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    The Divine Comedy
    The Divine Comedy
    The Divine Comedy
    Ebook549 pages7 hours

    The Divine Comedy

    By Dante Alighieri

    4/5

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    The "Divine Comedy" was entitled by Dante himself merely "Commedia," meaning a poetic composition in a style intermediate between the sustained nobility of tragedy, and the popular tone of elegy. The word had no dramatic implication at that time, though it did involve a happy ending. The poem is the narrative of a journey down through Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory, and through the revolving heavens into the presence of God. In this aspect it belongs to the two familiar medieval literary types of the Journey and the Vision. It is also an allegory, representing under the symbolism of the stages and experiences of the journey, the history of a human soul, painfully struggling from sin through purification to the Beatific Vision. Contained in this volume is the complete "Divine Comedy," from the translation of Charles Eliot Norton.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781596741607
    Author

    Dante Alighieri

    Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was an Italian poet. Born in Florence, Dante was raised in a family loyal to the Guelphs, a political faction in support of the Pope and embroiled in violent conflict with the opposing Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman Emperor. Promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati at the age of 12, Dante had already fallen in love with Beatrice Portinari, whom he would represent as a divine figure and muse in much of his poetry. After fighting with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino in 1289, Dante returned to Florence to serve as a public figure while raising his four young children. By this time, Dante had met the poets Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia, and Brunetto Latini, all of whom contributed to the burgeoning aesthetic movement known as the dolce stil novo, or “sweet new style.” The New Life (1294) is a book composed of prose and verse in which Dante explores the relationship between romantic love and divine love through the lens of his own infatuation with Beatrice. Written in the Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin, The New Life was influential in establishing a standardized Italian language. In 1302, following the violent fragmentation of the Guelph faction into the White and Black Guelphs, Dante was permanently exiled from Florence. Over the next two decades, he composed The Divine Comedy (1320), a lengthy narrative poem that would bring him enduring fame as Italy’s most important literary figure.

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    Reviews for The Divine Comedy

    4/5

    2,357 ratings46 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Extraordinary illustrations...Gustave Dore....Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    • 5/5
      Un classico in un'edizione davvero prestigiosa.
    • 4/5
      Dante's classic poem of his journeys through hell and heaven.
    • 3/5
      In finally sitting down and reading the entire Divine Comedy, I can now see why The Inferno is usually separated from Purgatorio & Paradiso. The Inferno is captivating and paints vivid pictures of what Dante &. Virgil are seeing and experiencing. However Purgatorio & Paradiso seemed to lack this each in their own way. Purgatorio was still able to paint the pictures but not quite as vividly. Perhaps the subject matter was not as captivating as well. Dante certainly had the gift of making Purgatory feel not too bad but also not too good. In Paradiso we switch guides from Virgil to Beatrice. It is then that Dante seems to loose his focus on his surroundings and turns toward fauning over Beatrice's beauty. I figured that the Canto with God in it would have been a bit more powerful & profound. Lucifer's appearance was more awe inspiring than God's. Don't get me wrong, I give credit to the absolute classic that this work is, however I think there are some issues with it from a reader's standpoint. When all of the action is over in the 1st portion of the book it becomes a chore to finish reading it. All-in-all this entire work was beautifully written in the terza rima rhyme scheme which adds a bit of romance to every line read. I have to mention that I think it's funny how people get the details of this work confused with The Holy Bible. There in itself stands testement to how amazing this work has been throughout history. Despite my personal issues with reading it I am honored to have read such famous and renouned piece of historical literature.
    • 4/5
      Dore illustrations. Beautiful!
    • 3/5
      In finally sitting down and reading the entire Divine Comedy, I can now see why The Inferno is usually separated from Purgatorio & Paradiso. The Inferno is captivating and paints vivid pictures of what Dante &. Virgil are seeing and experiencing. However Purgatorio & Paradiso seemed to lack this each in their own way. Purgatorio was still able to paint the pictures but not quite as vividly. Perhaps the subject matter was not as captivating as well. Dante certainly had the gift of making Purgatory feel not too bad but also not too good. In Paradiso we switch guides from Virgil to Beatrice. It is then that Dante seems to loose his focus on his surroundings and turns toward fauning over Beatrice's beauty. I figured that the Canto with God in it would have been a bit more powerful & profound. Lucifer's appearance was more awe inspiring than God's. Don't get me wrong, I give credit to the absolute classic that this work is, however I think there are some issues with it from a reader's standpoint. When all of the action is over in the 1st portion of the book it becomes a chore to finish reading it. All-in-all this entire work was beautifully written in the terza rima rhyme scheme which adds a bit of romance to every line read. I have to mention that I think it's funny how people get the details of this work confused with The Holy Bible. There in itself stands testement to how amazing this work has been throughout history. Despite my personal issues with reading it I am honored to have read such famous and renouned piece of historical literature.
    • 5/5
      One of the absolute summits of western (arguably, world) literature.The general outline is well-enough known: Dante has a vision (on Easter weekend, 1300) in which he visits Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. (The vision frame is external to the poem itself; the Dante inside the poem is the dreamer from the very beginning.) He is guided through the first two realms (well, all of Hell and most of Purgatory) by Virgil, and through the rest of Purgatory and all of Heaven by Beatrice, the focus of his early work La Vita Nuova. He begins in a dark wood, "selva oscura" and ends with the beatific vision of the union of the Christian Trinity and the Aristotelian unmoved mover: "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle".On its way he maintains a multi-level allegory, fills it with an encyclopaedia of his day's science, history, and theology, carries out an extended argument regarding the (sad) politics of his day and of his beloved Florence, from which he was an exile, and does so in verse which stays at high level of virtuosity throughout. It's the sort of thing that writers like Alanus de Insulis tried in a less ambitious way and failed (well, failed by comparison: who except specialists reads the De Planctu Naturae these days?).There is no equivalent achievement, and very few at the same level. This would get six stars if they were available.
    • 5/5
      It is a wonderful read if you have footnotes to understand who the people he is talking about is. I found it fascinating and I hope that I finish it someday.
    • 3/5
      Contains some wonderful imagery, but seems rather obsolete in certain sections. Still a masterful writing display though, which has had its impact over the last centuries.
    • 5/5
      Wow! All I can say is what a pleasurable and enriching experience to have had the opportunity to listen to Dante's legendary poetry read aloud. The only metaphorical example I can think of is the difference between watching an epic film (like "Life of Pi") in 2D or 3D.

      Yes! Dante's Divine Comedy book vs. audiobook is on the same proportional movie-going scale! I highly recommend indulging yourself with this audiobook. It's one you'll want to purchase, not borrow!
    • 4/5
      eBook

      Perhaps this was not the best choice of a book to read at the gym. That decision was certainly not helped by the fact that the eBook version I read had no footnotes.

      I'd read the Inferno before, but never Purgatorio or Paradiso, and I was a little disappointed that the physicality I admired so much in the first part was slowly phased out as the poem went on. I suppose Dante was making a point about the difference between the physical world and his relationship to god, but what was so impressive about the Inferno was how he charged a discussion of ideas and morality with a concrete dimension. He made the abstract real.

      This was carried over into Purgatorio, although to a lesser extent, but a significant portion of Paradiso seemed to be about his inability to fully render his experience. This seemed to me to be a structural flaw, as we are suddenly asked to once again perceive abstract concepts in an abstract way, and it seems a huge let down.

      Or maybe I just needed footnotes to explain it to me.
    • 2/5
      I didn't enjoy this book very much. There were a lot of references to people in politics at the time it was written (1200). Its interesting to see Dante's viewpoint on Catholicism during that time and throughout the book Virgil and Thomas Aquinas are referred to. I don't know too much about Catholicism then or now, so it was a little off topic for me. I was amazed at the technical aspect of the book. Dante refers to both mathematics in general and geometry at a fairly high level. My edition also had plenty of notes confiriming that most of Dante's calculations for sun, star and planet positions were correct. Seems a little technical for a religious story of a man's trip through hell, purgatory and heaven!
    • 5/5
      As with other books from a different time, take a course or get a good study guide. You'll never understand all the specific references to Florentine conflicts. Keep at it because understanding personalities, parody and sniping provides a lot of entertainment.
    • 5/5
      Here is where I default by saying...I am not a Christian. However I grew up in churches...I like to think I know the bible better than most Christians seeing as I have actually read it. And I appreciate aspects of the religion. More than anything...the most interesting to me has always been the Catholics. Dante...while being ever so colorful...and ever so in the past...gives me a fun little look at past Christianity. What I noticed in this segment...rather than the other two...even he had some small concerns over his own religion...largely the way God was meant to deal with certain things...like the people who had come before said religion. People who might have been just as pure and pious and deserving of Heaven as those who came after. I enjoyed my realization that while he understood the rules of his religion what could and could not be done...he believed over that..that God was loving and merciful...should always be loving and merciful and therefore he could not understand partial exclusion of some. Which again I say came as a nice surprise because in the first two...I often got the feeling he was merely speaking out against what had been done to him...through his beliefs and his skill as a poet. Not that I'm saying he didn't...because well really...throwing enemies in hell and friends in heaven would have perks. But I think there is a little more there and I like it..a lot.
    • 5/5
      I can't believe I read the whole thing. *phew*
    • 5/5
      This is a republication of the origial English translation. This is an amazing poem describing man's struggle with God and the afterlife.
    • 4/5
      Personally, I'm a bit of a purist. I was halfway through the Inferno section when I looked into the details behind the translation. The problem with translating a rhyme from one language to another--and keeping the phrase rhymed--required the translator to completely butcher both the wording of the original and the English language as a whole. At times, whole lines are added to the cantos that were not even in the original Italian version. I'm not touching it until I find a non-rhyming version that is more directly translated from the original.But still, it's a good read, so 4 stars.
    • 4/5
      The Divine Comedy epitomized medieval attitudes. From historical perspectives, this work serves as a window into the mentality of late middle ages in Italy, on the brink of the Renaissance. Scholastic thinking informs Dante's approach.
    • 5/5
      Deservedly a true classic, Dante's portrayal of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradisio is at the same time metaphysical allegory, religious and political commentary, and great poetry. I read John Ciardi's translation of the Inferno (1982) and Lawrence Binyon's interpretation of the latter two sections (1947, also includes several shorter poems and Dante's Vita Nuova). It is a work such as this that makes me wish my feeble mind could retain more of the specific details of what I read. The whole story takes place during the time of Easter, the various hours of which correspond to Dantes' travels. Inferno, in particular, hosts a myriad of fascinating events. We witness Dante descend with Virgil through a series of concentric rings, each holding a type of sinner and punishing them accordingly. Similar punihsments take place in Purgatorio, except of course that these seven deadly sins are being atoned for and occassionally a resident is freed to Paradise. Paradise also consists of a series of relative rewards, although everyone is completely happy with their lot in recognition of perfect justice (and they only differ in terms of relative bliss). Paradise is much more descriptive of the beauty and awe of God, Christ, and Mary. Dante used this work to compliment many of his friends and colleagues and also to disgrace political enemies and a host of popes.Two events in Dante's own life greatly influenced this final work of his -- his banishment from Florence and the death of his first love, Beatrice. The poem is structured in three sections each with 33 cantos consisting of three line groups. Together with the introduction, there are 10 cantos. Ciardi's translation is both more understandable and appealing to me.
    • 5/5
      I find this among the most amazing works I've ever read--despite that the work is essentially Christian Allegory and I'm an atheist. First and foremost for its structure. Recently I read Moby Dick and though it had powerful passages I found it self-indulgent and bloated and devoutly wished an editor had taken a hatchet to the numerous digressions. There is no such thing as digressions in Dante. I don't think I've ever read a more carefully crafted work. We visit three realms in three Canticas (Hell, Purgatory and Heaven) each of 33 cantos and in a terza rima verse in a triple rhyme scheme. Nothing is incidental or left to chance here. That's not where the structure ends either. Hell has nine levels, Purgatory has seven terraces on its mountain and Heaven nine celestial spheres (so, yes, there is a Seventh Heaven!) All in all, this is an imaginary landscape worthy of Tolkien or Pratchett, both in large ways and small details. I found it fitting how Dante tied both sins and virtues to love--a sin was love misdirected or applied, and the lower you go in hell, the less love there is involved, until at the lowest reaches you find Satan and traitors encased in a lake of ice. Then there are all the striking phrases, plays of ideas and gorgeous imagery that comes through despite translations. This might be Christian Allegory, but unlike say John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress it's far from dry or tedious and is full of real life contemporaries of Dante and historical figures. There are also Dante's guides here. His Virgil is wonderful--and the perfect choice. The great Latin poet of the Aeneid leading the great Italian poet who made his Tuscan dialect the standard with his poetry. Well, guide through Hell and Purgatory until he changes places with Beatrice. Which reminds me of that old joke--Heaven for the climate--Hell for the company.And certainly Hell is what stays most vividly in my mind. I remember still loving the Purgatorio--it's the most human and relatable somehow of the poems and Paradise has its beauties. But I remember the people of Hell best. There's Virgil of course, who must remain in limbo for eternity because he wasn't a Christian. There's Francesca di Rimini and her lover, for their adultery forever condemned to be flung about in an eternal wind so that even Dante pities them. And that, of course, is the flip side of this. Dante's poem embodies the orthodox Roman Catholic Christianity of the 1300s and might give even Christians today pause. Even though I don't count myself a Christian, I get the appeal of hell. In fact, I can remember exactly when I understood it. When once upon a time I felt betrayed, and knew there was no recourse. The person involved would never get their comeuppance upon this Earth. How nice I thought, if there really was a God and a Hell to redress the balance. The virtue of any Hell therefore is justice. These are the words Dante tells us are at hell's entrance.THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY,THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST. JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER;MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY,THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGSWERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY.ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.It's hard to see Dante's vision matching the orthodox doctrine as just however, even when I might agree a particular transgression deserves punishment. Never mind the virtuous and good in limbo because they weren't Christians or unbaptized or in hell because they committed suicide or were homosexual. And poor Cassio and Brutus, condemned to the lowest circle because they conspired to kill a tyrant who was destroying their republic. My biggest problem with hell is that it is eternal. Take all the worst tyrants who murdered millions, make them suffer not only the length of the lifetimes of their victims but all the years they might have had, I doubt if you add it up it comes to the age of the Earth--never mind eternity. Justice taken to extremes is not justice--it's vindictiveness and sadism. Something impossible for me to equate with "the primal love." Yet I loved this work so much upon my first read (I read the Dorothy Sayers translation) I went out and bought two other versions. One by Allen Mandelbaum (primarily because it was a dual language book with the Italian on one page facing the English translation) and a hardcover version translated by Charles Eliot Norton. Finally, before writing up my review and inspired by Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club, I got reacquainted by finding Longfellow's translation online. Of all of them, I greatly prefer Mandelbaum's translation. The others try to keep the rhyming and rhythm of the original and this means a sometimes tortured syntax and use of archaic words and the result is forced and often obscure, making the work much harder to read than it should be.
    • 4/5
      There is so much going on in The Divine Comedy that one reading is not enough to try to comprehend this book. Someone could, and I am sure many have, spend a lifetime reading and studying this.
    • 3/5
      The Divine Comedy is a long, narrative poem in three parts that tells of the still living Dante's visit to Hell and Purgatory, guided by the poet Virgil and ascension to Paradise, lead by his ideal woman, Beatrice. The author uses allegory to describe the journey of the soul toward God, and on the way reveals much about his own scientific andpolitical idealogies and medieval Christian theology. In The Inferno, the underworld is rife with a variety of mythological creatures. Dante is able to meet with the damned, including a number of prominent figures in history and literature, as well as his own personal acquaintences. There are nine concentric circles of Hell, where deeper levels house greater sinners and punishments. Satan is bound in a lake of ice in the deepest circle at the center of the Earth. In Purgatorio, Dante climbs through the seven terraces of mount Purgatory, each housing penitents guilty of one of the seven deadly sins. He joins the penitents in their pilgrimmage and purges himself of sin in order that he might see his beloved Beatrice and ascend into Heaven. Dante and Virgil meet many souls along the way who are surprised to see the living Dante among them. As a resident of Limbo, Virgil takes his leave before the ascension into heaven. Beatrice meets Dante and guides him through the nine celestial spheres. Dante discovers that all souls in Heaven are in contact with God and while all parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul, its ability to love God determines its placement in heaven. The Paradiso is a poem of fullfilment and completion and, contrary to The Inferno, does have a happy ending fitting of the title, Comedy.I tried reading a few different translations but preferred those that were more prose than poetry. If my first language was Italian I'm sure I would have enjoyed the original terza rima rhyme scheme, but any attempt at a similar rhyme scheme in English just doesn't work for me. Sadly, I found The Inferno and Purgatorio to be the most interesting realms of Dante's visit, but I'll chalk that up to the nature of Heaven being beyond our human ability to even imagine. I would hate to be one of the many whose sins were called out by the author so blatantly, but I have to admit that if the work were contemporary I might even find it humorous at times. At least I would be able to relate better. Overall it is an interesting and fairly quick read (if you skip all of the footnotes and commentary that take more lines than the poem itself) that I would recommend to anyone curious about this acclaimed work of literature.
    • 5/5
      This is the sort of work that seems beyond review. It is a classic of the highest order, one which I have only just scratched the surface. From even the barest reading, it is obvious that this work would reward close study and careful consideration. As someone who is not a specialist in poetry, particularly of this era, Christian theology, or the historical context, I can only record my impressions as someone reading this for its literary value. This review is based on the Everyman's Library edition of the Divine Comedy, which includes the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is translated by Allen Mandelbaum. I found the translation pleasurable to read, and it shows through some of Dante's poetry. Having heard readings of it in its original language, I can hardly imagine any translation really capturing its poetic brilliance, but such is the challenge facing all translations of poetry. While I cannot compare it with other translations, I did find this one an enjoyable experience to read.This edition also contains extensive end notes throughout. Unless one is steeped in the theology and history, this work would be impenetrable without these notes. Dante is constantly alluding to individuals of historical note (often only within his context), the political rivalry between the Black and White Guelphs plays an important role and the work is rife with symbolism (beyond the obvious punishments detailed in the Inferno!). Further, and most importantly, Dante is engaged with the philosophical and theological debates of the day, and he tries to defend certain positions in this work. I would have been lost without the notes here. Indeed, one of the most rewarding things about reading the poem is learning about the history and philosophical/theological context. Reading an edition without extensive notes not only makes the text more difficult to understand for a modern reader, but deprives one of one of the most rewarding experiences in reading it.The Inferno is the most famous of the three books, and it is no small wonder why. Dante's depiction of the levels of hell is riveting and powerful. The imagery throughout is engrossing. It is interesting, however, that Dante recognizes that his abilities to describe, in imagistic terms, what he observes diminish as he rises through Pugatory and Heaven. He consistently invokes higher and higher deities to help him match these sights poetically. Yet, taken in the imagery of the poem, none of the works is more immediately powerful than the Inferno. One of the most interesting aspects of the poem is how Dante rises to meet this challenge. While in the Inferno, Dante is able to describe all manner of punishment and pain, his descriptions of heaven often turn on the blinding nature of its beauty. Its beauty is such that his eyes fail, and the correspondingly imaginative nature of his poetry falls short. He compensates by revealing the beauty of his heaven in other ways. Most notably is that he does so by showing how the divine nature of heaven can meet all of his questions and intellectual challenges. The joy and beauty of heaven is revealed in its ability to provide rational coherence. While I may be over-intellectualizing Dante here (I am no scholar of this material), it was the intellectual nature of his work that really struck me.One final portion of the work that I found particularly moving is that Dante is a human being observing what he does, and this comes through in his emotions and questions most of all. Though he recognizes that the punishments of hell must be just (because they are divine justice), he pities those who suffer them. I wrestled with the same questions, and the reader cannot help but feel sympathy for these souls as Dante describes their punishments. Dante is our guide through these questions, and even if I as a reader am less than satisfied with the answers Dante comes with, he struggles with them. It is not merely a description and celebration of the divine, but rather a real struggle to understand it, and reconcile it to our own conception of justice and the world. This makes the work an interactive intellectual exercise, one works on the same problems that Dante does.
    • 4/5
      Hell is fun! in book form.
    • 4/5
      Quintessential tale of recovery - The way out is for Dante to journey deeper into Hell.
    • 4/5
      If you want the Italian text, with notes in English, you might track down the Grandgent/Singleton Divina Commedia published in (I think) 1972. (There's another, older, one with only Grandgent as editor.)
    • 4/5
      DRAFT notes - the neologism "trasumanar" in canto 1 of Paradiso (to go beyond the human). Why did Dante coin this new word? At this time in his day.Some of the metaphors sound somehow mixed or even wrong: In the Tuscan, "nel lago del cor m'era durata". Does the "hardening lake of my heart" prefigure the revelation at the end of the Inferno that its deepest pit is frozen? Is the not-burning, a pious reader surprise?
    • 5/5
      Throughout The Divine Comedy Dante claims that his is no mere story, but a vision granted to him by the divine. While your personal faith probably plays a role in how you assess that claim, one thing is certain: Dante was a visionary, and The Divine Comedy contains some of the most stunning imagery you'll find in literature. Everyone has heard of Dante's nine circles of hell, but how many know that the ninth circle is surrounded by a living wall of giants, chained for their rebellion? Or that the mountain of purgatory is the land that was thrust up by Lucifer's fall, and atop it sits the Garden of Eden? Or that in paradise the souls of all the protectors of humanity form a huge eagle that addresses Dante, the eagle being formed of countless souls that shine like rubies in the sunlight? Not to mention the ultimate image Dante gives us, of the highest realm of heaven, wherein every soul that has reached paradise joins together to take the shape of a white rose, with God at its center.

      It's beautiful stuff, and even in translation Dante's prose proves up to the task of describing it. From the opening of Inferno where Dante has lost his way to the final lines of each canticle that draw our minds to the stars, Dante is a masterful writer. Not only that, but he's an assertive writer as well. While I could easily imagine an author falling back on his beautiful writing and delivering only a milquetoast moral stance (and indeed, Dante mentions this temptation), in The Divine Comedy Dante makes his opinions known on issues large and small. He's not afraid to criticize the practice of blood feuds, or to pillory different orders of monks, or even to call out the leadership of the Church and the rulers of Italy. He places popes and kings in the fires of hell just as readily as he does false prophets and foreign conquerers.

      In addition to this, The Divine Comedy serves as perhaps the best memorial for a lost love to ever be written. Dante's first love Beatrice, dead before he began work on The Divine Comedy, is not only placed by Dante among the highest ranks of paradise, but it is through her mercy and care that Dante is granted his vision of the divine. She is credited with not only inspiring his pen, but with saving his soul as well. Through this work Dante immortalizes his lost love, and if there is a love letter that can compare I don't know of it.

      The work isn't without its flaws. Paradiso has several cantos that focus on Dante's take on cosmology or astrophysics that aren't only clearly wrong under our modern understanding, but that don't flow particularly well either. They're like Melville's chapters on whale classification in Moby Dick- they struck me as more distracting than atmospheric. Paradiso is also rife with Dante raising theological questions, only to give them unsatisfying answers. I wish Dante had given us more of his brilliant descriptions instead of trying his hand at reconciling the nature of God with real world events. Occasionally in Inferno it feels as though Dante is sticking it to the people he doesn't like in life at the expense of the flow of the canto, while at other times it feels as though Dante is making an exception for historical figures he really liked at the expense of the logic of the divine system he has described (Cato being the prime example, but various Roman and Greek figures throughout raise this issue). Still, these complaints are minor. It's a vision, after all, and so the lack of a concrete system with steadfast rules isn't surprising.

