At the heart of Dante's poem lies the recognition by mankind of their sins and the ascent to spiritual life and to God. According to the poet, in order to find peace of mind, it is necessary to go through all the circles of hell and give up blessings, and redeem sins with suffering. Each of the three chapters of the poem includes 33 songs. "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise" are the eloquent names of the parts that make up the "Divine Comedy". The summary makes it possible to comprehend the main idea of ​​the poem.

Dante Alighieri created the poem during the years of exile, shortly before his death. She is recognized in world literature as a brilliant creation. The author himself gave her the name "Comedy". So in those days it was customary to call any work that has a happy ending. "Divine" Boccaccio called her, thus putting the highest mark.

Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy", a summary of which schoolchildren pass in the 9th grade, is hardly perceived by modern teenagers. A detailed analysis of some songs cannot give a complete picture of the work, especially considering today's attitude to religion and human sins. However, an acquaintance, albeit an overview, with the work of Dante is necessary to create a complete picture of world fiction.

"The Divine Comedy". Summary of the chapter "Hell"

The protagonist of the work is Dante himself, to whom the shadow of the famous poet Virgil appears with an offer to make a trip to Dante. ).

The path of the actors begins from hell. In front of the entrance to it are miserable souls who, during their lifetime, did neither good nor evil. Outside the gate flows the river Acheron, through which Charon transports the dead. Heroes are approaching the circles of hell:

Having passed all the circles of hell, Dante and his companion went upstairs and saw the stars.

"The Divine Comedy". Brief summary of the part "Purgatory"

The protagonist and his guide end up in purgatory. Here they are met by the guard Cato, who sends them to the sea to wash. The companions go to the water, where Virgil washes away the soot of the underworld from Dante's face. At this time, a boat sails up to the travelers, which is ruled by an angel. He lands on the shore the souls of the dead who did not go to hell. With them, the heroes make a journey to the mountain of purgatory. On the way, they meet fellow countryman Virgil, the poet Sordello, who joins them.

Dante falls asleep and is transported in a dream to the gates of purgatory. Here the angel writes seven letters on the forehead of the poet, denoting the Hero goes through all the circles of purgatory, being cleansed of sins. After passing each circle, the angel erases from Dante's forehead the letter of the overcome sin. On the last lap, the poet must pass through the flames of fire. Dante is afraid, but Virgil convinces him. The poet passes the test of fire and goes to heaven, where Beatrice is waiting for him. Virgil falls silent and disappears forever. The beloved washes Dante in the sacred river, and the poet feels strength pouring into his body.

"The Divine Comedy". Summary of the part "Paradise"

Beloved ascend to heaven. To the surprise of the protagonist, he was able to take off. Beatrice explained to him that souls not burdened with sins are light. Lovers pass through all heavenly skies:

• the first sky of the moon, where the souls of the nuns are;
• the second is Mercury for the ambitious righteous;
• the third is Venus, the souls of the loving ones rest here;
• the fourth - the Sun, intended for the sages;
• the fifth is Mars, which receives warriors;
• the sixth - Jupiter, for the souls of the just;
• the seventh is Saturn, where the souls of contemplators are;
• the eighth is for the spirits of the great righteous;
• ninth - here are angels and archangels, seraphim and cherubim.

After ascending to the last heaven, the hero sees the Virgin Mary. She is among the shining rays. Dante raises his head up to the bright and blinding light and finds the highest truth. He sees the deity in his trinity.

. The Divine Comedy is the fruit of the entire second half of Dante's life and work. In this work, the worldview of the poet was reflected with the greatest completeness. Dante appears here as the last great poet of the Middle Ages, a poet who continues the line of development of feudal literature, but absorbed some features typical of the new early bourgeois culture.

Structure

The surprisingly coherent composition of The Divine Comedy was influenced by the rationalism of creativity that developed in the atmosphere of the new bourgeois culture.

The Divine Comedy is extremely symmetrical. It falls into three parts; each part consists of 33 songs, and ends with the word Stelle, that is, the stars. In total, 99 songs are obtained in this way, which, together with the introductory song, make up the number 100. The poem is written in terts - stanzas consisting of three lines. This tendency to certain numbers is explained by the fact that Dante gave them a mystical interpretation - so the number 3 is associated with the Christian idea of ​​\u200b\u200b, the number 33 should remind you of the years of earthly life, etc.

Plot

According to Catholic beliefs, the afterlife consists of hell, where forever condemned sinners go, purgatory - the seat of sinners atoning for their sins - and paradise - the abode of the blessed.

Dante describes the structure of the afterlife with extreme accuracy, capturing all the details of its architectonics with graphic certainty. In the introductory song, Dante tells how, having reached the middle of his life, he once got lost in a dense forest and how the poet Virgil, having saved him from three wild animals that blocked his path, invited Dante to make a journey through the afterlife. Upon learning that Virgil was sent to Beatrice, Dante surrenders without trepidation to the leadership of the poet.

Hell

Having passed the threshold of hell, inhabited by the souls of insignificant, indecisive people, they enter the first circle of hell, the so-called limbo, where the souls of those who could not know the true God reside. Here Dante sees outstanding representatives of ancient culture -, etc. The next circle (hell looks like a colossal funnel consisting of concentric circles, the narrow end of which rests on the center of the earth) is filled with the souls of people who once indulged in unbridled passion. Among those carried by a wild whirlwind, Dante sees Francesca da Rimini and her beloved Paolo, fallen victim to forbidden love for each other. As Dante, accompanied by Virgil, descends lower and lower, he becomes a witness to the torment, forced to suffer from rain and hail, misers and squanderers, tirelessly rolling huge stones, angry, bogged down in a swamp. They are followed by heresiarchs embraced by eternal flame (among them the emperor, Pope Anastasius II), tyrants and murderers swimming in streams of boiling blood, turned into plants, and rapists burned by falling flames, deceivers of all kinds. The torments of deceivers are varied. Finally, Dante enters the last, 9th circle of hell, intended for the most terrible criminals. Here is the abode of traitors and traitors, of which the greatest are, and Cassius, they are gnawed by their three mouths, who once rebelled on, the king of evil, doomed to imprisonment in the center of the earth. The description of the terrible appearance of Lucifer ends the last song of the first part of the poem.

Purgatory

Having passed a narrow corridor connecting the center of the earth with the second hemisphere, Dante and Virgil come to the surface of the earth. There, in the middle of the island surrounded by the ocean, a mountain rises in the form of a truncated cone - like hell, consisting of a series of circles that narrow as they approach the top of the mountain. The angel guarding the entrance to purgatory lets Dante into the first circle of purgatory, having previously drawn seven Ps (Peccatum - sin), that is, a symbol of the seven deadly sins, on his forehead with a sword. As Dante rises higher and higher, passing one circle after another, these letters disappear, so that when Dante, having reached the top of the mountain, enters the earthly paradise located on the top of the last, he is already free from the signs inscribed by the guardian of purgatory. The circles of the latter are inhabited by the souls of sinners atoning for their sins. Here they are cleansed, forced to bend under the burden of weights pressing their backs, negligent, etc. Virgil brings Dante to the gates of paradise, where he, as one who did not know baptism, has no access.

Paradise

In the earthly paradise, Virgil is replaced by Beatrice, seated on a drawn chariot (an allegory of the triumphant church); she induces Dante to repentance, and then lifts him up to heaven, enlightened. The final part of the poem is devoted to Dante's wanderings in the heavenly paradise. The latter consists of seven spheres encircling the earth and corresponding to seven planets (according to the then widespread): spheres, etc., followed by the spheres of fixed stars and crystal, - behind the crystal sphere is the Empyrean, - an endless region inhabited by blessed, contemplative God, - the last sphere that gives life to all things. Flying through the spheres, guided, Dante sees the emperor, introducing him to history, teachers of the faith, martyrs for the faith, whose shining souls form a sparkling cross; ascending higher and higher, Dante sees Christ and the angels, and, finally, the “heavenly Rose” is revealed to him - the abode of the blessed. Here Dante partakes of the highest grace, reaching communion with the Creator.

The Comedy is Dante's last and most mature work. The poet, of course, did not realize that through his mouth in the Comedy "ten silent centuries spoke", that he sums up in his work the entire development of medieval literature.

Analysis

In form, the poem is an afterlife vision, of which there were many in medieval literature. Like the medieval poets, it rests on an allegorical core. So the dense forest, in which the poet got lost halfway through earthly existence, is a symbol of life's complications. Three beasts that attack him there:, and - the three most powerful passions: sensuality, lust for power,. This also gives a political interpretation: the panther -, the spots on the skin of which should indicate the enmity of the parties and the Ghibellines. Lion - a symbol of brute physical strength -; she-wolf, greedy and lustful - curia. These beasts threaten the national unity that Dante dreamed of, a unity held together by the rule of a feudal monarchy (some literary historians give Dante's entire poem a political interpretation). Saves the poet from the beasts - the mind sent to the poet Beatrice (- faith). Virgil leads Dante through to and on the threshold of paradise gives way to Beatrice. The meaning of this allegory is that reason saves a person from passions, and knowledge of divine science delivers eternal bliss.

