How to read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: a guide to Hell. Dante

Halfway through life, I - Dante - got lost in a dense forest. It's scary, wild animals are all around - allegories of vices; nowhere to go. And then a ghost appears, which turned out to be the shadow of my favorite ancient Roman poet Virgil. I ask him for help. He promises to take me from here to the afterlife so that I can see Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. I am ready to follow him.

Yes, but am I capable of such a journey? I hesitated and hesitated. Virgil reproached me, telling me that Beatrice herself (my late beloved) descended to him from Paradise to Hell and asked him to be my guide in wandering through the afterlife. If so, then we must not hesitate, we need determination. Lead me, my teacher and mentor!

Above the entrance to Hell is an inscription that takes away all hope from those who enter. We entered. Here, right behind the entrance, the pitiful souls of those who did not create either good or evil during their lifetime groan. Next is the Acheron River. Through it, the ferocious Charon transports the dead on a boat. We are with them. "But you're not dead!" Charon shouts angrily at me. Virgil subdued him. We swam. From a distance a roar is heard, the wind blows, a flame flashed. I lost my senses...

The first circle of Hell is Limbo. Here the souls of unbaptized babies and glorious pagans languish - warriors, sages, poets (including Virgil). They do not suffer, but only grieve that they, as non-Christians, have no place in Paradise. Virgil and I joined the great poets of antiquity, the first of which was Homer. Gradually walked and talked about the unearthly.

At the descent into the second circle of the underworld, the demon Minos determines which sinner to which place in Hell should be cast down. He reacted to me in the same way as Charon, and Virgil pacified him in the same way. We saw the souls of voluptuaries (Cleopatra, Elena the Beautiful, etc.) carried away by a hellish whirlwind. Francesca is among them, and here she is inseparable from her lover. Immeasurable mutual passion led them to a tragic death. Deeply sympathizing with them, I again fainted.

In the third circle, the bestial dog Cerberus rages. He barked at us, but Virgil subdued him too. Here, lying in the mud, under a heavy downpour, are the souls of those who have sinned with gluttony. Among them is my countryman, the Florentine Chacko. We talked about the fate of our native city. Chacko asked me to remind living people of him when I return to earth.

The demon guarding the fourth circle, where spendthrifts and misers are executed (among the latter there are many clerics - popes, cardinals), is Plutos. Virgil also had to besiege him to get rid of. From the fourth they descended into the fifth circle, where the angry and lazy are tormented, mired in the swamps of the Stygian lowland. We approached a tower.

This is a whole fortress, around it is a vast reservoir, in the canoe is a rower, the demon Phlegius. After another squabble, we sat down to him, we swim. Some sinner tried to cling to the side, I scolded him, and Virgil pushed him away. Before us is the hellish city of Dit. Any dead evil spirits prevents us from entering it. Virgil, leaving me (oh, it's scary to be alone!), went to find out what was the matter, returned worried, but reassured.

And then the infernal furies appeared before us, threatening. A heavenly messenger suddenly appeared and curbed their anger. We entered Dit. Everywhere are tombs engulfed in flames, from which the groans of heretics are heard. On a narrow road we make our way between the tombs.

From one of the tombs, a mighty figure suddenly emerged. This is Farinata, my ancestors were his political opponents. In me, having heard my conversation with Virgil, he guessed from the dialect of the countryman. Proud, he seemed to despise the whole abyss of Hell. We argued with him, and then another head popped out from a nearby tomb: yes, this is the father of my friend Guido! It seemed to him that I was a dead man and that his son had also died, and he fell on his face in despair. Farinata, calm him down; Live Guido!

Near the descent from the sixth circle to the seventh, over the grave of heretic pope Anastasius, Virgil explained to me the structure of the remaining three circles of Hell, tapering downwards (towards the center of the earth), and what sins are punished in which zone of which circle.

The seventh circle is compressed by mountains and guarded by the half-bull demon Minotaur, who roared menacingly at us. Virgil yelled at him, and we hurried to move away. We saw a blood-boiling stream in which tyrants and robbers boil, and from the shore centaurs shoot at them with bows. Centaur Ness became our guide, told about the executed rapists and helped to ford the boiling river.

Around thorny thickets without greenery. I broke some branch, and black blood flowed from it, and the trunk groaned. It turns out that these bushes are the souls of suicides (rapists over their own flesh). They are pecked by the infernal birds of the Harpy, trampled by the running dead, causing them unbearable pain. One trampled bush asked me to collect the broken branches and return them to him. It turned out that the unfortunate man was my countryman. I complied with his request and we moved on. We see sand, flakes of fire fall on it from above, scorching sinners who scream and groan - all except one: he lies silently. Who is it? The king of Kapanei, a proud and gloomy atheist, slain by the gods for his obstinacy. Even now he is true to himself: either he is silent, or he loudly curses the gods. "You are your own tormentor!" Virgil yelled at him...

But towards us, tormented by fire, the souls of new sinners are moving. Among them, I hardly recognized my highly esteemed teacher Brunetto Latini. He is among those who are guilty of a tendency to same-sex love. We started talking. Brunetto predicted that glory awaits me in the world of the living, but there will also be many hardships that must be resisted. The teacher bequeathed to me to take care of his main work, in which he lives, - "Treasure".

And three more sinners (sin - the same) are dancing in the fire. All Florentines, former respected citizens. I talked to them about the misfortunes of our hometown. They asked me to tell the living countrymen that I saw them. Then Virgil led me to a deep pit in the eighth circle. An infernal beast will bring us down there. He is already climbing to us from there.

This is a motley tailed Geryon. While he prepares to descend, there is still time to look at the last martyrs of the seventh circle - usurers, toiling in a whirlwind of flaming dust. Hanging from their necks are multi-colored purses with different coats of arms. I didn't talk to them. Let's hit the road! We sit down with Virgil astride Geryon and - oh horror! - we are smoothly flying into failure, to new torments. Went down. Gerion immediately flew away.

The eighth circle is divided into ten ditches, called Angry Sinuses. Pimps and seducers of women are executed in the first ditch, and flatterers are executed in the second. Procurers are brutally scourged by horned demons, flatterers sit in a liquid mass of stinking feces - the stench is unbearable. By the way, one whore is punished here not because she fornicated, but because she flattered her lover, saying that she was fine with him.

The next ditch (the third bosom) is lined with stone, full of round holes, from which stick out the burning legs of high-ranking clerics who traded in church positions. Their heads and bodies are clamped with wells stone wall. Their successors, when they die, will also jerk their flaming legs in their place, completely squeezing their predecessors into stone. This is how Papa Orsini explained it to me, at first mistaking me for his successor.

