The meaning of the name "The Divine Comedy"

Interpretation of the meaning of the poem is possible from several perspectives. In a literal sense, this is truly the journey of the soul after death in the other world. But, in addition to the literal, the allegorical understanding of the poem is also legitimate, that is, every event, every detail carries additional meaning.

According to traditional religious beliefs, hell is a place where sinners are found. Suffering due to sins committed in purgatory is intended for those who have the opportunity to be cleansed and saved for a new life. Paradise is the reward for those who live a righteous life. We are talking about the moral assessment of people’s actions: where exactly a person’s soul ends up after death is determined by its earthly life.

So even in the literal interpretation of the poem, the world of people is divided into righteous and sinners. However, in The Divine Comedy we are not talking about individuals, but the insults created by the author symbolize certain principles or phenomena. Thus, the image of Virgil, which accompanies the protagonist on a journey through the circles of hell, is not only an image of the poet Virgil, but embodies the principle of understanding the world, devoid of faith. Dante recognizes the greatness of Virgil, nevertheless depicts him as a resident of hell. Beatrice is not only an image of a beloved woman, but also an allegory of love, saving and all-forgiving.

The allegories in the poem are also ambiguous. For example, the animals that meet on Dante’s path in the dense forest are endowed with traditional meanings for the Middle Ages: the lynx symbolizes treachery, the she-wolf - gluttony, the lion - pride. There is another interpretation of the images depicted by the poet: the lynx is Dante’s political enemies, the lion is the king of France, the she-wolf is the Roman papacy. The meanings of the allegories are layered on top of each other, giving the work additional dimensions.

The unfolding allegory is the journey itself - this is the search for the right spiritual path for a person surrounded by sins, temptations and passions. Choosing a road is a search for the meaning of life. The main action takes place in the soul of the lyrical hero. The entire journey takes place in the mind of the poet. Having learned what ruin is, having gone through the circles of hell, changes occur in the poet’s soul, he rises to the awareness of the most important truths about the world and about himself.

It is in the part that depicts paradise that the main secret of life is revealed, which lies in love. Not only in love for a single and beautiful woman, but in all-consuming and all-forgiving love, love in the broad sense of the word. Love is the driving force, the force that moves the heavenly bodies. Dante leads us to believe that God is love.

Federal Agency for Education

State educational institution

Higher professional education

Kama State Engineering and Economic Academy

Department "RiSo"

Test

in the discipline "History of World Literature"

on the topic of: " Literature of the Renaissance.

Dante Alighieri "The Divine Comedy"

Completed by: student of group 4197c

correspondence department

Nevmatullina R.S.

Checked by: teacher

department "RiSo"

Meshcherina E.V.

Naberezhnye Chelny 2008

Chapter 2. Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy"

2.3 Purgatory

2.5 Dante's Path

Chapter 1. Literature of the Renaissance

The end of medieval civilization in human history is associated with a brilliant period of culture and literature called the Renaissance. This is a much shorter era than antiquity or the Middle Ages. It is of a transitional nature, but it is the cultural achievements of this time that force us to distinguish it as a special stage of the late Middle Ages. The Renaissance gives the history of culture a huge constellation of genuine masters who left behind the greatest creations in both science and art - painting, music, architecture - and literature. Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci, Rabelais and Copernicus, Botticelli and Shakespeare are just a few random names of geniuses of this era, often and rightly called titans.

The intensive flowering of literature during this period is largely associated with a special attitude towards the ancient heritage. Hence the very name of the era, which sets itself the task of recreating, “reviving” cultural ideals and values ​​supposedly lost in the Middle Ages. In fact, the rise of Western European culture does not arise against the background of a previous decline. But in the life of the culture of the late Middle Ages, so much changes that it feels like it belongs to another time and feels dissatisfied with the previous state of the arts and literature. The past seems to the Renaissance man to be the oblivion of the remarkable achievements of antiquity, and he sets about restoring them. This is expressed in the work of writers of this era, and in their very way of life.

Renaissance is a time when science is intensively developing and the secular worldview begins to, to a certain extent, crowd out the religious worldview, or significantly changes it, preparing the church reformation. But the most important thing is the period when a person begins to feel himself and the world around him in a new way, often to answer in a completely different way those questions that have always worried him, or to pose other, complex questions. Medieval asceticism has no place in the new spiritual atmosphere, enjoying the freedom and power of man as an earthly, natural being. From an optimistic conviction in the power of man, his ability to improve, there arises a desire and even a need to correlate the behavior of an individual, his own behavior with a specific example of an “ideal personality”, and a thirst for self-improvement is born. This is how a very important, central movement of this culture was formed in the Western European culture of the Renaissance, which was called “humanism”.