The Divine Comedy is imbued with the political tendencies of the author. Dante never misses an opportunity to reckon with his ideological, even personal enemies; he hates usurers, condemns credit as "excess", condemns his own age as an age of profit, and. In his opinion, - the source of all evils. To the dark present, he contrasts the bright past, bourgeois Florence - feudal Florence, when simplicity of morals, moderation, chivalrous "knowledge" ("Paradise", Kachchagvida's story), feudal (cf. Dante's treatise "On the Monarchy") prevailed. The tercines of "Purgatory", accompanying the appearance of Sordello (Ahi serva Italia), sound like a real hosanna of Ghibellinism. Dante treats the papacy as a principle with the greatest respect, although he hates individual representatives of it, especially those who contributed to the strengthening of the bourgeois system in Italy; some dads Dante meets in hell. His religion is, although a personal element is already woven into it, alien to the old orthodoxy, although the Franciscan religion of love, which is accepted with all passion, is also a sharp deviation from classical Catholicism. His philosophy is theology, his science is his poetry, his poetry is allegory. Ascetic ideals in Dante have not yet died, and he regards free love as a grave sin (Hell, 2nd circle, the famous episode with Francesca da Rimini and Paolo). But it is not a sin for him to love, which attracts to the object of worship with a pure platonic impulse (cf. "New Life", Dante's love for Beatrice). This is a great world force that "moves the sun and other luminaries." And humility is no longer an absolute virtue. “Whoever in glory does not renew his strength with victory will not taste the fruit that he obtained in the struggle.” And the spirit of inquisitiveness, the desire to widen the circle of knowledge and acquaintance with the world, combined with “virtue” (virtute e conoscenza), which encourages heroic daring, is proclaimed an ideal.

Dante built his vision from pieces of real life. Separate corners of Italy, which are placed in it with clear graphic contours, went to the construction of the afterlife. And so many living human images are scattered in the poem, so many typical figures, so many vivid psychological situations that literature still continues to draw from there. People who suffer in hell, repent in purgatory (moreover, the volume and nature of the punishment corresponds to the volume and nature of sin), abide in bliss in paradise - all living people. In these hundreds of figures, no two are the same. In this huge gallery of historical figures there is not a single image that has not been cut by the poet's unmistakable plastic intuition. No wonder Florence experienced a period of such intense economic and cultural upsurge. That keen sense of landscape and man, which is shown in the Comedy and which the world learned from Dante, was possible only in the social situation of Florence, which was far ahead of the rest of Europe. Separate episodes of the poem, such as Francesca and Paolo, Farinata in his red-hot grave, Ugolino with children, Capaneus and Ulysses, in no way similar to ancient images, the Black Cherub with subtle devilish logic, Sordello on his stone, are produced to this day strong impression.

The Concept of Hell in The Divine Comedy

In front of the entrance are pitiful souls who did not do either good or evil during their lifetime, including “bad flock of angels”, who were neither with the devil nor with God.

• 1st circle (Limb). Unbaptized Infants and the Virtuous.
• 2nd circle. Voluptuaries (fornicators and adulterers).
• 3rd circle. , and gourmets.
• 4th circle. Buyers and spendthrifts.
• 5th circle (Stygian swamp). and .
• 6th round. and false teachers.
• 7th round.
  • 1st belt. Violators over the neighbor and over his property (and robbers).
  • 2nd belt. Violators over themselves () and over their property (and motes).
  • 3rd belt. Violators of the deity (), against nature () and art, ().
• 8th round. Deceived the disbelievers. It consists of ten ditches (Zlopazuhi, or Evil Slits).
  • 1st ditch. Pimps and.
  • 2nd ditch. Flatterers.
  • 3rd ditch. Holy merchants, high-ranking clerics who traded in church positions.
  • 4th ditch. , stargazers, .
  • 5th ditch. Bribe-takers, .
  • 6th ditch. Hypocrites.
  • 7th ditch. .
  • 8th ditch. Wicked advisers.
  • 9th ditch. Discord instigators.
  • 10th ditch. , false witnesses, counterfeiters.
• 9th round. Deceived those who trusted.
  • Belt . Family traitors.
  • Belt . Traitors and associates.
  • Belt of Tolomei. Traitors of friends and companions.
  • Giudecca belt. Traitors of benefactors, majesty divine and human.

Building a model of Hell, Dante follows, which refers to the 1st category the sins of intemperance, to the 2nd - the sins of violence, to the 3rd - the sins of deceit. Dante has circles 2-5 for the intemperate, 7th for rapists, 8-9 for deceivers (8th is just for deceivers, 9th is for traitors). Thus, the more material the sin, the more forgivable it is.

The concept of Paradise in The Divine Comedy

• 1 sky() - the abode of those who observe duty.
• 2 sky() - the abode of reformers and innocent victims.
• 3 sky() - the abode of lovers.
• 4 sky() - the abode of sages and great scientists ().
• 5 sky() - the abode of warriors for the faith -,.
• 6 sky() - the abode of just rulers (biblical kings David and Hezekiah, Emperor Trajan, King Guglielmo II the Good and the hero of the "Aeneid" Ripheus)
• 7 sky() - the abode of theologians and monks ( , ).
• 8 sky(sphere of stars)
• 9 sky(The prime mover, crystal sky). Dante describes the structure of the heavenly inhabitants (see)
• 10 sky(Empyrean) - Flaming Rose and Radiant River (the core of the rose and the arena of the heavenly amphitheater) - the abode of the Deity. On the banks of the river (the steps of the amphitheater, which is divided into 2 more semicircles - the Old Testament and the New Testament), blessed souls sit. Maria (

Canto One

“Having passed half of his earthly life”, Dante “find himself in a gloomy forest” of sins and delusions. The middle of human life, the top of its arc, Dante considers thirty-five years of age. He reached it in 1300, and coincides with this year his journey to the afterlife. Such a chronology allows the poet to resort to the method of "prediction" of events that took place after this date.

Above the forest of sins and delusions rises the saving hill of virtue, illuminated by the sun of truth. The poet's ascent to the hill of salvation is hindered by three animals: a lynx, personifying voluptuousness, a lion, symbolizing pride, and a she-wolf, the embodiment of self-interest. The spirit of the frightened Dante, "running and confused, turned back, looking around the path leading everyone to the predicted death."

Before Dante is Virgil, the famous Roman poet, author of the Aeneid. In the Middle Ages, he enjoyed the legendary fame of a sage, sorcerer and forerunner of Christianity. Virgil, who will lead Dante through Hell and Purgatory, is a symbol of the mind that guides people to earthly happiness. Dante turns to him with a request for salvation, calls him "the honor and light of all the singers of the earth", his teacher, "beloved example". Virgil advises the poet to "choose a new path", because Dante is not yet prepared to overcome the she-wolf and climb the joyous hill:

She-wolf, from which you are in tears,
It happened to every creature,
She will seduce many, but glorious
The Dog will come, and it will end.

The dog is the coming savior of Italy, he will bring with him honor, love and wisdom, and wherever “the she-wolf seeks her run, having overtaken her, he will imprison her in Hell, from where envy lured the predator.”

Virgil announces that he will accompany Dante through all nine circles of Hell:

And you will hear the screams of madness
And the ancient spirits that live there,
For a new death, vain prayers;
Then you will see those who are strangers to sorrows
Among the fire, in the hope of joining
Someday to blessed tribes.
Ho if you want to fly higher,
A worthy soul awaits you.

The owner of the "worthiest soul" is none other than Beatrice, the woman Dante loved since childhood. She died at the age of twenty-five, and Dante made a vow "to say things about her that have never been said about anyone." Beatrice is a symbol of heavenly wisdom and revelation.

Canto two

Am I powerful enough
To call me for such a feat?
And if I go to the land of shadows
I'm afraid I'll be crazy, no more.

After all, before Dante, visiting Hell was only possible for the literary hero Aeneas (who descended into the underground abode of shadows, where the late father showed him the souls of his descendants) and the apostle Paul (who visited both Hell and Paradise, “so that others might be strengthened in the faith that leads to salvation go"). Virgil calmly replies:

It is impossible for fear to command the mind;
I was called by a woman
beautiful,
That he pledged to serve her in everything.

It was Beatrice who asked Virgil to pay special attention to Dante, guide him through the underworld and protect him from danger. She herself is in Purgatory, but, driven by love, she was not afraid to descend to Hell for the sake of Dante:

You should only be afraid of what is harmful
For the neighbor lies hidden.

In addition, at the request of Beatrice, the Virgin Mary is on the side of Dante (“There is a blessed wife in heaven; grieving for the one who suffers so severely, she bowed the judge to mercy”) and the Christian Saint Lucia. Virgil encourages the poet, assures that the path he ventured on will end happily:

Why are you embarrassed by shameful timidity?
Why not bright with bold pride,
When the three blessed wives
You found the words of protection in heaven
And the wondrous path is foreshadowed for you?

Dante calms down and asks Virgil to go ahead, showing him the way.

