire points upward, and Dante, gradually losing consciousness from a strong light, sees God: three multi-colored circles reflecting each other, in one of which the poet begins to distinguish a human face. Dante Alighieri stops seeing and wakes up.
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When, in fact, the first songs of the Divine Comedy were written, it is impossible to determine exactly. Based on some data, it is suggested that it was probably around 1313. The first two parts of the poem - "Hell" and "Purgatory" - were known to the public during the life of their creator, and "Paradise" became known only after the death of Dante.
The name "Comedy" was given to his poem by Dante himself. This did not mean belonging to dramatic genre, in the time of Dante, a comedy was called a work that begins tragically, but ends happily. The epithet "Divine" - "Divina commedia" was added by admiring posterity later, in the 16th century, not as a result of the content of the poem, but as a designation of the highest degree of perfection of Dante's great work. The Divine Comedy does not belong to any particular genre (although there are disputes about its genre: it is considered a vision, a poem), it is a completely peculiar, one-of-a-kind mixture of all the elements of various directions of poetry.
Dante's contribution to the Divine Comedy and to the national written language of Italy is enormous. After all, this work was written in living Italian, and not in Latin.
The Divine Comedy consists of 100 songs and contains 14,230 verses.
in the middle life path, that is, at the age of 35 (thus, the time of the vision is attributed by the poet to 1300, when he was a prior), Dante tells, he got lost in the forest of life. The poet fell asleep and cannot give himself an account of how he got into this wild, gloomy and impenetrable forest. Frightened, he decides to get out of there. In front of him is the foot of the mountain, the top of which is illuminated by rays rising sun. Dante is about to climb the desert steepness and heads for the mountain. A leopard, then a lion, and finally a she-wolf, especially the last one, crossing his path, fill his heart with mortal fear, so that he hastens to return to the dark valley. Here, someone appears in front of him in the form of a man, or rather, a light shadow: this is Virgil, that Virgil who was for Dante the greatest poet antiquity, teacher and mentor. Dante turns to him with a prayer, and Virgil instructs him, tells him about the harmful properties of the she-wolf and about her evil disposition, that she will cause much more harm and misfortune to people until the hound dog, veltro, appears, which will drive away her back to Hell, whence Satan's jealousy unleashed her on the world. Then Virgil explains to the poet that in order to get out of this jungle, one must choose a different path, and promises to lead him through Hell and the country of repentance to the top of the sunny hill, “where a soul worthier than me will meet you; I will hand you over to her and leave,” he concludes his speech. But Dante hesitates until Virgil informs him that Beatrice has been sent. Now the poet follows Virgil, his mentor and leader, to the threshold of the Earthly Paradise and descends with him into Hell, where he reads a terrible inscription over the gates: “Lasciate ogni speranza voi qu" entrate "(" Leave all hope entering here "). Here, on the eve of Hell, in starless space, weeping and groaning are heard - here people suffer, "insignificant on earth", those who did not sin and were not virtuous - indifferent, that sad kind that lived "without blasphemy and the glory of being."
Among them are Pope Celestine V, who “rejected the great gift out of baseness”, that is, renounced the papal tiara thanks to the intrigues of his successor Boniface VIII, and “unworthy angels who, having not betrayed God, were not his faithful servants and thought only of yourself." The torment of these "indifferent" people consists in the incessant torment of them by winged insects. But their main suffering is the consciousness of their own insignificance: they were rejected forever by "the Lord and the enemy, leading discord with Him."
Having crossed the Acheron, Dante and his mentor enter into the first Circle of Hell. Here is “deep sorrow without torment”, since here are virtuous people, but not enlightened by Christianity, who lived before the coming of Christ. They are condemned to "eternal desire, not refreshed by hope." Separately from them, behind a tower surrounded by seven walls and a beautiful river, into which seven gates lead, the seat, among the greenery and in the light of the sun, famous poets, scientists and heroes of antiquity. Here is Virgil, and with him Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, who make up a special circle, and further, in a flowery meadow, Dante sees Aeneas, Caesar, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato ...