Soothsayers, astrologers, sorceresses suffer in the fourth sinus. Their necks are twisted in such a way that, when weeping, they irrigate their backs with tears, not their chests. I myself wept when I saw such a mockery of people, and Virgil shamed me; it's a sin to pity sinners! But he also told me with sympathy about his countrywoman, the soothsayer Manto, after whom Mantua, the birthplace of my glorious mentor, was named.

The fifth ditch is filled with boiling tar, into which the evil-handed devils, black, winged, throw bribe-takers and make sure that they do not stick out, otherwise they will hook the sinner with hooks and finish him off in the most cruel way. The devils have nicknames: Evil-tail, Cross-winged, etc. We will have to go part of the further path in their terrible company. They grimacing, showing tongues, their boss made a deafening obscene sound from behind. I have never heard of this before! We walk with them along the ditch, the sinners dive into the tar - they hide, and one hesitated, and they immediately pulled him out with hooks, intending to torment him, but first they allowed us to talk with him. The poor cunning lulled the vigilance of the Zlokhvatov and dived back - they did not have time to catch him. Irritated devils fought among themselves, two fell into the tar. In the confusion, we hurried to leave, but no such luck! They fly after us. Virgil, picking me up, barely managed to run across to the sixth bosom, where they are not masters. Here hypocrites languish under the weight of leaden gilded robes. And here is the crucified (nailed to the ground with stakes) Jewish high priest, who insisted on the execution of Christ. He is trampled underfoot by lead-heavy hypocrites.

The transition was difficult: by a rocky path - into the seventh bosom. Thieves live here, bitten by monstrous poisonous snakes. From these bites, they crumble to dust, but are immediately restored to their appearance. Among them is Vanni Fucci, who robbed the sacristy and blamed someone else. A rude and blasphemous man: He sent God away, lifting up two figs. Immediately snakes attacked him (I love them for this). Then I watched how a certain snake merged with one of the thieves, after which it took on its form and stood up, and the thief crawled away, becoming a reptile reptile. Miracles! You will not find such metamorphoses in Ovid either.

Rejoice, Florence: these thieves are your offspring! It's a shame ... And in the eighth ditch live insidious advisers. Among them is Ulysses (Odysseus), his soul imprisoned in a flame that can speak! So, we heard the story of Ulysses about his death: thirsty to know the unknown, he sailed with a handful of daredevils to the other side of the world, suffered a shipwreck and, together with his friends, drowned away from the world inhabited by people.

Another talking flame, in which the soul of a crafty adviser who did not name himself, was hidden, told me about his sin: this adviser helped the Pope in one unrighteous deed - counting on the fact that the pope would forgive him his sin. Heaven is more tolerant of the simple-hearted sinner than of those who hope to be saved by repentance. We crossed into the ninth ditch, where the sowers of unrest are executed.

Here they are, the instigators of bloody strife and religious unrest. The devil will maim them with a heavy sword, cut off their noses and ears, crush their skulls. Here is Mahomet, and Curio, who encouraged Caesar to civil war, and the beheaded troubadour warrior Bertrand de Born (he carries his head in his hand like a lantern, and she exclaims: “Woe!”).

Next, I met my relative, angry with me because his violent death remained unavenged. Then we moved on to the tenth ditch, where the alchemists suffer from an eternal itch. One of them was burned because he jokingly boasted that he could fly - he became a victim of a denunciation. He went to Hell not for this, but as an alchemist. Here, those who pretended to be other people, counterfeiters and liars in general are executed. Two of them fought among themselves and then quarreled for a long time (master Adam, who mixed copper into gold coins, and ancient greek Sinon who deceived the Trojans). Virgil rebuked me for the curiosity with which I listened to them.

Our journey through the Spitefuls is coming to an end. We came to the well leading from the eighth circle of Hell to the ninth. There are ancient giants, titans. Among them are Nimrod, who angrily shouted something to us in an incomprehensible language, and Antaeus, who, at the request of Virgil, lowered us to the bottom of the well on his huge palm, and he immediately straightened up.

So, we are at the bottom of the universe, near the center the globe. Before us is an icy lake, those who betrayed their relatives froze into it. I accidentally kicked one of them on the head, he yelled, but refused to name himself. Then I grabbed his hair, and then someone called his name. Scoundrel, now I know who you are, and I will tell people about you! And he: “Lie whatever you want, about me and about others!” And here is the ice pit, in which one dead man gnaws the skull of another. I ask: for what? Looking up from his victim, he answered me. He, Count Ugolino, takes revenge on his former associate, Archbishop Ruggieri, who betrayed him, who starved him and his children, imprisoning them in the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Their suffering was unbearable, the children were dying in front of their father, he was the last to die. Shame on Pisa! Let's go further. And who is in front of us? Alberigo? But he, as far as I know, did not die, so how did he end up in Hell? It also happens: the body of the villain still lives, but the soul is already in the underworld.

In the center of the earth, the ruler of Hell, Lucifer, frozen into ice, cast down from heaven and hollowed out the abyss of hell in his fall, disfigured, three-faced. From his first mouth Judas sticks out, from the second Brutus, from the third Cassius, He chews them and torments them with claws. Worst of all is the most vile traitor - Judas. A well stretches from Lucifer, leading to the surface of the opposite earth hemisphere. We squeezed into it, rose to the surface and saw the stars.

Purgatory

May the Muses help me to sing the second kingdom! His guard Elder Cato greeted us unfriendly: who are they? how dare you come here? Virgil explained and, wishing to propitiate Cato, spoke warmly about his wife Marcia. Why is Marcia here? Go to the seashore, you need to wash! We are going. Here it is, the sea distance. And in the coastal grasses - abundant dew. With it Virgil washed away the soot of abandoned Hell from my face.

A boat controlled by an angel is sailing towards us from the distance of the sea. It contains the souls of the dead, who were lucky enough not to go to Hell. They moored, went ashore, and the angel swam away. The shadows of the arrivals crowded around us, and in one I recognized my friend, the singer Cosella. I wanted to hug him, but the shadow is incorporeal - I hugged myself. Cosella, at my request, sang about love, everyone listened, but then Cato appeared, shouted at everyone (they didn’t do business!), And we hurried to the Mount of Purgatory.

Virgil was dissatisfied with himself: he gave a reason to shout at himself ... Now we need to scout the upcoming road. Let's see where the arriving shadows go. And they themselves have just noticed that I am not a shadow: I do not let light pass through me. Surprised. Virgil explained everything to them. "Come with us," they invited.

So, we hasten to the foot of the purgatory mountain. But is everyone in a hurry, is everyone really impatient? There, near a large stone, there is a group of people who are not in a hurry to climb up: they say, they will have time; climb the one who itchs. Among these sloths I recognized my friend Belacqua. It is pleasant to see that he, and in life the enemy of any haste, is true to himself.