Song Three

On the gates of Hell, Dante reads the inscription:

I'm taking you to outcast villages,
I take away through the eternal groan,
I take you to the lost generations.
My architect was truly inspired:
I am the highest power, the fullness of omniscience
And created by the first love.
Ancient me only eternal creatures,
And I will be on a par with eternity.
Incoming, leave hope.

Ho Christian mythology, Hell was created by a triune deity: the father (higher power), the son (the fullness of omniscience) and the holy spirit (first love) to serve as a place of execution for the fallen Lucifer. Hell was created before everything transitory and will exist forever. Ancient Hell only earth, sky and angels. Hell is an underground funnel-shaped abyss, which, narrowing, reaches the center of the globe. Its slopes are surrounded by concentric ledges, "circles" of Hell.

Virgil notes: “Here it is necessary that the soul be firm; here fear should not give advice.

Dante enters the "mysterious vestibule". He finds himself on the other side of the gates of Hell.

There are sighs, weeping and a frenzied cry
In the starless darkness were so great
Fragments of all dialects, wild murmur,
Words in which pain, and anger, and fear,
Splashing of hands, and complaints, and cries
Merged into a rumble, without time, for centuries,
Spinning in the mist unillumined,
Like a stormy whirlwind of indignant dust.

Virgil explains that here are the "insignificant ones", those miserable souls "who have lived without knowing either the glory or the shame of mortal deeds. And with them a bad flock of angels, ”who, when Lucifer rebelled, did not join either him or God. “They were overthrown by the sky, not tolerating the spot; and the abyss of Hell does not accept them. Sinners groan in despair because

And the hour of death is unattainable for them,
And this life is so unbearable
That everything else would be easier for them.
They seem to be driven and pushed to the waves,
As it may seem from afar.

Virgil leads Dante to Acheron, the river of the ancient underworld. Flowing down, Acheron forms the swamp of Styx (the Stygian swamp in which the angry are executed), even lower it becomes Phlegeton, a ring-shaped river of boiling blood in which rapists are immersed, crosses the forest of suicides and the desert, where the fiery rain falls. Finally, Acheron plunges deep into the depths with a noisy waterfall, so that in the center of the earth it turns into an icy lake Cocytus.

Towards the poets floats in the boat "an old man, overgrown with ancient gray hair." This is Charon, the carrier of the souls of the ancient underworld, who turned into a demon in Dante's Hell. Charon is trying to drive Dante - a living soul - from the dead, who have angered God. Knowing that Dante was not condemned to eternal torment, Charon believes that the place of the poet is in a light boat, on which an angel transports the souls of the dead to Purgatory. Ho, Virgil stands up for Dante, and the poet enters the gloomy boat of Charon.

The depth of the earth blew with the wind,
The desert of sorrow flared up all around,
Blinding feelings with crimson brilliance...

Dante faints.

Canto Four

Waking up from a fainting dream, Dante finds himself in the first circle of the Catholic Hell, which is otherwise called Limbo. Here he sees unbaptized babies and virtuous non-Christians. They did nothing wrong during their lifetime, however, if there is no baptism, no merit will save a person. Here is the place of Virgil's soul, which Dante explains:

Who lived before the Christian doctrine,
That god did not honor the way we should.
So am I. For these omissions
Not for anything else, we are condemned,

Virgil tells that Christ, between his death and resurrection, descended into Hell and brought out the Old Testament saints and patriarchs (Adam, Abel, Moses, King David, Abraham, Israel, Rachel). They all went to heaven. Returning to Limbo, Virgil is greeted by four of the greatest poets of antiquity:

Homer, the highest of the singers of all countries;
The second is Horace, scourging morals;
Ovid is the third, followed by Lucan.

Dante is the sixth in this company of great poets, he considers this a great honor for himself. After a walk with the poets, a high castle appears in front of him, surrounded by seven walls. The famous Trojan Greeks appear before Dante's eyes - Electra (daughter of Atlanta, beloved of Zeus, mother of Dardanus, the founder of Troy); Hector (Trojan hero); Aeneas. Following are the famous Romans: “Caesar, friend of battles” (commander and statesman who laid the foundations of autocracy); Brutus, first Roman consul; Caesar's daughter Julius, and others. The Sultan of Egypt and Syria, Saladin, known for his spiritual nobility, approaches. Wise men and poets sit in a separate circle: “the teacher of those who know”, Aristotle; Socrates; Plato; Democritus, who "thinks the world of chance"; philosophers Diogenes, Thales with Anaxagoras, Zeno, Empedocles, Heraclitus; doctor Dioscorides; the Roman philosopher Seneca, the mythical Greek poets Orpheus and Lin; Roman orator Tullius; geometer Euclid; astronomer Ptolemy; doctors Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna; Arab philosopher Averrois.

“Having left the initial circle,” Dante descends into the second circle of Hell.

Song Five

At the border, the circle of the second Dante is met by the just Greek king Minos, the "legislator of Crete", who after his death became one of the three judges of the underworld. Minos assigns the degree of punishment to sinners. Dante sees the souls of sinners flying around.

That hellish wind, not knowing rest,
Rushing hosts of souls in the surrounding haze
And tortures them, twisting and torturing.
...it's a circle of torment
For those whom the earthly flesh called,
Who betrayed the mind to the power of lust.

Among the voluptuaries languishing in the second circle are the queens Semiramis, Cleopatra, Elena, "the culprit of difficult times." Achilles, “the thunder of battles, who was defeated by love” are recognized as voluptuaries and endure torments here; Paris, Tristan.

Dante turns to a pair of inseparable lovers even in Hell - Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta. Francesca was married to an ugly and lame man, but soon fell in love with his younger brother. Francesca's husband killed both. Francesca calmly replies to Dante that, despite the torments of Hell,

Love that commands loved ones to love,
I was drawn to him so powerfully,
That this captivity you see is indestructible.

Francesca tells Dante the story of their love with Paolo. The reason for entering into a love affair, for them, was a joint reading of the novel about Lancelot, the Knight of the Round Table, and his love for Queen Ginevra. "The torment of their hearts" covers Dante's forehead with "mortal sweat", and he falls unconscious.

Song Six

Dante, accompanied by Virgil, enters the third circle, the entrance to which is guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus, a demon with the features of a dog and a man:

His eyes are purple, his belly is swollen,
The fat in the black beard, the claws of the hand;
He torments souls, tears skin with meat.

In the third circle, where gluttons languish, "the rain is streaming, cursed, eternal, heavy, icy." Virgil bends down, scoops up two handfuls of earth and throws them into the "gluttonous mouth." Cerberus. While he is choking on the ground, the poets get the opportunity to pass him.

Dante meets Chacko, a glutton known throughout Florence. Chacko predicts the coming fate of Florence, torn apart by hostility between two noble families (Black and White Guelphs, to which Dante belonged):

After a long fight
Blood will be shed and power to the forest
(White) will deliver,
And their enemies - exile and shame.
When the sun reveals its face three times,
They will fall, and help those to rise
The hand of the one who is cunning these days
(Pope Boniface VIII).

The Black Guelphs will crush the Whites, according to Chacko's prophecy. Many Whites, including Dante, will be exiled.

Virgil explains to Dante that when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead, each soul will hasten to its grave, where its body is buried, enter it and hear its sentence. Virgil refers to the writings of Aristotle, which say that "the more perfect nature is in being, the sweeter the bliss in it, and the pain is more painful." This means that the more perfect a being is, the more receptive it is to both pleasure and pain. A soul without a body is less perfect than a soul united with it. Therefore, after the resurrection of the dead, sinners will experience even greater suffering in Hell, and the righteous will experience even greater bliss in Paradise.

Canto Seven

In the next circle, Dante is waiting for the Greek god of wealth, Plutos, an animal-like demon guarding access to the fourth circle, where misers and spendthrifts are executed. These two groups lead a kind of round dance:

Two hosts marched, army to army,
Then they collided and again
With difficulty they trudged back, shouting to each other:
"What to save?" or “What to throw?”

Virgil reproaches Dante for his erroneous idea that Fortune holds human happiness in her hands, and explains that the goddess of fate is only the executor of God's just will, she disposes of worldly happiness, while each of the heavenly spheres corresponds to its own angelic circle, which knows heavenly happiness.

Virgil and Dante cross the fourth circle and reach

To the jets of the stream, which are spacious,
Pitted by them, the hollow rushed.
Their coloration was purple-black ...
The gloomy key subsides and grows
Falling into the Stygian swamp...

In the Stygian swamp, Dante sees a ferocious crowd of naked people.

They fought, not only in two hands,
Ho head, and chest, and legs
Strive to gnaw each other to shreds.

Virgil explains that the angry ones bear eternal punishment here. Under the waves of the Stygian swamp, people are also punished, "whose throats are covered with mud." These are those who deeply concealed anger and hatred during their lifetime and, as it were, suffocated from them. Now their punishment is worse than those who splashed their anger on the surface.

Virgil leads Dante to the foot of the tower of the underground city of Dita, located on the other side of the Stygian swamp.