Second the circle of Hell is the region where the very air trembles. The entrance to it is guarded by Minos, "the knower of all sins"; he examines the sins at the entrance and sends the sinners, according to their offenses, into their proper circle. Here weeping is heard, here is the complete absence of daylight, "as if struck by dumbness." In this circle, those who are carried away by sensual love are executed, and their torment is a continuous whirling in a hellish whirlwind. Dante sees Semiramide, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles and others here. He meets Paolo and Francesca da Rimini here, and touching story the last about her love and misfortune so strikes him that he falls unconscious.
The whirlwind of the second round produces eternal rain mixed with hail and snow; there is a stench in the air third a circle. Here gluttons are punished, and in addition to everything they are tormented by Cerberus, "a ferocious, ugly beast," who, "grabbing the evil ones, rips off their skin."
AT fourth the squanderers, the covetous, and the misers are placed in the circle; they roll huge weights, collide, heap abuse on each other, and again set to their hard work.
The downpour of the third circle forms a stream, which in fifth circle overflows into a lake of stagnant water and forms a stinking swamp of the Styx, surrounding the infernal city of Deet. Here the angry suffer; they beat each other with their feet, heads, breasts and tear with their teeth, while the envious are immersed in the swamp mud and constantly choke in it. At the edge of the swamp rises a tower, on top of which three Furies appear and show Dante the head of Medusa in order to turn him into stone. But Virgil guards the poet, covering his eyes with his hand. After that, thunder is heard: with dry soles through the stinking swamp, the messenger of heaven passes through the Styx. His sight tames the demons, and they freely let Virgil and Dante into the gates of the infernal city of Dita.
The surroundings of this city are sixth a circle. Here before us are vast fields, "full of sorrow and the most cruel torments," and everywhere open graves from which flames snake. Materialists, who preached about the death of the spirit together with the body, who doubted the immortality of the soul, as well as heretics and spreaders of heresy, burn in eternal fire here.
Along a steep cliff, the poet and his leader come to an abyss from which an unbearably stinking fumes rush and which is guarded by the Minotaur. it seventh a circle designed to torture perpetrators of violence; it consists of three belts. In the first, which is a wide ditch filled with blood, they languish " strong lands”, who encroached on the life and property of people, tyrants and, in general, murderers guilty of violence against their neighbor. Centaurs armed with bows run back and forth along the bank of the moat and shoot arrows at the one who rises from the bloody waves more than the degree of his sins allows. In the second belt of the seventh circle, those guilty of violence against themselves, that is, suicides, are punished. They are turned into poisonous and gnarled trees with leaves not green, but some kind of gray, gloomy color. In the branches of the trees hideous harpies have built their nests, which tear and eat their leaves. This terrible forest - the forest of unspeakable sorrow - surrounds the steppe, covered with combustible and dry sands - the third belt of the seventh circle. Slowly but relentlessly the fiery rain falls here. Here is the place of execution of sinners who are guilty of violence against God, who rejected in their hearts His holy name and offended nature and its gifts. Some of the sinners lie prostrate, others sit crouched, still others walk continuously, and without rest "their poor hands rush back and forth, throwing away fiery drops that constantly fall on them." Here the poet meets his teacher Brunetto Latini. Following this steppe, Dante and Virgil reach the Phlegeton River, the waves of which are terribly crimson, bloody, and the bottom and banks are completely petrified. It flows into the lower part of Hell, where it forms Cocytus, the icy lake of the Giudecca. Like other hellish rivers, Phlegeton originates from the tears of the statue of Time, erected from various metals and towering on the island of Crete.
But here is eighth a circle. Our travelers descend there on Geryon, the personification of deceit and lies, a winged monster who, according to legend, attracted strangers to his house with friendly words and then killed them.
