"This Poem of the earth and air,
This mediaeval miracle of song."
Dante Alighieri was born at Florence, in May, 1265. His family belonged to
the Guelph, or Papal faction, and he early took part in the struggle
between the parties. In 1274 he first saw Beatrice Portinari, and he says
of this meeting in the "Vita Nuova," "I say that thenceforward Love swayed
my soul, which was even then espoused to him." Beatrice died in 1290, and
Dante married Gemma Donati, between 1291 and 1294. In 1295 he joined the
Art of Druggists, in order to become a member of the Administrative
Council. In 1300 he was made Prior, and in 1301, when the Neri entered
Florence, he was exiled, his property confiscated, and himself sentenced
to be burned, if found within the republic. After this he became a
Ghibeline, and took up arms against the city with his fellow-exiles, but
withdrew from their council at last because of disagreements, and
separating from them, spent his time at Verona, Padua, Sunigianda, and in
the monastery of Gubbio. In 1316 the government of Florence issued a
decree allowing the exiles to return on payment of a fine; but Dante
indignantly refused to acknowledge thus that he had been in the wrong. He
was in Ravenna in 1320, and died there Sept. 14, 1321, on his return from
an embassy to Venice.
The "Commedia" was written during Dante's nineteen years of exile. The
three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, are emblematic of the
threefold state of man,--sin, grace, and beatitude. The thirty-three
cantos into which each part is divided, are in allusion to the years of
the Saviour's life, and the triple rhyme suggests the Trinity.
The Divine Comedy is written in the _terza rima_, which consists of three
verses arranged in such a way that the middle line of each triplet rhymes
with the first or third verse of the succeeding triplet.
The entire time occupied in the "Commedia" is eleven days, from March 25
to April 5, 1300.
Dante called the poem a comedy because of its prosperous ending. The
prefix "divine" was given it later by its admirers.
The Divine Comedy is sometimes called the epic of mediaevalism, and again,
the epic of man. Dante himself said: "The subject of the whole work, then,
taken literally, is the state of the soul after death, regarded as a
matter of fact; for the action of the whole work deals with this and is
about this. But if the work be taken allegorically, its subject is man, in
so far as by merit or demerit in the exercise of free will, he is exposed
to the rewards or punishment of justice."
For a time the Divine Comedy was neglected, and even in comparatively
recent times the Inferno was the only portion read; but of late years
there has been a re-awakening of interest in regard to the whole poem.
In no other of the epics has the author put so much of himself as Dante
has in the "Commedia." It was he himself who saw this vision; he himself,
proud, tortured, who carried the sense of his wrongs with him through Hell
and Purgatory, even into Paradise. We learn the history of his times, all
the crimes committed by men in high position, and we also learn the
history of the unhappy Florentine, of whose poem it has been said, "none
other in the world is so deeply and universally sorrowful."