Canto Eight

Dante notices two lit lights. This is a signal about the arrival of two souls, to which a response signal is given from the tower of the city of Dita, and from there a carrier sails on a canoe.

The evil guardian of the fifth circle, the carrier of souls through the Stygian swamp - Phlegius, according to Greek myth, the king of the Lapiths. Phlegius burned down the Temple of Delphi and was thrown into Hades by an angry Apollo.

Phlegius is boating Virgil with Dante. “In the middle of the dead stream”, Dante sees a supporter of the Black Guelphs, a rich Florentine knight, nicknamed Argenti (“silver”), because he shoed his horse with silver. During his lifetime, there was a personal enmity between him and Dante, Argenti was distinguished by arrogance and a furious disposition. He wraps both arms around Dante's neck, trying to drag him into the gloomy waters, but Argenti is attacked by "all the dirty people in a great fury" and does not allow him to fulfill his vile intention. Argenti "tears himself with his teeth in wild anger."

Before Dante, the city of Dit (the Latin name of Hades) grows, in which "joyless people are imprisoned, a sad host." The eternal flame blows outside the city walls and paints the towers crimson. This is how Dante sees the lower Hell. At the gate, Dante sees many hundreds of devils "raining down from heaven." They were once angels, but together with Lucifer they rebelled against God and are now cast into Hell.

The devils demand that Virgil come up to them alone, while Dante continues to stand at a distance. Dante is scared to death, but Virgil assures him that everything will be all right, you just have to believe and hope. The devils talk to Virgil for a short time and quickly hide inside. The iron of Deet's inner gate rumbles. The outer gates were broken by Christ when he tried to bring the souls of the righteous out of Hell, and the devils blocked his path. Since then, the gates of hell have been open.

Canto Nine

Seeing that Dante turned pale with fear at his return, Virgil overcame his own pallor. The poet of antiquity says that once he had already passed here, “the evil Erichto, cursed, that she knew how to call souls back to bodies.” (Erichto is a sorceress who resurrected the dead and made them predict the future).

In front of Dante and Virgil, "three Furies, bloody and pale, and entwined with green hydras," soar. They call on Medusa, from the look of which Dante should turn to stone. However, Virgil warns in time for Dante to close his eyes and turn away, and even covers his face with his hands. The Furies regret that at one time they did not destroy Theseus, who entered Hades in order to kidnap Persephone: then mortals would finally lose their desire to penetrate into the underworld.

In the sixth circle, Dante sees "only deserted places filled with inconsolable sorrow."

The barren valley is covered with tombs, -
Because here fires crawled between the pits,
So their kalya, as in the flame of a furnace
Iron has not been heated from time immemorial.

Heretics languish in these mournful tombs.

Canto Ten

Suddenly, from one grave, the voice of Farinat degli Uberti, the head of the Florentine Ghibellines (a party hostile to the Guelphs), is heard. He asks whose descendant is Dante. The poet tells his story honestly. Farinata begins to insult him, and Virgil advises Dante from now on not to tell about himself to those he meets. Dante is confronted by a new ghost, Guelph Cavalcanti, father of Dante's closest friend, Guido Cavalcanti. He is surprised that he does not see Guido next to Dante. The poet explains that he was brought to Hell by Virgil, whose works Guido "did not honor."

Virgil warns that when Dante “enters the blessed light of beautiful eyes that see everything truthfully,” that is, she meets Beatrice, she will let him see the shadow of Cacchagvida, which will reveal to Dante his future fate.

Canto Eleven

Virgil explains to his companion that in the abyss of lower Hell, there are three circles. In these last circles, malice is punished, wielding either violence or deceit.

Deception and force are the tools of the evil ones.
Deception, vice, only akin to man,
Worse than the Creator; it fills the bottom
And torture is executed hopeless.
Violence is in the first circle
Which is divided into three belts ...

In the first belt, murder, robbery, arson (that is, violence against one's neighbor) is punishable. In the second belt - suicide, game and extravagance (that is, violence against one's property). In the third belt - blasphemy, sodomy and covetousness (violence against the deity, nature and art). Virgil mentions that "the most pernicious are only three instincts hated by heaven: intemperance, malice, violent bestiality." At the same time, "incontinence is a lesser sin before God, and he does not punish him that way."

Canto Twelve

The entrance to the seventh circle, where rapists are punished, is guarded by the Minotaur, "the shame of the Cretans", a monster conceived by the Cretan queen Pasiphae from a bull.

In the seventh circle centaurs rush about. Dante and Virgil meet the fairest of the centaurs, Chiron, the tutor of many heroes (for example, Achilles). Chiron orders that the centaur Nessus become a guide for Dante and drive away those who could interfere with the poet.

Along the shore, over the scarlet boiling water,
The guide led us without question.
The cry of those who were being cooked alive was terrible.

Tyrants languishing in the boiling bloody river, thirsting for gold and blood - Alexander the Great (commander), Dionysius of Syracuse (tyrant), Attila (destroyer of Europe), Pyrrhus (who waged war with Caesar), Sextus (who exterminated the inhabitants of the city of Gabia).

Canto thirteen

Wandering along the second belt of the seventh circle, where rapists are punished against themselves and over their property, Dante sees the nests of harpies (mythical birds with girlish faces). She and Virgil pass through the "desert of fire". Virgil says that when Aeneas began to break the myrtle bush to decorate his altars with branches, blood came out of the bark, and the mournful voice of the Trojan prince Polydor buried there was heard. Dante, following the example of Aeneas, stretches out his hand to the blackthorn and breaks the knot. Trunk exclaims that it hurts.

So Dante enters the forest of suicides. They are the only ones who, on the day of the Last Judgment, having gone for their bodies, will not be reunited with them: "It is not ours that we ourselves threw off."

There is no forgiveness for suicides, whose "soul, hardened, willfully tear the shell of the body," even if the person "planned to prevent slander by death." Those who voluntarily took their own lives turned into plants after death.

Grain into an escape and into, the trunk is turned;
And the harpies, feeding on its leaves,
Pain is created...

Canto Fourteen

Dante walks along the third belt of the seventh circle, where the rapists languish over the deity in eternal torment. Before him "the steppe opened, where there is no living sprout." The blasphemers are downcast, lying face up, the covetous sit huddled, the sodomites scurry around tirelessly.

The irreconcilable blasphemer, who does not give up his opinion even in Hell, "executes himself, in great fury, more severely than any court." He "abhorred God - and did not become more meek."

Dante and Virgil are moving towards the high mountain of Ida.

A certain great old man stands in grief;
He shines golden head
And the chest and arms are cast silver,
And further - copper, to the place where it is bifurcated;
Then - the iron is simple to the bottom,
Ho clay right metatarsus,
All flesh, from the neck down, is cut,
And drops of tears flow through the cracks
And the bottom of the cave is gnawed by their wave.
In the underground depths of them will be born
And Acheron, and Styx, and Phlegeton.

This is the Cretan Elder, the emblem of humanity that has passed through the golden, silver, copper and iron ages. Now it (humanity) is leaning on a fragile clay foot, that is, the hour of its end is near. The elder turns his back to the East, the region of the ancient kingdoms that have become obsolete, and faces Rome, where, as in a mirror, the former glory of the world monarchy is reflected and from where, as Dante believes, the salvation of the world can still shine.

Canto fifteen

In front of Dante, an infernal river flows, the “burning Phlegeton”, over which rises “abundant steam”. From there comes the voice of the Florentine Brunetto, a scientist, poet and statesman of the time of Dante, whom the poet himself looks at as his teacher. He accompanies the guest for some time. Dante

... did not dare to go through the burning plain
Side by side with him; but bowed his head
Like a man walking respectfully.

Dante sees how “the people of the church, the best to know them, scientists known to all countries” are tormented in the bubbling scarlet waters of the hellish river.

Canto Sixteen

Three shadows fly up to Dante and Virgil from the crowd, which consists of the souls of military and statesmen. “All three of them ran in a circle,” because in the third belt of the seventh circle of Hell, souls are forbidden to stop even for a moment. Dante recognizes the Florentine Guelphs Guido Gverra, Teggiaio Aldobrandi and Pycticucci., who glorified themselves in Dante's time.

Virgil explains that now it's time for them to descend into the most terrible place of Hell. A rope is found on Dante's belt - he hoped "to catch a lynx with it sometime." Dante hands the rope to Virgil.

He, standing sideways and so that he
Do not hook on the ledges of the cliff,
Threw her into the yawning darkness.

I saw - to us from the abyss, like a swimmer, Soared up some kind of image growing, Wonderful and for insolent hearts.

Canto Seventeen

Geryon appears from the abyss of hell, the guardian of the eighth circle, where deceivers are punished.

He was clear in face and majestic
Tranquility traits friendly and clean,
Ho the rest of the serpentine was the composition.
Two paws, hairy and clawed;
His back, and belly, and sides -
In the pattern of spots and flowery knots.

Dante notices "a crowd of people who sat near the abyss in burning dust." These are moneylenders. They are placed just above the cliff, on the border with the region where deceivers suffer torment. Virgil advises Dante to find out "what is the difference between their lot."