In the foothills of Purgatory, I had a chance to communicate with the shadows of the victims violent death. Many of them were serious sinners, but, saying goodbye to life, they managed to sincerely repent and therefore did not go to Hell. Such a vexation for the devil, who has lost his prey! However, he found how to win back: not having gained power over the soul of a repentant dead sinner, he outraged his murdered body.

Not far from all this, we saw the regal and majestic shadow of Sordello. He and Virgil, recognizing each other as fellow countryman poets (Mantuans), embraced fraternally. Here is an example for you, Italy, a dirty brothel, where the bonds of brotherhood are completely broken! Especially you, my Florence, are good, you won’t say anything ... Wake up, look at yourself ...

Sordello agrees to be our guide to Purgatory. It is a great honor for him to help the highly esteemed Virgil. Conversing sedately, we approached a flowering fragrant valley, where, preparing for an overnight stay, the shadows of high-ranking persons - European sovereigns - settled down. We watched them from afar, listening to their consonant singing.

The evening hour has come, when desires draw those who have sailed back to their loved ones, and you remember the bitter moment of farewell; when sadness dominates the pilgrim and he hears how the distant chime cries bitterly about the day of irretrievable... An insidious serpent of temptation crawled into the valley of rest of earthly rulers, but the angels who arrived expelled it.

I lay down on the grass, fell asleep, and in my dream was transferred to the gates of Purgatory. The angel guarding them inscribed the same letter on my forehead seven times - the first in the word "sin" (seven deadly sins; these letters will be erased from my forehead one by one as we ascend the mountain of purgatory). We entered the second realm of the afterlife, the gates closed behind us.

The ascent has begun. We are in the first circle of Purgatory, where the proud atone for their sin. To shame pride, statues were erected here, embodying the idea of ​​a high feat - humility. And here are the shadows of the arrogant being cleansed: unbending during life, here, as a punishment for their sin, they bend under the weight of the stone blocks heaped on them.

"Our Father ..." - this prayer was sung by bent proud people. Among them is the miniaturist Oderiz, who during his lifetime boasted of his loud fame. Now, he says, he realized that there is nothing to boast about: everyone is equal in the face of death - both the decrepit old man and the baby who murmured “yum-yum”, and glory comes and goes. The sooner you understand this and find the strength in yourself to curb your pride, to humble yourself, the better.

Under our feet we have bas-reliefs depicting scenes of punished pride: Lucifer and Briares cast down from heaven, King Saul, Holofernes and others. Our stay in the first round is coming to an end. The angel who appeared wiped one of the seven letters from my forehead - as a sign that I had overcome the sin of pride. Virgil smiled at me.

We went up to the second round. There are envious people here, they are temporarily blinded, their former "envious" eyes do not see anything. Here is a woman who, out of envy, wished harm to her countrymen and rejoiced in their failures ... In this circle, after death, I will not be cleansed for long, because I rarely envied anyone. But in the past circle of proud people - probably for a long time.

Here they are, blinded sinners whose blood once burned with envy. In the silence, the words of the first envious person, Cain, sounded thunderous: “The one who meets me will kill me!” In fear, I clung to Virgil, and the wise leader told me bitter words that the highest eternal light is inaccessible to envious people who are carried away by earthly lures.

Passed the second round. Again an angel appeared to us, and now only five letters remained on my forehead, which I have to get rid of in the future. We are in the third round. A cruel vision of human fury flashed before our eyes (the crowd stoned a meek youth with stones). In this circle, those possessed by anger are cleansed.

Even in the darkness of Hell there was no such black haze as in this circle, where the fury of the angry is subdued. One of them, the Lombard Marco, got into a conversation with me and expressed the idea that everything that happens in the world cannot be understood as a consequence of the activity of higher heavenly powers: this would mean denying the freedom of the human will and removing from a person responsibility for what he has done.

Reader, have you ever wandered in the mountains on a foggy evening, when the sun is almost invisible? That's how we are... I felt the touch of an angel's wing on my forehead - another letter was erased. We climbed to the fourth circle, illuminated by the last ray of sunset. Here the lazy ones are cleansed, whose love for the good was slow.

Sloths here must run swiftly, not allowing any indulgence in their lifetime sin. Let them be inspired by the examples of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, as you know, had to hurry, or Caesar with his amazing quickness. They ran past us and disappeared. I want to sleep. I sleep and dream...

I dreamed of a disgusting woman, who turned into a beauty before my eyes, who was immediately put to shame and turned into an even worse ugly woman (here she is, the imaginary attractiveness of vice!). Another letter disappeared from my forehead: I, therefore, defeated such a vice as laziness. We rise to the fifth circle - to the misers and spenders.

Avarice, greed, greed for gold are disgusting vices. Molten gold was once poured down the throat of one obsessed with greed: drink to your health! I don't feel comfortable being surrounded by misers, and then there was an earthquake. From what? Due to my ignorance, I don't know...

It turned out that the shaking of the mountain was caused by jubilation over the fact that one of the souls was cleansed and ready for ascent: this is the Roman poet Statius, an admirer of Virgil, who was delighted that from now on he will accompany us on the path to the purgatory peak.

Another letter, denoting the sin of avarice, was erased from my forehead. By the way, was Statius, languishing in the fifth round, stingy? On the contrary, it is wasteful, but these two extremes are punished jointly. Now we are in the sixth circle, where gluttons are cleansed. Here it would not be bad to remember that gluttony was not characteristic of Christian ascetics.

Former gluttons are destined to the pangs of hunger: emaciated, skin and bones. Among them I found my late friend and countryman Forese. They talked about their own, scolded Florence, Forese condemningly spoke about the dissolute ladies of this city. I told my friend about Virgil and my hopes of seeing my beloved Beatrice in the afterlife.

With one of the gluttons, a former poet of the old school, I had a conversation about literature. He acknowledged that my like-minded supporters of the "new sweet style" had achieved love poetry much more than he himself and the masters close to him. Meanwhile, the penultimate letter has been erased from my forehead, and the path to the highest, seventh circle of Purgatory is open to me.

And I still remember the thin, hungry gluttons: how did they become so emaciated? After all, these are shadows, not bodies, and they would not have to starve. Virgil explained that the shadows, although incorporeal, exactly repeat the outlines of the implied bodies (which would lose weight without food). Here, in the seventh circle, the voluptuaries scorched by fire are cleansed. They burn, sing and praise examples of temperance and chastity.

The voluptuaries engulfed in flames were divided into two groups: those who indulged in same-sex love and those who did not know the limits in bisexual intercourse. Among the latter are the poets Guido Guinicelli and the Provençal Arnald, who greeted us exquisitely in his own dialect.

And now we ourselves have to go through the wall of fire. I was scared, but my mentor said that this is the path to Beatrice (to the Earthly Paradise, located on the top of the mountain of purgatory). And so the three of us (Statius with us) go, scorched by the flames. We passed, we move on, it is getting dark, we stopped to rest, I slept; and when I woke up, Virgil turned to me with last word parting words and approval, Everything, from now on he will be silent ...

