Italian literature: Encyclopedia II - Italian literature - Dante

Italian literature - Dante

Dante, the greatest of Italian poets, also shows these lyrical tendencies. In La Vita Nuova, written in 1321, (so called by its author to indicate that his first meeting with Beatrice was the beginning of a life entirely different from that he had hitherto led) there is a high idealization of love. It seems as if there were in it nothing earthly or human, and that the poet had his eyes constantly fixed on heaven while singing of his lady. Everything is supersensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice is always gradually melting more and more into the symbolical onepassing out of her human nature and into the divine. Several of the lyrics of the Canzoniere deal with the theme of the new life ; but all the love poems do not refer to Beatrice, while other pieces are philosophical and bridge over to the Convito.

The work which made Dante immortal, and raised him above all other men of genius in Italy, was his Divina Commedia. An allegorical meaning is hidden under the literal one of this great epic. Dante travelling through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is a symbol of mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. By the forest in which the poet loses himself is meant the civil and religious confusion of society, deprived of its two guides, the emperor and the pope. The mountain illuminated by the sun is universal monarchy. The three beasts are the three vices and the three powers which offered the greatest obstacles to Dantes designs: envy is Florence, light, fickle and divided by the Bianchi and Neri; pride is the house of France; avarice is the papal court; Virgil represents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid without which man cannot attain the supreme end, which is God.

The merit of the poem does not lie in the allegory, which still connects it with medieval literature. What is new is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Whether he describes nature, analyses passions, curses the vices or sings hymns to the virtues, Dante is notable for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. He took the materials for his poem from theology, from philosophy, from history, from mythology but more especially from his own passions, from hatred and love; and he has breathed the breath of genius into all these materials. Under the pen of the poet, the dead come to life again; they become men again, and speak the language of their time, of their passions. Farinata degli Uberti, Boniface VIII, Count Ugolino, Manfred, Sordello, Hugh Capet, St Thomas Aquinas, Cacciaguida, St Benedict, St Peter, are all so many objective creations; they stand before us in all the life of their characters, their feelings, their habits.

The real chastizer of, the sins and rewarder of virtues is Dante himself. The personal interest he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is what most interests us and stirs us. Dante remakes history after his own passions. Thus the Divina Commedia is not only a life-like drama of contemporary thoughts and feelings, but also a clear and spontaneous reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, from the indignation of the citizen and the exile to the faith of the believer and the ardour of the philosopher. The Divina Commedia defined the destiny of Italian literature, to give artistic lustre to all forms of literature the middle ages had produced. Dante begins the Renaissance.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Dante", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki