Dante - Divine Comedy

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Biography of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

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Dante is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the comic story-teller Boccaccio and the poet Petrarch, he forms the classic trio of Italian authors. Dante Alighieri was born in the city-state Florence in 1265. He first saw the woman, or rather the child, who was to become the poetic love of his life when he was almost nine years old and she was some months younger. In fact, Beatrice married another man, Simone di' Bardi, and died when Dante was 25, so their relationship existed almost entirely in Dante's imagination, but she nonetheless plays an extremely important role in his poetry. Dante attributed all the heavenly virtues to her soul and imagined, in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, that she was his guardian angel who alternately berated and encouraged him on his search for salvation.

Politics as well as love deeply influenced Dante's literary and emotional life. Renaissance Florence was a thriving, but not a peaceful city: different opposing factions continually struggled for dominance there. The Guelfs and the Ghibellines were the two major factions, and in fact that division was important in all of Italy and other countries as well. The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were political rivals for much of this time period, and in general the Guelfs were in favor of the Pope, while the Ghibellines supported Imperial power. By 1289 in the battle of Campaldino the Ghibellines largely disappeared from Florence. Peace, however, did not insue. Instead, the Guelf party divided between the Whites and the Blacks (Dante was a White Guelf). The Whites were more opposed to Papal power than the Blacks, and tended to favor the emperor, so in fact the preoccupations of the White Guelfs were much like those of the defeated Ghibellines. In this divisive atmosphere Dante rose to a position of leadership. in 1302, while he was in Rome on a diplomatic mission to the Pope, the Blacks in Florence seized power with the help of the French (and pro-Pope) Charles of Valois. The Blacks exiled Dante, confiscating his goods and condemning him to be burned if he should return to Florence.

Dante never returned to Florence. He wandered from city to city, depending on noble patrons there. Between 1302 and 1304 some attempts were made by the exiled Whites to retrieve their position in Florence, but none of these succeeded and Dante contented himself with hoping for the appearance of a new powerful Holy Roman Emperor who would unite the country and banish strife. Henry VII was elected Emperor in 1308, and indeed laid seige to Florence in 1312, but was defeated, and he died a year later, destroying Dante's hopes. Dante passed from court to court, writing passionate political and moral epistles and finishing his Divine Comedy, which contains the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. He finally died in Ravenna in 1321.

As can be seen, little is known about the details of Dante's life other than what he tells us in his works. The portrait emerges of a bitter and passionate man who used prophetic poetry to warn Florentines of the evils which awaited them for their misdeeds and the confusion and corruption of their government.

Although his political aims were doomed to failure, Dante achieved great victories in literature. Notably, he was one of the first authors to write in the vernacular Tuscan, rather than Latin, and thus had a defining effect on what Italian is today: before his work, Italian was usually only spoken, and hence was divided into many different dialects, without a coherent literary language. Dante used the melodic vowel word-endings of many Italian words in the rhyme scheme "terza rime," in which first and the third lines of each triplet end in the same vowel sound.



Sayonara!!! Good Night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.




Được sửa chữa bởi - milou on 24/09/2001 10:07

Bones 'likely to belong to Dante's cannibal count'
By Bruce Johnston in Pisa
(Filed: 24/09/2001)
BONES found in a crypt in Pisa "almost certainly" belonged to Count Ugolino, the central character of one the most dramatic episodes of Dante's Inferno.
The poet strongly hints that the 13th-century politician and entrepreneur Count Ugolino della Gherardesca ate his two sons and two grandsons when they were imprisoned and left to starve together in a Pisan tower.
Prof Francesco Mallegni, head of anthropology at the University of Pisa, said that after a month of tests, he was "98 per cent" sure that five skeletons found under a church in Pisa were those of the count and his sons, Gaddo and Ugguccione, and grandsons Nino and Anselmuccio.
Presenting his finds at the weekend, Prof Mallegni unveiled a plastic model of a head of the count which he had reconstructed by studying one of the skulls and applying forensic methods developed by the FBI.
"It is the face of a very strong character, and a strapping, robust man, who was well above the average [height] for his day," the professor said.
"But he looks a little stressed. Knowing his history, I would call his appearance subdued, but not vanquished." In Canto XXXIII of the Inferno, Dante encounters Count Ugolino languishing in the lowest depths of Hell. There, despite his old age, he has been cast for betraying Pisa, the city he had ruled, and its Guelph faction.
As they are left to starve, Ugolino's sons say: "Father, it will be far less pain for us if you eat us. You did clothe us with this wretched flesh and do you strip us of it."
The poet says that the count's hunger "prevailed over his grief".
Prof Mallegni said tests showed that all five people had had the same poor diet in their final months. This suggested that they had been together, living on a prison diet of bread and water.
It was not known if they had died from starvation, however, although a sign of a heavy blow - although not necessary fatal - on the head of the count, and a wound in the femur of one of the other skeletons suggested that some or all of the group had been killed as an act of mercy as they starved.
The discoveries, after a two-month search in the church of San Francesco where the family has a crypt, corresponded closely with what was known about the prisoners, who died in 1289.
Tests would now be done to try to determine if any of the prisoners had resorted to cannibalism, and to match the DNA to living descendants.