We are in the Earthly Paradise, in a blooming grove resounding with the chirping of birds. I saw a beautiful donna singing and picking flowers. She said that there was a golden age here, innocence shone, but then, among these flowers and fruits, the happiness of the first people was destroyed in sin. When I heard this, I looked at Virgil and Statius: they were both smiling blissfully.

Oh Eve! It was so good here, you ruined everything with your daring! Living fires float past us, righteous elders in snow-white robes, crowned with roses and lilies, march under them, wonderful beauties dance. I couldn't get enough of this amazing picture. And suddenly I saw her - the one I love. Shocked, I made an involuntary movement, as if trying to cling to Virgil. But he disappeared, my father and savior! I sobbed. “Dante, Virgil is not coming back. But you don't have to cry for him. Look at me, it's me, Beatrice! And how did you get here? she asked angrily. Then a voice asked her why she was so strict with me. She replied that I, seduced by the lure of pleasures, had been unfaithful to her after her death. Do I plead guilty? Oh yes, tears of shame and remorse choke me, I lowered my head. "Raise your beard!" - She said sharply, not ordering to take her eyes off her. I lost my senses, and woke up immersed in Oblivion - a river that bestows oblivion of committed sins. Beatrice, now look at the one who is so devoted to you and so eager for you. After a ten-year separation, I looked into her eyes, and my vision was temporarily dimmed by their dazzling brilliance. Having regained my sight, I saw a lot of beauty in the Earthly Paradise, but suddenly cruel visions came to replace all this: monsters, desecration of the shrine, debauchery.

Beatrice grieved deeply, realizing how much evil lies in these visions revealed to us, but she expressed her confidence that the forces of good will ultimately defeat evil. We approached the river Evnoe, drinking from which you strengthen the memory of the good you have done. Statius and I bathed in this river. A sip of her sweetest water poured new strength into me. Now I am pure and worthy to climb the stars.

Paradise

From the Earthly Paradise, Beatrice and I will fly together to the Heavenly, to heights inaccessible to the comprehension of mortals. I did not notice how they took off, looking at the sun. Am I, staying alive, capable of this? However, Beatrice was not surprised by this: a purified person is spiritual, and a spirit not burdened with sins is lighter than ether.

Friends, let's part here - do not read further: you will be lost in the vastness of the incomprehensible! But if you are insatiably hungry for spiritual food - then go ahead, follow me! We are in the first sky of Paradise - in the sky of the Moon, which Beatrice called the first star; plunged into its bowels, although it is difficult to imagine a force capable of containing one closed body (which I am) into another closed body (the Moon).

In the bowels of the moon, we met the souls of nuns kidnapped from monasteries and forcibly married. Through no fault of their own, they did not keep the vow of virginity given during the tonsure, and therefore the higher heavens are inaccessible to them. Do they regret it? Oh no! To regret would mean not to agree with the highest righteous will.

And yet I wonder: why are they to blame, submitting to violence? Why can't they rise above the sphere of the Moon? Blame the rapist, not the victim! But Beatrice explained that the victim also bears a certain responsibility for the violence committed against her, if, in resisting, she did not show heroic fortitude.

Failure to fulfill a vow, Beatrice argues, is almost irreparable by good deeds (there is too much to do to atone for guilt). We flew to the second heaven of Paradise - to Mercury. Here dwell the souls of the ambitious righteous. These are no longer shadows, unlike the previous inhabitants. afterlife, and the lights: shine and radiate. One of them flared up especially brightly, rejoicing in communication with me. It turned out that this was the Roman emperor, legislator Justinian. He is aware that being in the sphere of Mercury (and not higher) is the limit for him, because ambitious people, doing good deeds for their own glory (that is, loving themselves first of all), missed the ray true love to the deity.

The light of Justinian merged with a round dance of lights - other righteous souls. I thought, and the course of my thoughts led me to the question: why did God the Father sacrifice his son? It was possible just like that, by the supreme will, to forgive people the sin of Adam! Beatrice explained: the highest justice demanded that humanity itself atone for its guilt. It is incapable of this, and it was necessary to impregnate an earthly woman so that the son (Christ), combining the human with the divine, could do this.

We flew to the third heaven - to Venus, where the souls of the loving ones bliss, shining in the fiery depths of this star. One of these spirit-lights is the Hungarian king Karl Martel, who, speaking to me, expressed the idea that a person can realize his abilities only by acting in a field that meets the needs of his nature: it’s bad if a born warrior becomes a priest ...

Sweet is the radiance of other loving souls. How much blessed light, heavenly laughter is here! And below (in Hell) the shadows thickened gloomily and gloomily ... One of the lights spoke to me (troubadour Folco) - he condemned the church authorities, self-serving popes and cardinals. Florence is the city of the devil. But nothing, he believes, it will get better soon.

The fourth star is the Sun, the abode of the sages. Here shines the spirit of the great theologian Thomas Aquinas. He joyfully greeted me, showed me other sages. Their consonant singing reminded me of church evangelism.

Thomas told me about Francis of Assisi - the second (after Christ) wife of Poverty. Following his example, the monks, including his closest students, began to walk barefoot. He lived a holy life and died - naked man on bare earth - in the bosom of Poverty.

Not only I, but also the lights - the spirits of the sages - listened to the speech of Thomas, stopping singing and dancing. Then the Franciscan Bonaventure took the floor. In response to the praise given to his teacher by the Dominican Thomas, he glorified Thomas' teacher, Dominic, a farmer and servant of Christ. Who now continued his work? There are none worthy.

And again Thomas took the floor. He talks about the great virtues of King Solomon: he asked God for wisdom, wisdom - not to solve theological issues, but to reasonably rule the people, that is, royal wisdom, which was granted to him. People, do not judge each other hastily! This one is busy good deed, that one is evil, but what if the first one falls and the second rises?

What will happen to the inhabitants of the Sun on the Day of Judgment, when the spirits become flesh? They are so bright and spiritual that it is difficult to imagine them materialized. Our stay here is over, we flew to the fifth heaven - to Mars, where the sparkling spirits of warriors for the faith settled down in the shape of a cross and a sweet hymn sounds.

One of the lights that form this marvelous cross, without going beyond its limits, moved downwards, closer to me. This is the spirit of my valiant great-great-grandfather, the warrior Kachchagvida. Greeted me and praised that glorious time in which he lived on earth and which - alas! - passed, replaced by the worst time.

I am proud of my ancestor, my origin (it turns out that one can experience such a feeling not only on a vain earth, but also in Paradise!). Cacchagvida told me about himself and about his ancestors, born in Florence, whose coat of arms - a white lily - is now stained with blood.