It is especially important that the humanities at this time began to be valued as the most universal, that in the process of forming the spiritual image of the individual, the main importance was attached to “literature”, and not to any other, perhaps more “practical”, branch of knowledge. As the wonderful Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarca wrote, it is “through the word that the human face becomes beautiful.”

During the Renaissance, the very way of thinking of a person changes. Not a medieval scholastic debate, but a humanistic dialogue, including different points of view, demonstrating unity and opposition, the complex diversity of truths about the world and man, becomes a way of thinking and a form of communication of people of this time. It is no coincidence that dialogue is one of the popular literary genres of the Renaissance. The flourishing of this genre, like the flourishing of tragedy and comedy, is one of the manifestations of the attention of Renaissance literature to the ancient genre tradition. But the Renaissance also knows new genre formations: the sonnet in poetry, the short story, the essay in prose. Writers of this era do not repeat ancient authors, but on the basis of their artistic experience create, in essence, a different and new world of literary images, plots and problems.

The stylistic appearance of the Renaissance era is novel and original. Although cultural figures of this time initially sought to revive the ancient principle of art as “imitation of nature,” in their creative competition with the ancients they discovered new ways and means of such “imitation,” and later entered into polemics with this principle. In literature, in addition to the stylistic direction that is called “Renaissance classicism” and which aims to create “according to the rules” of ancient authors, “grotesque realism” is also developing, based on the heritage of humorous folk culture. Both the clear, free, figurative and stylistic flexible style of the Renaissance, and - in the later stages of the Renaissance - whimsical, sophisticated, deliberately complicated and emphatically mannered "mannerism". Such stylistic diversity naturally deepens as Renaissance culture evolves from origins to completion.

In the process of historical development, the reality of the late Renaissance became more and more turbulent and restless. Economic and political rivalry between European countries is growing, the religious Reformation movement is expanding, leading increasingly to direct military clashes between Catholics and Protestants. All this makes contemporaries of the Renaissance more keenly feel the utopianism of the optimistic hopes of Renaissance thinkers. It is not for nothing that the word “utopia” itself (it can be translated from Greek as “a place that is nowhere”) was born in the Renaissance - in the title of the famous novel by the English writer Thomas More. A growing sense of the disharmony of life, its inconsistency, an understanding of the difficulties of embodying the ideals of harmony, freedom, and reason in it ultimately leads to a crisis of Renaissance culture. A premonition of this crisis already appears in the works of writers of the late Renaissance.

The development of Renaissance culture proceeds in different countries of Western Europe in different ways.

Renaissance in Italy. It was Italy that was the first country in which the classical culture of the Renaissance arose, which had a great influence on other European countries. The reason for this was both socio-economic factors (the existence of independent, economically powerful city-states, the rapid development of trade at the crossroads between West and East), and national cultural tradition: Italy was historically and geographically especially closely connected with Roman antiquity. The culture of the Renaissance in Italy went through several stages: the early Renaissance of the 14th century. - this is the period of creativity of Petrarch - a scientist, a humanist, but above all in the minds of the general reader, a wonderful lyric poet, and Boccaccio - a poet and famous short story writer. Mature and high Renaissance of the 15th century. - This is primarily the stage of “scientific” humanism, the development of Renaissance philosophy, ethics, and pedagogy. The artistic works created during this period are now best known to specialists, but this is a time of widespread dissemination of the ideas and books of Italian humanists throughout Europe. Late Renaissance - XVI century. - marked by a process of crisis of humanistic ideas. This is a time of awareness of the tragedy of human life, the conflict between a person’s aspirations and abilities and the real difficulties of their implementation, a time of changing styles, and a clear strengthening of manneristic tendencies. Among the most significant works of this time is Ariosto's poem "The Furious Orlando".

Renaissance in France. Humanistic ideas began to penetrate into France from Italy at the turn of the 14th - 15th centuries. But the Renaissance in France was a natural, internal process. For this country, the ancient heritage was an organic part of its own culture. And yet, French literature acquired Renaissance features only in the second half of the 15th century, when socio-historical conditions for the development of the Renaissance arose. Early Renaissance in France - 70s. XV century - 20s XVI century This was the time of the formation of a new education system in France, the creation of humanistic circles, the publication and study of books by ancient authors. Mature Renaissance - 20-60s. XVI century - the period of creation of the collection of short stories by Margarita Navarskaya “Heptameron” (modeled on “Decameron” by Boccaccio), the publication of the famous novel by Francois Rabelais “Gargantua” and “Pantagruel”. Late Renaissance - end of the 16th century. - this, as in Italy, is the time of the crisis of the Renaissance, the spread of mannerism, but this is also the time of creativity of the wonderful writers of the late Renaissance - the poets P. Ronsard, Waiting Belle, the philosopher and essayist M. Montaigne.