      It's the journey that counts, not the destination, and Dante gives us one hell of a journey. It's an epic sightseeing trip through the world of Christian theology, a world that is still heavily influenced by the myths and scholars of ancient Rome and Greece. Though it's not perfect, it's great, and well worth your time.
    • 5/5
      A true classic that everyone should read but, unfortunately, few will genuinely appreciate. You travel the afterlife from Hell through Purgatory and arrive in Heaven. Along the way you meet various souls (some of whom Dante had been ticked at who today are not known) and realize the very Catholic approach to redemption.
    • 5/5
      I loved everything up to the Paradisso portion. I know this is supposed to be the best part of the three but it really wasn't to me. I really thought the first two were absolutely excellent. This is definitely devine!

    Book preview

    The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

    THE DIVINE COMEDY

    BY DANTE ALIGHIERI

    TRANSLATED BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

    A Digireads.com Book

    Digireads.com Publishing

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2641-5

    Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59674-160-7

    This edition copyright © 2012

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    To

    JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

    E come sare' io sense lui corso?

    It is a happiness for me to connect this volume with the memory of my friend and master from youth. I was but a beginner in the study of the Divine Comedy when I first had his incomparable aid in the understanding of it. During the last year of his life he read the proofs of this volume, to what great advantage to my work may readily be conceived.

    When, in the early summer of this year, the printing of the Purgatory began, though illness made it an exertion to him, he continued this act of friendship, and did not cease till, at the fifth canto, he laid down the pencil forever from his dear and honored hand.

    CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.

    CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,

    1 October, 1891

    The text followed in this translation is, in general, that of Witte. In a few cases I have preferred the readings which the more recent researches of the Rev. Dr. Edward Moore, of Oxford, seem to have established as correct.

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY.

    HELL.

    CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into the eternal world.

    CANTO II. Dante, doubtful of his own powers, is discouraged at the outset.—Virgil cheers him by telling him that he has been sent to his aid by a blessed Spirit from Heaven.—Dante casts off fear, and the poets proceed.

    CANTO III. The gate of Hell.—Virgil lends Dante in.—The punishment of the neither good nor bad.—Acheron, and the sinners on its bank.—Charon.—Earthquake.—Dante swoons.

    CANTO IV. The further side of Acheron.—Virgil leads Dante into Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, containing the spirits of those who lived virtuously but without Christianity.—Greeting of Virgil by his fellow poets.—They enter a castle, where are the shades of ancient worthies.—Virgil and Dante depart.

    CANTO V. The Second Circle, that of Carnal Sinners.—Minos.—Shades renowned of old.—Francesca da Rimini.

    CANTO VI. The Third Circle, that of the Gluttonous.—Cerberus.—Ciacco.

    CANTO VII. The Fourth Circle, that of the Avaricious and the Prodigal.—Pluto.—Fortune.—The Styx.—The Fifth Circle, that of the Wrathful and the Sullen.

    CANTO VIII. The Fifth Circle.—Phlegyas and his boat.—Passage of the Styx.—Filippo Argenti.—The City of Dis.—The demons refuse entrance to the poets.

    CANTO IX. The City of Dis.—Erichtho.—The Three Furies.—The Heavenly Messenger.—The Sixth Circle, that of the Heresiarchs.

    CANTO X. The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs.—Farinata degli Uberti.-Cavalcante Cavalcanti.—Frederick II.

    CANTO XI. The Sixth Circle: Heretics.—Tomb of Pope Anastasius.—Discourse of Virgil on the divisions of the lower Hell.

    CANTO XII. First round of the Seventh Circle; those who do violence to others; Tyrants and Homicides.—The Minotaur.—The Centaurs.—Chiron.—Nessus.—The River of Boiling Blood, and the Sinners in it.

    CANTO XIII. Second round of the Seventh Circle: of those who have done violence to themselves and to their goods.—The Wood of Self-murderers.—The Harpies.—Pier delle Vigne.—Lano of Siena and others.

    CANTO XIV. Third round of the Seventh Circle of those who have done violence to God.—The Burning Sand.—Capaneus.—Figure of the Old Man in Crete.—The Rivers of Hell.

    CANTO XV. Third round of the Seventh Circle: of those who have done violence to Nature.—Brunetto Latini.—Prophecies of misfortune to Dante.

    CANTO XVI. Third round of the Seventh Circle: of those who have done violence to Nature.—Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacopo Rusticucci.—The roar of Phlegethon as it pours downward.—The cord thrown into the abyss.

    CANTO XVII. Third round of the Seventh Circle: of those who have done violence to Art.—Geryon.—The Usurers.—Descent to the Eighth Circle.

    CANTO XVIII. Eighth Circle: the first pit: panders and seducers.—Venedico Caccianimico.—Jason.—Second pit: false flatterers.—Alessio Interminei.—Thais.

    CANTO XIX. Eighth Circle third pit: simonists.—Pope Nicholas III.

    CANTO XX. Eighth Circle: fourth pit: diviners, soothsayers, and magicians.—Amphiaraus.—Tiresias.—Aruns.—Manto.—Eurypylus.—Michael Scott.—Asdente.

    CANTO XXI. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: barrators.—A magistrate of Lucca.—The Malebranche.—Parley with them.

    CANTO XXII. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: barrators.—Ciampolo of Navarre.—Fra Gomita.—Michel Zanche.—Fray of the Malebranche.

    CANTO XXIII. Eighth Circle. Escape from the fifth pit.—The sixth pit: hypocrites, in cloaks of gilded lead.—Jovial Friars.—Caiaphas.—Annas.—Frate Catalano.

    CANTO XXIV. Eighth Circle. The poets climb from the sixth pit.—Seventh pit, filled with serpents, by which thieves are tormented.—Vanni Fucci.—Prophecy of calamity to Dante.

    CANTO XXV. Eighth Circle: seventh pit: fraudulent thieves.—Cacus.—Agnello Brunelleschi and others.

    CANTO XXVI. Eighth Circle: eighth pit fraudulent counselors.—Ulysses and Diomed.

    CANTO XXVII. Eighth Circle: eighth pit fraudulent counselors.—Guido da Montefeltro.

    CANTO XXVIII. Eighth Circle: ninth pit: sowers of discord and schism.—Mahomet and Ali.—Fra Dolcino.—Pier da Medicina. -Curio.—Mosca.—Bertran de Born.

    CANTO XXIX. Eighth Circle ninth pit.—Geri del Bello.—Tenth pit: falsifiers of all sorts.—Griffolino of Arezzo.—Capocchio.

    CANTO XXX. Eighth Circle: tenth pit: falsifiers of all sorts.—Myrrha.—Gianni Schicchi.—Master Adam.—Sinon of Troy.

    CANTO XXXI. The Giants around the Eighth Circle.—Nimrod.—Ephialtes.—Antaeus sets the Poets down in the Ninth Circle.

    CANTO XXXII. Ninth Circle: traitors. First ring: Caina.—Counts of Mangona.—Camicion de' Pazzi.—Second ring: Antenora.—Bocca degli Abati.—Buoso da Duera.—Count Ugolino.

    CANTO XXXIII. Ninth circle: traitors. Second ring: Antenora.—Count Ugolino.—Third ring Ptolomea.—Brother Alberigo. Branca d' Oria.

    CANTO XXXIV. Ninth Circle: traitors. Fourth ring: Judecca.—Lucifer.—Judas, Brutus and Cassius.—Centre of the universe.—Passage from Hell.—Ascent to the surface of the Southern Hemisphere.

    PURGATORY.

    CANTO I. Invocation to the Muses.—Dawn of Easter on the shore of Purgatory.—The Four Stars.—Cato.—The cleansing of Dante from the stains of Hell.

    CANTO II. Sunrise.—The Poets on the shore.—Coming of a boat, guided by an angel, bearing souls to Purgatory.—Their landing.—Casella and his song.—Cato hurries the souls to the mountain.

    CANTO III. Ante-Purgatory.—Souls of those who have died in contumacy of the Church.—Manfred.

    CANTO IV. Ante-Purgatory.—Ascent to a shelf of the mountain.—The negligent, who postponed repentance to the last hour.—Belacqua.

    CANTO V. Ante-Purgatory.—Spirits who had delayed repentance, and met with death by violence, but died repentant.—Jacopo del Cassero.—Buonconte da Montefeltro—Via de' Tolomei.

