Love stories. Middle Ages
"Dante and Beatrice", miniature from the 15th century
One of the most famous poets, scientists, philosophers and politicians, the author of the “Divine Comedy”, which still amazes his contemporaries, the great Durante degli Alighieri, better known to the world as Dante, was born in 1265 in Florence. His parents did not stand out in any way from the rest of the townspeople and were not rich, but they were able to raise funds and pay for their son’s schooling. From an early age, he was fond of poetry and composed poems that were full of romantic images and admiration for the beauty of nature, the best sides of the people around him and the charm of young women.
Giotto di Bondone. Dante Alighieri. The Proto-Renaissance portrait is an early stage in the development of the portrait genre of the Italian Renaissance.
When Dante was nine years old, an amazing meeting took place in his life with a little girl, his age. They collided on the threshold of the church, and for an instant their eyes met. Only a second passed, the girl immediately lowered her eyes and quickly walked past, but this was enough for the romantic boy to passionately fall in love with the stranger. Only after some time did he learn that the girl was the daughter of a rich and noble Florentine Folco Portinari, and her name was most likely Bice. However, the future poet gave her the melodious and tender name Beatrice.
Simeon Solomon. Dante's first meeting with Beatrice. 1859-63
Many years later, in a work that Dante called “New Life,” he described his first meeting with his beloved: “She appeared to me dressed in the noblest scarlet color ... girded and dressed in a manner befitting her very young age.” The girl seemed to the impressionable child to be a real lady, who combined the most virtuous traits: innocence, nobility, kindness. Since then, little Dante dedicated poems only to her, and in them he praised the beauty and charm of Beatrice.
Years passed, and Bice Portinari turned from a little girl into a charming creature, spoiled by her parents, a little mocking and impudent. Dante did not at all strive to seek new meetings with his beloved, and he accidentally learned about her life from acquaintances.
Mary Stillman. Beatrice (1895)
The second meeting took place nine years later, when a young man was walking along a narrow Florentine street and saw a beautiful girl walking towards him. With a sinking heart, Dante recognized his beloved in the young beauty, who, as he passed by, as it seemed to him, slightly lowered her head and smiled slightly. Overwhelmed with happiness, the young man lived from now on for this moment and, under the impression, wrote the first sonnet dedicated to his beloved. From that day on, he longed to see Beatrice again.
Rossetti. Greetings to Beatrice
Their next meeting took place at a celebration dedicated to the wedding of mutual friends, but this day did not bring anything to the poet in love except bitter suffering and tears. Always self-confident, Alighieri suddenly became embarrassed when he saw his beloved among his acquaintances. He could not utter a word, and when he came to his senses a little, he said something incoherent and absurd. Seeing the embarrassment of the young man, not taking his eyes off her, the lovely girl began to make fun of the uncertain guest and ridicule him along with her friends. That evening, the inconsolable young man finally decided never to seek a date with the beautiful Beatrice and devote his life only to singing his love for Signorina Portinari. The poet never saw her again.
Rossetti. Beatrice, meeting Dante at the wedding feast, refuses to greet him
I heard my heart awaken
The spirit of love that slumbered there;
Then in the distance I saw Love
So joyful that I doubted her.
She said: “It’s time to bow down
You are in front of me...” - and there was laughter in the speech.
But I only listened to the mistress,
Her dear gaze fixed on me.
And Monna Bath with Monna Beach I
I saw them coming to these lands -
Behind a wondrous miracle is a miracle without an example;
And, as it is kept in my memory,
Love said: “This one is Primavera,
And that one is Love, we are so similar to her.”
However, the feeling for his beloved has not changed. Alighieri still loved her so passionately that all other women did not exist for him. Nevertheless, he still got married, although he did not hide the fact that he took this step without love. The poet's wife was the beautiful Italian Gemma Donati.
Beatrice married the wealthy Signor Simon de Bardi, and a few years later she died unexpectedly. She was not even twenty-five years old. This happened in the summer of 1290, after which Dante, broken by grief, vowed to devote all his work to the memory of his beloved.
Rossetti. Dante's dream during the death of Beatrice
Marriage to an unloved wife did not bring comfort. Life with Gemma soon began to weigh so heavily on the poet that he began to spend less time at home and devoted himself entirely to politics. At that time, there were constant clashes in Florence between the parties of black and white Guelphs. The former were supporters of papal power in the territory of Florence, while the latter opposed it. Dante, who shared the views of the “whites,” soon joined this party and began to fight for the independence of his native city. At that time he was barely thirty years old.
Rossetti. First anniversary of Beatrice's death: Dante draws an angel
You laughed at me among your friends,
But did you know, Madonna, why
You can't recognize my appearance,
When I stand before your beauty?
Oh, if only you knew - with the usual kindness
You couldn't contain your feelings:
After all, it is Love that has captivated me all,
Tyrannizes with such cruelty,
That, reigning among my timid feelings,
Having executed some, sent others into exile,
She alone directs her gaze to you.
That's why my appearance is unusual!
But even then their exiles
So clearly I hear the grief.
When a split occurred in the party to which the great poet belonged, and after Charles Valois came to power, the black Guelphs gained the upper hand, Dante was accused of treason and intrigue against the church, after which he was put on trial. The accused was deprived of all the high ranks that he had previously held in Florence, imposed a large fine and expelled from his hometown. Alighieri took the latter most painfully and was never able to return to his homeland until the end of his life. From that day on, his many years of wandering around the country began.
