”in every man … a demon lies hidden — the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain. (The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky)”
Dante lived in a time of rapid change, a time when radical new concepts were altering the outlook of man on his world. Measured against the accelerating transformation of our own society, the Renaissance can be seen as a relatively minor cultural revolution in the history of humanity. This view, logical and linear, likely misses its target.
It is said that only poets and artists can synthesize the life of an epoch. In this respect Dante made a great summary statement. Dante’s pilgrimage began at the midpoint of his life, in the first lines of a poem. He called his account a ”comedy”. Later, he was unwilling to accept so modest a title for so great a work, and insisted on adding the ”Divine”, and justly so. There is no modern parallel for Dante and his achievement. The Divine Comedy is one of the supreme imaginative creations in human records. It is the greatest Catholic poem as Paradise Lost is the greatest Protestant poem. In the North American mind, it has colored the common conception of Heaven and Hell, and demons and angels.
Dante Alighieri ( 1265-1321 ) His paternal ancestry was ancient and noble; though of a minor nobility and the mercantile class. Dante’s father was a banker, though to all appearances an unsuccessful money lender. Dante was admitted to the small society of Florentine intelectuals, and worked his way up to hold a number of responsible civic appointments. In 1300, he was elected prior, thus becoming a member of the highest elected body of Florence. However, political winds changed and Dante’s party, ”the whites” which represented the middle class and minor gentry, and hostile to papal claims for domination of Tuscany, lost control of Florence to the ”blacks”.
Dante vigorously opposed the temporal claims of Pope Boniface VIII, and narrowly missed excommunication. He was accused of graft and embezzlement and disturbance of the peace, forcing him to flee. A second sentence was added that if he should ever return to Florence, he would be burned alive. Thenceforth, Dante was an exile without home or property living as a parasite and beggar. He became politically active, and proposed a separation between church and state where the spiritual and temporal powers, both sanctioned from on high, were each to rule contentedly on their own domain. Eventually, Florence offered him amnesty, but with humiliating conditions. He refused them and was again condemned to death.
His last years are obscure. His wanderings came to an end in Ravenna, where he was warmly received by the local despot. He had barely completed the Divine Comedy when he died on September 13, 1321. Who was he? He was ardently religious yet longed for earthly fame and prosperity. He was emotionally charged, and struggled with bouts of melancholy and deep reflection. Furious passion drove him to his convictions and deeds. His love hate relationship with Florence, his admiration and loathing for individuals, and his anger, pride, and humility were so excessive as to be sublime. He was a mass of contradictions, but in his work he could subdue his passion to fit an ordered frame, in careful meter and rhyme. Despite several other important writings,though appealing, the one great book is what Dante called his ”Commedia”. He called his poem a comedy because it begins in adversity and ends happily, and because it is couched in a familiar style; a colloquial language filled with vulgar and comic connotations yet filled with cadences and overtones that permitted the text to rise to sublimity. The Divine Comedy is, first of all, a confession, proceeding from anguish of spirit.Its opening lines:
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