    CANTO VI. Ante-Purgatory.—More spirits who had deferred repentance till they were overtaken by a violent death.—Efficacy of prayer.—Sordello.—Apostrophe to Italy.

    CANTO VII. Virgil makes himself known to Sordello.—Sordello leads the Poets to the Valley of the Princes who have been negligent of salvation.—He points them out by name.

    CANTO VIII. Valley of the Princes.—Two Guardian Angels.—Kino Visconti.—The Serpent.—Corrado Malaspina.

    CANTO IX. Slumber and Dream of Dante.—The Eagle.—Lucia.—The Gate of Purgatory.—The Angelic Gatekeeper.—Seven P's inscribed on Dante's Forehead.—Entrance to the First Ledge.

    CANTO X. First Ledge: the Proud.—Examples of Humility sculptured on the Rock.

    CANTO XI. First Ledge: the Proud.—Prayer.—Omberto Aldobrandeschi.—Oderisi d' Agubbio.—Provenzan Salvani.

    CANTO XII. First Ledge: the Proud.—Examples of the punishment of Pride graven on the pavement.—Meeting with an Angel who removes one of the P's.—Ascent to the Second Ledge.

    CANTO XIII. Second Ledge the Envious.—Examples of Love.—The Shades in haircloth, and with sealed eyes.—Sapia of Siena.

    CANTO XIV. Second Ledge: the Envious—Guido del Duca.—Rinieri de' Calboli.—Examples of the punishment of Envy.

    CANTO XV. Second Ledge: the Envious.—An Angel removes the second P from Dante's forehead.—Discourse concerning the Sharing of Good.—Ascent to the Third Ledge: the Wrathful.—Examples of Forbearance seen in Vision.

    CANTO XVI. Third Ledge the Wrathful.—Marco Lombardo.—His discourse on Free Will, and the Corruption of the World.

    CANTO XVII. Third Ledge the Wrathful.—Issue from the Smoke.—Vision of examples of Anger.—Ascent to the Fourth Ledge, where Sloth is purged.—Second Nightfall.—Virgil explains how Love is the root of Virtue and of Sin.

    CANTO XVIII. Fourth Ledge The Slothful.—Discourse of Virgil on Love and Free Will.—Throng of Spirits running in haste to redeem their Sin.—The Abbot of San Zone.—Dante falls asleep.

    CANTO XIX. Fourth Ledge: the Slothful—Dante dreams of the Siren.—The Angel of the Pass.—Ascent to the Fifth Ledge.—Pope Adrian V.

    CANTO XX. Fifth Ledge: the Avaricious.—The Spirits celebrate examples of Poverty and Bounty.—Hugh Capet.—His discourse on his descendants.—Trembling of the Mountain.

    CANTO XXI. Fifth Ledge: the Avaricious.—Statius.—Cause of the trembling of the Mountain.—Statius does honor to Virgil.

    CANTO XXII. Ascent to the Sixth Ledge.—Discourse of Statius and Virgil.—Entrance to the Ledge: the Gluttonous.—The Mystic Tree.—Examples of Temperance.

    CANTO XXIII. Sixth Ledge: the Gluttonous.—Forese Donati.—Nella.—Rebuke of the women of Florence.

    CANTO XXIV. Sixth Ledge: the Gluttonous.—Forese Donati.—Bonagiunta of Lucca—Pope Martin IV—Ubaldin dalla Pila.—Bonifazio.—Messer Marchese.—Prophecy of Bonagiunta concerning Gentucca, and of Forese concerning Corso de' Donati.—Second Mystic Tree.—The Angel of the Pass.

    CANTO XXV. Ascent to the Seventh Ledge.—Discourse of Statius on generation, the infusion of the Soul into the body, and the corporeal semblance of Souls after death.—The Seventh Ledge: the Lustful.—The mode of their Purification.

    CANTO XXVI. Seventh Ledge: the Lustful.—Sinners in the fire, going in opposite directions.—Guido Guinicelli.—Arnaut Daniel.

    CANTO XXVII. Seventh Ledge: the Lustful.—Passage through the Flames.—Stairway in the rock.—Night upon the stairs.—Dream of Dante.—Morning.—Ascent to the Earthly Paradise.—Last words of Virgil.

    CANTO XXVIII. The Earthly Paradise.—The Forest.—A Lady gathering flowers on the bank of a little stream.—Discourse with her concerning the nature of the place.

    CANTO XXIX. The Earthly Paradise.—Mystic Procession or Triumph of the Church.

    CANTO XXX. The Earthly Paradise.—Beatrice appears.—Departure of Virgil.—Reproof of Dante by Beatrice.

    CANTO XXXI. The Earthly Paradise.—Reproachful discourse of Beatrice, amid confession of Dante.—Passage of Lethe.—Appeal of the Virtues to Beatrice.—Her Unveiling.

    CANTO XXXII. The Earthly Paradise.—Return of the Triumphal procession.—The Chariot bound to the Mystic Tree.—Sleep of Dante.—His waking to find the Triumph departed.—Transformation of the Chariot.—The Harlot and the Giant.

    CANTO XXXIII. The Earthly Paradise.—Prophecy of Beatrice concerning one who shall restore the Empire.—Her discourse with Dante.—The river Eunoe.—Dante drinks of it, and is fit to ascend to Heaven.

    PARADISE.

    CANTO I. Proem.—Invocation.—Beatrice and Dante ascend to the Sphere of Fire.—Beatrice explains the cause of their ascent.

    CANTO II. Proem.—Ascent to the Moon.—The cause of Spots on the Moon.—Influence of the Heavens.

    CANTO III. The Heaven of the Moon.—Spirits whose vows had been broken.—Piccarda Donati.—The Empress Constance.

    CANTO IV. Doubts of Dante, respecting the justice of Heaven and the abode of the blessed, solved by Beatrice.—Question of Dante as to the possibility of reparation for broken vows.

    CANTO V. The sanctity of vows, and the seriousness with which they are to be made or changed.—Ascent to the Heaven of Mercury.—The shade of Justinian.

    CANTO VI. Justinian tells of his own life.—The story of the Roman Eagle.—Spirits in the planet Mercury.—Romeo.

    CANTO VII. Discourse of Beatrice.—The Fall of Man.—The scheme of his Redemption.

    CANTO VIII. Ascent to the Heaven of Venus.—Spirits of Lovers, Source of the order and the varieties in mortal things.

    CANTO IX. The Heaven of Venus.—Conversation of Dante with Cunizza da Romano,—With Folco of Marseilles.—Rahab.—Avarice of the Papal Court.

    CANTO X. Ascent to the Sun.—Spirits of the wise, and the learned in theology.—St. Thomas Aquinas.—He names to Dante those who surround him.

    CANTO XI. The Vanity of worldly desires,—St. Thomas Aquinas undertakes to solve two doubts perplexing Dante.—He narrates the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

    CANTO XII. Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men, doctors of the Church and teachers.—St. Bonaventura narrates the life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the circle with him.

    CANTO XIII. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks again, and explains the relation of the wisdom of Solomon to that of Adam and of Christ, and declares the vanity of human judgment.

    CANTO XIV. At the prayer of Beatrice, Solomon tells of the glorified body of the blessed after the Last Judgment.—Ascent to the Heaven of Mars.—Souls of the Soldiery of Christ in the form of a Cross with the figure of Christ thereon.—Hymn of the Spirits.

    CANTO XV. Dante is welcomed by his ancestor, Cacciaguida.—Cacciaguida tells of his family, and of the simple life of Florence in the old days.

    CANTO XVI. The boast of blood.—Cacciaguida continues his discourse concerning the old and the new Florence.

    CANTO XVII. Dante questions Cacciaguida as to his fortunes.—Cacciaguida replies, foretelling the exile of Dante, and the renown of his Poem.

    CANTO XVIII. The Spirits in the Cross of Mars.—Ascent to the Heaven of Jupiter.—Words shaped in light upon the planet by the Spirits.—Denunciation of the avarice of the Popes.

    CANTO XIX. The voice of the Eagle.—It speaks of the mysteries of Divine justice; of the necessity of Faith for salvation; of the sins of certain kings.