Each had a purse hanging on his chest,
Having a special sign and color,
And it seemed to delight their eyes.

The empty purses are decorated with the coats of arms of usurers, which indicates their noble origin. Dante and Virgil sit on the back of Gerion, and he rushes them into the abyss. Horror seizes Dante when he sees that

...around one
The empty abyss of air turns black
And only the back of the beast rises.

Gerion lowers the poets to the bottom of the failure and disappears.

Canto Eighteen

Dante enters the eighth circle (Evil Slits), which is furrowed with ten concentric ditches (slits). In Evil Slits, deceivers are punished who deceived people who were not connected with them by any special bonds. In the first ditch, sinners walk in two oncoming streams, scourged by demons and therefore “walking bigger” than Dante and Virgil. The row closest to the poets moves towards them. These are pimps who seduce women for others. The far row is formed by seducers who seduced women for themselves. Among them -

... wise and brave ruler,
Jason, rune acquirer of gold.
He deceived, decorating speech richly,
Young Hypsipyle, in turn
Tovarok deceived once.
He left her there bearing fruit;
For this he is so viciously scourged ...

Dante ascends "to the bridge where there is room for the eye." Crowds of sinners appear before his eyes, “stuck in foul-smelling feces” in the second ditch. These are flatterers. Dante recognizes Alessio Interminelli, who admits that he suffers such punishment "because of the flattering speech that he wore on his tongue."

Canto nineteen

In the third moat, holy merchants, "church traders" are punished. Here Dante sees Pope Nicholas III, who has been buried upside down for twenty years. The poet leans over him like a confessor over a murderer (in the Middle Ages in Italy, murderers were buried upside down in the ground, and the only way to delay a terrible execution was to ask the confessor to approach the convicted person again). Dante brings out the symbol of papal Rome, merging together the image of a harlot and a beast (following the example of the author of the Apocalypse, who called Rome "the great harlot" sitting on a seven-headed and ten-horned beast).

Silver and gold are now God for you;
And even those who pray to the idol,
They honor one, you honor a hundred at once.

Canto Twenty

In the fourth ditch of the eighth circle, soothsayers languish, stricken with dumbness. Dante recognizes the Theban soothsayer Tiresias, who, having struck two intertwined snakes with his staff, turned into a woman, and after seven years made the opposite transformation. Here is the daughter of Tiresias, Manto, also a soothsayer.

Song twenty-one

Bribe-takers are punished in the fifth ditch of the eighth circle. The moat is guarded by the demons of Zagrebala. Dante sees how thick tar is boiling in the moat, notices “how a certain black devil, nicknamed the Tailman, runs up the steep path.”

He threw a sinner like a bag,
On a sharp shoulder and rushed to the rocks,
Holding it by the tendons of the legs.
... And up to a hundred teeth
They immediately plunged into the sinner's sides.

Song twenty two

Virgil and Dante walk "with ten demons" along the fifth ditch. Sometimes, “to ease the torment,” one of the sinners emerges from the boiling tar and hastily dives back, because demons are zealously guarding them on the shore. As soon as someone lingers on the surface, one of the guards, Zabiyaka, tears his forearm with a hook and snatches out a whole piece of meat.

As soon as the bribe-taker disappeared with his head,
He immediately moved his nails at his brother,
And the devils grappled over the pitch.

Song twenty-three

The sixth ditch contains hypocrites dressed in lead robes, which are called cloaks. The hypocrites move forward very slowly under the weight of their armor. Virgil advises Dante to wait and walk with someone he knows in step along the road.

One of the sinners admits that he and his friend are Gaudents (in Bologna, the Order of the “Knights of the Virgin Mary”, the Gaudents, was established, the purpose of which was considered to be reconciliation of the warring and protecting the disadvantaged. Since the members of the order cared most about their pleasures, they were called “merry brothers"). The Gaudents are punished for the hypocrisy of their order.

Dante sees "crucified in the dust with three stakes." This sinner is the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who, according to the gospel legend, gave the Pharisees advice to kill Christ. Caiaphas hypocritically said that the death of one Christ would save the whole nation from destruction. Otherwise, the people may incur the wrath of the Romans, under whose rule Judea was, if they continue to follow Christ.

He is thrown across the path and naked,
As you see yourself, and feels all the time,
How heavy everyone who walks is.

The Pharisees themselves waged a fierce struggle against the early Christian communities, which is why the Gospel calls them hypocrites as well.

Song twenty-four

Thieves are punished in the seventh ditch. Dante and Virgil climb to the top of the collapse. Dante is very tired, but Virgil reminds him that there is a much higher staircase ahead of him (referring to the path to Purgatory). In addition, Dante's goal is not just to get away from sinners. This is not enough. You have to achieve inner perfection yourself.

“Suddenly, a voice from the cleft rang out, which did not even sound like a speech.” Dante does not understand the meaning of the words, does not see where the voice comes from and to whom it belongs. Inside the cave, Dante sees "a terrible lump of snakes, and so many different snakes could be seen that the blood freezes."

In the midst of this monstrous osprey
Naked people, rushing about, not a corner
He waited to hide, not a heliotrope.
Twisting their hands behind their backs, sides
Serpents pierced with tail and head,
To tie the ends of the ball in front.

Here thieves suffer punishment. The snakes incinerate the thief, he burns, loses his body, falls, falls apart, but then his ashes close up and return to their previous appearance, so that the execution starts all over again.

The thief admits that he was a lover of "living like a beast, but like a human could not." Now he is "so deeply thrown into this pit because he stole the utensils in the sacristy."

Song twenty-five

At the end of the speech, hands up
And sticking out two figs, the villain
He exclaimed like this: “God, both things!”
Since then, I have become a friend of snakes:
Me in none of the dark circles of Hell
A shrewd spirit did not appear to God ...

The snakes bite into the bodies of the thieves, and the thieves themselves turn into snakes: their tongues fork, their legs grow together into a single tail, after which

The soul in the guise of a reptile creeps
And with a thorn is removed into the hollow.

Song twenty-six

In the eighth ditch, crafty advisers are executed. "Here every spirit is lost inside the fire with which it burns." In the eighth ditch, Ulysses (Odysseus) and Diomedes (Trojan heroes who always acted together in battles and ingenious enterprises) are tormented, “and so together, as they went to anger, they go the way of retribution.”

Odysseus tells Dante that he is guilty of leading people astray all his life, deliberately suggesting cunning, incorrect ways out of the situation, manipulating them, for which he is now suffering the torments of Hell. Repeatedly, his crafty advice cost his companions their lives, and Odysseus had to "replace his triumph with crying."

Song twenty-seven

Another sly adviser is Count Guido de Montefeltro, the leader of the Romanesque Ghibellines, a skilled commander, who was at war with papal Rome, then reconciled with him. Two years before his death, he took the monastic vows, which Dante now informs about:

I changed the sword to the cordillera belt
And I believed that I would receive grace;
And so my faith would be fulfilled,
Whenever you lead me into sin again
The Supreme Shepherd (evil fate to him!);
I knew all kinds of secret ways
And knew the tricks of every suit;
The end of the world heard the sound of my inventions.
When I realized that I had reached that part
My path, where is the wise man,
Retracting his sail, winds up the tackle,
Everything that captivated me, I cut off;
And, contritely having made a confession, -
Woe to me! - I would be saved forever.

However, the count could not get rid of the cunning and cunning habitual to his mind, the perverted logic with which he spoiled the lives of less far-sighted people. Therefore, when the death hour of Guido de Montefeltro came, the devil descended from heaven and grabbed his soul, explaining that he was also a logician.

Song twenty-eight

In the ninth ditch, the instigators of discord suffer. According to Dante, “it will surpass the ninth ditch in monstrous reprisal a hundred times” all the other circles of Hell.

Not so full of holes, having lost the bottom, tub,
How here the inside of one gaped
lips to where they stink:
A shock of intestines hung between the knees,
One could see a heart with a vile purse,
Where what is eaten passes into feces.

One of the sinners is the troubadour Bertram de Born, who fought a lot with both his brother and neighbors and encouraged others to war. Under his influence, Prince Henry (whom Dante calls John) rebelled against his father, who crowned him during his lifetime. For this, Bertram's brain is cut off forever, his head is cut in half.

Song twenty-nine

The sight of these crowds and this torment
So intoxicated my eyes that I
I wanted to cry, not melting suffering.

The tenth ditch is the last refuge of forgers. metals, forgers of people (i.e., pretending to be others), counterfeiters of money and counterfeiters of words (liars and slanderers). Dante sees two people sitting back to back, "crusted from the feet to the top of the head." They suffer from foul-smelling scabies and, moreover, are relaxed.

Their nails peeled off the skin completely,
Like scales from a large-scaled fish

Or withbream scrapes a knife.

Canto Thirty

Before Dante are

...two pale naked shadows,
Which, biting everyone around,
Rushed...
One was built just like a lute;
He would only cut off in the groin
The whole bottom, which is bifurcated in people.

