La Divina Commedia

Sandro Botticelli

English Translation by H. W. Longfellow, Boston 1867

Illustrated by famousWorld artists

La Divina Commedia is Italian most important literary work. It was written by Dante Alighieri in the vernacular language, instead than in Latin as it was used in that time. Therefore Dante is considered the Father of the Italian Language.

La Divina Commedia is a poem divided in three parts, which illustrates Dante’s imaginary travel into Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.

Here he meets important writers and philosophers of the past, political personalities, saints and sinners, but also common people he has had the chance to meet in his turbolent life.

The poem depicts immortal figures, taken in the moment in which their mortal life has changed into eternity, fixing forever the main traits of their personality. ….

In a difficult moment of his life, Dante understands he has lost his guiding principles and he imagines he is wandering in a dark wood, surrounded by ferocious animals.

He thus starts a journey into the underworld, accompanied by Virgil, the Latin poet.

This journey will be both a religious and a human experience and he will be deeply changed by it.

Entering the gates of Hell, Dante sees a huge door: the sign on it warns passers-by to forget all forms of hope….

Hell is the place of eternal justice and eternal punishment without hope of a final redemption

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitami ritrovai per una selva oscura,ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa duraesta selva selvaggia e aspra e forteche nel pensier rinova la paura!

Canto I

Joseph Anton Koch

Midway upon the journey of our lifeI found myself within a forest dark,For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to sayWhat was this forest savage, rough, and stern,Which in the very thought renews the fear.

Per me si va ne la città dolente,per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,per me si va tra la perduta gente.

Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore;fecemi la divina podestate,la somma sapïenza e 'l primo amore.

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose createse non etterne, e io etterno duro.Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'.

Canto II

William Blake

Through me the way is to the city dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole;Through me the way among the people lost.

Justice incited my sublime Creator;Created me divine Omnipotence,The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.

Before me there were no created things,’Only eterne, and I eternal last.All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"

In Dante’s hell sinners are divided according to their sins and the punishment is often subtly connected to their human experience

We meet Paolo and Francesca in Canto V, the two adulterous lovers lost in life because of their love and now victims of an eternal blowing wind which represents their passionate souls

In Canto X we find Farinata Degli Uberti, an important Florentine who in life was a heretic and did’t believe in the eternity of the soul.Now he is eternally stuck in a tomb, but this fact doesn’t prevent him from speaking passionately with Dante about politics.

Amor, ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,prese costui de la bella personache mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende.

Amor, ch'a nullo amato amar perdona,mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona.

Amor condusse noi ad una morte.Caina attende chi a vita ci spense».Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte.

Canto V

Mosè Bianchi

Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize,Seized this man for the person beautifulThat was ta'en from me, and still the mode offends me.

Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;

Love has conducted us unto one death;Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!" These words were borne along from them to us.

«O Tosco che per la città del focovivo ten vai così parlando onesto,piacciati di restare in questo loco.

La tua loquela ti fa manifestodi quella nobil patrïa natio,a la qual forse fui troppo molesto».

Canto X

Andrea del Castagno

"O Tuscan, thou who through the city of fire Goest alive, thus speaking modestly, Be pleased to stay thy footsteps in this place.

Thy mode of speaking makes thee manifest A native of that noble fatherland, To which perhaps I too molestful was."

Moving along the different scenarios in Hell, Dante meets other famous personalities of his time

An illustrious sinner is Ulysses, here punished for his frauding advice.

The great Greek hero tells Dante how, back to Ithaca at the end of his ten-year long adventures, he left again with his old mates to pursue knowledge beyond the limits of the known world….

At the end of a perilous journey, they fell down the border of the known world, after having passed the Pillars of Hercules…

"O frati", dissi, "che per cento miliaperigli siete giunti a l'occidente,a questa tanto picciola vigilia

d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanentenon vogliate negar l'esperïenza,di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.

Considerate la vostra semenza:fatti non foste a viver come bruti,ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza".

Canto XXVI

O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West, To this so inconsiderable vigil

Which is remaining of your senses still Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge, Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang; Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

Another pitiful scene opens in front of Dante’s eyes: a man eating from someone’s head . It is Count Ugolino,

He had been imprisoned in a dungeon with his children and died of hunger after having watched his own children die and possibly having eaten their bodies to survive…

La bocca sollevò dal fiero pastoquel peccator, forbendola a' capellidel capo ch'elli avea di retro guasto.

Poi cominciò: «Tu vuo' ch'io rinovellidisperato dolor che 'l cor mi premegià pur pensando, pria ch'io ne favelli.

Ma se le mie parole esser dien semeche frutti infamia al traditor ch'i' rodo,parlar e lagrimar vedrai insieme.

Canto XXXIII

His mouth uplifted from his grim repast, That sinner, wiping it upon the hair Of the same head that he behind had wasted.

Then he began: "Thou wilt that I renew The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already To think of only, ere I speak of it;

But if my words be seed that may bear fruit Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw, Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together.

Auguste Rodin

Dante feels contrasting emotions towards the people he meets: anger, admiration, pity.

At the end of his long journey in hell , he is finally allowed to get out and admire once more a sky full of stars…..

Salvator Dalì

Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascosointrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo;e sanza cura aver d'alcun riposo,

salimmo sù, el primo e io secondo,tanto ch'i' vidi de le cose belleche porta 'l ciel, per un pertugio tondo.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

Canto XXXIV

Gustave Dorè

The Guide and I into that hidden road Now entered, to return to the bright world; And without care of having any rest

We mounted up, he first and I the second, Till I beheld through a round aperture Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.