Revival in Germany and the Netherlands. In these countries, the Renaissance is not only distinguished by its later moment of birth than in Italy, but also by its special character: “northern” humanists (as Renaissance figures in countries north of Italy are usually called) are distinguished by a greater interest in religious problems, a desire for direct participation in church reform activities. Printing and the development of the “university reformation” played a very important role in the development of Renaissance culture in these countries. On the other hand, religious discussions and the movement of “Christian humanism” that emerged during these discussions were no less important. Both German literature and the literature of the Netherlands sought to combine satire and edification, journalism and allegorism in their artistic appearance. Both literatures are also united by the figure of the remarkable humanist writer Erasmus of Rotterdam.

The Divine Comedy took almost fourteen years to write. The very name “Comedy” goes back to purely medieval meanings: in the poetics of that time, tragedy was called any work with a sad beginning and a prosperous, happy ending, and not the dramatic specificity of the genre with a focus on laughter. For Dante, it was a “comedy” (understood outside of connection with the dramatic canon - as a combination of the sublime with the ordinary and trivial), and in addition, “poeta sacra” - a sacred poem interpreting the revelations of unearthly existence. The epithet “Divine” was first used by Boccaccio, emphasizing its poetic perfection, and not at all its religious content. It is under this name, which was adopted for the poem in the 16th century, shortly after Dante’s death, that we become acquainted with the poet’s great work.

Commentators have worked hard to determine firm dates for the composition of the three cants of the Comedy. They are still controversial. There are only general considerations suggested by the content of both “Hell” and “Purgatory”.

When he wrote Inferno, Dante was entirely influenced by the events surrounding the exile. Even Beatrice, fleetingly named at the beginning of the poem and then mentioned 2-3 more times in connection with various episodes of wandering through the underworld, seemed to fade into the background. At that time, Dante was interested in politics, viewed from the point of view of the Italian commune. “Hell” saw off the poet’s past, his Florentine happiness, his Florentine struggle, his Florentine catastrophe. Therefore, I somehow especially persistently want to look for the date of writing “Inferno” during the period when Dante sheathed the sword raised against his native city, broke with the emigrants and delved into thinking about what he had experienced in the last two years of Florentine life and in the first five-year exile. "Hell" must have been conceived around 1307 and took 2 or 3 years of work to complete.

Between “Hell” and “Purgatory” lay a large period of scientific pursuits that revealed the world of science and philosophy in a different way for Dante. While working on Purgatory, the identity of Emperor Henry VII was revealed. However, it was impossible to delay interweaving Beatrice into the storyline. After all, the poem was intended as a glorification of her memory. It was in “Purgatory” that Beatrice had to appear, bringing with her all the burden of complex theological symbolism, to take the place of Virgil, a pagan who was denied the path to heaven. These three themes: political, scientific-philosophical and theological-symbolic related to Beatrice - again approximately determine the years of the emergence of the second canticle. It had to be started no later than 1313 and no earlier than 1311 and completed before 1317.

The first two cants were published when “Paradise” was not yet finished. It was completed shortly before the poet's death, but had not yet been published at the time of his death. The appearance of lists of all three parts of the poem consisting of 100 songs dates back to the years immediately after the poet’s death.

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Compositional structure of Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy"

"The Divine Comedy" by Dante written at the beginning of the 14th century. It combined the achievements of philosophical, religious, artistic thought of the Middle Ages and a new look at man, his uniqueness and unlimited possibilities.

The author himself called his poem a “comedy,” for in medieval poetics every work with a sad beginning and a happy ending was called a comedy. But the epithet “Divine” was added in 1360 by Giovanni Boccaccio, the poet’s first biographer.

The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam said that to read the Comedy you should stock up on “a pair of shoes with nails.” So he warned the reader about how much mental strength must be expended in order to follow Dante into the other world and comprehend the meaning of the poem.

Dante's image is based on the Universe, in the center of which is a motionless ball - the Earth. Dante supplemented the Universe with three regions: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. Hell is a funnel in the Northern Hemisphere, reaching to the center of the Earth and arose from the fall of Lucifer. A part of the land pushed to the surface of the earth in the Southern Hemisphere formed Mount Purgatory, and the earthly Paradise is located slightly above the “cut off” peak of Purgatory.

The composition of the poem is striking in its grandeur and at the same time harmony. "Comedy" consists of three large parts. The number three has a mystical meaning for the poet. This, first of all, embodies the idea of ​​the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. One can also recall fairy tales where there are three brothers, where the heroes find themselves at the crossroads of three roads and where they have to pass three tests.