This is Gianni Schicchi and Mirra, posing as other people. Mirra, the daughter of the Cypriot king Kinir, was inflamed with love for her father and quenched her passion under a false name. Upon learning of this, her father wanted to kill her, but Mirra fled. The gods turned her into a myrrh tree. Gianni Schicchi pretended to be a dying rich man and dictated his will to a notary for him. A forged will was drawn up in many respects in favor of Schicchi himself (who received an excellent horse and six hundred gold pieces, while donating pennies to charitable causes).

In the tenth ditch of the eighth circle languishes "who lied against Joseph" - the wife of Potiphar, who tried in vain to seduce the beautiful Joseph, who served in their house, and as a result slandered him before her husband, and he imprisoned Joseph. In the tenth ditch, the “Trojan Greek and liar Sinon”, an perjurer who, with a false story, convinced the Trojans to bring a wooden horse into Troy, is executed with eternal shame.

Song thirty one

Virgil is angry with Dante for paying so much attention to such scoundrels. But the tongue of Virgil, which stung Dante with reproach and caused a blush of shame on his face, itself heals his spiritual wound with consolation.

From the gloomy light towers appear in the distance. Coming closer, Dante sees that this is the Well of the Giants (giants who, in Greek mythology, tried to take the sky by storm and were overthrown by Zeus' lightning).

They stand in the well, around the vent,
And their bottom, from the navel, is adorned with a fence.

King Nimrod languishes among the giants, who planned to build a tower to heaven, which led to a shift in the previously common language, and people no longer understood each other's speech. The giant Ephialtes is punished by the fact that he can no longer move his arms.

Titan Antaeus emerges from a dark basin. He did not participate in the struggle of the giants with the gods. Virgil cajoles Antaeus, praises his supernatural power, and he takes them with Dante "into the abyss, where Judas is swallowed up by the ultimate darkness and Lucifer."

Song thirty-two

The bottom of the well, guarded by giants, turns out to be the icy lake Cocytus, in which those who deceived those who trusted, that is, traitors, are punished. This is the last circle of Hell, divided into four concentric belts. In the first belt, traitors to relatives are executed. They are up to their necks in ice, and their faces are turned downwards.

And their eyes, swollen with tears,
They poured out moisture, and it froze,
And frost iced over their eyelids.

In the second belt, traitors to the motherland suffer punishment. By chance, Dante kicks one sinner in the temple with his foot. This is Bocca degli Abbati. In battle, he cut off the hand of the standard-bearer of the Florentine cavalry, which led to confusion and defeat. Bocca begins to quarrel, refuses to introduce himself to Dante. Other sinners attack the traitor with contempt. Dante promises that Bocca, with his help, will "perpetuate his shame in the world forever."

Two other sinners freeze in the pit together.

One, like a hat, was covered with another.
How hungry gnaws bread, bitching,
So the upper teeth stuck into the lower
Where the brain and neck meet.

Song thirty-three

In the third belt, Dante sees traitors of friends and companions. Here he listens to the story of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca. He ruled in Pisa jointly with his grandson Nino Visconti. But soon a strife arose between them, which Ugolino's enemies took advantage of. Under the guise of friendship and promising help in the fight against Nino, Bishop Ruggiero raised a popular rebellion against Ugolino. Ugolino, together with his four sons, was imprisoned in a tower, where he had previously locked his prisoners, where they were starved to death. At the same time, the sons repeatedly asked their father to eat them, but he refused and saw how the children died one after another in agony. For two days Ugolino called the dead with cries of anguish, but it was not grief that killed him, but hunger. Ugolino asks to remove the oppression from his gaze, "so that sorrow will shed a tear even for a moment, until the frost dragged it down."

At a distance, the monk Alberigo is tormented, who, when a relative slapped him in the face, invited him to a feast as a sign of reconciliation. At the end of the meal, Alberigo called for fruit, and at this sign, his son and brother, together with assassins, attacked a relative and his infant son and stabbed them both. "Fruit of Brother Alberigo" has become proverbial.

Song thirty-four

The poets enter the last, fourth belt, or more precisely, the central disk of the ninth circle.

Ada. Here traitors to their benefactors are executed.

Some lie; others froze standing,
Who is up, who is frozen head down;
And who - an arc, a face cut with feet.

Lucifer rises up to his chest from the ice. Once the most beautiful of angels, he led their rebellion against God and was cast out of heaven into the bowels of the earth. Turn into a monstrous Devil, he became the lord of the underworld. Thus, evil appeared in the world.

In the three mouths of Lucifer, those whose sin, according to Dante, is the most terrible of all: traitors to the majesty of God (Judas) and the majesty of man (Brutus and Cassius, champions of the republic who killed Julius Caesar) are executed.

Judas Iscariot is buried inside with his head and heels out. Brutus dangles from the black mouth of Lucifer and writhes in mute grief.

Virgil announces that their journey through the circles of Hell has come to an end. They make a turn and rush to the southern hemisphere. Dante, accompanied by Virgil, returns to the "clear light". Dante completely calms down, as soon as his eyes are illuminated by "the beauty of heaven in the gaping gap."

Purgatory

Dante and Virgil leave Hell at the foot of Mount Purgatory. Now Dante is preparing to "sing the Second Kingdom" (i.e., the seven circles of Purgatory, "where souls find purification and ascend to eternal being").

Dante depicts Purgatory as a huge mountain rising in the southern hemisphere in the middle of the Ocean. It has the shape of a truncated cone. The coastline and the lower part of the mountain form Prepurgatory, and the upper part is surrounded by seven ledges (seven circles of Purgatory). On the flat top of the mountain, Dante places the desert forest of the Earthly Paradise. There the human spirit acquires the highest freedom, then to go to Paradise.

The guardian of Purgatory is the elder Cato (a statesman of the last times of the Roman Republic, who, not wanting to survive its collapse, committed suicide). He "desired freedom" - spiritual freedom, which is achieved through moral purification. To this freedom, which is not realizable without civil freedom, Cato dedicated and gave his life.

At the foot of Mount Purgatory, the newly arrived souls of the dead crowd. Dante recognizes the shadow of his friend, composer and singer Casella. Kasella tells the poet that the souls of those "who are not attracted by Acheron", that is, are not condemned to the torments of Hell, flock after death to the mouth of the Tiber, from where an angel takes them in a canoe to the island of Purgatory. Although the angel did not take Kasella with him for a long time, he did not see any offense in this, being convinced that the desire of the angel-carrier "is similar to the highest truth." Ho now is the spring of 1300 (the time of the action of the Divine Comedy). In Rome, starting from Christmas, the church "anniversary" is celebrated, sins of the living are generously forgiven and the fate of the dead is alleviated. Therefore, for three months now, as the angel "takes freely" in his boat everyone who asks.

At the foot of Mount Purgatory stand the dead under church excommunication. Among them - Manfred, king of Naples and Sicily, an implacable opponent of the papacy, excommunicated. To fight him, the papal throne called for Charles of Anjou. In the battle of Benevento (1266), Manfred died, and his kingdom went to Charles. Each warrior of the enemy army, honoring the brave king, threw a stone on his grave, so that a whole hill grew.

On the first ledge of the Prepurgatory are the negligent, who hesitated to repent until the hour of death. Dante sees the Florentine Belacqua, who is waiting for the living to pray for him - his own prayers from the Prepurgatory are no longer heard by God.

negligent of their fate, who died a violent death. Here are those who fell in battle, and who were killed by a treacherous hand. The soul of Count Buonconte, who fell in battle, is taken by an angel to Paradise, "using a tear" of his remorse. The devil decides to take possession of at least "other", that is, his body.

Dante meets Sordello, a 13th-century poet who wrote in Provencal and died, according to legend, a violent death. Sordello was a native of Mantua, as was Virgil.

Virgil says that he is deprived of the vision of God (the Sun) not because he sinned, but because he did not know the Christian faith. He "learned to know it too late" - already after death, when Christ descended into Hell.

In a secluded valley are the souls of earthly rulers who have been absorbed in worldly affairs. Here is Rudolf of Habsburg (the emperor of the so-called "Holy Roman Empire"), the Czech king Premysl-Ottokar II (fell in battle with Rudolf in 1278), the snub-nosed French king Philip III the Bold (he was defeated, "darkening the honor of the lilies" of his coat of arms) etc. Most of these kings are very unhappy in their offspring.

Two bright angels descend to the earthly rulers to guard the valley, since "the appearance of the serpent is near." Dante sees Nino Visconti, friend and rival of Count Ugolini, whom the poet met in Hell. Nino laments that the widow soon forgot him. Three bright stars rise above the horizon, symbolizing faith, hope and love.

Virgil and the other shadows don't need to sleep. Dante falls asleep. While he is sleeping, Saint Lucia appears, she wants to transfer the poet herself to the Gates of Purgatory. Virgil agrees and dutifully follows Lucia. Dante must climb three steps - white marble, purple and fiery scarlet. On the last one sits the messenger of God. Dante reverently asks that the gates be opened for him. He, having drawn seven "P"s on Dante's forehead with a sword, takes out the silver and gold keys, opens the Gates of Purgatory.