Thanks for being there for me.​

Bones exhumed to verify Dante's cannibalism tale
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
(Filed: 28/06/2001)
REMAINS believed to be those of a 13th-century Italian count accused of cannibalism in Dante's Inferno have been exhumed to determine the truth of the story.
Dante suggested that Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, accused of treason and imprisoned without food in a tower in Pisa in 1288, was forced by hunger and despair to eat his two grown sons and fellow inmates, Gaddo and Uguccione.
In Inferno, the men offer themselves to their starving father in the Gualandi Tower, where they were being held with their own boys, Anselmuccio and Nino.
While all five prisoners died, Dante was ambiguous as to whether the offer was accepted, though he implied that the count's love for food was greater than his sorrow at the prospect of his sons' deaths.
This week a tomb in the family chapel in Pisa was opened by Ugolino's direct descendant and namesake, Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, a cousin of the Duchess of York's friend Gaddo della Gherardesca.
Prof Francesco Mallegni, an anthropologist, told the newspaper La Repubblica: "If I can show that they belong to an elderly man, two middle aged men and two boys, we will have 99 per cent proof that this is Ugolino, his sons and grandsons."
The latter-day Count Ugolino and his brother, Guelfo, have agreed *****pply skin samples for DNA testing.
Fulvio Bartoli, a scientist specialising in nutrition, said: "Some bones, like the ribs, conserve a record of what the body was nourished with. From a comparison we could learn whether, shortly before dying, Ugolino had eaten meat."
Such a finding would back Dante's account, the newspaper noted, as the "poor count was not in the habit of being served Florentine steak" in captivity.