Each part of the poem consists of 33 songs written in three-line stanzas. And, including the additional introductory song “Hell”, their number is 100. To find yourself in Heaven, you need to go down and go through the nine circles of Hell, where sinners are. On the gates of hell there is a terrible inscription: “Abandon hope, all who enter here.” In the first circle, the souls of unbaptized infants languish, as well as famous pagans: Greek poets, philosophers. The lower we go, the more terrible the punishment of sinners. At the very bottom, in the icy lake, Lucifer holds three traitors in his mouth: Judas, who betrayed Jesus Christ, Brutus and Cassius, who killed Julius Caesar. Having gone through all the circles of Hell, Purgatory and the nine shining heavens of Paradise, where the righteous are placed depending on their merits, Dante finds himself in the abode of God - the empyrean.

The symbolism of numbers is hidden not only in the composition of the poem, but also in the story itself. The poet has three guides in the other world: Virgil, who symbolizes earthly wisdom, Beatrice - heavenly wisdom, and the medieval philosopher - Bernard of Clairvaux. Dante meets three animals at the beginning of his journey: a lion (symbol of lust for power), a panther (lust), a she-wolf (pride).

Despite the fact that the work was written in the genre of vision, contemporaries were sure that the poet had really visited the other world. The reliability of this fact did not raise the slightest doubt among the medieval reader.

Dante himself proposed interpreting the poem “from four different positions.” The first is literal, i.e. the text is perceived and understood as it is written. The second is allegorical, when the text must be compared with events in the outside world. The third is moral, when the text is perceived as a description of the experiences and passions of the human soul. The third is mystical, because the author’s goal is to present the reader’s soul, distract him from sin and attract him to God.

He could not call his work a tragedy only because they, like all genres of “high literature,” were written in Latin. Dante wrote it in his native Italian. “The Divine Comedy” is the fruit of the entire second half of Dante’s life and work. This work most fully reflected the poet’s worldview. Dante appears here as the last great poet of the Middle Ages, a poet who continues the line of development of feudal literature.

Editions

Translations into Russian

• A. S. Norova, “Excerpt from the 3rd song of the poem Hell” (“Son of the Fatherland”, 1823, No. 30);
• F. Fan-Dim, “Hell”, translation from Italian (St. Petersburg, 1842-48; prose);
• D. E. Min “Hell”, translation in the size of the original (Moscow, 1856);
• D. E. Min, “The First Song of Purgatory” (“Russian Vest.”, 1865, 9);
• V. A. Petrova, “The Divine Comedy” (translated with Italian terzas, St. Petersburg, 1871, 3rd edition 1872; translated only “Hell”);
• D. Minaev, “The Divine Comedy” (LPts. and St. Petersburg. 1874, 1875, 1876, 1879, translated not from the original, in terzas);
• P. I. Weinberg, “Hell”, canto 3, “Vestn. Heb., 1875, No. 5);
• Golovanov N. N., “The Divine Comedy” (1899-1902);
• M. L. Lozinsky, “The Divine Comedy” (, Stalin Prize);
• A. A. Ilyushin (created in the 1980s, first partial publication in 1988, full publication in 1995);
• V. S. Lemport, “The Divine Comedy” (1996-1997);
• V. G. Marantsman, (St. Petersburg, 2006).

Structure

The Divine Comedy is constructed extremely symmetrically. It is divided into three parts: the first part (“Hell”) consists of 34 songs, the second (“Purgatory”) and the third (“Paradise”) - 33 songs each. The first part consists of two introductory songs and 32 describing hell, since there can be no harmony in it. The poem is written in terzas - stanzas consisting of three lines. This tendency towards certain numbers is explained by the fact that Dante gave them a mystical interpretation - so the number 3 is associated with the Christian idea of ​​the Trinity, the number 33 should recall the years of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, etc. In total, there are 100 songs in the Divine Comedy (the number is 100 - a symbol of perfection).

Plot

Dante's meeting with Virgil and the beginning of their journey through the underworld (medieval miniature)

According to Catholic tradition, the afterlife consists of hell, where eternally condemned sinners go, purgatory- the location of sinners atoning for their sins, and Raya- abode of the blessed.

Dante details this idea and describes the structure of the underworld, recording with graphic certainty all the details of its architectonics. In the introductory song, Dante tells how, having reached the middle of his life, he once got lost in a dense forest and how the poet Virgil, having delivered him from three wild animals that blocked his path, invited Dante to travel through the afterlife. Having learned that Virgil was sent to Beatrice, Dante’s deceased beloved, he surrenders without trepidation to the poet’s leadership.