The eighth circle is called "Evil Moats"; they are ten; various kinds of deceit are punished here. In the first of these ditches, horned demons (note that this is the only place where Dante's devils are horned) mercilessly scourge seducers. In the second, flatterers scream and moan, hopelessly immersed in liquid, stinking mud. The third ditch is occupied by the Simonists, who traded in holy things, deceiving superstitious ignorant people. Sinners of this category are terribly tormented: they put their heads in disgusting pits, their legs stick up and are constantly burned by flames. Many popes were placed here by the poet, including Nicholas III, and a place for Boniface VIII was prepared here. In the fourth ditch, people walk in silence, in tears, each of whom has his face turned to his back, as a result of which they must move backwards, because they cannot see anything in front of them. These are magicians, soothsayers, etc.: “Because of the desire to look too far ahead, they now look back and move back.” Bribers, corrupt people are placed in the fifth ditch, where they are immersed in a lake of boiling tar. In the sixth, the hypocrites are executed. Wrapped in monastic cassocks, blindingly gilded on the outside, and leaden and unbearably heavy on the inside, with the same hoods hanging over their eyes, silently and weeping, they walk with quiet steps, as in a procession. The seventh ditch, where thieves are tormented, is all filled with a terrible number of snakes, between which sinners run back and forth in horror. Their hands are tied with snakes behind their backs; snakes bite into their thighs, coil around their breasts and subject them to various transformations. In the eighth ditch, evil and crafty advisers are carried, enclosed in fiery tongues devouring them. Ulysses, who is executed here, having launched into the open ocean, penetrated far, but the storm destroyed his ship and sank him with all his comrades. In the ninth ditch are placed the sowers of temptation, schism, all sorts of strife, political and family. The demon, armed with a sharp sword, subjects them to terrible and varied cuts; but the wounds immediately heal, the bodies are subjected to new blows - and there is no end to these Promethean torments. But here is the last, tenth ditch of the eighth circle: here people who encroached on various forgeries are tormented; they are covered with terrible sores, and nothing can lessen and appease the frenzy of their scabies. Hell ends. Virgil and Dante come to a gloomy, cramped well, the walls of which are supported by giants. This is the bottom of the universe and at the same time the last - ninth- the circle of Hell, where the highest human crime is punished - treason. This circle is an icy lake, consisting of four parts: Caina, Antenora, Tolomei and Giudecca. In Cain (from Cain) those who have betrayed relatives and relatives, who encroached on the life of these latter, are placed. In Antenor, so named after the Trojan Antenor, who gave advice to the enemies to bring a wooden horse to Troy, traitors to the fatherland are tormented; among them is Ugolino, who was placed here for the treacherous surrender of the fortress; he gnaws the head of his enemy, Archbishop Ruggeri, who starved him and his children to death. In Tolomei (named after the Egyptian king Ptolemy, who allegedly once invited friends to dinner and killed them), those who betrayed their friends are tormented. They have their heads stuck in the ice; “the tears shed by them close the flow of other tears, and grief flows back and increases languor, because the first tears freeze and, like a crystal visor, cover the hollows of the eyes.” Finally, in the fourth zone of the ninth circle, in Giudecca, traitors to Christ and the supreme state power. Here is the residence of Satan, "the lord of the kingdom of sorrow", the creation of "once so beautiful." He is up to half of his chest immersed in ice. He has three faces and six huge wings; moving the latter, he produces a wind that freezes the waters of the entire ninth circle. With each mouth of his three faces, he crushes one sinner. Judas, who betrayed Christ, is executed the most severely, then Brutus and Cassius, who killed Caesar.
On the wool of Lucifer, Virgil and Dante descend to the center of the earth, and from here they begin to climb up the crevice. A little more and they're out terrible kingdom darkness; above them the stars shone again. They are at the foot of Mount Purgatory.
“In order to sail from this moment on the best waters, the boat of my genius spreads its sails and leaves such a stormy sea behind it.” With these words begins the second part of the poem, and immediately follows wonderful description dawn, which is a striking contrast with the picture of darkness upon entering Hell.