In the first circle of Purgatory, souls atone for the sin of pride. The circular path along which Dante and Virgil are moving runs along the marble wall of the mountain slope, decorated with bas-reliefs depicting examples of humility (for example, the gospel legend of the humility of the Virgin Mary before an angel announcing that she will give birth to Christ).

The shadows of the dead give praise to the Lord, ask to guide people on the true path, to enlighten them, for "the majestic mind is powerless to find the way." They walk along the edge, "until the darkness of the world falls from them." Among those who are here is Oderisi of Gubbio, an illustrious miniaturist. He says that "to be the first always diligently marked", which he must now atone for.

"The path that souls follow is paved with slabs that "reveal who was who among the living." Dante's attention, in particular, is attracted by the image of the terrible torments of Niobe, who was proud of her seven sons and seven daughters and mocked Latona, the mother of only two twins - Apollo and Diana Then the children of the goddess killed all the children of Niobe with arrows, and she turned to stone with grief.

Dante notes that in Purgatory, souls enter each new circle with hymns, while in Hell they enter with cries of torment. The letters "P" on Dante's forehead grow dim, it seems easier for him to rise. Virgil, smiling, draws his attention to the fact that one letter has already completely disappeared. After the first “P”, the sign of pride, the root of all sins, was erased, the rest of the signs became dull, especially since pride was Dante’s main sin.

Dante gets to lap two. The poet realizes that he sinned much less with envy than with pride, but he foresees the torment of the "lower cliff", the one where the proud are "oppressed by the burden."

Dante enters the third circle of Purgatory. A bright light strikes his eyes for the first time. This is a heavenly ambassador who announces to the poet that a further path is open to him. Virgil explains to Dante:

The riches that attract you are so bad,
That the more you are, the poorer the part,
And envy inflates sighs like fur.
And if you directed passion
To the supreme realm, worry is yours
It should inevitably fall away.
After all, there - the more people who say "our",
The greater share each is endowed with,
And so love burns brighter and more beautiful.

Virgil advises Dante to quickly achieve the healing of the "five scars", of which two have already been erased by the poet's repentance of his sins.

The blinding smoke that poets enter envelops the souls of those who in life were blinded by anger. Before Dante's inner gaze, the Virgin Mary appears, who, having found her missing son, twelve-year-old Jesus, talking in the temple with a teacher, three days later, speaks meek words to him. Another vision is the wife of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, with pain in her voice, demanding revenge from her husband on the young man who kissed their daughter in public. Peisistratus did not listen to his wife, who demanded that the insolent one be punished, and the matter ended in a wedding. This dream was sent to Dante so that his heart would not for a moment turn away the “moisture of reconciliation” - meekness that extinguishes the fire of anger.

The fourth circle of Purgatory is reserved for the dull. Virgil expounds the doctrine of love as the source of all good and evil and explains the gradation of the circles of Purgatory. Circles I, II and III purify from the soul the love for "alien evil", that is, malevolence (pride, envy, anger); circle IV - insufficient love for the true good (despondency); circles V, VI, VII - excessive love for false goods (covetousness, gluttony, voluptuousness). Natural love is the natural desire of creatures (whether it be a primary substance, a plant, an animal or a person) to what is beneficial for them. Love is never wrong in choosing a goal.

In the fifth circle, the eyes of Dante appear miserly and spendthrifts, in the sixth - gluttons. The poet notes Erysichthon among them. Erysichthon cut down the oak of Ceres, and the goddess sent such an insatiable hunger on him that, having sold everything for food, even his own daughter, Erysichthon began to eat his own body. In the sixth circle, the purification of Boniface Fiesca, the Archbishop of Ravenna, takes place. Fieschi did not so much saturate his spiritual flock with moral food as his entourage with dainty dishes. Dante compares emaciated sinners with hungry Jews during the days of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans (70), when the Jewess Mariam ate her infant.

The poet Bonajunta of Lucca asks Dante if he is the one who sang love best of all. Dante formulates the psychological basis of his poetics and, in general, of the “sweet new style” he developed in poetry:

When I breathe love
Then I am attentive; she just needs
Suggest words to me, and I write.

In the seventh circle, Dante sees voluptuaries. Some of them angered God, indulging in sodomy, others, like the poet Guido Gvinicelli, are tormented by shame for the unbridled "bestial passion." Guido already "began to atone for his sin, like those who early in their hearts grieved." To their shame they commemorate Pasiphae.

Dante falls asleep. He dreams of a young woman picking flowers in a meadow. This is Leah, a symbol of active life. She collects flowers for her sister Rachel, who likes to look into a mirror framed with flowers (a symbol of the contemplative life).

Dante enters the Lord's forest - that is, the Earthly Paradise. Here a woman appears to him. This is Matelda. She sings and picks flowers. If Eve had not violated the ban, mankind would have lived in the Earthly Paradise, and Dante would have tasted the bliss that is now revealed to him from birth to death.

Creator of all blessings, satisfied only with himself,
Introduced a good person, for good,
Here, on the eve of eternal rest.
The fault of people stopped that time,
And turned into pain and crying for the old
Sinless laughter and sweet play.

Dante is surprised that he sees water and wind in the Earthly Paradise. Matelda explains (based on Aristotle's "Physics") that atmospheric precipitation is generated by "wet vapor", and wind is generated by "dry vapor". It is only below the level of the gates of Purgatory that such disturbances are observed, generated by steam, which, under the influence of the heat of the sun, rises from the water and from the earth. At the height of the Earthly Paradise, there are no more erratic winds. Here, only the uniform circulation of the earth's atmosphere from east to west is felt, caused by the rotation of the ninth heaven, or the First Mover, which sets in motion the eight heavens closed in whom.

The stream flowing in the Earthly Paradise is divided. The river Lethe flows to the left, destroying the memory of committed sins, to the right - Evnoya, resurrecting in a person the memory of all his good deeds.

A mystical procession marches towards Dante. This is a symbol of the triumphant church, going towards the repentant sinner. The procession opens with seven lamps, which, according to the Apocalypse, "are the seven spirits of God." Three women at the right wheel of the chariot - three "theological" virtues: scarlet - Love, green - Hope, white - Faith.

The holy string stops. Before Dante appears his beloved - Beatrice. She died at the age of twenty-five. But here Dante again tasted the "charm of the former love." At this moment, Virgil disappears. Further, the poet's guide will be his beloved.

Beatrice reproaches the poet for the fact that on earth after her death he was unfaithful to her both as a woman and as heavenly wisdom, looking for answers to all his questions in human wisdom. So that Dante "does not direct the steps of the evil paths", Beatrice arranged for him to travel through the nine circles of Hell and the seven circles of Purgatory. Only in this way the poet was convinced with his own eyes: it is possible to give him salvation only "by the spectacle of those who perished forever."

Dante and Beatrice talk about what the poet's unrighteous paths led to. Beatrice washes Dante in the waters of the river Lethe, which gives forgetfulness of sins. The nymphs sing that Dante will now be forever faithful to Beatrice, marked by the highest beauty, "the harmony of heaven." Dante discovers the second beauty of Beatrice - her mouth (the first beauty, eyes, Dante knew even in earthly life).

Dante, after "ten years of thirst" to see Beatrice (ten years have passed since her death), does not take his eyes off her. Holy host, mystical procession turns back east. The procession surrounds the biblical "tree of the knowledge of good and evil", from the forbidden fruits of which Eve and Adam ate.

Beatrice instructs the poet to describe everything that he will now see. Before Dante appear in allegorical images the past, present and future destinies of the Roman Church. An eagle descends to the chariot and showers it with its feathers. These are the riches with which the Christian emperors endowed the church. The dragon (devil) tore off part of its bottom from the chariot - the spirit of humility and poverty. Then she instantly dressed herself in feathers, overgrown with riches. The feathered chariot transforms into an apocalyptic beast.

Beatrice expresses confidence that the chariot stolen by the giant will be returned and will take on its former form. Events will show who will be the coming deliverer of the church, and the solution of this difficult riddle will lead not to disasters, but to peace.

Beatrice wants Dante, returning to the people, to convey her words to them, without even delving into their meaning, but simply keeping them in memory; so the pilgrim returns from Palestine with a palm branch tied to a staff. Sleep sends Dante to the Zvnoe River, which returns him his lost strength. Dante goes to Paradise, "pure and worthy to visit the luminaries."

Paradise

Dante, having drunk from the jets of Evnoia, returns to Beatrice. She will lead him to Paradise, the pagan Virgil cannot ascend to heaven.

Beatrice "sticks" her gaze into the sun. Dante tries to follow her example, but, unable to withstand the brilliance, fixes his eyes on her eyes. Unbeknownst to himself, the poet begins to ascend into the heavenly spheres together with his beloved.

The celestial spheres revolve with the ninth, crystalline heaven, or Prime Mover, which in turn revolves with unfathomable speed. Each of its particles yearns to unite with each of the particles of the motionless Empyrean that surrounds it. According to Beatrice's explanation, the heavens do not rotate by themselves, but are set in motion by angels who endow them with the power of influence. Dante designates these "motors" with the words: "deep wisdom", "reason" and "minds".