Hell

Hell looks like a colossal funnel consisting of concentric circles, the narrow end of which rests on the center of the earth. Having passed the threshold of hell, inhabited by the souls of insignificant, indecisive people, they enter the first circle of hell, the so-called limbo (A., IV, 25-151), where the souls of virtuous pagans reside, who have not known the true God, but have approached this knowledge and beyond then freed from hellish torment. Here Dante sees outstanding representatives of ancient culture - Aristotle, Euripides, Homer, etc. The next circle is filled with the souls of people who once indulged in unbridled passion. Among those carried by a wild whirlwind, Dante sees Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo, fallen victims of forbidden love for each other. As Dante, accompanied by Virgil, descends lower and lower, he witnesses the torment of gluttons forced to suffer from rain and hail, misers and spendthrifts tirelessly rolling huge stones, angry ones getting bogged down in the swamp. They are followed by heretics and heresiarchs engulfed in eternal flames (among them Emperor Frederick II, Pope Anastasius II), tyrants and murderers floating in streams of boiling blood, suicides turned into plants, blasphemers and rapists burned by falling flames, deceivers of all kinds, torment which are very diverse. Finally, Dante enters the final, 9th circle of hell, reserved for the most terrible criminals. Here is the abode of traitors and traitors, the greatest of them - Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius - they are gnawing with his three mouths by Lucifer, the angel who once rebelled against God, the king of evil, doomed to imprisonment in the center of the earth. The last song of the first part of the poem ends with a description of the terrible appearance of Lucifer.

Purgatory

Purgatory

Having passed the narrow corridor connecting the center of the earth with the second hemisphere, Dante and Virgil emerge on the surface of the earth. There, in the middle of an island surrounded by the ocean, a mountain rises in the form of a truncated cone - purgatory, like hell, consisting of a number of circles that narrow as they approach the top of the mountain. The angel guarding the entrance to purgatory allows Dante into the first circle of purgatory, having previously drawn seven Ps (Peccatum - sin) on his forehead with a sword, that is, a symbol of the seven deadly sins. As Dante rises higher and higher, passing one circle after another, these letters disappear, so that when Dante, having reached the top of the mountain, enters the “earthly paradise” located at the top of the latter, he is already free from the signs inscribed by the guardian of purgatory. The circles of the latter are inhabited by the souls of sinners atoning for their sins. Here the proud are purified, forced to bend under the burden of weights pressing on their backs, the envious, the angry, the careless, the greedy, etc. Virgil brings Dante to the gates of heaven, where he, as someone who has not known baptism, has no access.

Paradise

In the earthly paradise, Virgil is replaced by Beatrice, seated on a chariot drawn by a vulture (an allegory of the triumphant church); she encourages Dante to repentance, and then takes him, enlightened, to heaven. The final part of the poem is dedicated to Dante's wanderings through the heavenly paradise. The latter consists of seven spheres encircling the earth and corresponding to the seven planets (according to the then widespread Ptolemaic system): the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, etc., followed by the spheres of the fixed stars and the crystal sphere, - behind the crystal sphere is the Empyrean, - the infinite the region inhabited by the blessed contemplating God is the last sphere that gives life to all things. Flying through the spheres, led by Bernard, Dante sees the Emperor Justinian, introducing him to the history of the Roman Empire, teachers of the faith, martyrs for the faith, whose shining souls form a sparkling cross; ascending higher and higher, Dante sees Christ and the Virgin Mary, angels and, finally, the “heavenly Rose” - the abode of the blessed - is revealed before him. Here Dante partakes of the highest grace, achieving communion with the Creator.

"Comedy" is Dante's last and most mature work.

Analysis of the work

In form, the poem is an afterlife vision, of which there were many in medieval literature. Like the medieval poets, it rests on an allegorical core. So the dense forest, in which the poet got lost halfway through his earthly existence, is a symbol of life’s complications. The three animals that attack him there: a lynx, a lion and a she-wolf are the three most powerful passions: sensuality, lust for power, greed. These allegories are also given a political interpretation: the lynx is Florence, the spots on the skin of which should indicate the enmity of the Guelph and Ghibelline parties. The lion is a symbol of brute physical strength - France; she-wolf, greedy and lustful - papal curia. These beasts threaten the national unity of Italy, which Dante dreamed of, a unity cemented by the dominance of the feudal monarchy (some literary historians give Dante's entire poem a political interpretation). Virgil saves the poet from the beasts - reason sent to the poet Beatrice (theology - faith). Virgil leads Dante through hell to purgatory and on the threshold of heaven gives way to Beatrice. The meaning of this allegory is that reason saves a person from passions, and knowledge of divine science brings eternal bliss.