Purgatory has the appearance of a mountain rising higher and higher and surrounded by eleven ledges or circles. The guardian of Purgatory is the majestic shadow of Cato Uticus, personifying, in the eyes of Dante, the freedom of the spirit, inner human freedom. Virgil asks the stern old man, in the name of freedom, which was so precious to him that for the sake of it he "renounced life", to show the way to Dante, who goes everywhere, looking for this freedom. An air boat, controlled by a bright angel, “on whose forehead bliss is inscribed,” brings souls to the foot of the mountain. But before actually penetrating into Purgatory, one must pass, as it were, on the threshold of it, four preliminary steps, where the souls of the lazy and negligent dwell, who wished to repent, realized their errors, but kept postponing repentance and never had time to do it. The stairs leading from one step to another are narrow and steep, but the higher our travelers climb, the easier and easier it is for them to climb. Steps passed; Dante is in a wonderful valley where purifying souls sing hymns of praise. Two angels descend from heaven with flaming swords, the tips of which are broken off - an indication that a life of mercy and forgiveness begins here. Their wings and clothes are green, the color of hope. After that, Dante, who has fallen asleep, wakes up at the gates of Purgatory, where an angel stands with a naked and shining sword. With the tip of this sword, he writes P (peccato - sin) seven times on Dante's forehead, thus letting him into Purgatory no longer as a passive person, in Hell, but as an active person who also needs purification. The door is open. Virgil and Dante enter at the sound of a hymn. “Oh, how these gates do not look like hell! exclaims Dante. “They enter here at the sound of singing, there at the sound of terrible cries.”
Actually Purgatory consists of seven circles: in each one of the seven deadly sins is redeemed. The proud move, bending under a heavy stone burden. Envious, with a deathly complexion, lean one on the other and are all leaning together against a high rock; they are dressed in coarse hair shirts, their eyelids are sewn with wire. Wrathful wander in impenetrable darkness and thick stinking smoke; lazy people run around. The stingy and prodigal, who had attachment only to earthly goods, lie face down on the ground, with their hands tied. Gluttons, terribly thin, with colorless eyes, experience the torments of Tantalus: they walk near a tree burdened with juicy fruits and spread its branches over a fresh spring, the waters of which fall from a high mountain, and suffer hunger and thirst, those who are carried away by sensual love atone for their sin in flame, which, coming out of the mountain, douses them with its tongues, is thrown back by the wind and returns again without interruption. At each new step, Dante meets an angel who, with the tip of his wing, erases one of the Rs imprinted on his forehead, because together with the proud he walked, bent under a heavy burden, and along with those carried away by sensual love, the flame passed.
Dante and Virgil finally reached the top of the mountain, overshadowed by a beautiful, evergreen forest. This is Earth Paradise. In the middle of the forest flow from the same source, but heading in different directions, two rivers. One flows to the left: this is Lethe, the river of oblivion of all evil; the other - to the right: this is Evnoya, imprinting all that is good and good forever in the human soul. Virgil, having fulfilled his task, having brought the poet to the Earthly Paradise, to Eden, says goodbye to him. Here, in Eden, where everything breathes with truth, innocence and love, the poet meets Beatrice. He is bathed in Evnou, whence he returns, "like a new plant that has just changed its foliage," pure and perfectly ready to ascend to the stars.
And the ascension begins: Dante is carried away through the air after Beatrice; she looks up all the time, but he does not take his eyes off her. That's Paradise.
Paradise (all according to the same system of Ptolemy) consists of ten spheres in Dante. First, seven planets inhabited by the righteous, also in a certain hierarchical order.
The first planet closest to Earth Moon, where the souls of those who made a vow on earth to preserve a celibate, virgin state, but who violated it, contrary to own will, due to violent opposition from the outside.
The second planet Mercury- the dwelling of righteous and strong sovereigns, who have acquired a loud glory for their virtue, who have made their subjects happy through good deeds and wise laws. Among them is Emperor Justinian, with whom the poet is talking.
The third planet Venus, where are the souls of people who loved with a higher, spiritual love that inspired them on Earth for good deeds.
The fourth planet Sun- inhabited by those who have explored the mysteries of faith and theology. Here Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas and others.
On the fifth planet mars- dwell the souls of persons who spread Christianity and sacrificed their lives for the faith and the church.
The sixth planet Jupiter; here are the souls of those who on Earth were the true guardians of justice.
The seventh planet Saturn- the abode of souls who lived a contemplative life on Earth. Dante sees here a radiant golden staircase, the upper part of which is lost far into the sky and along which light spirits ascend and descend.