Jean Leon Gerome. Dante
Seventeen years after the death of Beatrice, Dante finally began writing his greatest work, The Divine Comedy, to the creation of which he devoted fourteen long years. “Comedy” was written in a simple, uncomplicated language, which, according to Alighieri himself, “is spoken by women.” In this poem, the author wanted not only to help people understand the secrets of life after death and overcome the eternal fear of the unknown, but also to glorify the Great Feminine Principle, which the poet raised to the heights through the image of his beloved Beatrice.
Bronzino. Allegorical portrait of Dante
In The Divine Comedy, his beloved, who has long departed from the earthly world, meets Dante and guides him through different spheres of the world - starting from the lowest, where sinners are tormented, reaching the high, divine part, where Beatrice herself lives.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise
She keeps Love in her eyes;
Blessed is all that she looks upon;
As she walks, everyone hurries to her;
If he greets you, his heart will tremble.
So, he is all confused, he will bow his face down
And he sighs about his sinfulness.
Arrogance and anger melts before her.
O donnas, who would not praise her?
All the sweetness and all the humility of thoughts
He who hears her word will know.
Blessed is he who is destined to meet her.
The way she smiles
The speech does not speak and the mind does not remember:
So this miracle is blissful and new.
She, who left without fully knowing worldly life, helps to reveal to the poet the entire philosophical meaning of life and death, to show the most unknown aspects of the afterlife, all the horrors of hell and the miracles that are performed by the Lord on the highest peaks of the world, called paradise.
Until the end of his days, Dante Alighieri wrote only about Beatrice, praising his love for her, glorifying and exalting his beloved. “The Divine Comedy” still amazes contemporaries with its deep philosophical meaning, and the name of the beloved author of the poem remains immortal forever.
Whose spirit is captivated, whose heart is full of light,
To all those before whom my sonnet will appear,
Who will reveal to me the meaning of its deafness,
In the name of Lady Love, greetings to them!
Already a third of the hours when given to the planets
Shine stronger, completing your path,
When Love appeared before me
Such that it’s scary for me to remember this:
Love walked in joy; and on the palm
Mine held my heart; and in your hands
She carried the Madonna, sleeping humbly;
And, having awakened, she gave the Madonna a taste
From the heart,” and she ate it with confusion.
Then Love disappeared, all in tears.
Dante spent the last years of his life in Ravenna, where he was buried in 1321. Many years later, the authorities of Florence declared the poet and philosopher an honorary resident of their city, wishing to return his ashes to their homeland. However, in Ravenna they refused to fulfill the wishes of the Florentines, who once expelled the great Dante and for the rest of his life deprived him of the opportunity to walk through the narrow streets of the city, where he once met his only beloved, Beatrice Portinari.
Text: Anna Sardaryan
“Fresco cycle in Casimo Massimo (Rome), Dante Hall, Empyrean and the eight heavens of Paradise. Fragment: Sky of the Sun. Dante and Beatrice between Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Peter of Lombardy and Siger of Paris." White Philip
“Fresco cycle in Casimo Massimo (Rome), Dante Hall, Empyrean and the eight heavens of Paradise. Fragment: Sky of the Moon. Dante and Beatrice before Constance and Piccarda." White Philip
Henry Halliday. "Dante and Beatrice"
Domenico Petarlini. Dante in exile. OK. 1860
La Disputa. Raphael
Frederic Leighton. Dante in exile
Sandro Botticelli. Portrait of Dante
Dante Alighieri. Works by Luca Signorelli (1499-1502). In detail.
Fresco by Domenico Di Michelino, Duomo in Florence
Ary Scheffer. Dante and Beatrice.(1851, Boston museum)
WashingtonAlston(Washington Allston).Beatrice. 1819. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Santuario de La iglesia de Santa Margarita de Florencia. Encuentro entre Dante y Beatrice
So noble, so modest
Madonna, returning the bow,
That near her the tongue is silent, confused,
And the eye does not dare to rise to her.
She walks, does not heed the delights,
And her camp is clothed in humility,
And it seems: brought down from heaven
This ghost comes to us, and it shows a miracle here.
She brings such delight to the eyes,
That when you meet her, you find joy,
Which the ignorant will not understand,
And it’s as if it comes from her lips
The spirit of love pouring sweetness into the heart,
Firmly repeating to the soul: “Breathe...” - and he will sigh.
Rossetti - Blessing of Beatrice
Dante in the fresco of the Villa Carduccio by Andrea del Castagno (1450, Uffizi Gallery)
Michael Parkes, portraits of Dante and Beatrice
O deity of love, the beginning is in you.
Whenever you were gone,
We would not know good thoughts:
It is impossible to separate the picture from the light,
In the midst of pitch darkness
Art to admire or color.
My heart is wounded by you,
Like the stars - the clear sun;
You were not yet an all-powerful deity,
When I was already your slave
My soul: you have exhausted it
With one passionate desire -
The desire to admire everything beautiful
And admire the highest beauty.
And I, admiring the lady alone,
Captivated by unprecedented beauty,
And the flame was reflected
Like in a mirror of water, in my soul:
She came in your heavenly rays,
And the light of your rays
I saw charm in her eyes.
Great and famous people of Florence. Statue on the facade of the Uffizi Gallery.
There are flowers in my gardens, sadness in yours...
There are flowers in my gardens, sadness in yours.
Come to me, beautiful sadness
Bewitch me like a smoky veil
My gardens are a painful distance.
You are a petal of Iranian white roses,
Come here, into the gardens of my longings,
So that there are no jerky movements,
So that the music has plastic poses,
So that it rushes from ledge to ledge
The thoughtful name Beatrice
And so that it’s not a choir of maenads, but a maiden choir
Sang the beauty of your sad lips.
Nikolay Gumilyov
Name
The name was quite popular in Italy, and, due to its consonance with the word “beata” - blessed, had clear Christian connotations that would be useful to Dante in “The Divine Comedy”.