The Divine Comedy is imbued with the author's political tendencies. Dante never misses an opportunity to reckon with his ideological, even personal enemies; he hates usurers, condemns credit as “usury”, condemns his age as the age of profit and love of money. In his opinion, money is the source of all kinds of evil. He contrasts the dark present with the bright past of bourgeois Florence - feudal Florence, when simplicity of morals, moderation, knightly “courtesy” (“Paradise”, Cacciaguida’s story), and a feudal empire reigned (cf. Dante’s treatise “On the Monarchy”). The terzas of "Purgatory" accompanying the appearance of Sordello (Ahi serva Italia) sound like a real hosanna of Ghibellinism. Dante treats the papacy as a principle with the greatest respect, although he hates its individual representatives, especially those who contributed to the consolidation of the bourgeois system in Italy; Dante meets some popes in hell. His religion is Catholicism, although a personal element is woven into it, alien to the old orthodoxy, although mysticism and the Franciscan pantheistic religion of love, which are accepted with all passion, are also a sharp deviation from classical Catholicism. His philosophy is theology, his science is scholasticism, his poetry is allegory. Ascetic ideals in Dante have not yet died, and he considers free love to be a grave sin (Hell, 2nd circle, the famous episode with Francesca da Rimini and Paolo). But for him, love that attracts to the object of worship with a pure platonic impulse is not a sin (cf. “New Life”, Dante’s love for Beatrice). This is a great world force that “moves the sun and other luminaries.” And humility is no longer an unconditional virtue. “Whoever does not renew his strength in glory with victory will not taste the fruit he obtained in the struggle.” And the spirit of inquisitiveness, the desire to expand the circle of knowledge and acquaintance with the world, combined with “virtue” (virtute e conoscenza), encouraging heroic daring, is proclaimed as an ideal.

Dante built his vision from pieces of real life. The design of the afterlife was based on individual corners of Italy, which are placed in it with clear graphic contours. And there are so many living human images scattered throughout the poem, so many typical figures, so many vivid psychological situations that literature even now continues to draw from there. People who suffer in hell, repent in purgatory (and the volume and nature of sin corresponds to the volume and nature of punishment), are in bliss in paradise - all living people. In these hundreds of figures, no two are identical. In this huge gallery of historical figures there is not a single image that has not been cut by the poet’s unmistakable plastic intuition. It was not for nothing that Florence experienced a period of such intense economic and cultural growth. That acute sense of landscape and man, which is shown in the Comedy and which the world learned from Dante, was possible only in the social environment of Florence, which was far ahead of the rest of Europe. Individual episodes of the poem, such as Francesca and Paolo, Farinata in his red-hot grave, Ugolino with the children, Capaneus and Ulysses, in no way similar to ancient images, the Black Cherub with subtle devilish logic, Sordello on his stone, still produce strong impression.

The concept of Hell in The Divine Comedy

Dante and Virgil in Hell

In front of the entrance are pitiful souls who did neither good nor evil during their lives, including “a bad flock of angels” who were neither with the devil nor with God.

• 1st circle (Limbo). Unbaptized Infants and Virtuous Non-Christians.
• 2nd circle. Voluptuaries (fornicators and adulterers).
• 3rd circle. Gluttons, gluttons.
• 4th circle. Misers and spendthrifts (love of excessive spending).
• 5th circle (Stygian swamp). Angry and lazy.
• 6th circle (city of Dit). Heretics and false teachers.
• 7th circle.
  • 1st belt. Violent people against their neighbors and their property (tyrants and robbers).
  • 2nd belt. Rapists against themselves (suicides) and against their property (gamblers and spendthrifts, that is, senseless destroyers of their property).
  • 3rd belt. Rapists against deity (blasphemers), against nature (sodomites) and art (extortion).
• 8th circle. Those who deceived those who did not trust. It consists of ten ditches (Zlopazukhi, or Evil Crevices), which are separated from each other by ramparts (rifts). Toward the center, the area of ​​the Evil Crevices slopes, so that each subsequent ditch and each subsequent rampart are located slightly lower than the previous ones, and the outer, concave slope of each ditch is higher than the inner, curved slope ( Hell , XXIV, 37-40). The first shaft is adjacent to the circular wall. In the center yawns the depth of a wide and dark well, at the bottom of which lies the last, ninth, circle of Hell. From the foot of the stone heights (v. 16), that is, from the circular wall, stone ridges run in radii, like the spokes of a wheel, to this well, crossing ditches and ramparts, and above the ditches they bend in the form of bridges or vaults. In Evil Crevices, deceivers are punished who deceived people who are not connected with them by special bonds of trust.
  • 1st ditch Pimps and Seducers.
  • 2nd ditch Flatterers.
  • 3rd ditch Holy merchants, high-ranking clergy who traded in church positions.
  • 4th ditch Soothsayers, fortune tellers, astrologers, witches.
  • 5th ditch Bribe takers, bribe takers.
  • 6th ditch Hypocrites.
  • 7th ditch The thieves .
  • 8th ditch Crafty advisors.
  • 9th ditch Instigators of discord (Mohammed, Ali, Dolcino and others).
  • 10th ditch Alchemists, false witnesses, counterfeiters.
• 9th circle. Those who deceived those who trusted. Ice Lake Cocytus.
  • Belt of Cain. Traitors to relatives.
  • Antenor's belt. Traitors to the motherland and like-minded people.
  • Tolomei's Belt. Traitors to friends and table mates.
  • Giudecca Belt. Traitors to benefactors, divine and human majesty.
  • In the middle, in the center of the universe, frozen into an ice floe (Lucifer) torments in his three mouths the traitors to the majesty of the earthly and heavenly (Judas, Brutus and Cassius).

