All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”[o]
The theme of the poem is too familiar to need further exposition here. It may be interesting to note, however, that the sequence of regions through which the poet journeys in witnessing the rewards of paradise is suggested by the ideas of cosmology that were prevalent in Dante’s time. The poem thus has interest from a scientific as well as from an artistic standpoint—an interest that is enhanced by the reflection that the time was almost at hand when a new system of cosmology would supplant the Ptolemaic one here suggested, and in so doing usher in a new scientific era, somewhat as the poem itself ushered in a new era of literature.[a]
The power of the human mind was never more forcibly demonstrated, in its most exquisite masterpieces, than in the poem of Dante. Without a prototype in any existing language, equally novel in its various parts and in the combination of the whole, it stands alone as the first monument of modern genius, the first great work which appeared in the reviving literature of Europe. In its composition, it is strictly conformable to the essential and invariable principles of the poetical art. It possesses unity of design and of execution; and bears the visible impress of a mighty genius, capable of embracing, at once, the parts and the whole of its scheme; of employing, with facility, the most stupendous materials, and of observing all the required niceties of proportion, without experiencing any difficulty from the constraint. In all other respects, the poem of Dante is not within the jurisdiction of established rules. It cannot with propriety be referred to any particular class of composition, and its author is only to be judged by those laws which he thought fit to impose upon himself. His modesty induced him to give his work the title of a comedy, in order to place it in a rank inferior to the epic, to which he conceived that Virgil had exclusive claims. Dante had not the slightest acquaintance with the dramatic art, of which he had, in all probability, never met with a single specimen; and from this ignorance proceeded that use of the word which now appears to us to be so extraordinary. In his native country, the title which he gave to his work was always preserved, and it is still known as The Divine Comedy. A name so totally different from every other seems to be happily bestowed upon a production which stands without a rival.
Dante the Man
The glory which Dante acquired, which commenced during his lifetime, and which raised him, in a little time, above the greatest names of Italy, contributed but little to his happiness. He was born in Florence in 1265, of the noble and distinguished family of the Alighieri, which was attached, in politics, to the party of the Guelfs.
Whilst yet very young, he formed a strong attachment to Beatrice, the daughter of Folco de’ Portinari, whom he lost at the age of twenty-five years. Throughout his future life, he preserved a faithful recollection of the passion which, during fifteen years, had essentially contributed to the happy development of his feelings, and which was thus associated with all his noblest sentiments and his most elevated thoughts. It was probably about ten years after the death of Beatrice when Dante commenced his great work, which occupied him during the remainder of his life, and in which he assigned the most conspicuous station to the woman he had so tenderly loved. In this object of his adoration, he found a common point of union for images both human and divine; and the Beatrice of his paradise appears to us sometimes in the character of the most beloved of her sex, and sometimes as an abstract emblem of celestial wisdom. Far from considering the passion of love in the same light as the ancients, the father of modern poetry recognises it as a pure, elevated, and sacred sentiment, calculated to ennoble and to sanctify the soul; and he has never been surpassed, by any who have succeeded him, in his entire and affecting devotion to the object of his attachment. Dante was, however, induced by considerations of family convenience to enter into a new engagement. In 1291, a year after the death of Beatrice, he married Gemma de’ Donati, whose obstinate and violent disposition embittered his domestic life. It is remarkable that, in the whole course of his work, into which he introduces the whole universe, he makes no personal allusion to his wife; and he was actuated, no doubt, by motives of delicacy towards her and her family, when he passed over, in similar silence, Corso Donati, the leader of the faction of his enemies, and his own most formidable adversary.
Torch Holder, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
In the battle of Campaldino, in 1289, Dante bore arms for his country against the Aretini, and also against the Pisans in the campaign of 1290—the year subsequent to that in which the catastrophe of Count Ugolino occurred. He subsequently assumed the magisterial functions, at the period so fatal to the happiness of his country, when the civil wars between the Bianchi and the Neri broke out. He was accused of a criminal partiality to the interest of the former faction, during the time when he was a member of the supreme council; and when Charles de Valois, the father of Philip VI, proceeded to Florence, to appease the dissensions of the two parties, Dante was sentenced, in the year 1302, to the payment of an oppressive fine and to exile. By the subsequent sentence of a revolutionary tribunal, he was condemned, during his absence, to be burned alive, with all his partisans.
From that period, Dante was compelled to seek an asylum at such of the Italian courts as were attached to the Ghibelline interest, and were not unwilling to extend their protection to their ancient enemies. To that party, which he had opposed in the outset of his career, his perpetual exile and his misfortune compelled him, ultimately, to become a convert. He resided, for a considerable time, with the marquis Malaspina, in the Lunigiana, with the count Busone da Gubbio, and with the two brothers Della Scala, lords of Verona. But, in every quarter, the haughty obstinacy of his character, which became more inflexible in proportion to the difficulties with which he was surrounded, and the bitterness of his wit, which frequently broke out in caustic sarcasms, raised up against him new enemies. His attempts to re-enter Florence with his party, by force of arms, were successively foiled; his petitions to the people were rejected; and his last hope, in the emperor Henry VII, vanished on the death of that monarch. His decease took place at Ravenna, on the 14th of September, 1321, whilst he was enjoying the hospitable protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of that city, who had always treated him rather as a friend than as a dependant, and who, a short time before, had bestowed upon him an honourable mark of his confidence by charging him with an embassy to the republic of Venice.