Passing from one planet to another, Dante does not feel this transition, it happens so easily, and learns about it every time only because the beauty of Beatrice becomes more radiant, more divine as he approaches the source of eternal grace ...
And so they climbed to the top of the stairs. At the direction of Beatrice, Dante looks down from here to the Earth, and she seems to him so pathetic that he smiles at the sight of her. "And I," he adds pessimistically, "approve of those who despise this Earth, and consider really wise those who direct their desires in a different direction."
Now the poet with his leader - in eighth sphere, the sphere of the fixed stars.
Here Dante sees Beatrice's full smile for the first time and is now able to endure its brilliance - able to endure, but not express in any human words. Marvelous visions delight the poet's eyesight: a luxurious garden opens up, growing under the rays of the Divine, where he sees a mysterious rose surrounded by fragrant lilies, and above it a ray of light falling from Christ. After a test in faith, hope and love (tested by St. Peter, James and John), endured by Dante completely satisfactorily, he is admitted to ninth sphere called the crystal sky. Here, in the form of a brightly luminous dot, without a definite image, the Glory of God is already present, still hidden by a veil of nine fiery circles. And finally last sphere: Empyrean - the dwelling of God and blessed spirits. All around sweet singing, marvelous dances, a river with sparkling waves, with ever-blooming banks; bright sparks spurt out of it, rising into the air and turning into flowers, only to fall back into the river, "like rubies set in gold." Dante moistens his eyelids with water from the river, and his spiritual gaze receives complete enlightenment, so that he can now understand everything around him. Beatrice, having disappeared for a moment, appears already at the very top, on the throne, "crowning herself with a crown of eternal rays emanating from herself." Dante turns to her with the following prayer: “Oh, who was not afraid for the sake of my salvation to leave a trace of her steps in Hell, I know that I owe you, your power and your goodness those great things that I saw. You have led me from slavery to freedom by all means, by all means that were in your power. Keep your bounties to me so that my soul, healed by you and worthy of your liking, can be separated from the body! .. "
“Here the power of imagination left me,” Dante ends his poem, “but my desires, my will have already been set in motion forever by love, which also moves the sun and stars,” that is, royally ruling the whole world.
The Divine Comedy is a great allegory of man, sin and redemption from the religious and moral sides. Every man carries within himself his own hell and his own paradise. Hell is the death of the soul, the dominion of the body, the image of evil or vice; Paradise is an image of goodness or virtue, inner peace and happiness; Purgatory is the transition from one state to another through repentance. The lynx (or patera in other translations), the lion and the she-wolf blocking the path to the sunny hill represent the three dominant vices then considered to be prevalent in the world, namely: voluptuousness, pride and greed.
In addition to this moral and religious significance, the Divine Comedy also has a political significance. Dark forest, in which the poet got lost, also means the anarchic state of the world and specifically Italy. The election of Virgil as a poet to the leadership is also not devoid of allegorical overtones. From a moral and religious point of view, the image of Virgil symbolizes earthly wisdom, and from a political point of view, the Ghibelline idea of a world monarchy, which alone has the power to establish peace on earth. Beatrice symbolizes heavenly wisdom, and from a biographical point of view, Dante's love. etc.
Symbolic and clear, thoughtful composition of the "Divine Comedy": it is divided into three parts ("kantiki"), each of which depicts one of the three parts of the underworld, according to Catholic teaching - hell, purgatory or paradise. Each part consists of 33 songs, and one more song-prologue is added to the first canticle, so that in total there are 100 songs with ternary division: the whole poem is written in three-line stanzas - tercina. This dominance in the compositional and semantic structure of the poem of the number 3 goes back to the Christian idea of the trinity and mystical meaning number 3. The whole architectonics of the afterlife of the Divine Comedy, thought out by the poet to the smallest detail, is based on this number. The symbolization does not end there: each song ends with the same word "stars"; the name of Christ rhymes only with itself; in hell the name of Christ is nowhere mentioned, nor is the name of Mary, and so on.