I want to ask him, the clairvoyant, about my future fate. What lies ahead for me? He replied that I would be expelled from Florence, that in my joyless wanderings I would know the bitterness of someone else's bread and the steepness of someone else's stairs. To my credit, I will not associate with impure political factions, but I will become my own party. In the end, my opponents will be put to shame, and a triumph awaits me.

Cacchagvida and Beatrice encouraged me. Ended up on Mars. Now - from the fifth heaven to the sixth, from the red Mars to the white Jupiter, where the souls of the righteous hover. Their lights are formed into letters, into letters - first into a call for justice, and then into the figure of an eagle, a symbol of the just imperial power, unknown, sinful, suffering earth, but affirmed in heaven.

This majestic eagle entered into a conversation with me. He calls himself “I”, but I hear “we” (just power is collegial!). He understands what I myself cannot understand: why is Paradise open only to Christians? What is wrong with a virtuous Hindu who does not know Christ at all? So I don't understand. And even that is true, - admits the eagle, - that a bad Christian is worse than a glorious Persian or Ethiopian.

The eagle personifies the idea of ​​justice, and its main thing is not claws or a beak, but an all-seeing eye, made up of the most worthy light-spirits. The pupil is the soul of the king and the psalmist David, the souls of the pre-Christian righteous shine in the eyelashes (and I just blunderedly talked about Paradise “only for Christians”? That's how to give vent to doubts!).

We ascended to the seventh heaven - to Saturn. This is the abode of contemplators. Beatrice has become even more beautiful and brighter. She did not smile at me - otherwise she would have completely incinerated me and blinded me. The blessed spirits of the contemplators were silent, did not sing - otherwise they would have deafened me. The sacred light, the theologian Pietro Damiano, told me about this.

The spirit of Benedict, after whom one of the monastic orders is named, angrily condemned the modern self-serving monks. After listening to him, we rushed to the eighth heaven, to the constellation of Gemini, under which I was born, saw the sun for the first time and breathed in the air of Tuscany. From its height, I looked down, and my gaze, passing through the seven heavenly spheres we visited, fell on a ridiculously small earthly ball, this handful of dust with all its rivers and mountain steeps.

Thousands of lights are burning in the eighth sky - these are the triumphant spirits of the great righteous. Intoxicated by them, my vision has increased, and now even Beatrice's smile will not blind me. She smiled wonderfully at me and again prompted me to turn my eyes to the radiant spirits who sang a hymn to the queen of heaven - the holy virgin Mary.

Beatrice asked the apostles to talk to me. To what extent have I penetrated the mysteries of sacred truths? The Apostle Peter asked me about the essence of faith. My answer: faith is an argument in favor of the invisible; mortals cannot see with their own eyes what is revealed here in Paradise - but let them believe in a miracle, having no visual evidence of its truth. Peter was satisfied with my answer.

Will I, the author of the sacred poem, see my homeland? Will I be crowned with laurels where I was baptized? The apostle James asked me about the essence of hope. My answer is: hope is the expectation of a future well-deserved and God-given glory. Delighted, Jacob lit up.

Next up is the question of love. The apostle John gave it to me. Answering, I did not forget to say that love turns us to God, to the word of truth. Everyone rejoiced. The exam (what is Faith, Hope, Love?) was successfully completed. I saw the radiant soul of our forefather Adam, who lived for a short time in the Earthly Paradise, expelled from there to earth; after the death of long languishing in Limbo; then moved here.

Four lights blaze before me: the three apostles and Adam. Suddenly Peter turned purple and exclaimed: “My earthly throne has been seized, my throne, my throne!” Peter hates his successor - the pope. And it is time for us to part with the eighth heaven and ascend to the ninth, supreme and crystal. With unearthly joy, laughing, Beatrice threw me into a rapidly spinning sphere and ascended herself.

The first thing I saw in the sphere of the ninth heaven was a dazzling dot, the symbol of a deity. Lights revolve around her - nine concentric angelic circles. The closest to the deity and therefore smaller are the seraphim and cherubim, the most distant and extensive are the archangels and just angels. People on earth are accustomed to think that the great is greater than the small, but here, as you can see, the opposite is true.

Angels, Beatrice told me, are the same age as the universe. Their rapid rotation is the source of all the movement that takes place in the Universe. Those who hurried to fall away from their host were cast down to Hell, and those who remained are still rapturously circling in Paradise, and they do not need to think, want, remember: they are completely satisfied!

Ascension to the Empyrean - the highest region of the Universe - is the last. I again looked at her, whose beauty, growing in Paradise, raised me from heights to heights. We are surrounded by pure light. Everywhere sparks and flowers are angels and blissful souls. They merge into a kind of radiant river, and then take the form of a huge heavenly rose.

Contemplating the rose and comprehending the general plan of Paradise, I wanted to ask Beatrice something, but I saw not her, but a clear-eyed old man in white. He pointed up. I look - it glows in an inaccessible height, and I called out to her: “Oh donna, who left a mark in Hell, granting me help! In everything I see, I recognize your good. I followed you from slavery to freedom. Keep me in the future, so that my spirit worthy of you is freed from the flesh! She looked at me with a smile and turned to the eternal shrine. Everything.

The old man in white is Saint Bernard. From now on, he is my mentor. We continue to contemplate the Empyrean rose with him. The souls of immaculate babies also shine in it. This is understandable, but why were the souls of babies in some places in Hell - they can't be vicious, unlike these? God knows better what potentials - good or bad - are laid in what infant soul. So Bernard explained and began to pray.

Bernard prayed to the Virgin Mary for me - to help me. Then he gave me a sign to look up. Peering, I see the supreme and brightest light. At the same time, he was not blind, but he gained the highest truth. I contemplate the deity in his radiant trinity. And love draws me to him, which moves both the sun and the stars.

Dante Alighieri - great representative medieval literature, which created all famous masterpiece- The Divine Comedy. We have studied it today and now we will write it, answering the question of what exactly the Divine Comedy tells about, which can be called a medieval encyclopedia that introduces readers to the afterlife.

In short, an essay on the topic of Dante's Divine Comedy takes the reader to the Middle Ages, where the author talks in detail about the afterlife, which is divided into three parts. This world consists of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Sinners go to hell, those who can atone for their sins go to Purgatory, but those who have achieved spiritual bliss go to Paradise. The meaning of Dante's work is that it is the mortal life of a person that will determine the future fate of his soul. From what kind of life a person leads, it will depend on where exactly his soul will drag out existence.

Together with the hero of the poem Divine Comedy, we go through the seven circles of hell, after which we end up in Purgatory, and only at the end we get acquainted with Paradise, which also consists of seven circles. Thus, we will learn the device of the afterlife, where we will meet different characters. Here is Dante himself, and his guide and assistant Virgil, who travels with the hero through hell and purgatory. We also get to know Beatrice, who is waiting for the hero in paradise. This is Alighieri's beloved and his Muse. In addition, the reader will get acquainted with Nicholas the Third, and with Guy Longin, and with Guido de Moltefeltro.