Further in “New Life” he gives a description of his life in the subsequent period: despite the fact that they apparently moved in the same society with Beatrice, they never spoke again. And so that his gaze would not betray his feelings, Dante, to divert his eyes, made other ladies the visible object of his worship, and once this even caused the condemnation of Beatrice, who did not talk to him at their next meeting.
He also describes how he met her once at someone else's wedding, and how several years before Beatrice's death he had a vision of her death, as well as various other situations related to his inner experiences and leading to the creation of his poems.
The poet’s biographer writes: “The poet’s love story is very simple. All events are the most insignificant. Beatrice passes him on the street and bows to him; he meets her unexpectedly at a wedding celebration and falls into such indescribable excitement and embarrassment that those present, and even Beatrice herself, mock him, and his friend must take him away from there. One of Beatrice's friends dies, and Dante composes two sonnets about this; he hears from other women how much Beatrice grieves over the death of her father... These are the events; but for such a high cult, for such love, of which the sensitive heart of a brilliant poet was capable, this is a whole inner story, touching in its purity, sincerity and deep religiosity.”
Dante reading
Then, 8 years after the second conversation and three years after her marriage, Beatrice died - she was only 24 years old. Boccaccio, in his biographical work about his older contemporary, writes: “Her death plunged Dante into such grief, into such contrition, into such tears that many of his closest relatives and friends feared that the matter could only end in death. And they thought that it would follow soon, because they saw that he did not give in to any sympathy, to any consolation. The days were like nights and the nights were like days. Not one of them passed without groans, without sighs, without copious tears. His eyes seemed to be two abundant sources, so much so that many wondered where he got so much moisture from to feed his tears... The crying and grief he felt in his heart, as well as the neglect of all concerns for himself, gave him the appearance of an almost wild man. He became thin, grew a beard and no longer looked at all like his former self. Therefore, not only friends, but everyone who saw him, looking at his appearance, were filled with pity, although while this life, full of tears, lasted, he showed up to few people except his friends.”
When she died, Dante studied philosophy in despair and took refuge in reading Latin texts written by people who, like him, had lost a loved one. The end of his crisis coincided with the composition of the "Vita Nuova" (which literally means "rebirth, renewal"). On the pages of “The Symposium,” his next work, it is said that after the death of Beatrice, Dante turned to searching for the truth, which “as if in a dream” he saw in “New Life.”
Real Portinari
Scientists have been debating for a long time over the identification of the real Beatrice. The generally accepted version is that her name was Biche di Folco Portinari and she was the daughter of the respected citizen banker of Florence Folco di Portinari (Folco di Ricovero Portinari). This version comes from Boccaccio, who writes in his lecture on "The Inferno" that the lady with whom Dante was in love was called Beatrice, that she was the daughter of a wealthy and respected citizen Folco Portinari and the wife of Simone de'Bardi from the influential Florentine banker Bardi family . It is important that Boccaccio's stepmother, Margherita dei Mardoli, daughter of Monna Lappa, born Portinari, was thus Beatrice's second cousin. At the end of 1339, Boccaccio could still find Mrs. Lappa alive or hear her stories about the past in the family. Biographer Dante Golenishchev-Kutuzov writes that “despite the fact that Boccaccio sometimes added some details to Dante’s biography, this testimony is trustworthy.”
Folco was a neighbor of the Alighieri family, born in Portico di Romagna and moved to Florence (d. 1289). Folco had 6 daughters and donated generously to the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. Dante writes that Beatrice's closest relative (obviously a brother) was his closest friend—the kind of friendship one would expect for two boys next door.
Beatrice's date of birth is calculated based on the words of Dante, who said how many years she was younger than him. However, there is insufficient documentary evidence about it, which makes its existence unproven. The only document is the will of Folco di Portinare, dated 1287, which reads: « ..item d. Bici filie sue et uxoris d. Simonis del Bardis reliquite..., lib.50 ad floren"- an indication of the daughter Biche (diminutive of “Beatrice”) and her husband. Beatrice married the banker Simone dei Bardi, nicknamed Mona, probably in January 1287. According to other sources, much earlier, even in adolescence. This assumption is based on new finds in the archives of the Bardi dynasty. A document from 1280 concerns the sale of Simone to his brother of a piece of land, which was made with the consent of "his wife Beatrice" - then she was about 15 years old. Another paper, from 1313, talks about the marriage of Simone's daughter named Francesca with Francesco Pierozzi Strozzi, but it is not indicated which wife - the first Beatrice, or the second - Bilia (Sibilla) di Puccio Deciaioli. He also had a son, Bartolo, and a daughter, Gemma, by Baroncelli.
Tombstone of Beatrice Portinari in the Church of Santa Margherita de' Cerci
A plausible hypothesis is that Beatrice's early death was related to childbirth. It is traditionally believed that her grave is located in the church of Santa Margherita de' Cerci, not far from the houses of Alighieri and Portinare, in the same place where her father and his family are buried. This is where the memorial plaque is located. However, this version is doubtful, since according to custom she was supposed to be buried in her husband’s tomb (Basilica of Santa Croce, next to the Pazzi Chapel).
Dante himself married by convenience 1-2 years after the death of Beatrice (the date is given as 1291) to Donna Gemma from the aristocratic family of Donati.
In works
Dante's love for Beatrice is closely connected with his love for poetry; in his works, Dante idealized his love for Beatrice.
Among Dante's youthful poems there is a sonnet to his friend, Guido Cavalcanti, an expression of a real, playful feeling, far from any transcendence. Beatrice is called a diminutive of her name: Biche. She is obviously married, because with the title monna (madonna) two other beauties are mentioned next to her, whom the poet’s friends were fond of and sang about, Guido Cavalcanti and Lapo Gianni.
