Poet, prose writer, literary theorist, philosopher, and political thinker, born in Florence, NC Italy. A lawyer's son, he was baptized Durante, later contracted into Dante. In 1274, when he was nine, a meeting with Beatrice (c.126590), possibly the daughter of the Florentine aristocrat Folco Portinari, influenced the rest of his life. His platonic devotion to her continued despite her marriage, and despite his own marriage (after her early death in 1290, aged barely 20) to Gemma Donati, daughter of a powerful Guelph family.
In 1300, he became one of the six priors of Florence. His sympathy for the moderate White Guelphs led to his exile in 1302, when the Black faction became dominant. His travelling after this date is unclear, but he never returned to his native city. He may have visited Paris and Oxford. Some believe he was recalled to Italy when Henry of Luxembourg became emperor, but when Henry died (1313), he took refuge in Ravenna, where he stayed until his death. Dante had six sons and one daughter.
The dates and sequence of his various works are not known. The lyric poems, Vita nuova, which tells of his boyish passion for Beatrice, are probably the earliest. By far the most celebrated is the Divina commedia (130721, Divine Comedy), a vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven which gives an encyclopedic view of the highest culture and knowledge of his age. He also wrote several shorter poems, as well as treatises on government and language. Of the latter, his Eloquence in the Vernacular Tongue was of major importance in establishing the Italian vernacular in place of Latin as the literary language, which in turn was to revolutionize the literary tradition of other European cultures.
| Dante Alighieri | |
|---|---|
| Dante in a fresco series of famous men by Andrea del Castagno, ca. June 1, 1265 | |
| Died | September 13/14, 1321 |
Durante degli Alighieri, better known as Dante Alighieri or simply Dante, (c.
Life
Dante was born in 1265, and he tells us he was born under the sign of Gemini, placing his birthday between May 18th and June 17th. As an infant, Dante may have been originally christened 'Durante' in Florence's Baptistery, and the name Dante could be a shortened version of that name.
He was born into the prominent Alighieri family of Florence, with loyalties to the Guelfs, a political alliance that supported the Papacy, involved in complex opposition to the Ghibellines, who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor.
These factions fashioned their names after the ones of opposing factions of German Imperial politics, centered around the noble families the Welfs (Guelfs or Guelphs) and Waiblingen (Ghibellines), but adapting their meaning to the Italian political arena. Dante (a White Guelf) pretended that his family descended from the ancient Romans (Inferno, XV, 76), but the earliest relative he can mention by name is Cacciaguida degli Elisei (Paradiso, XV, 135), of no earlier than about 1100.
Dante's father, Alighiero de Bellincione, was a White Guelf who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the Battle of Montaperti. She died when Dante was 5 or 6 years old, and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi. (It is uncertain whether he really married her, as widowers had social limitations in these matters.) This woman definitely bore two children, Dante's brother Francesco and sister Tana (Gaetana).
When Dante was 12, in 1277, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Messer Manetto Donati.
Dante had several sons with Gemma. As often happens with famous people, many people later claimed to be Dante's offspring;
Education and poetry
Not much is known about Dante's education, and it is presumed he studied at home. Nevertheless, we can assume that Dante was a keen up-to-date intellectual with international interests.
At 18, Dante met Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia, and soon after Brunetto Latini; Brunetto later received a special mention in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XV, 82), for what he had taught Dante.
When he was nine years old he met Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari, with whom he fell in love "at first sight", and apparently without even having spoken to her. It was in the name of this love that Dante gave his imprint to the Stil Novo and would lead poets and writers to discover the themes of Love (Amore), which had never been so emphasized before.
When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante tried to find a refuge in Latin literature.
Exile and death
Boniface quickly sent away the other representatives and asked Dante alone to remain in Rome. Dante was condemned to exile for two years, and to pay a large sum of money.
The poet took part in several attempts by the White Guelfs to regain the power they had lost, but these failed due to treachery. Dante, bitter at the treatment he had received at the hands of his enemies, also grew disgusted with the infighting and ineffectiveness of his erstwhile allies, and vowed to become a party of one.
He went to Verona as a guest of Bartolomeo Della Scala, then moved to Sarzana (Liguria), and after this he is supposed to have lived for some time in Lucca with Madame Gentucca, who made his stay comfortable (and was later gratefully mentioned in Purgatorio, XXIV, 37). Dante saw in him the chance of revenge, so he wrote to him (and to other Italian princes) several public letters violently inciting them to destroy the Black Guelfs.
In Florence Baldo d'Aguglione pardoned most of the White Guelfs in exile and allowed them to come back; however, Dante had gone beyond the pale in his violent letters to Arrigo (Henry VII), and he was not recalled.
In 1312, Arrigo assaulted Florence and defeated the Black Guelfs, but there is no evidence that Dante was involved. In 1313 Arrigo died, and with him any residual hope for Dante to see Florence again. Cangrande was admitted to Dante's Paradise (Paradiso, XVII, 76).
In 1315, Florence was forced by Uguccione della Faggiuola (the military officer controlling the town) to grant an amnesty to people in exile. Dante too was in the list of citizens to be pardoned. Dante refused this outrageous formula, and preferred to remain in exile.
When Uguccione finally defeated Florence, Dante's death sentence was converted into confinement, at the sole condition that he go to Florence to swear that he would never enter the town again. Dante didn't go.
Dante still hoped late in life that he might be invited back to Florence on honourable terms. For Dante, exile was nearly a form of death, stripping him of much of his identity. e questo è quello strale
| this is the arrow that the bow of exile | |
| che l'arco de lo essilio pria saetta. | shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste |
| Tu proverai sì come sa di sale | of others' bread, how salty it is, and know |
| lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle | how hard a path it is for one who goes |
| lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale . |
As for the hope of returning to Florence, he describes it wistfully, as if he had already accepted its impossibility, (Paradiso, XXV, 1–9):
| Se mai continga che 'l poema sacro | If it ever come to pass that the sacred poem |
| al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, | to which both heaven and earth have set their hand |
| sì che m'ha fatto per molti anni macro, | so as to have made me lean for many years |
| vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra | should overcome the cruelty that bars me |
| del bello ovile ov'io dormi' agnello, | from the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb, |
| nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; | an enemy to the wolves that make war on it, |
| con altra voce omai, con altro vello | with another voice now and other fleece |
| ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte | I shall return a poet and at the font |
| del mio battesmo prenderò 'l cappello . |
Of course it never happened. Dante was buried in the Church of San Pier Maggiore (later called San Francesco).
On the grave, some verses of Bernardo Canaccio, a friend of Dante, dedicated to Florence:
parvi Florentia mater amoris "Florence, mother of little love"Eventually, Florence came to regret Dante's exile. That tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body still remaining in its tomb in Ravenna, far from the land he loved so dearly.
Works
The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by his beloved Beatrice. Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages, in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe", Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).
Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect. In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature. Monarchia, which sets out Dante's ideas on global political organization; But it also contains Dante's learned comments on his own work, and these too are in the local language, instead of the Latin that was almost universally used.
Cultural references
Dante and The Divine Comedy have been a source of inspiration for countless artists for almost eight centuries. A dictionary of words used by Dante.
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