The symbolism also permeates the other two canticles. In the mystical procession meeting Dante at the entrance to paradise, 12 lamps “are the seven spirits of God” (according to the Apocalypse), 12 elders - 24 books of the Old Testament, 4 beasts - 4 gospels, a wagon - Christian church, griffon - the God-man Christ, 1 elder - the Apocalypse, the "humble four" - the "Messages" of the apostles, etc.
For all its originality, Dante's poem has various medieval sources. The plot of the poem reproduces the scheme of the popular in medieval literature genre of "visions" or "traveling through torments" - about the secrets of the afterlife. The theme of afterlife "visions" was developed in a similar direction in medieval literature and beyond. Western Europe (Old Russian apocrypha"Walking of the Virgin through the torments", XII century., Muslim tradition about the vision of Mohammed, contemplating in prophetic dream the torment of sinners in hell and the heavenly bliss of the righteous). The Arab poet-mystic of the XII century. Abenarabi is a work in which pictures of hell and paradise are given, similar to those of Dante, and their parallel independent appearance (for Dante did not know Arabic, and Abenarabi was not translated into the languages \u200b\u200bknown to him) indicates a general trend in the evolution of these representations in various remote regions from each other.
In building the picture of Hell, Dante proceeded from the Christian model of the world. According to Dante, Hell is a funnel-shaped abyss, which, narrowing, reaches the center of the earth. Its slopes are surrounded by concentric ledges, "circles" of Hell. The rivers of the underworld (Acheron, Styx, Phlegeton) - Lethe, the river of ablution and oblivion, stands apart, although its waters also flow to the center of the earth - this is, in essence, one stream penetrating into the bowels of the earth: at first it appears as Acheron (according to - Greek, “river of sorrow”) and encircles the first circle of Hell, then, flowing down, forms the swamp of Styx (in Greek, “hated”), which washes the walls of the city of Dita, bordering the abyss of lower Hell; even lower, it becomes Phlegeton (in Greek, “burning”), a ring-shaped river of boiling blood, then, in the form of a bloody stream, it crosses the forest of suicides and the desert, from where it plunges deep into the depths in a noisy waterfall to turn into the icy lake Cocytus in the center of the earth. Lucifer (aka Beelzebub, the devil) Dante calls Dit (Dis), this latin name King Hades, or Pluto, son of Kronos and Rhea, brother of Zeus and Poseidon. In Latin, Lucifer means light-bearer. The most beautiful of angels, he was punished with ugliness for rebellion against God.
The origin of Hell according to Dante is as follows: An angel (Lucifer, Satan) who rebelled against God, together with his supporters (demons), was cast down from the ninth heaven to Earth and, piercing into it, hollowed out a cavity - a funnel to the very center - the center of the Earth, the Universe and universal gravitation : there is nowhere to fall further. Stuck there in the eternal ice:
An agonizing power lord
Chest of ice uplifted half;
And I'm closer in height to a giant,
Than the hands of Lucifer are gigantic ...;
And I became speechless from amazement,
When I saw three faces on it:
One - above the chest; its color was red;
And over one and over the other shoulder
Two adjacent to this side threatened,
Closing on the back of the head under the crest.
The face to the right was white-yellow;
The color on the left was
Like those who came from the falls of the Nile,
Growing under each two large wings,
As a bird so great in the world should;
The mast did not carry such sails,
Without feathers, they looked like a bat;
He fanned them, moving the ramen,
And drove three winds along the dark expanse,
Jets of Cocytus ice to the bottom.
Six eyes sharpened tears, and flowed down
Bloody saliva from three mouths.
They tormented all three, as they ruffled,
For a sinner...
(canto XXXIV)
In the three mouths of the three-faced Demon, the most heinous, according to Dante, traitors are executed: Judas, Brutus, Cassius.
In the description of the devil, the medieval unambiguously prevails negative attitude to the enemy of the human race. Dante's Lucifer, half frozen in ice (a symbol of the coldness of dislike), is an ugly parody of the images of heaven: his three faces are a mockery of the trinity, of which red is anger as the opposite of love, pale yellow is powerlessness or laziness as opposed to omnipotence, black is ignorance as opposed to omniscience; the six wings of a bat correspond to the six wings of a cherub. Not surprisingly, Chateaubriand and other romantics did not like Dante's Lucifer. It has nothing in common with the proud Satan of Milton, with the philosophizing Mephistopheles Goethe, with the recalcitrant Demon of Lermontov. Lucifer in The Divine Comedy is a rebel who has hopelessly lost his cause. He became a part of the cosmic whole, subject to the highest unquestioned laws.