"New life"
Beatrice was the main inspirer of Dante's work “Vita Nuova” (c. 1293), most of the poems in the book are about her, he calls her “gentilissima” (kindest) and “benedetta” (blessed). “New Life” consists of sonnets, canzones and a lengthy prose story-commentary about love for Beatrice.
With other ladies you're above me
You laugh, but you don’t know the strength,
That my mournful appearance was transformed:
I was amazed by your beauty.
Oh, if only they knew what torment
I'm languishing, I would feel pity.
Amor, bending over you like a luminary,
Everything is blinding; with an imperious hand
Confused spirits of my mind
He burns with fire or drives away;
And then I contemplate you alone.
And I take on an unusual appearance,
But I hear - who can help me? -
Exiles exhausted by sobs.
To Dante, love seemed something sacred, mysterious, carnal motives disappeared to the desire to see Beatrice, to the thirst for her greetings, to the bliss of singing her praises.
The feeling was tuned to the extremes of spirituality, carrying with it the image of the sweetheart: she was no longer in the company of cheerful poets (as in the early sonnet). Gradually spiritualized, she becomes a ghost, “the young sister of the angels”; this is God's angel, they said about her when she walked, crowned with modesty; they are waiting for her in heaven.
In “New Life” there are no facts, no love story; but every sensation, every meeting with Beatrice, her smile, refusal of greetings - everything receives serious significance, which the poet thinks about as a secret that has happened to him. After the first dates, the thread of reality begins to get lost in the world of aspirations and expectations, mysterious correspondences of the numbers three and nine and prophetic visions, lovingly and sadly tuned, as if in an anxious awareness that all this will not last long. The repeated repetition of the period of 9 (a multiple of the Holy Trinity), which Dante uses more than once, is one of the arguments about the rather large role of fiction in the love described by the poet: “The numbers “nine” and “three” in all of Dante’s works are significant and invariably foreshadow Beatrice. The number “nine” marks her appearance as an infant to the youth Dante and her appearance at the Florentine festival in that spring, when she appeared to the gaze of the young man in the full bloom of her beauty. Beatrice died when the perfect number “ten” was repeated nine times, that is, in 1290.” .
The manner in which Dante expresses his love for Beatrice is consistent with the medieval concept of courtly love - a secret, unrequited form of admiration.
One day, Dante Alighieri began writing a canzone in which he wanted to depict the beneficial influence of Beatrice on him. He began and probably did not finish, at least he reports only a fragment from it (§ XXVIII): at this time the news of Beatrice’s death was brought to him, and the next paragraph of the “New Life” begins with the words of Jeremiah (Lamentations I): “how lonely the once crowded city stands! He became like a widow; the great among the nations, the prince over the regions, became a tributary.” On the anniversary of her death, he sits and draws on a tablet: the figure of an angel comes out (§ XXXV).
His grief subsided so much that when one young beautiful lady looked at him with compassion, condoling with him, some new, unclear feeling awoke in him, full of compromises with the old, not yet forgotten. He begins to assure himself that the same love that makes him shed tears resides in that beauty. Every time she met him, she looked at him in the same way, turning pale, as if under the influence of love; it reminded him of Beatrice: after all, she was just as pale. He feels that he is beginning to look at the stranger and that, whereas before her compassion brought tears to him, now he does not cry. And he comes to his senses, reproaches himself for the unfaithfulness of his heart; he is hurt and ashamed.
Pilgrims wandering in care
About something that is probably far away
Left behind - after all, from a foreign land
Judging by your fatigue, you are wandering,
Isn’t that why you don’t shed tears?
That we came to the mournful city along the way
And you couldn’t hear about the misfortune?
But I believe in my heart - you will leave in tears.
Heard at will by you
It will hardly leave you indifferent
To what this city has suffered.
He was left without his Beatrice,
And if you talk about it in words,
I don’t have the strength to listen without tears. .
Beatrice appeared to him in a dream, dressed in the same way as the first time he saw her as a girl. It was the time of year when pilgrims passed through Florence in droves, heading to Rome to venerate the miraculous image. Dante returned to his old love with all the passion of mystical passion; he addresses the pilgrims: they go thinking, perhaps about the fact that they left their homes in their homeland; from their appearance one can conclude that they are from afar. And it must be from afar: they walk through an unknown city and do not cry, as if they do not know the reasons for the common grief.
“New Life” ends with the poet’s promise to himself not to talk about it anymore until he is able to do it in a worthy manner. “For this I work as hard as I can,” she knows; and if the Lord prolongs my life, I hope to say about her what has not yet been said about any woman, and then may God vouchsafe me to see the glorious one who now beholds the face of the Blessed One from the ages.”
"The Divine Comedy"
She also acts as a conductor in the Divine Comedy. There she takes over the baton of guide from Virgil, since the Latin poet, being a pagan, cannot enter heaven, and also because, being the embodiment of divine love (as her name is interpreted), it is she who leads to beatific visions. (The third guide will be Bernard of Clairvaux).
The figure of Beatrice appears in his work as a savior; moreover, at the beginning of the poem, Dante agrees to follow Virgil who met him only after he reports that he sent him to Beatrice. If in “New Life” she is still a real person, albeit without any shortcomings, then in this poem she went through the stage of “deification” and turned into an angelic being.