    CANTO XX. The Song of the Just.—Princes who have loved righteousness, in the eye of the Eagle.—Spirits, once Pagans, in bliss.—Faith and Salvation.—Predestination.

    CANTO XXI. Ascent to the Heaven of Saturn.—Spirits of those who had given themselves to devout contemplation.—The Golden Stairway.—St. Peter Damian.—Predestination.—The luxury of modern Prelates.

    CANTO XXII. Beatrice reassures Dante.—St. Benedict appears.—He tells of the founding of his Order, and of the falling away of its brethren. Beatrice and Dante ascend to the Starry Heaven.—The constellation of the Twins.—Sight of the Earth.

    CANTO XXIII. The Triumph of Christ.

    CANTO XXIV. St. Peter examines Dante concerning Faith, and approves his answer.

    CANTO XXV. St. James examines Dante concerning Hope.—St. John appears, with a brightness so dazzling as to deprive Dante, for the time, of sight.

    CANTO XXVI. St. John examines Dante concerning Love.—Dante's sight restored.—Adam appears, and answers questions put to him by Dante.

    CANTO XXVII. Denunciation by St. Peter of his degenerate successors.—Dante gazes upon the Earth.—Ascent of Beatrice and Dante to the Crystalline Heaven.—Its nature.—Beatrice rebukes the covetousness of mortals.

    CANTO XXVIII. The Heavenly Hierarchy.

    CANTO XXIX. Discourse of Beatrice concerning the creation and nature of the Angels.—She reproves the presumption and foolishness of preachers.

    CANTO XXX. Ascent to the Empyrean.—The River of Light.—The celestial Rose.—The seat of Henry VII.—The last words of Beatrice.

    CANTO XXXI. The Rose of Paradise.—St. Bernard.—Prayer to Beatrice.—The glory of the Blessed Virgin.

    CANTO XXXII. St. Bernard describes the order of the Rose, and points out many of the Saints.—The children in Paradise.—The angelic festival.—The patricians of the Court of Heaven.

    CANTO XXXIII. Prayer to the Virgin.—The Beatific Vision.—The Ultimate Salvation.

    INTRODUCTION

    So many versions of the Divine Comedy exist in English that a new one might well seem needless. But most of these translations are in verse, and the intellectual temper of our time is impatient of a transmutation in which substance is sacrificed for form's sake, and the new form is itself different from the original. The conditions of verse in different languages vary so widely as to make any versified translation of a poem but an imperfect reproduction of the archetype. It is like an imperfect mirror that renders but a partial likeness, in which essential features are blurred or distorted. Dante himself, the first modern critic, declared that nothing harmonized by a musical bond can be transmuted from its own speech without losing all its sweetness and harmony, and every fresh attempt at translation affords a new proof of the truth of his assertion. Each language exhibits its own special genius in its poetic forms. Even when they are closely similar in rhythmical method their poetic effect is essentially different, their individuality is distinct. The hexameter of the Iliad is not the hexameter of the Aeneid. And if this be the case in respect to related forms, it is even more obvious in respect to forms peculiar to one language, like the terza rima of the Italian, for which it is impossible to find a satisfactory equivalent in another tongue.

    If, then, the attempt be vain to reproduce the form or to represent its effect in a translation, yet the substance of a poem may have such worth that it deserves to be known by readers who must read it in their own tongue or not at all. In this case the aim of the translator should he to render the substance fully, exactly, and with as close a correspondence to the tone and style of the original as is possible between prose and poetry. Of the charm, of the power of the poem such a translation can give but an inadequate suggestion; the musical bond was of its essence, and the loss of the musical bond is the loss of the beauty to which form and substance mutually contributed, and in which they were both alike harmonized and sublimated. The rhythmic life of the original is its vital spirit, and the translation losing this vital spirit is at best as the dull plaster cast to the living marble or the breathing bronze. The intellectual substance is there; and if the work be good, something of the emotional quality may be conveyed; the imagination may mould the prose as it moulded the verse,—but, after all, translations are but as turn-coated things at best, as Howell said in one of his Familiar Letters.

    No poem in any tongue is more informed with rhythmic life than the Divine Comedy. And yet, such is its extraordinary distinction, no poem has an intellectual and emotional substance more independent of its metrical form. Its complex structure, its elaborate measure and rhyme, highly artificial as they are, are so mastered by the genius of the poet as to become the most natural expression of the spirit by which the poem is inspired; while at the same time the thought and sentiment embodied in the verse is of such import, and the narrative of such interest, that they do not lose their worth when expressed in the prose of another tongue; they still have power to quicken imagination, and to evoke sympathy.

    In English there is an excellent prose translation of the Inferno, by Dr. John Carlyle, a man well known to the reader of his brother's Correspondence. It was published forty years ago, but it is still contemporaneous enough in style to answer every need, and had Dr. Carlyle made a version of the whole poem I should hardly have cared to attempt a new one. In my translation of the Inferno I am often Dr. Carlyle's debtor. His conception of what a translation should be is very much the same as my own. Of the Purgatorio there is a prose version which has excellent qualities, by Mr. W. S. Dugdale. Another version of great merit, of both the Purgatorio and Paradiso, is that of Mr. A. J. Butler. It is accompanied by a scholarly and valuable comment, and I owe much to Mr. Butler's work. But through what seems to me occasional excess of literal fidelity his English is now and then somewhat crabbed. He overacts the office of an interpreter, I cite again from Howell, who doth enslave himself too strictly to words or phrases. One may be so over-punctual in words that he may mar the matter.

    I have tried to be as literal in my translation as was consistent with good English, and to render Dante's own words in words as nearly correspondent to them as the difference in the languages would permit. But it is to be remembered that the familiar uses and subtle associations which give to words their full meaning are never absolutely the same in two languages. Love in English not only sounds but is different from amor in Latin, or amore in Italian. Even the most felicitous prose translation must fail therefore at times to afford the entire and precise meaning of the original.

    Moreover, there are difficulties in Dante's poem for Italians, and there are difficulties in the translation for English readers. These, where it seemed needful, I have endeavored to explain in brief footnotes. But I have desired to avoid distracting the attention of the reader from the narrative, and have mainly left the understanding of it to his good sense and perspicacity. The clearness of Dante's imaginative vision is so complete, and the character of his narration of it so direct and simple, that the difficulties in understanding his intention are comparatively few.

    It is a noticeable fact that in by far the greater number of passages where a doubt in regard to the interpretation exists, the obscurity lies in the rhyme-word. For with all the abundant resources of the Italian tongue in rhyme, and with all Dante's mastery of them, the truth still is that his triple rhyme often compelled him to exact from words such service as they did not naturally render and as no other poet had required of them. The compiler of the Ottimo Commento records, in an often-cited passage, that I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say for him what they were not wont to express for other poets. The sentence has a double truth, for it indicates not only Dante's incomparable power to compel words to give out their full meaning, but also his invention of new uses for them, his employment of them in unusual significations or in forms hardly elsewhere to be found. These devices occasionally interfere with the limpid flow of his diction, but the difficulties of interpretation to which they give rise serve rather to mark the prevailing clearness and simplicity of his expression than seriously to impede its easy and unperplexed current. There are few sentences in the Divina Commedia in which a difficulty is occasioned by lack of definiteness of thought or distinctness of image.