The center of the universe, coinciding with the center of the earth, is bound by ice. Evil is in the concentration of the gravity of the universe. The resulting funnel - the underworld - this is Hell, waiting for sinners who at that time had not yet been born, since the Earth was lifeless. The gaping wound of the Earth immediately healed. Shifted as a result of the collision caused by the fall of Lucifer, the earth's crust closed the base of the cone-shaped funnel, swelling in the middle of this base with Mount Golgotha, and on the opposite side of the funnel - Mount Purgatory. The entrance to the dungeon of Hell remained on the side, near the edge of the recess, on the territory of the future Italy. As you can see, many images (rivers of the underworld, the entrance to it, topology) were taken by Dante from ancient sources (Homer, Virgil).
Dante's appeal to ancient writers (and above all to Virgil, whose figure is directly displayed in the poem as Dante's guide to hell) is one of the main symptoms of the preparation for the Renaissance in his work. Dante's "Divine Comedy" is not a divinely inspired text, but an attempt to express some experience, a revelation. And since it was the poet who discovered the way of expressing the higher world, he was chosen as a guide to the other world. The influence of Virgil's "Aeneid" was reflected in the borrowing from Virgil of certain plot details and images described in the scene of Aeneas's descent into Tartarus in order to see his late father.
Renaissance elements are felt both in the very rethinking of the role and figure of a guide through the afterlife, and in the rethinking of the content and function of "visions". Firstly, the pagan Virgil receives from Dante the role of an angel-guide of medieval "visions". True, Virgil, due to the interpretation of his 4 eclogues as a prediction of the onset of a new “golden age of justice”, was ranked among the heralds of Christianity, so that he was a figure, as it were, not entirely pagan, but nevertheless such a step by Dante could be called quite bold at that time.
The second significant difference was that, unlike the medieval "visions", which aimed to turn a person from worldly vanity to afterlife thoughts, Dante uses the story of afterlife for the most complete reflection of real earthly life and, above all, for the judgment of human vices and crimes in the name of not denying earthly life, but correcting it. The purpose of the poem is to free those living on earth from the state of sinfulness and lead them on the path to bliss.
The third difference is the life-affirming beginning that permeates the entire poem, optimism, bodily saturation (materiality) of scenes and images. In fact, the entire "Comedy" was shaped by the desire for absolute harmony and the belief that it is practically achievable.
Often, Dante illustrates the described torment of sinners with pictures of nature, alien to medieval descriptions, and the dead element of hell itself with phenomena of the living world. For example, the Hell whirlwind in the 5th song is compared to the flight of starlings:
And like starlings, their wings carry them away,
on days of cold, in a thick and long formation,
there this storm circles the spirits of evil,
here, there, down, up, in a huge swarm
The same interest distinguishes the picturesque palette of Dante, rich in all kinds of colors. Each of the three edgings of the poem has its own colorful background: "Hell" - a gloomy color, thick ominous colors with a predominance of red and black: "And over the desert slowly fell / Rain of flame, wide scarves / Like snow in the stillness of mountain rocks ..." (Song XIV ), “So the fire blizzard descended / And the dust burned like tinder under the flint ...” (Song XIV), “The fire snaked over the feet of everyone ...” (Song XIX); “Purgatory” - soft, pale and foggy colors characteristic of wildlife that appears there (sea, rocks, green meadows, trees): “The road here is not dressed with carvings; / the wall of the slope and the ledge under it - / Solid gray stone color ”(“ Purgatory ”, Song XIII); "Paradise" - dazzling brilliance and transparency, radiant colors the purest light. Similarly, each of the parts has its own musical edging: in hell - this is a growl, roar, groans, in paradise the music of the spheres sounds. The Renaissance vision is also distinguished by the plastic sculptural outline of the figures. Each image is presented in a memorable plastic pose, as if molded and at the same time full of movement.