Canto XXXIII: Summary:
The sinner who had been eating his companion's head raised his own and told Dante why he hated his companion so much:
He was Count Ugolino and his companion was the Archbishop Ruggieri. Ugoloino had been captured by Ruggieri and imprisoned in a tower with his two sons and two grandsons. One night he dreamed that a wolf and his whelps was hunted down by Ruggieri, and he awoke to hear his sons and grandsons weeping for bread in their sleep. At the time when their food was usually brought, Ugolino heard people nailing the tower shut. Ugolino stonily did not weep, but the boys did, and asked him what was wrong. The next day he bit his hands out of grief, and the boys, thinking he was doing it out of hunger, offered him their flesh to eat ư so he tried to stay calm, to keep them from worrying. On the fourth day Gaddo died, crying: "Father why do you not help me?" In the next few days the other boys died too, and Ugolino went blind. On the sixth day the boys were all dead, and Ugolino mourned for them for two days ư then "fasting had more force than grief."
After telling this story, Ugolino looked mad with sorrow and hate, and bit Ruggieri's skull with his strong teeth. Dante lamented the wicked ways of Pisa, where this had taken palce, and said that even if Ugolino had been said to betray some fortresses, there had been no need *****bject his innocent children to the same cruel death: Brigata, Uguiccione, Anselmo, and Gaddo.
Moving on, Dante saw other sinners who were frozen flat on their backs. Their very tears prevented them from weeping, because they froze over their eyes. Dante seemed to feel a wind, and Virgil told him he would soon see what caused it.
One of the sinners begged him to free his eyes from the ice, and Dante said he would if he would tell him who he was. The sinner said he was Fra Alberigo, whose figs had been repaid with dates. Dante was surprised because he thought Alberigo was still alive. Alberigo answered that his body was still alive: when a soul becomes a traitor, the soul goes to Hell and a demon uses its body. For example, Ser Branca Doria's soul was there. Dante insisted that Doria was still living, and Alberigo answered that Doria's soul had come to Hell even before the soul of his victim, Michele Zanca, who was in the pitch in Malebolge.
Alberigo then asked Dante to free his eyes, and Dante refused: "it was courtesy to show him rudeness." The canto ends with an invective against the corruption of the Genoese.
Canto XXXIII: Analysis:
The moving story of the deaths of Ugolino and his children is, perhaps with the exception of the story of Francesca da' Rimini, the most tragic moment in this Comedy. Ugolino della Gherardesca was a Pisan Ghibelline who negotiated with the powerful Guelphs of Lucca and Florence and ceded them three castles. Ugolino was forced out of the office of chief magistrate of Pisa in 1288, and returned to Pisa at the invitation of the Archbishop Ruggieri, who betrayed and imprisoned him, along with his sons Gaddo and Uguiccione, and his grandsons Anselmo and Nino (nicknamed Brigata). In March 1289, after they had been imprisoned for nine months, the tower was locked up.
Gaddo's cry is reminiscent of that of Christ in Matthew 27:46: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" A painful irony results from this: Ugolino was not an omnipotent God, nor was he even in a position to help anyone.
One rather disturbing issue in this story is that of cannibalism. We know, of course, that Ugolino has been gnawing Ruggieri's head, which is presumably linked to his death by starvation. But did Ugolino eat his children two days after they were all dead? What does the phrase "then fasting had more force than grief" really mean? Ugolino begins chewing on Ruggieri's head immediately after he says it. Of course it is possible that Ugolino was simply too weak to mourn anymore, and that he collapsed into the lethargy which ended in his own death. Logically, it does not seem realistic that he would eat his sons and grandsons when it would only put off his death by a little time, and he certainly seems to have loved them very much.
Fra Alberigo was a Jovial Friar who had his relatives Manfred and Manfred's son killed during a banquet. He summoned the assassins by ordering figs. When he says that his figs have been repaid with dates, he is complaining that his punishment is too severe: dates were more expensive than figs. Branca Doria killed his father-in-law Michele Zanche (see Canto XXII) during a banquet.
Canto XXXIV: Summary:
Dante and Virgil continued on, and passed sinners who were completely covered by ice, deep below them in the frozen lake. Finally Virgil told Dante to look and see the center of Hell itself. Dante was awed by the sight of Lucifer, a gigantic figure who dwarfed the giant Nimrod. He had three heads and bat-like wings ư they were the cause of the freezing wind. His six eyes wept and the tears mixed with the blood of the sinners he was grinding between his teeth: the three mouth held Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. Judas was in the front mouth, and was clawed as well as bitten.
Virgil told Dante that night had come, and it was time to leave. He picked Dante up and climbed down Lucifer's body. After a certain point, it suddenly seemed to Dante as though Lucifer were upside-down. Finally they made their way through a ****rn. Dante asked Virgil why Lucifer had seemed to change, and why the sun had moved so quickly. Virgil answered that they were now in the southern hemisphere: there is was morning when it was night on the other side. Lucifer had fallen into the southern hemisphere, which was why almost all the land was in the nothern hemisphere, where it had fled. Dante saw the sky through an opening in the ****rn, and finally they emerged to see the stars.
Canto XXXIV: Analysis:
The four rings of the ninth circle are Caina (traitors to kin), Antenora (traitors to party), Ptolomea (traitors to guests), and Judecca (traitors to benefactors).
Lucifer's three faces make a perverted trinity, echoing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Judas Iscariot was the apostle who betrayed Christ: in the legend, he identified Christ for his enemies by kissing him, for thirty pieces of silver. Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longus assassinated ****** Caesar in 44 BC, and both committed suicide two years later.
The detailed discussion of the change in the direction of the gravitational force is one indication that Columbus was not being terribly original when he argued that the world was round. The spherical shape of the earth is taken for granted by Dante, though he is excited over its implications. Dante's earth is a solid sphere. The northern hemisphere is mostly covered by land and the southern sphere is mostly covered by water. The gigantic figure of Lucifer almost spans the diameter of the earth, and his heads and upper body are in the northern hemisphere, with his legs in the southern part. Thus Virgil and Dante climb down from his head to his waist, and up from his waist to his feet. The space between his head and the surface of the earth is taken up by Hell, which is cone shaped.
Dante emerges when it is night, before dawn on Easter Sunday. In symbolic holy time, he has been "dead" for the time after the crucifixion and before Christ rose, and now he rises with Christ.