    A far deeper-lying and more pervading source of imperfect comprehension of the poem than any verbal difficulty exists in the double or triple meaning that runs through it. The narrative of the poet's spiritual journey is so vivid and consistent that it has all the reality of an account of an actual experience; but within and beneath runs a stream of allegory not less consistent and hardly less continuous than the narrative itself. To the illustration and carrying out of this interior meaning even the minutest details of external incident are made to contribute, with an appropriateness of significance, and with a freedom from forced interpretation or artificiality of construction such as no other writer of allegory has succeeded in attaining. The poem may be read with interest as a record of experience without attention to its inner meaning, but its full interest is only felt when this inner meaning is traced, and the moral significance of the incidents of the story apprehended by the alert intelligence. The allegory is the soul of the poem, but like the soul within the body it does not show itself in independent existence. It is, in scholastic phrase, the form of the body, giving to it its special individuality. Thus in order truly to understand and rightly appreciate the poem the reader must follow its course with a double intelligence. Taken literally, as Dante declares in his Letter to Can Grande, the subject is the state of the soul after death, simply considered. But, allegorically taken, its subject is man, according as by his good or ill deserts he renders himself liable to the reward or punishment of Justice. It is the allegory of human life; and not of human life as an abstraction, but of the individual life; and herein, as Mr. Lowell, whose phrase I borrow, has said, lie its profound meaning and its permanent force.{1} And herein too lie its perennial freshness of interest, and the actuality which makes it contemporaneous with every successive generation. The increase of knowledge, the loss of belief in doctrines that were fundamental in Dante's creed, the changes in the order of society, the new thoughts of the world, have not lessened the moral import of the poem, any more than they have lessened its excellence as a work of art. Its real substance is as independent as its artistic beauty, of science, of creed, and of institutions. Human nature has not changed; the motives of action are the same, though their relative force and the desires and ideals by which they are inspired vary from generation to generation. And thus it is that the moral judgments of life framed by a great poet whose imagination penetrates to the core of things, and who, from his very nature as poet, conceives and sets forth the issues of life not in a treatise of abstract morality, but by means of sensible types and images, never lose interest, and have a perpetual contemporaneousness. They deal with the permanent and unalterable elements of the soul of man.

    The scene of the poem is the spiritual world, of which we are members even while still denizens mu the world of time. In the spiritual world the results of sin or perverted love, and of virtue or right love, in this life of probation, are manifest. The life to come is but the fulfilment of the life that now is. This is the truth that Dante sought to enforce. The allegory in which he cloaked it is of a character that separates the Divine Comedy from all other works of similar intent, In The Pilgrim's Progress, for example, the personages introduced are mere simulacra of men and women, the types of moral qualities or religious dispositions. They are abstractions which the genius of Bunyan fails to inform with vitality sufficient to kindle the imagination of the reader with a sense of their actual, living and breathing existence. But in the Divine Comedy the personages are all from real life, they are men and women with their natural passions and emotions, and they are undergoing an actual experience. The allegory consists in making their characters and their fates, what all human characters and fates really are, the types and images of spiritual law. Virgil and Beatrice, whose nature as depicted in the poem makes nearest approach to purely abstract and typical existence, are always consistently presented as living individuals, exalted indeed in wisdom and power, but with hardly less definite and concrete humanity than that of Dante himself.

    The scheme of the created Universe held by the Christians of the Middle Ages was comparatively simple, and so definite that Dante, in accepting it in its main features without modification, was provided with the limited stage that was requisite for his design, and of which the general disposition was familiar to all his readers. The three spiritual realms had their local bounds marked out as clearly as those of time earth itself. Their cosmography was but an extension of the largely hypothetical geography of the tune.

    The Earth was the centre of the Universe, and its northern hemisphere was the abode of man. At the middle point of this hemisphere stood Jerusalem, equidistant from the Pillars of Hercules on the West, and the Ganges on the East.

    Within the body of this hemisphere was hell, shared as a vast cone, of which the apex was the centre of the globe; and here, according to Dante, was the seat of Lucifer. The concave of Hell had been formed by his fall, when a portion of the solid earth, through fear of him, ran back to the southern uninhabited hemisphere, and formed there, directly antipodal to Jerusalem, the mountain of Purgatory which rose from the waste of waters that covered this half of the globe. Purgatory was shaped as a cone, of similar dimensions to that of Hell, amid at its summit was the Terrestrial Paradise.

    Immediately surrounding the atmosphere of the Earth was the sphere of elemental fire. Around this was the Heaven of the Moon, and encircling this, in order, were the Heavens of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jove, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, and the Crystalline or first moving Heaven. These nine concentric Heavens revolved continually around the Earth, and in proportion to their distance from it was time greater swiftness of each. Encircling all was the Empyrean, increate, incorporeal, motionless, unbounded in time or space, the proper seat of God, the home of the Angels, the abode of the Elect.

    The Angelic Hierarchy consisted of nine orders, corresponding to the nine moving heavens. Their blessedness and the swiftness of time motion with which in unending delight they circled around God were in proportion to their nearness to Him,—first the Seraphs, then the Cherubs, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Princes, Archangels, and Angels. Through them, under the general name of Intelligences, the Divine influence was transmitted to the Heavens, giving to them their circular motion, which was the expression of their longing to be united with the source of their creation. The Heavens in their turn streamed down upon the Earth the Divine influence thus distributed among them, in varying proportion and power, producing divers effects in the generation and corruption of material things, and in the dispositions and the lives of men.

    Such was the general scheme of the Universe. The intention of God in its creation was to communicate of his own perfection to the creatures endowed with souls, that is, to men and to angels, and the proper end of every such creature was to seek its own perfection in likeness to time Divine. This end was attained through that knowledge of God of which the soul was capable, and through love which was in proportion to knowledge. Virtue depended on the free will of man; it was the good use of that will directed to a right object of love. Two lights were given to the soul for guidance of the will: the light of reason for natural things and for the direction of the will to moral virtue the light of grace for things supernatural, and for the direction of the will to spiritual virtue. Sin was the opposite of virtue, the choice by the will of false objects of love; it involved the misuse of reason, and the absence of grace. As the end of virtue was blessedness, so the end of sin was misery.

    The cornerstone of Dante's moral system was the Freedom of the Will; in other words, the right of private judgment with the condition of accountability. This is the liberty which Dante, that is man, goes seeking in his journey through the spiritual world. This liberty is to be attained through the right use of reason, illuminated by Divine Grace; it consists in the perfect accord of the will of man with the will of God.

    With this view of the nature and end of man Dante's conception of the history of the race could not be other than that its course was providentially ordered. The fall of man had made him a just object of the vengeance of God; but the elect were to be redeemed, and for their redemption the history of the world from the beginning was directed. Not only in his dealings with the Jews, but in his dealings with the heathen was God preparing for the reconciliation of man, to be finally accomplished in his sacrifice of Himself for them. The Roman Empire was foreordained and established for this end. It was to prepare the way for the establishment of the Roman Church. It was the appointed instrument for the political government of men. Empire and Church were alike divine institutions for the guidance of man on earth.

    The aim of Dante in the Divine Comedy was to set forth these truths in such wise as to affect the imaginations and touch the hearts of men, so that they should turn to righteousness. His conviction of these truths was no mere matter of belief; it had the ardor and certainty of faith. They had appeared to him in all their fulness as a revelation of the Divine wisdom. It was his work as poet, as poet with a divine commission, to make this revelation known. His work was a work of faith; it was sacred; to it both Heaven and Earth had set their hands.

    To this work, as I have said, the definiteness and the limits of the generally accepted theory of the Universe gave the required frame. The very narrowness of this scheme made Dante's design practicable. He had had the experience of a man on earth. He had been lured by false objects of desire from the pursuit of the true good. But Divine Grace, in the form of Beatrice, who had of old on earth led him aright, now intervened and sent to his aid Virgil, who, as the type of Human Reason, should bring him safe through Hell, showing to him the eternal consequences of sin, and then should conduct him, penitent, up the height of Purgatory, till on its summit, in the Earthly Paradise, Beatrice should appear once more to him. Thence she, as the type of that knowledge through which comes the love of God, should lead him, through the Heavens up to the Empyrean, to the consummation of his course in the actual vision of God.

    AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY.

    The Essay by Mr. Lowell, to which I have already referred (Dante, Lowell's Prose Works, vol. iv.) is the best introduction to the study of the poem. It should be read and re-read.

    Dante, an essay by the late Dean Church, is the work of a learned and sympathetic scholar, and is an excellent treatise on the life, times, and work of the poet.

    The Notes and Illustrations that accompany Mr. Longfellow's translation of the Divine Comedy form an admirable body of comment on the poem.

    The Rev. Dr. Edward Moore's little volume, on The Time-References in the Divina Commedia (London, 1887), is of great value in making the progress of Dante's journey clear, and in showing Dante's scrupulous consistency of statement. Dr. Moore's more recent work, Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Divina Commedia (Cambridge, 1889), is to be warmly commended to the advanced student.

