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A Brief Background on Dante
This section provides a brief history of Dante, a look at how he fits
into the canon of Western literature, and sheds some light on how his first
35 years both spawned his love of Virgil and influenced his writings in
the Divine Comedy.
Biography
Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence, Italy, to a patrician
family of the political party of the times called the White guelphs.
In 1285 he wed through an arranged marriage, and up until 1301 he was both
an active participant in Florentine politics and a steady writer.
In 1292, while he was studying philosophy, Dante began writing his autobiographical
Vita
Nuova in 1292, a work which also included thirty-one sonnets, ballads,
and other poems. He was also the author of several other minor works
- among them De Vulgaria Eloquentia, Convivio, De Monarchia,
and several Eclogues. |
Historians consider this painting the most
accurate depiction of Dante we have |
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By 1300, then, Dante was a very educated and versatile writer.
The wealth of his family allowed him to be well-schooled, and it was during
his education where he was most probably first introduced to Virgil's
writing. He had already mastered the languages of Italian and
Latin, and had written in a number of genres and styles - philosophical,
political, and literary treatise, poetry, and autobiography.
Dante always felt distanced from
Beatrice (Evelyn Paul) |
Beatrice
In the Vita Nuova, Dante tells of his young love for Beatrice.
She was his first and only true love. Dante was never able to have
a relationship with Beatrice - marriages were arranged in his society,
and Beatrice died young in 1290. Her death would have an enormous
impact on Dante's writing, especially in the Divine Comedy. |
He revered her in the highest degree, and even went so far as to use
a screen-woman, or using a different woman as the object of his affections
to conceal his true love for Beatrice. At the end of Purgatorio,
Dante is joyfully reunited with Beatrice, and she escorts him into Paradise.
Exile and the Divine Comedy
In 1301, the political faction opposing Dante's white Guelphs seized
control of Florence. Because he had been so involved in the white
Guelph party, Dante was exiled from the city for life. For 20 years
Dante lived in exile, wandered Europe, and wrote one of the greatest classics
in all Western literature, his Divina Commedia. His exile
and his desire to go return to Florence would, like his feelings for Beatrice,
impact his later writings greatly. In the Divine Comedy, Dante
places many Florentine politicians and Catholic figures in various stages
of hell, levels of purgatory, or even spheres of heaven. Modern historians,
by studying the history of these figures, can learn more about what Dante
really intended for his various levels in the Divine Comedy.
| Some scholars have suggested that in fact the
entire theme of the Divine Comedy is in fact about being in exile.
From the very beginning, Dante was in exile from the "true path" of righteousness.
Furthermore, he was exiled from Beatrice, never having been able to rightly
express his profound feelings to her while she lived, and never having
taken action on his noble love. Paradiso XVII, where Dante's
mentor Cacciaguida foretells Dante's exile, sheds much light on Dante's
own thoughts on his exile: |
Cacciaguida speaks (Gustave Doré) |
"You shall leave everything you love most dearly:
this is
the arrow that the bow of exile
shoots
first. You are to know the bitter taste
of others' bread, how salt it is, and know
how hard
a path it is for one who goes
descending
and ascending others' stairs.
And what will be most hard for you to bear
will be
the scheming, senseless company
that is
to share your fall into this valley."
(Para.
XVII 55-63, trans. Mandelbaum)
Clearly, while Dante is writing his Divine Comedy, he is constantly
aware of his plight as an exile. |