Building a model of Hell ( Hell , XI, 16-66), Dante follows Aristotle, who in his “Ethics” (Book VII, Chapter I) classifies the sins of intemperance (incontinenza) in the 1st category, and the sins of violence (“violent bestiality" or matta bestialitade), to 3 - sins of deception ("malice" or malizia). In Dante, circles 2-5 are for intemperate people, circle 7 is for rapists, circles 8-9 are for deceivers (the 8th is simply for deceivers, the 9th is for traitors). Thus, the more material the sin, the more forgivable it is.

Heretics - apostates from the faith and deniers of God - are specially singled out from the host of sinners filling the upper and lower circles into the sixth circle. In the abyss of lower Hell (A., VIII, 75), with three ledges, like three steps, there are three circles - from the seventh to the ninth. In these circles, anger that uses either force (violence) or deception is punished.

The concept of Purgatory in the Divine Comedy

The three holy virtues - the so-called "theological" ones - are faith, hope and love. The rest are the four “basic” or “natural” (see note Ch., I, 23-27).

Dante depicts it as a huge mountain rising in the southern hemisphere in the middle of the Ocean. It looks like a truncated cone. The coastal strip and the lower part of the mountain form the Pre-Purgatory, and the upper part is surrounded by seven ledges (seven circles of Purgatory itself). On the flat top of the mountain, Dante places the deserted forest of the Earthly Paradise.

Virgil expounds the doctrine of love as the source of all good and evil and explains the gradation of the circles of Purgatory: circles I, II, III - love for “other people's evil,” that is, malice (pride, envy, anger); circle IV - insufficient love for true good (despondency); circles V, VI, VII - excessive love for false benefits (greed, gluttony, voluptuousness). The circles correspond to the biblical mortal sins.

• Prepurgatory
  • The foot of Mount Purgatory. Here the newly arrived souls of the dead await access to Purgatory. Those who died under church excommunication, but repented of their sins before death, wait for a period thirty times longer than the time they spent in “discord with the church.”
  • First ledge. Negligent, who delayed repentance until the hour of death.
  • Second ledge. Negligent people who died a violent death.
• Valley of the Earthly Rulers (not related to Purgatory)
• 1st circle. Proud people.
• 2nd circle. Envious people.
• 3rd circle. Angry.
• 4th circle. Dull.
• 5th circle. Misers and spendthrifts.
• 6th circle. Gluttonies.
• 7th circle. Voluptuous people.
• Earthly paradise.

The concept of Heaven in the Divine Comedy

(in brackets are examples of personalities given by Dante)

• 1 sky(Moon) - the abode of those who observe duty (Jephthah, Agamemnon, Constance of Normandy).
• 2 sky(Mercury) is the abode of reformers (Justinian) and innocent victims (Iphigenia).
• 3 sky(Venus) - the abode of lovers (Charles Martell, Cunizza, Folco of Marseilles, Dido, “Rhodopean woman”, Raava).
• 4 heaven(Sun) is the abode of sages and great scientists. They form two circles (“round dance”).
  • 1st circle: Thomas Aquinas, Albert von Bolstedt, Francesco Gratiano, Peter of Lombardy, Dionysius the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Bede the Venerable, Rickard, Siger of Brabant.
  • 2nd circle: Bonaventure, Franciscans Augustine and Illuminati, Hugon, Peter the Eater, Peter of Spain, John Chrysostom, Anselm, Aelius Donatus, Rabanus the Maurus, Joachim.
• 5 sky(Mars) is the abode of warriors for the faith (Joshua, Judas Maccabee, Roland, Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert Guiscard).
• 6 sky(Jupiter) is the abode of just rulers (biblical kings David and Hezekiah, Emperor Trajan, King Guglielmo II the Good and the hero of the Aeneid, Ripheus).
• 7 heaven(Saturn) - the abode of theologians and monks (Benedict of Nursia, Peter Damiani).
• 8 sky(sphere of stars).
• 9 sky(Prime Mover, crystal sky). Dante describes the structure of the heavenly inhabitants (see The ranks of angels).
• 10 sky(Empyrean) - Flaming Rose and Radiant River (the core of the rose and the arena of the heavenly amphitheater) - the abode of the Deity. Blessed souls sit on the banks of the river (the steps of the amphitheater, which is divided into 2 more semicircles - the Old Testament and the New Testament). Mary (Mother of God) is at the head, below her are Adam and Peter, Moses, Rachel and Beatrice, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth, etc. John is sitting opposite, below him are Lucia, Francis, Benedict, Augustine, etc.