What is a feature?

The peculiarity of the work lies in the fact that the writer immediately included several meanings here. Moral, political, spiritual, literal, allegorical, and mystical meanings are combined here. The Divine Comedy contains allegorical inserts, where animals personify such sins as pride, deceit, gluttony. The hero's journey represents the search for the true spiritual path where sins and vices meet. Paradise is the personification of all-forgiving love.

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 with a capital letter comes to the fore, 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 image. And what could be more attractive for a poet than the figure of a young Florentine, accidentally met on a narrow street of an 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, divided in turn 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 clothes in which Beatrice is clothed, three symbolic beasts, 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 that special status, which was worn by the birthplace of the great poet - Florence - 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 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 man 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. New look 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 corresponds to the moral ideals of the 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 groups - 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 in absentia to death penalty. To save himself, the poet was forced to leave his 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 made special emphasis on the color symbolism of the Universe he depicts. 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, the new Pope Clement V declares him King of Italy and invites him to Rome, where the new Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire is crowned magnificently. Dante, who was an ally of Henry, returned to politics again, where he was able to use his literary experience productively, 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 mission, 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.

He could not call his work a tragedy only because those, 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. In this work, the worldview of the poet was reflected with the greatest completeness. Dante appears here as the last great poet Middle Ages, a poet who continues the line of development of feudal literature.

Editions

Translations into Russian

• A. S. Norova, “An excerpt from the 3rd song of the poem Hell” (“Son of the Fatherland”, 1823, No. 30);
• F. Fan-Dim, "Hell", translated 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 words, 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 terts);
• P. I. Weinberg, “Hell”, song 3, “Vestn. Evr.", 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 edition in 1995);
• V. S. Lemport, The Divine Comedy (1996-1997);
• V. G. Marantsman, (St. Petersburg, 2006).

Structure

The Divine Comedy is extremely symmetrical. 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 tertsina - stanzas, consisting of three lines. This penchant for 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 remind you of the years of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, etc. There are 100 songs in the Divine Comedy (number 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 forever condemned sinners go, purgatory- the places of residence of sinners atoning for their sins, and Raya- the abode of the blessed.

Dante details this representation and describes the device of the afterlife, fixing all the details of its architectonics with graphic certainty. 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 saved him from three wild animals that blocked his path, invited Dante to make a journey through the afterlife. Having learned that Virgil was sent to Beatrice, Dante's deceased beloved, he surrenders without trepidation to the leadership of the poet.

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 did not know the true God, but who approached this knowledge and beyond then spared from hellish torments. Here Dante sees prominent representatives 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 beloved Paolo, fallen victim forbidden love for each other. As Dante, accompanied by Virgil, descends lower and lower, he becomes a witness to the torment of gluttons, forced to suffer from rain and hail, misers and spendthrifts, tirelessly rolling huge stones, angry, bogged down in a swamp. They are followed by heretics and heresiarchs engulfed in eternal flame (among them Emperor Frederick II, Pope Anastasius II), tyrants and murderers swimming in streams of boiling blood, suicides turned into plants, blasphemers and rapists burned by falling flames, deceivers of all kinds, torments which are very varied. Finally, Dante enters the last, 9th circle of hell, intended for the most terrible criminals. Here is the abode of traitors and traitors, of which the greatest are Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius, they are gnawed with their three mouths by Lucifer, an angel who once rebelled against God, the king of evil, doomed to imprisonment in the center of the earth. The description of the terrible appearance of Lucifer ends last song the first part of the poem.

Purgatory

Purgatory

Having passed a narrow corridor connecting the center of the earth with the second hemisphere, Dante and Virgil come to the surface of the earth. There, in the middle of the island surrounded by the ocean, a mountain rises in the form of a truncated cone - purgatory, like hell, consisting of a series of circles that narrow as they approach the top of the mountain. The angel guarding the entrance to purgatory lets Dante into the first circle of purgatory, having previously drawn seven P (Peccatum - sin) on his forehead with a sword, that is, a symbol of the seven deadly sins. As Dante rises higher and higher, bypassing one circle after another, these letters disappear, so that when Dante, having reached the top of the mountain, enters the "earthly paradise" located on 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 cleansed, forced to bend under the burden of weights pressing their backs, envious, angry, negligent, greedy, etc. Virgil brings Dante to the gates of paradise, where he, as one who did not know 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 prompts Dante to repentance, and then lifts him, enlightened, to heaven. The final part of the poem is devoted to Dante's wanderings in the heavenly paradise. The latter consists of seven spheres encircling the earth and corresponding to seven planets (according to the then widespread Ptolemaic system): the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, etc., followed by the spheres of fixed stars and the crystal one, - behind the crystal sphere is Empyrean, - infinite the region inhabited by the blessed, contemplating God, is the last sphere that gives life to all that exists. 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; Rising higher and higher, Dante sees Christ and the Virgin Mary, angels, and, finally, the “Heavenly Rose” is revealed before him - the abode of the blessed. Here Dante partakes of the highest grace, reaching communion with the Creator.

The 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 dense forest, in which the poet got lost halfway through earthly existence, is a symbol of life's complications. Three beasts that attack him there: a lynx, a lion and a wolf - 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. Lion - 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 held together by the rule of a feudal monarchy (some literary historians give Dante's entire poem a political interpretation). Virgil saves the poet from the beasts - the mind sent to the poet Beatrice (theology - faith). Virgil leads Dante through hell to purgatory, and on the threshold of paradise gives way to Beatrice. The meaning of this allegory is that reason saves a person from passions, and knowledge of divine science delivers eternal bliss.

The Divine Comedy is imbued with the political tendencies of the author. Dante never misses an opportunity to reckon with his ideological, even personal enemies; he hates usurers, condemns credit as "excess", condemns his own age as an age of profit and avarice. In his opinion, money is the source of all evils. He contrasts the dark present with the bright past of bourgeois Florence - feudal Florence, when simplicity of morals, moderation, chivalrous "nobility" ("Paradise", Kachchagvida's story), the feudal empire (cf. Dante's treatise "On the Monarchy") prevailed. The tercines 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 individual representatives of it, especially those who contributed to the strengthening of the bourgeois system in Italy; some dads Dante meets in hell. His religion is Catholicism, although a personal element is already 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. The ascetic ideals in Dante have not yet died, and he regards free love as a grave sin (Hell, 2nd circle, famous episode with Francesca da Rimini and Paolo). But it is not a sin for him to love, which attracts to the object of worship with a pure platonic impulse (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 absolute virtue. “Whoever in glory does not renew his strength with victory will not taste the fruit that he obtained in the struggle.” And the spirit of inquisitiveness, the desire to widen the circle of knowledge and acquaintance with the world, combined with “virtue” (virtute e conoscenza), which encourages heroic daring, is proclaimed an ideal.