Illustration for the “Divine Comedy”: Beatrice carries the poet upward to the Holy Trinity
Beatrice leads Dante in the last book of Paradise, and the last 4 cantos of Purgatory. At the end of Purgatory, when Dante enters the Earthly Paradise, a solemn triumphal procession approaches him; among it is a wondrous chariot, and on it is Beatrice herself, in a green dress and a fiery-colored cloak. Beatrice turns to the angels and, accusing Dante, tells the story of his errors, especially emphasizing his extraordinary natural gifts, using which he could “achieve perfection in every virtue,” but “uncultivated soil produces bad and wild plants the more abundantly, the more fertile it is” - is the personification of his conscience.
Purgatory, XXXIII
And Beatrice, surrounded by sorrow,
She listened to them, like in sadness,
Perhaps only Mary at the cross.
When did they give space for speech,
She said, flaring up like a fire in the darkness,
And she stood up, and so her words sounded (...)
And, having moved on the eve of the week,
To me, the woman and the sage - follow her
The mania of the right hand ordered me to go.
And earlier than on his path
She dropped her tenth step,
The light of her eyes poured into my eyes.
Dante flies through the air after Beatrice; She looks up, he doesn't take his eyes off her. Moving from one planet to another, Dante does not feel this transition, it happens so easily, and he learns about it each time only because Beatrice’s beauty becomes more and more radiant as she approaches the source of eternal grace. As they reached the top of the stairs. At the direction of Beatrice, Dante looks down from here to the ground, and she seems so pitiful to him that he smiles at the sight of her. Then the poet and his leader are in the eighth sphere, the sphere of the fixed stars. Here Dante sees Beatrice’s full smile for the first time and is now able to bear its brilliance - able to bear it, but not to express it in words. Beatrice, having disappeared for a moment, appears already at the very top, on the throne, “crowning herself with a crown of eternal rays emanating from herself.” Dante turns to her with a plea.
Published: Kravchenko A.A. “The female analogue of Christ”: the image of Beatrice in the “Divine Comedy” // Man, image, word in the context of historical time and space: Materials of the All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference, April 23-24, 2015 / rep. ed. THEM. Erlikhson, Yu.I. Losev; Ryazan State University named after S.A. Yesenina. – Ryazan: Publishing house “Concept”, 2015. pp. 52-54.In modern feminist theology, Christianity is usually called a “male religion.” The image of God, although not directly gendered, is traditionally thought of in “male” categories. In this regard, the experiment of deification of the Lady, undertaken in the 13th century, is interesting. Italian poets of the “new sweet style” school. This ethical ideal, which inextricably links the Christian religion with the female image, reaches its apotheosis in the works of Dante Alighieri, finding its fullest expression in his main work, The Divine Comedy.
Dante deifies his beloved Beatrice (who, apparently, really had extraordinary moral qualities) already in his first poems, written in the spirit of the “new sweet style.”
After Beatrice's early death, the notes of deification sound louder, brighter, more expressive. The Lord has already called her to himself, and now she has taken her rightful place in Paradise among the heavenly angels. In one of his poems, Dante writes that “her good soul, full of all mercy,” ascended. In the original these lines sound “piena di grazia l’anima gentile”. This “piena di grazia” is nothing more than “gratia plena” from the Latin hymn to the Virgin Mary (“Ave, Maria, gratia plena!”). Dante addresses his deceased beloved in a way that could only be addressed to the highest, holiest woman of Christianity - the Mother of God.
Dante ends his first book of poems, “New Life,” with a promise to say about Beatrice “what has never been said about anyone else.” We find the embodiment of this plan in the poet’s most outstanding work - The Divine Comedy.
In fact, the glorification of Beatrice in the Comedy is a continuation of the traditions of the “new sweet style”. In the poem we find traces of it, in some places changed almost beyond recognition. The same deification of a lady, at the same time both a beloved and a heavenly being. Remaining a real woman, Beatrice in the Comedy is the personification of divine love, wisdom and revelation, truth, Christianity and the Christian church, theology and scholasticism (which in the medieval tradition was viewed exclusively in a positive sense - as the way of knowing God).
According to the plot of the poem, it is Beatrice who saves Dante, who is on the verge of spiritual death; thanks to her prayers and intercession, he receives an unprecedented opportunity to visit the afterlife during his lifetime; she also lifts him to the highest heavenly spheres.
Beatrice in the “Comedy” is spoken of as a kind of female “analogue” of Christ, although symbolically in some places of the poem she turns out to be even higher (for example, during the mystical procession in canto XXIX of “Purgatory” the Griffin, personifying Christ, draws a chariot in which he sits Beatrice).
The very meeting of the poet with his beloved in the Earthly Paradise - for all its drama - occurs solely thanks to Beatrice. It was she who came to the aid of Dante in his sinful delusions; in order to save him, she descended into Hell. And her harsh judgment itself has a single goal: to forgive and grant salvation. Beatrice also speaks about this:
“So deep was his trouble,
What could be done to save him?
Only the spectacle of those who perished forever.
And I visited the gates of the dead,
Asking in anguish for help
The one whose hand brought him here"
and Dante - having already reached the heights of heaven:
“Oh lady, the joy of my hopes,
You, to give me help from above
Left her mark in the depths of Hell,
In all that I was called to contemplate,
Your bounty and noble will
I recognize both power and grace."
In the original, the word “soffristi” - “suffered” is striking here: “you suffered for my good, leaving your traces in hell.” Beatrice paid Dante's salvation at a difficult price... And, probably, he fully realizes this right here - at the very top of Paradise. Suffering and atonement for the sins of another person... The idea, which is one of the central meanings of Christianity, receives a “female” embodiment in Dante’s poem. A woman’s love is elevated to the rank of Divine, sacrificial and saving Love.
This became the pinnacle of Dante's glorification of his beloved. The poet kept his promise - no one before him (and, perhaps, after) had ever spoken such words about any woman. This highest deification, the merging of reality and symbol into one person and the ascension of the beloved to the heavenly realms has become one of the brightest, lightest, divinely pure and holy images of a woman in world civilization.