Scientific points, misconceptions and comments

• Hell , XI, 113-114. The constellation Pisces rose above the horizon, and Voz(constellation Ursa Major) inclined to the northwest(Kavr; lat. Caurus- the name of the north-west wind). This means there are two hours left before sunrise.
• Hell , XXIX, 9. That their route is twenty-two miles around.(about the inhabitants of the tenth ditch of the eighth circle) - judging by the medieval approximation of the number Pi, the diameter of the last circle of Hell is 7 miles.
• Hell , XXX, 74. Baptist sealed alloy- Florentine gold coin, florin (fiormo). On the front side was the patron saint of the city, John the Baptist, and on the reverse side was the Florentine coat of arms, the lily (fiore - flower, hence the name of the coin).
• Hell , XXXIV, 139. Each of the three cants of the Divine Comedy ends with the word “luminaries” (stelle - stars).
• Purgatory , I, 19-21. Beacon of love, beautiful planet- that is, Venus, eclipsing with its brightness the constellation Pisces in which it was located.
• Purgatory , I, 22. To the spine- that is, to the celestial pole, in this case the south.
• Purgatory , I, 30. Chariot- Ursa Major hidden behind the horizon.
• Purgatory , II, 1-3. According to Dante, Mount Purgatory and Jerusalem are located at opposite ends of the earth's diameter, so they have a common horizon. In the northern hemisphere, the apex of the celestial meridian (“midday circle”) crossing this horizon is above Jerusalem. At the hour described, the sun, visible in Jerusalem, was setting, soon to appear in the sky of Purgatory.
• Purgatory , II, 4-6. And the night...- According to medieval geography, Jerusalem lies in the very middle of the land, located in the northern hemisphere between the Arctic Circle and the equator and extending from west to east by only longitudes. The remaining three quarters of the globe are covered by the waters of the Ocean. Equally distant from Jerusalem are: in the extreme east - the mouth of the Ganges, in the extreme west - the Pillars of Hercules, Spain and Morocco. When the sun sets in Jerusalem, night approaches from the direction of the Ganges. At the described time of year, that is, at the time of the spring equinox, the night holds scales in its hands, that is, it is in the constellation Libra, opposing the Sun, located in the constellation Aries. In the fall, when she “overcomes” the day and becomes longer than it, she will leave the constellation Libra, that is, she will “drop” them.
• Purgatory , III, 37. Quia- a Latin word meaning “because”, and in the Middle Ages it was also used in the sense of quod (“that”). Scholastic science, following Aristotle, distinguished between two types of knowledge: scire quia- knowledge of existing - and scire propter quid- knowledge of the reasons for existing things. Virgil advises people to be content with the first kind of knowledge, without delving into the reasons for what exists.
• Purgatory , IV, 71-72. The Road Where the Unlucky Phaeton Ruled- zodiac.
• Purgatory , XXIII, 32-33. Who is looking for "omo"...- it was believed that in the features of a human face one could read “Homo Dei” (“Man of God”), with the eyes depicting two “Os”, and the eyebrows and nose representing the letter M.
• Purgatory , XXVIII, 97-108. According to Aristotelian physics, “wet vapors” generate atmospheric precipitation, and “dry vapors” generate wind. Matelda explains that only below the level of the gates of Purgatory are such disturbances generated by steam, which “following the heat,” that is, under the influence of the sun’s heat, rises from the water and from the earth; at the height of the Earthly Paradise, only a uniform wind remains, caused by the rotation of the first firmament.
• Purgatory , XXVIII, 82-83. Twelve venerable elders- twenty-four books of the Old Testament.
• Purgatory , XXXIII, 43. Five hundred fifteen- a mysterious designation for the coming deliverer of the church and restorer of the empire, who will destroy the “thief” (the harlot of Song XXXII, who took someone else’s place) and the “giant” (the French king). The numbers DXV form, when the signs are rearranged, the word DVX (leader), and the oldest commentators interpret it this way.
• Purgatory , XXXIII, 139. The score is due from the beginning- In the construction of the Divine Comedy, Dante observes strict symmetry. Each of its three parts (cantik) contains 33 songs; “Hell” also contains one more song, which serves as an introduction to the entire poem. The volume of each of the hundred songs is approximately the same.
• Paradise , XIII, 51. And there is no other center in the circle- There cannot be two opinions, just as in a circle only one center is possible.
• Paradise , XIV, 102. The sacred sign was composed of two rays, which is hidden within the boundaries of the quadrants- segments of adjacent quadrants (quarters) of a circle form a cross sign.
• Paradise , XVIII, 113. In Liley M- Gothic M resembles a fleur-de-lis.
• Paradise XXV, 101-102: If Cancer had a similar pearl...- From December 21 to January 21, the constellation rises at sunset