    These sources of information are enough for the mere English reader. But one who desires to make himself a thorough master of the poem must turn to foreign sources of instruction: to Carl Witte's invaluable Dante-Forschungen (2 vols. Halle, 1869); to the comment, especially that on the Paradiso, which accompanies the German translation of the Divine Comedy by Philalethes. the late King John of Saxony; to Bartoli's life of Dante in his Storia della Letteratura Italiana (Firenze, 1878 and subsequent years), and to Scartazzini's Prolegomeni della Divina Commedia (Leipzig, 1890). The fourteenth century Comments, especially those of Boccaccio, of Buti, and of Benvenuto da Imola, are indispensable to one who would understand the poem as it was understood by Dante's immediate contemporaries and successors. It is from them and from the Chronicle of Dante's contemporary and fellow-citizen, Giovanni Villani, that our knowledge concerning many of the personages mentioned in the Poem is derived.

    In respect to the theology and general doctrine of the Poem, the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas is the main source from which Dante himself drew.

    Of editions of the Divina Commedia in Italian, either that of Andreoli, or of Bianchi, or of Fraticelli, each in one volume, may be recommended to the beginner. Scartazzini's edition in three volumes is the best, in spite of some serious defects, for the deeper student.

    HELL.

    CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into the eternal world.

    Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the right way had been missed. Ah! how hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and dense wood was, which in thought renews the fear! So bitter is it that death is little more. But in order to treat of the good that there I found, I will tell of the other things that I have seen there.

    I cannot well recount how I entered it, so full was I of slumber at that point where I abandoned the true way. But after I had arrived at the foot of a hill, where that valley ended which had pierced my heart with fear, I looked on high, and saw its shoulders clothed already with the rays of the planet{2} that leadeth men aright along every path. Then was the fear a little quieted which in the lake of my heart had lasted through the night that I passed so piteously. And even as one who with spent breath, issued out of the sea upon the shore, turns to the perilous water and gazes, so did my soul, which still was flying, turn back to look again upon the pass which never had a living person left.

    After I had rested a little my weary body I took my way again along the desert slope, so that the firm foot was always the lower. And ho! almost at the beginning of the steep a she-leopard, light and very nimble, which was covered with a spotted coat. And she did not move from before my face, nay, rather hindered so my road that to return I oftentimes had turned.

    The time was at the beginning of the morning, and the Sun was mounting upward with those stars that were with him when Love Divine first set in motion those beautiful things;{3} so that the hour of the time and the sweet season were occasion of good hope to me concerning that wild beast with the dappled skin. But not so that the sight which appeared to me of a lion did not give me fear. He seemed to be coming against me, with head high and with ravening hunger, so that it seemed that the air was affrighted at him. And a she-wolf,{4} who with all cravings seemed laden in her meagreness, and already had made many folk to live forlorn,—she caused me so much heaviness, with the fear that came from sight of her, that I lost hope of the height And such as he is who gaineth willingly, and the time arrives that makes him lose, who in all his thoughts weeps and is sad,—such made me the beast without repose that, coming on against me, little by little was pushing me back thither where the Sun is silent.

    While I was falling back to the low place, before mine eyes appeared one who through long silence seemed hoarse. When I saw him in the great desert, Have pity on me! I cried to him, whatso thou art, or shade or real man. He answered me: "Not man; man once I was, and my parents were Lombards, and Mantuans by country both. I was born sub Julio, though late, and I lived at Rome under the good Augustus, in the time of the false and lying gods. Poet was I, and sang of that just son of Anchises who came from Troy after proud Ilion had been burned. But thou, why returnest thou to so great annoy? Why dost thou not ascend the delectable mountain which is the source and cause of every joy?"

    Art thou then that Virgil and that fount which poureth forth so large a stream of speech? replied I to him with bashful front: O honor and light of the other poem I may the long seal avail me, and the great love, which have made me search thy volume! Thou art my master and my author; thou alone art he from whom I took the fair style that hath done me honor. Behold the beast because of which I turned; help me against her, famous sage, for she makes any veins and pulses tremble.

    Thee it behoves to hold another course, he replied, when he saw me weeping, "if thou wishest to escape from this savage place; for this beast, because of which thou criest out, lets not any one pass along her way, but so hinders him that she kills him! and she has a nature so malign and evil that she never sates her greedy will, and after food is hungrier than before. Many are the animals with which she wives, and there shall be more yet, till the hound{5} shall come that will make her die of grief. He shall not feed on land or goods, but wisdom and love and valor, and his birthplace shall be between Feltro and Feltro. Of that humble{6} Italy shall he be the salvation, for which the virgin Camilla died, and Euryalus, Turnus and Nisus of their wounds. He shall hunt her through every town till he shall have set her back in hell, there whence envy first sent her forth.

    Wherefore I think and deem it for thy best that thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, and will lead thee hence through the eternal place where thou shalt hear the despairing shrieks, shalt see the ancient spirits woeful who each proclaim the second death. And then thou shalt see those who are contented in the fire, because they hope to come, whenever it may be, to the blessed folk; to whom if thou wilt thereafter ascend, them shall be a soul more worthy than I for that. With her I will leave thee at my departure; for that Emperor who reigneth them above, because I was rebellious to His law, wills not that into His city any one should come through me. In all parts He governs and them He reigns: there in His city and His lofty seat. O happy he whom thereto He elects! And I to him, Poet, I beseech thee by that God whom thou didst not know, in order that I may escape this ill and worse, that thou lead me thither whom thou now hest said, so that I may see the gate of St. Peter, and those whom thou makest so afflicted."

    Then he moved on, and I behind him kept.

    CANTO II. Dante, doubtful of his own powers, is discouraged at the outset.—Virgil cheers him by telling him that he has been sent to his aid by a blessed Spirit from Heaven.—Dante casts off fear, and the poets proceed.

    The day was going, and the dusky air was taking the living things that are on earth from their fatigues, and I alone was preparing to sustain the war alike of the road, and of the woe which the mind that erreth not shall retrace.

    O Muses, O lofty genius, now assist me! O mind that didst inscribe that which I saw, here shall thy nobility appear!

    I began:—"Poet, that guidest me, consider my virtue, if it is sufficient, ere to the deep pass thou trustest me. Thou sayest that the parent of Silvius while still corruptible went to the immortal world and was there in the body. Wherefore if the Adversary of every ill was then courteous, thinking on the high effect that should proceed from him, and on the Who and the What,{7} it seemeth not unmeet to the man of understanding; for in the empyreal heaven he had been chosen for father of revered Rome and of her empire; both which (to say truth indeed) were ordained for the holy place where the successor of the greater Peter hath his seat. Through this going, whereof thou givest him vaunt, he learned things which were the cause of his victory and of the papal mantle. Afterward the Chosen Vessel went thither to bring thence comfort to that faith which is the beginning of the way of salvation. But I, why go I thither? or who concedes it? I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul; me worthy of this, neither I nor others think; wherefore if I give myself up to go, I fear lest the going may be mad. Thou art wise, thou understandest better than I speak."

    And as is he who unwills what he willed, and because of new thoughts changes his design, so that he quite withdraws from beginning, such I became on that dark hillside: wherefore in my thought I abandoned the enterprise which had been so hasty in the beginning.

    If I have rightly understood thy speech, replied that shade of the magnanimous one, "thy soul is hurt by cowardice, which oftentimes encumbereth a man so that it turns him back from honorable enterprise, as false seeing does a beast when it is startled. In order that thou loose thee from this fear I will tell thee wherefore I have come, and what I heard at the first moment that I grieved for thee. I was among those who are suspended,{8} and a Lady called me, so blessed and beautiful that I besought her to command. Her eyes were more lucent than the star, and she began to speak to me sweet and low, with angelic voice, in her own tongue:

    'O courteous Mantuan soul, of whom the fame yet lasteth in the world, and shall last so long as the world endureth! a friend of mine and not of fortune upon the desert hillside is so hindered on his road that he has turned for fear, and I am afraid, through that which I have heard of him in heaven, lest already he be so astray that I may have risen late to his

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