Bibliography:
Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. New life / trans. from Italian M.: AST, 2002.
It is often imagined that Beatrice is one of the clearest or even the most “transparent” figure of Dante’s “Comedy”: a beautiful young Florentine who charmed the young Dante, died early and was mourned by him in his famous “New Life”. And, according to the poet’s unconditional conviction, elevated by the highest powers to heaven. “Comedy” was written in her glory. The love that arose on Earth does not go out in heaven: with bright, warm, sometimes scorching flashes of human warmth, it illuminates the cold corners of the universe depicted by Dante.
But the heavenly Beatrice in the poem is enriched with the sophistry of Aquinas’s philosophy. Beatrice argues “following Thomas” (R., XIV, 6-7). Dante the author forces blessed Beatrice to conduct scientific disputes with Dante the hero of the poem, trying through her lips to dispel doubts in matters of religion expressed through his lips.
An important point should be added to this: according to the concept of the poem, it is Beatrice, by the will of heavenly powers, who gives the poet permission to visit the otherworldly possessions of God. She, as mentioned, does this through Virgil, to whom she entrusts the guidance of the living poet through Hell.
But in the soul of Dante the author, love is alive for that woman who captivated him in his early youth, whose untimely death he mourned in his poems and in whose name he decided to create this grandiose poetic epic. And Beatrice, too, cannot throw it off, completely hide her love for the poet, the one for which he was waiting so much on earth and which he decided to depict in the poem. Echoes of their mutual feelings rarely break through, but they cannot but excite the reader. Dante, alive and not a saint, expresses his feelings openly.
In La Vita Nueva, his early work, Dante says that he first met Beatrice when he was 9 years old, in 1274, and did not see her again until another 9 years later, in 1283. The symbolic repetition of the number 9 creates an atmosphere of some incompleteness and mystery of the narrative, in which the heroine lives as a spiritual creature that evokes surprised admiration. Today, the real existence of this ideal woman is beyond doubt: it is known that she was the daughter of Folco Portinari, a generous Florentine who founded the Santa Maria Nuova hospital, the largest at that time in the city; then she was given as a wife to Simone de' Bardi, who, according to some sources, held significant positions in the city (he was repeatedly a podesta and “captain of the people” - the city mayor).
Beatrice, this “very young angel,” died, barely 24 years old, on June 8, 1290. In the “new life” her image is endowed with allegorical and mystical meaning, which elevate her above the “angelic women” of other Stilnovists and attract the poet himself to salvation and perfection, i.e. to the transition to a completely new, updated state. The role of the “earthly” Beatrice precedes the role of the “theological” Beatrice, who in the other world becomes a symbol of divine Knowledge, without ever losing her femininity. She comes to Dante's aid when he finds himself in the "wild forest", calling upon Virgil; appears to him at the top of Purgatory and reproaches him for his apostasy; then becomes his beloved guide through the celestial spheres of Paradise in the intellectual, moral and religious ascent that culminates in the contemplation of God. According to De Sanctis, Dante, through the image of Beatrice, was able to poetically deify the human in the “New Life” and humanly soften the divine in the “Comedy”. In infinity lives “her beautiful smile” (Nzh, XXI, 8), with which he was in love during her life; Beatrice, transformed in glory and bliss, remains the same “beautiful and laughing” (Paradise, XIV), as she was in the works of the Stilnovists, ready to captivate him with “a ray of a smile” (Paradise, XVIII, 19).
8. “New Life” is a prose narrative about the poet’s love for Beatrice. 31 poems, written in the period from 1283 to 1292 (or a little later), which are included in the text of the 45 chapters that make up the book, accompanied by clarifications of the dates and circumstances in which they were written, and comments on the texts, become key, reflect the most intense moments of the entire love story experienced by the poet. In its unified composition, this is a new book, and it becomes clear why in our time it can be considered the first novel of the New Age, like “The Feast” - the first scientific work in Italian. Some of the facts given in the “little book” (libello) - as Dante himself calls the “New Life” - have biographical authenticity, others seem fictitious. All of them, however, outline a very important picture of the inner world and are included in the “rarefied”, dreamy atmosphere of the narrative. It is also important to note that the urban reality of Florence, through the streets of which Beatrice and her friends walk, becomes a harmonious background for the image of this perfect creature, “descended from heaven to earth in confirmation of miracles.” And Beatrice looks here more sublime thanks to her spiritual qualities - and yet more humane than the feudal ladies glorified by Provençal poets with their studied sophistication, living in the aristocratic halls of their gloomy castles.
Born in 1265, died in 1321.
Vita nova comedy divina. Trade, banking, and crafts flourished in Florence - Florence became the most prosperous city. The rich surrounded themselves with artists and poets who glorified them.
Dante was a Florentine, belonged to the guild of apothecaries (educated, sacred people), most likely studied law in Bologna. Dante's life is shrouded in darkness; not everything is known from his biography.
He loved Florence very much and could not imagine his existence outside of Florence. He enjoyed authority as a poet, philosopher and politician. He took part in public life, was elected to the position of prior (he was one of the governors of Florence). Party passions were in full swing in Florence - there were two parties Guelphs And Ghibellines. Basically, the Guelph party included wealthy people, owners of factories and banks. The Ghibellines were basically the Florentine aristocracy. And between these two parties there was a merciless struggle for power. Dante himself also took part in these party feuds, which were further complicated by the fact that the Guelph party was divided into white and black Guelphs. Dante's misfortune was that his opponents won. Dante was expelled from Florence by his political opponents. We do not know exactly what year he left Florence, but apparently it happened at the very beginning of the 14th century. By that time, Dante had already gained fame and glory, and in exile he was received with honors in different cities of Italy, but he dreamed of returning to Florence. To do this, it was necessary to perform a rite of repentance. He had to put on a white robe and walk around the whole of Florence with a candle during the day. Dante did not want to repent and continued to engage in creativity in exile.