Dante built his vision from pieces real life. Separate corners of Italy, which are placed in it with clear graphic contours, went to the construction of the afterlife. And so many living things are scattered in the poem human images, so many typical figures, so many vivid psychological situations that literature still continues to draw from there. People who suffer in hell, repent in purgatory (moreover, the volume and nature of the punishment corresponds to the volume and nature of sin), abide in bliss in paradise - all living people. In these hundreds of figures, no two are the same. 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. No wonder Florence experienced a period of such intense economic and cultural upsurge. That keen sense of landscape and man, which is shown in the Comedy and which the world learned from Dante, was possible only in the social situation of Florence, which was far ahead of the rest of Europe. Separate episodes of the poem, such as Francesca and Paolo, Farinata in his red-hot grave, Ugolino with children, Capaneus and Ulysses, in no way similar to ancient images, the Black Cherub with subtle devilish logic, Sordello on his stone, are still produced to this day 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 lifetime, including “bad flock of angels”, who were neither with the devil nor with God.

• 1st circle (Limb). Unbaptized Infants and Virtuous Non-Christians.
• 2nd circle. Voluptuaries (fornicators and adulterers).
• 3rd circle. Gluttons, gluttons.
• 4th circle. Covetous and spendthrifts (love of excessive spending).
• 5th circle (Stygian swamp). Angry and lazy.
• 6th circle (city of Dit). Heretics and false teachers.
• 7th round.
  • 1st belt. Violators over the neighbor and over his property (tyrants and robbers).
  • 2nd belt. Violators of themselves (suicides) and of their property (players and wasters, that is, senseless destroyers of their property).
  • 3rd belt. Violators of the deity (blasphemers), against nature (sodomites) and art (extortion).
• 8th round. Deceived the untrustworthy. It consists of ten ditches (Zlopazuhi, or Evil Slits), which are separated from each other by ramparts (rifts). Toward the center, the area of ​​Evil Slits slopes, so that each next ditch and each next shaft are located somewhat 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 adjoins the circular wall. In the center gapes 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 go to this well in radii, like the spokes of a wheel, crossing ditches and ramparts, and above the ditches they bend in the form of bridges, or vaults. In Evil Slits, deceivers are punished who deceive people who are not connected with them by special bonds of trust.
  • 1st ditch. Procurers and seducers.
  • 2nd ditch. Flatterers.
  • 3rd ditch. Holy merchants, high-ranking clerics who traded in church positions.
  • 4th ditch. Soothsayers, fortune tellers, astrologers, sorceresses.
  • 5th ditch. Bribers, bribe-takers.
  • 6th ditch. Hypocrites.
  • 7th ditch. The thieves .
  • 8th ditch. Wicked advisers.
  • 9th ditch. The instigators of discord (Mohammed, Ali, Dolcino and others).
  • 10th ditch. Alchemists, perjurers, counterfeiters.
• 9th round. Deceived those who trusted. Ice lake Cocytus.
  • Belt of Cain. Family traitors.
  • Belt of Antenor. Traitors of the motherland and like-minded people.
  • Belt of Tolomei. Traitors of friends and companions.
  • Giudecca belt. Traitors of benefactors, majesty divine and human.
  • In the middle, in the center of the universe, frozen into an ice floe (Lucifer) torments in his three mouths 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, ch. I) refers to the 1st category the sins of intemperance (incontinenza), to the 2nd - the sins of violence ("violent bestiality" or matta bestialitade), to 3 - sins of deceit ("malice" or malizia). Dante has circles 2-5 for the intemperate, 7th for rapists, 8-9 for deceivers (8th is just for deceivers, 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 singled out especially from the host of sinners who fill the upper and lower circles, in the sixth circle. In the abyss of the lower Hell (A., VIII, 75), three ledges, like three steps, are three circles - from the seventh to the ninth. In these circles, malice is punished, wielding either force (violence) or deceit.

The Concept of Purgatory in The Divine Comedy

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

Dante depicts him as a huge mountain rising in the southern hemisphere in the middle of the Ocean. It has the shape of a truncated cone. The coastline and the lower part of the mountain form the Prepurgatory, and the upper one is surrounded by seven ledges (seven circles of Purgatory proper). On the flat top of the mountain, Dante places the desert 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 "foreign evil", that is, malevolence (pride, envy, anger); circle IV - insufficient love for the true good (despondency); circles V, VI, VII - excessive love for false goods (covetousness, gluttony, voluptuousness). The circles correspond to the biblical deadly 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 that they spent in "strife with the church."
  • First ledge. Careless, until the hour of death they hesitated to repent.
  • Second ledge. Careless, died a violent death.
• Valley of Earthly Lords (does not apply to Purgatory)
• 1st circle. Proud.
• 2nd circle. Envious.
• 3rd circle. Angry.
• 4th circle. Dull.
• 5th round. Buyers and spendthrifts.
• 6th round. Gluttons.
• 7th round. Voluptuaries.
• Earthly paradise.

The concept of Paradise in The Divine Comedy

(in brackets - examples of personalities given by Dante)

• 1 sky(Moon) - the abode of those who observe duty (Jephthah, Agamemnon, Constance of Norman).
• 2 sky(Mercury) - the abode of the reformers (Justinian) and the innocent victims (Iphigenia).
• 3 sky(Venus) - the abode of lovers (Karl Martell, Kunitzsa, Folco of Marseilles, Dido, "Rhodopeian", Raava).
• 4 sky(Sun) - the abode of sages and great scientists. They form two circles ("round dance").
  • 1st circle: Thomas Aquinas, Albert von Bolstedt, Francesco Gratiano, Peter of Lombard, Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul Orosius, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Bede the Venerable, Ricard, Seeger of Brabant.
  • 2nd circle: Bonaventure, Franciscans Augustine and Illuminati, Hugon, Peter the Eater, Peter of Spain, John Chrysostom, Anselm, Elius Donat, Raban Maurus, Joachim.
• 5 sky(Mars) - the abode of warriors for the faith (Jesus Nun, Judas Maccabee, Roland, Gottfried of Bouillon, Robert Guiscard).
• 6 sky(Jupiter) - 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 sky(Saturn) - the abode of theologians and monks (Benedict of Nursia, Peter Damiani).
• 8 sky(sphere of stars).
• 9 sky(The prime mover, crystal sky). Dante describes the structure of the heavenly inhabitants (see Orders 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. 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), blessed souls sit. Mary (Our Lady) - at the head, under her - Adam and Peter, Moses, Rachel and Beatrice, Sarah, Rebekah, Judith, Ruth, etc. John sits opposite, below him - Lucia, Francis, Benedict, Augustine, etc.