Elements of the old and new worldview are intertwined throughout the poem in a variety of scenes and layers. Carrying out the idea that earthly life there is preparation for the future, eternal life, Dante at the same time shows a keen interest in earthly life. Outwardly agreeing with the teaching of the church about the sinfulness of carnal love and placing the voluptuous in the second circle of hell:
then the hellish wind, not knowing rest,
rushing hosts of souls among the surrounding darkness
and tortures them, twisting and torturing
Dante listens with ardent sympathy to Francesca's story about her sinful love for her husband's brother Paolo, which led them both, stabbed by the ugly Gianciotto Malatesta, to hell. Agreeing with the church teaching about the vanity and sinfulness of striving for glory and honors, he praises the striving for glory through the mouth of Virgil. He also praises others condemned by the church human qualities, such as the thirst for knowledge, the inquisitive mind, the desire for the unknown, an example of which is the confession of Ulysses, who was executed among the crafty advisers for his craving for travel.
At the same time, the vices of the clergy and their very spirit are subject to criticism, and they are stigmatized even in paradise. Dante's attacks on the greed of the clergy are also heralds of a new worldview and in the future will become one of the main motives of the anti-clerical literature of modern times.
Silver and gold are now God for you;
and even those who pray to an idol,
honor one, you honor a hundred at once
(Song XIX)
Renaissance trends are especially strong in the third canticle - "Paradise". And this is due to the very nature of the described subject.
At the end of Purgatory, when Dante enters the Earthly Paradise, a solemn triumphal procession approaches him; in the midst of it is a marvelous chariot, and on it is Beatrice herself, the charm of his childhood, the beloved of his youth, the guardian angel of his mature years. A moment of supreme solemnity. Dante stands in the shade of the trees of the Earthly Paradise, on the banks of the river Lethe, and opposite him, on the other side of the river, is a chariot; around her is a procession consisting of seven lamps, sparkling with bright heavenly light, twenty-four patriarchs in white robes and wreaths of roses, four evangelists, seven virtues and a crowd of angels throwing flowers. And finally, she herself, Beatrice, on a chariot, in a green dress and in a fiery cloak:
As sometimes they are filled with crimson
In the early morning of the region of the east,
And the skies are beautiful and clear
And the face of the sun, rising low,
So veiled with the softness of vapors
That an eye calmly looks at him, -
So in a light cloud of angelic flowers,
Soared and overthrown by a collapse
On the marvelous cart and beyond its edges,
In a wreath of olives, under a white veil,
A woman appeared, dressed
In a green cloak and in a fiery dress.
And my spirit, even though times have flown away,
When she plunged him into a shudder
By her very presence, she
And here the contemplation was incomplete, -
Before the secret power that came from her,
Former love tasted the charm.
(Purgatory, Canto XXX)
The heavy supermateriality of Hell is opposed by transcendence, luminous lightness, the elusive spiritual radiance of Paradise. And to rigid restrictions of the binding infernal geometry - spatial multidimensionality of heavenly spheres with increasing degrees of freedom. Someone else's will reigns in Hell, a person is forced, dependent, dumb, and this someone else's will is clearly visible, and its manifestations are colorful; in Paradise - only one's own will, personal; there is an extension, which Hell is deprived of: in space, consciousness, will, time. In Hell there is bare geometry, there is no time there, it is not eternity (that is, an infinite length of time), but time equal to zero, that is, nothing. The space divided into circles is flat and of the same type in each circle. It is dead, timeless and empty. Its artificial complexity is imaginary, apparent, it is the complexity (geometry) of emptiness. In Paradise, it acquires volume, diversity, variability, pulsation, it spreads, imbued with celestial glimmer, supplemented, created by every will, and therefore incomprehensible.
After all, that is why our esse is blessed,
that God's will guides them
and ours with her is not in opposition
("Paradise", song III).
The Renaissance elements of the Divine Comedy make it possible to consider Dante as the forerunner of the New Age. In art history, the term "ducento" is adopted - the XII century, called the proto-Renaissance, that is, the historical stage followed immediately by the Renaissance. Dante's work dates back to the beginning of this period.