Dante's main work "The Divine Comedy".
"New life" - which Dante worked on in the 90s of the 13th century. NJ is the poet's first autobiography. New Life is written in both poetry and prose; prose text is combined with poetic text. NJ tells about Dante's meeting and love for Beatrice (“the bestower of bliss”). This is a real young girl, apparently, she did not know that Dante was in love with her, for Dante’s love for her is also a kind of love from afar, love is exclusively platonic, spiritual, sublime. He interprets the image of Beatrice as the earthly incarnation of Madonna. He worships her, bows before her, admires her. Biatrice symbolizes everything that is most important in Dante's life: nobility, faith, kindness, beauty, wisdom, philosophy, heavenly bliss. A new life began with a meeting with Beatrice. The first time he saw her was when she was 9 years old. She was wearing a red dress (everything is full of symbolism and red is a symbol of passion). He saw her a second time nine years later, when she was eighteen and wearing a white dress (purity). And the happiest moment in Dante’s life, when Beatrice smiled at him slightly. When he saw her for the third time, he rushed towards her, and she pretended that she did not recognize him. He realized that he should show restraint and should not reveal his feelings. And alas, this was their last meeting, because soon Beatrice died and the poet’s heart was pierced by grief and he took a vow to glorify Beatrice, in this he saw the meaning of life.
Everything is filled with some inner meaning. In addition to what he sets out here very prosaically, he captures the most intense moments of his spiritual life in poetry. The New Life includes 25 sonnets, 3 canzones and 1 ballad.
Sonnet – 14 lines. the main lyric genre in Renaissance poetry. The sonnet is the most common expression of thoughts and feelings. Sonnets were written about love, about the immortality of creativity, simply about life, about death. Those. A sonnet is always a poem of a philosophical nature. The sonnet most likely originated in Italy in the 12th century, possibly in Sicily. 14 lines. Consists of two quatrains and two tercets (4+4, 3+3).
The popularity of the Sonnet genre came with the poetry of Dante; he demonstrated to the world the beauty of sonnet forms.
“...The stern Dante did not despise the sonnet
Petrarch poured out the heat of love in him...” (c) Pushkin.
Treatise "Feast". The name is borrowed from Plato. Of course, it has an allegorical meaning - a feast of knowledge, a feast of the mind.
Treatise "On the Monarchy". Dante was a supporter of imperial power; he believed that spiritual power should belong to the pope, and secular power to the emperor. Separated spiritual and secular power. His sympathies were with the emperor.
Traktar “On Folk Eloquence”. This treatise is written in Latin, but Dante argues that literature should exist in Italian. The Italian language – “the language of Tuscany (region of Italy) – is the barley bread of poetry.” Latin was appropriate in this treatise, because. he was more scientific.
The Divine Comedy
It was created in the 14th century and Dante worked on it for about 20 years. Wrote the work "Comedia". Comedies were works that began with dramatic events and ended with a happy ending. Comedy is not necessarily a dramatic work. If we define the genre of the “Divine Comedy”, then it is poem. This is a vision of the afterlife. "BK" is a work of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. “BK” begins with verses:
“Having completed half of my earthly life
I found myself in a dark forest
"BK" is written in stanzas that consist of three lines. A-B-A > B-C-B > etc. It turns out to be a kind of chain. Mandelstam noted in the essay that the weaving is so complex that it is impossible to single out individual lines. Compared with the Cathedral (equally slender and majestic). Pushkin said that even one plan of BC testifies to the genius of Dante.
“The Divine Comedy” consists of three parts: “Hell”, “Purgatory”, “Paradise”. This is how the world order seemed to be. It seemed that the human soul went through three stages. Hell, Purgatory and Heaven consist of 33 songs. And there is one introductory song. The resulting figure is 100 - for the literature of that period - a number denoting greater integrity. In the Divine Comedy, a special role is played by the number “3” and its multiple of three (the soul undergoes three stages; the divine trinity; 3 is a sacred number).
The Divine Comedy is the most complex work of world literature. The difficulty is that everything is full of allegorical meaning. “I found myself in a dark forest” - the forest is a symbol of wandering. There are three animals in this forest: a lion (pride), a she-wolf (greed), and a panther (lust). These three animals that he met in the dark forest symbolize the main human vices. But Beatrice, Dante canonizes her, declares her a saint of her own poetic will, seeing Dante’s wanderings in earthly life, wants to show him another, afterlife. To discover what awaits a person there, in another world. And he sends Virgil to meet him. Virgil is also a symbolic image - this is the earthly mind, this is the poet, this is the guide through the circles of hell. While Beatrice embodies divine wisdom. Beatrice herself is in heaven.
The architecture of hell was not invented by Dante, this is how hell was imagined in the Middle Ages. Hell is divided into 9 circles;
19. “Limbo” - unbaptized babies, ancient poets and philosophers are deprived of heavenly bliss, but they do not suffer. They did not exist joyfully, but there was no particular suffering. They cannot go to heaven through no fault of their own.