Scientific points, misconceptions and comments

• Hell , xi, 113-114. The constellation Pisces rose above the horizon, and Woz(constellation Ursa Major) tilted to the northwest(Kavr; lat. Caurus is the name of the northwest wind. This means that there are two hours left before sunrise.
• Hell , XXIX, 9. That their way is twenty-two district miles.(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- golden Florentine coin, florin (fiormo). On its front side, the patron of the city, John the Baptist, was depicted, and on the reverse side, the Florentine coat of arms, a lily (fiore is a flower, hence the name of the coin).
• Hell , XXXIV, 139. The word "luminaries" (stelle - stars) ends each of the three canticles of the Divine Comedy.
• 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 awn- that is, to the celestial pole, in this case the south.
• Purgatory , I, 30. Chariot- Ursa Major, hidden over the horizon.
• Purgatory , II, 1-3. According to Dante, the Mount of Purgatory and Jerusalem are located at opposite ends of the earth's diameter, so they have a common horizon. In the northern hemisphere, the top of the celestial meridian ("half-day circle") that crosses this horizon falls over Jerusalem. At the hour described, the sun, visible in Jerusalem, was sinking, to soon 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 Ganges. At the time of the year described, that is, at the time of the vernal equinox, the night holds the scales in its hands, that is, it is in the constellation Libraopposing the Sun, which is in the constellation Aries. In the autumn, 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 ("what"). Scholastic science, following Aristotle, distinguished between two kinds of knowledge: scire quia- knowledge of the existing - and scire propter quid- knowledge of the causes of the existing. Virgil advises people to be content with the first kind of knowledge, without delving into the causes of what is.
• Purgatory , IV, 71-72. The road where the unfortunate Phaeton ruled- zodiac.
• Purgatory , XXIII, 32-33. Who is looking for "omo"...- it was believed that in features human face you can read "Homo Dei" ("Man of God"), with the eyes depicting two "O", and the eyebrows and nose - the letter M.
• Purgatory , XXVIII, 97-108. According to Aristotelian physics, atmospheric precipitation is generated by "wet vapor", and wind is generated by "dry vapor". Matelda explains that only below the level of the gates of Purgatory are there such disturbances, generated by steam, which "follows the heat", that is, under the influence of solar 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 four venerable elders- twenty-four books of the Old Testament.
• Purgatory , XXXIII, 43. five hundred fifteen- a mysterious designation of the coming deliverer of the church and the 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 that way.
• Purgatory , XXXIII, 139. Account set from the beginning- In the construction of the Divine Comedy, Dante observes strict symmetry. In each of its three parts (kantik) - 33 songs; "Hell" contains, in addition, another song that serves as an introduction to the whole 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 only one center is possible in a circle.
• Paradise , XIV, 102. The sacred sign was composed of two rays, which is hidden within the borders of the quadrants.- segments of adjacent quadrants (quarters) of the circle form the sign of the cross.
• Paradise , XVIII, 113. In Lily M- The Gothic M resembles a fleur-de-lis.
• Paradise , XXV, 101-102: If Cancer has a similar pearl ...- FROM

In the two greatest works of Dante Alighieri - "New Life" and in "The Divine Comedy" (see its summary) - the same idea is carried out. Both of them are connected by the idea that pure love ennobles the nature of man, and the knowledge of the frailty of sensual bliss brings man closer to God. But the "New Life" is only a series of lyrical poems, while the "Divine Comedy" is a whole poem in three parts, containing up to one hundred songs, each of which contains about one hundred and forty verses.

In early youth, Dante experienced a passionate love for Beatrice, daughter of Fulk Portinari. He kept it for last days life, although he never managed to connect with Beatrice. Dante's love was tragic: Beatrice died at a young age, and after her death, the great poet saw in her a transformed angel.

Dante Alighieri. Drawing by Giotto, 14th century

AT mature years love for Beatrice began to gradually lose its sensual connotation for Dante, passing into a purely spiritual dimension. Healing from sensual passion was a spiritual baptism for the poet. The Divine Comedy reflects this spiritual healing of Dante, his view of the present and the past, his life and the lives of his friends, art, science, poetry, Guelphs and Ghibellines, on the political parties of "black" and "white". In The Divine Comedy, Dante expressed how he views all this comparatively and relatively to the eternal moral principle of things. In "Hell" and "Purgatory" (he often calls the second "Mountain of propitiation") Dante considers all phenomena only from the side of their external manifestation, from the point of view of state wisdom, personified by him in his "guide" - Virgil, i.e. point of view of law, order and law. In "Paradise" all the phenomena of heaven and earth are presented in the spirit of the contemplation of a deity or the gradual transformation of the soul, by which the finite spirit merges with the infinite nature of things. The transfigured Beatrice, a symbol of divine love, eternal mercy and true knowledge of God, leads him from one sphere to another and leads him to God, where there is no more limited space.

Such poetry might have seemed like a purely theological treatise if Dante had not littered his journey through the world of ideas with living images. The meaning of the "Divine Comedy", where the world and all its phenomena are described and depicted, and the allegory carried out is only slightly indicated, was very often reinterpreted when analyzing the poem. Under clearly allegorical images, they understood either the struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, then politics, the vices of the Roman church, or events in general modern history. This best proves how far Dante was from the empty play of fantasy and how he was wary of drowning out poetry under allegory. It is desirable that his commentators should be as circumspect in their analysis of the Divine Comedy as he was.

Statue of Dante in Piazza Santa Croce in Florence

Dante's Inferno - analysis

"I think it's for your good that you should follow me. I will show the way and lead you through the countries of eternity, where you will hear the cries of despair, you will see the mournful shadows that lived on earth before you, calling for the death of the soul after the death of the body. Then you will also see others rejoicing in the midst of the purifying flame, because they hope to gain access to the habitation of the blessed through suffering. If you wish to ascend to this dwelling, then a soul worthier than mine will lead you there. She will stay with you when I leave. By the will of the supreme lord, I, who never knew his laws, was not allowed to show the way to his city. The whole universe obeys him, according to his kingdom there. There is his chosen city (sua città), there stands his throne above the clouds. Oh, blessed are those who are sought by him!”

According to Virgil, Dante will have to know in "Hell", not in words, but in deeds, all the disaster of a person who has fallen away from God, and see all the vanity of earthly greatness and ambition. To do this, the poet depicts in the "Divine Comedy" underworld, where he connects everything that he knows from mythology, history and his own experience about a person's violation of the moral law. Dante inhabits this realm with people who have never sought to achieve pure and spiritual existence through labor and struggle, and divides them into circles, showing, by their relative distance from each other, the various degrees of sins. These circles of Hell, as he himself says in the eleventh song, personify the moral teaching (ethics) of Aristotle about man's deviation from divine law.