20. Sensuality is punished. Surrendered to the whirlwind of passion. One of the most wonderful songs is canto five, which tells the story of Francesca da Rimini and the love of Paolo. This is a true story that was widely known. Francesca tells this story. The Divine Comedy is distinguished by its laconic style. This story is told very briefly. The principle of Dante's poetry is “According to sin and retribution.” Dante makes the lovers Francesco and Paolo in the first and second circles rotate in a whirlwind, i.e. the metaphorical expression “whirlwind of passion” takes on a literal meaning. Francesca tells how she fell in love with Paolo (her husband's brother) and how they were passionate about each other, that they read a chivalric romance about Lancelot together and Francesca very briefly says: “We read no more that day.” Their crime becomes known, the husband commits reprisals, and they die. Dante punishes them in hell, punishes them severely (i.e. acts like a medieval man), but after listening to Francesca’s story, he himself has compassion for them. He feels immensely sorry for the suffering Francesco and Paolo.
21. Gluttons are punished. Here he depicts the famous gluttons in Florence.
22. Misers and spendthrifts are punished. Dante believes that spenders and misers have lost their sense of proportion - and this is one sin.
23. Angry and envious.
24. Heretics. Here he acts like a Medieval poet. A crime against God, against faith and religion is one of the most terrible.
25. Rapists. People who have committed murder, suicide; The image of suicides is very expressive. They turned into dry branches, and when the poet, led by Virgil, accidentally broke the branch, blood began to ooze from it.
26. Deceivers, seducers, cunning people. For Dante, deception is also a terrible crime.
27. Traitors. Traitors. The worst crime is betrayal. The traitors are Judas, who betrayed Christ, and Brutus, who betrayed Caesar, which once again reminds us that Dante was a supporter of strong imperial power.
With Dante everything is symmetrical. 9 circles of Hell and he makes 7 purgatories. And the human soul rises through the steps, is freed from the 7 deadly sins, sins disappear from the human body and it approaches heaven.
There is more abstraction in Paradise and Purgatory. In Hell the images are more earthly. In Paradise, of course, Dante meets Beatrice and Dante tastes heavenly bliss.
“The Divine Comedy” is translated into Russian by Lazinsky.
DZ: Draw hell.
Dante. "The Divine Comedy".
Dante died in 1265 in Florence. The plot is from medieval “walkings”. Of particular importance is the Aeneid. The afterlife is not opposed to earthly life, but, as it were, its continuation. Each image can be interpreted in different ways.
The action begins in the forest. This song contains a combination of concrete and allegorical meaning. The forest is an allegory of the delusion of the human soul and the chaos in the world. All subsequent images of the prologue are also allegorical. D. meets 3 animals: a panther, a lion, a she-wolf. Each of them personifies a certain type of moral evil and def. negative social force. Panther – voluptuousness and oligarchic government. Leo - pride and violence and the tyranny of a cruel ruler. The she-wolf is greed and the Roman Church, which is mired in greed.
All together are forces that hinder progress. The top of the hill that D strives for is salvation (moral elevation) and a state built on moral principles. Virgil is an allegory of man. wisdom. The embodiment of the knowledge to which humanists devoted themselves. Beatrice – the connection of the image with the “New Life”.
1 lap. Pagans and unbaptized infants. Dante meets Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan there, as well as a lot of ancient mythical and real creatures: Hector, Aeneas, Cicero, Caesar, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, etc. In this circle, only sighs are heard: they are not particularly tormented.
2nd circle: Minos sits in the second circle and decides who to send to which circle. Here, overly loving personalities rush around in a whirlwind, incl. Paolo, Francesca, Cleopatra, Achilles (!), Dido, etc.
3rd circle: gluttons suffer in the icy rain. I won’t list them further by name, you won’t remember them anyway, but I’ll have to look for them at scrap. There are mostly Dante's contemporaries. Cerberus lives in the same circle.
4: misers and spendthrifts. They collide with each other, shouting “What are you saving for?” or “What should I throw?” Here is the Stygian swamp (regarding the water surfaces in Hell: the river Acheron encircles 1 circle of Hell, falling down, forms the Styx (Stygian swamp), which surrounds the city of Dita (Lucifer). Below the waters of the Styx transform into the blazing river Phlegethon, and he, already in the center it turns into the icy lake Cocytus, where Lucifer is frozen.)
5: The angry ones sit in the Stygian swamp.
6: heretics. They lie in burning tombs.
7: three belts in which rapists of different types are tormented: over people, over themselves (suicides) and over a deity. In the first belt, D. meets centaurs. In the same circle there are moneylenders as rapists against nature.
8: 10 evil crevices where they languish: pimps and seducers, flatterers who sold the church. positions, soothsayers, astrologers, sorceresses, bribe-takers, hypocrites, thieves, treacherous advisers (here Ulysses and Diomedes), instigators of discord (Mohammed and Bertrand de Born), counterfeiters, posing as other people, lying with words.
9: Belts: Kaina – those who betrayed their relatives (named Kaina). Antenora are traitors to like-minded people (here Ganelon). Tolomea - traitors to friends.. Giudecca (named after Judas) - traitors to benefactors. Here Lucifer chews Judas. This is the very center of the earth. Following the wool of L. Dante and Virgil are selected to the surface of the Earth from the other side.
Hell - 9 circles. Purgatory – 7, + pre-purgatory, + earthly paradise, paradise – 9 heavens. Geometric symmetry of the Earth and symmetry in the composition: 100 songs = 1 introductory song + 33 each for Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. This construction was a new phenomenon in literature. D. relied on medieval symbolism of number (3 - Trinity and its derivative 9). In building a model of Hell, D. follows Aristotle, who classifies the sins of intemperance into category 1, violence into category 2, and deception into category 3. D. has 2-5 circles for intemperate people, 7 for rapists (6 I don’t know where, it’s not said, think for yourself), 8-9 for deceivers, 8 for simply deceivers, 9 for traitors. Logic: the more material the sin, the more forgivable it is. Punishment is always symbolic. Deception is worse than violence because it destroys spiritual connections between people.