Dante's attention is drawn to the harmonic consonances produced by the rotation of the heavens. It seems to Dante that they are covered with a transparent smooth thick cloud. Beatrice raises the poet to the first sky - the Moon, the closest luminary to the earth. Dante and Beatrice plunge into the bowels of the moon.

Dante asks Beatrice "is it possible to make up for the break of the vow with new deeds?" Beatrice replies that a person can do this only by becoming like divine love, which wants all the inhabitants of the heavenly kingdom to be like it.

Beatrice and Dante fly to the "second kingdom", the second heaven, Mercury. Towards them rushes "innumerability of brilliance." They are ambitious doers of good. Dante asks some of them about their fate. Among them is the Byzantine emperor Justinian, who during his reign “everyone eliminated the flaw in the laws”, embarked on the path of true faith, and God “marked him”. Here, “retribution according to merit” is paid to Cincinnatus, the Roman consul and dictator, who became famous for his strictness of character. Torquatus, the Roman commander of the 4th century BC, Pompey the Great and Scipio Africanus are glorified here.

In the second heaven, “inside the beautiful pearl, the light of Romeo shines”, a modest wanderer, i.e. Rome de Villene, a minister who, according to legend, allegedly came to the court of the Count of Provence as a poor pilgrim, put his property affairs in order, and betrayed his daughters for four kings, but envious courtiers slandered him. The count demanded a report from Romeo in management, he presented the count with his increased wealth and left the count's court as a poor wanderer as he had come. The count executed the slanderers.

Dante, in an incomprehensible way, together with Beatrice, flies up to the third heaven - Venus. In the depths of the luminous planet, Dante sees the whirling of other luminaries. These are the souls of the loving. They move at different speeds, and the poet suggests that this speed depends on the degree of "their eternal vision", that is, the contemplation of God available to them.

The brightest is the fourth heaven - the Sun.

No soul knew such
Holy zeal and give your fervor
The Creator was not so ready
As I, listening, felt it;
And so my love was absorbed by him,
What did I forget about Beatrice -

recognized by the poet.

A round dance of brilliance wraps around Dante and Beatrice, like a “burning row of singing suns”. From one sun, the voice of Thomas Aquinas, philosopher and theologian, is heard. Next to him are Gratian, a jurist monk, Peter of Lombard, the theologian, the biblical king Solomon, Dionysius the Areopagite, the first Bishop of Athens, etc. Dante, surrounded by a round dance of sages, exclaims:

O mortal reckless efforts!
How stupid any syllogism is,
Which crushes your wings!
Who analyzed the law, who - an aphorism,
Who went jealously to the degrees of the priesthood,
Who to power through violence or sophism,
Who was attracted by robbery, who - profit,
Who, immersed in the pleasures of the body,
I was exhausted, and who dozed lazily,
While, freed from turmoil,
I'm with Beatrice in heaven far away
Such great glory was honored.

Dante appears radiant in the fourth celestial sphere of the souls of saints, to whom God the Father reveals the mystery of the procession of the god-spirit and the birth of god-son. Sweet voices reach Dante, which, compared with the sound of "earthly sirens and muses", that is, earthly singers and poets, are inexplicably beautiful. Above one rainbow rises another. Twenty-four wise men surround Dante with a double wreath. He calls them flowers sprouted from the seed of true faith.

Dante and Beatrice ascend to the fifth heaven - Mars. Here they are met by warriors for the faith. In the bowels of Mars, “wrapped with stars, a sacred sign was composed of two rays,” that is, a cross. A marvelous song sounds around, the meaning of which Dante does not understand, but admires the wonderful harmonies. He guesses that this is a song of praise to Christ. Dante, absorbed in the vision of the cross, even forgets to look into Beatrice's beautiful eyes.

Down, along the cross, one of the stars glides, "whose glory shines there." This is Kachchagvida, Dante's great-great-grandfather, who lived in the 12th century. Kachchagvida blesses the poet, calls himself "the avenger of evil deeds", deservedly now eating "peace". Kachchagvida is very pleased with his descendants. He only asks that Dante shorten his grandfather's stay in Purgatory with good deeds.

Dante enters the sixth heaven - Jupiter. Separate sparks, particles of love are the souls of the just living here. Flocks of souls, flying, weave different letters in the air. Dante reads the words that arise from these letters. This is the biblical saying "Love justice, you who judge the earth." At the same time, the Latin letter "M" resembles Dante's fleur-de-lis. The lights that have flown to the top of the "M" turn into the head and neck of a heraldic eagle. Dante prays to Reason "to be indomitably angry at the fact that the temple has been made the place of bargaining." Dante compares the clouds of smoke covering the just Reason with the papal curia, which does not allow the earth to be illuminated by a ray of justice, and the popes themselves are famous for their greed.

Beatrice again urges Dante to move on. They ascend to the planet Saturn, where the souls of those who devoted themselves to the contemplation of God appear to the poet. Here, in the seventh heaven, the sweet songs that are heard in the lower circles of Paradise do not sound, because "the ear is mortal." Contemplators explain to Dante that "the mind that shines here" is powerless even in the heavenly spheres. So on earth his strength is all the more perishable and it is useless to seek answers to eternal questions by means of the human mind alone. Among the contemplators there are many humble monks, whose "heart was strict."

Dante ascends to the eighth, starry sky. Here, the triumphant righteous enjoy the spiritual treasure that they have accumulated in a sorrowful earthly life, rejecting worldly wealth. The souls of the triumphant form a multitude of whirling round dances. Beatrice enthusiastically draws Dante's attention to the Apostle James, famous for his message about the generosity of God, symbolizing hope. Dante peers into the radiance of the Apostle John, trying to see his body (there was a legend according to which John was taken to heaven by the living Christ). But in paradise, only Christ and Mary, the “two radiances”, shortly before that “ascended to the Empyrean”, have a soul and a body.

The ninth, crystal sky, Beatrice otherwise calls the Prime Mover. Dante sees a Point, pouring an unbearably bright light, around which nine concentric circles diverge. This Point, immeasurable and indivisible, is a kind of symbol of the deity. The point is surrounded by a circle of fire, which consists of angels, divided into three "tripartite hosts"

Dante wants to know "where, when and how" angels were created. Beatrice answers:

Out of time, in its eternity,
Eternal love revealed itself
Boundless, innumerable loves.
She was before
He is in a stagnant dream, then what is the deity
Neither "before" nor "after" hovered over the water
Separate and together, essence and substance
They rushed their flight to the world of perfection...

Dante penetrates the Empyrean, the tenth, already immaterial, heaven, the radiant abode of God, angels and blissful souls.

Dante sees a shining river. Beatrice tells him to prepare for a spectacle that will quench his "great thirst to comprehend what has appeared before you." And what Dante imagines as a river, sparks and flowers, soon turns out to be different: the river is a circular lake of light, the core of a heavenly rose, the arena of a heavenly amphitheater, the banks are its steps; flowers - blissful souls sitting on them; sparks - flying angels

The Empyrean is illuminated by an immaterial light that allows creatures to contemplate the deity. This light continues in a ray that falls from on high to the pinnacle of the ninth heaven, the Prime Mover, and gives it life and power to influence the heavens below. Illuminating the top of the Prime Mover, the beam forms a circle, much larger than the circumference of the sun.

Around the luminiferous circle are located, forming over a thousand rows, the steps of the amphitheater. They are like an open rose. On the steps sits in white robes "everything that has found a return to the heights", that is, all those souls who have reached heavenly bliss.

The steps are overcrowded, but the poet bitterly notes that this heavenly amphitheater “waits for a few from now on,” that is, it indicates the depravity of mankind, and at the same time reflects the medieval belief in the nearness of the end of the world.

Having surveyed the general structure of Paradise, Dante begins to look for Beatrice with his eyes, but she is no longer around. Having fulfilled the mission of the guide, Beatrice returned to her place in the heavenly amphitheater. Instead, Dante sees an old man in a snow-white robe. This is Bernard of Clairvaux, a mystical theologian who took an active part in the political life of his time. Dante considers him a "contemplative". In the Empyrean, Bernard is the same mentor to the poet as the active Matelda was in the Earthly Paradise.

In the middle of the amphitheater sits the Virgin Mary, and smiles at all whose eyes are turned to her. Opposite Mary sits John the Baptist. To the left of Mary, the first in the Old Testament semicircle, sits Adam. To the right of Mary, the first in the New Testament semicircle, sits the Apostle Peter.

Elder Bernard calls to “lift up the gaze of the eyes to the great love,” that is, to God, and to pray to the Mother of God for mercy. Bernard begins to pray, says that in the womb of the Mother of God the love between God and people flared up again, and thanks to the heat of this love, the color of paradise increased, that is, paradise was inhabited by the righteous.

Dante looks up. His gaze is presented to the "Superior Light, so exalted above the thought of the earth." The poet does not have enough words to express all the infinity of the Endless Power, the Inexpressible Light, his delight and shock.

Dante sees the secret of the triune deity in the form of three equal circles, different colors. One of them (god-son) seems to be a reflection of the other (god-father), and the third (god-spirit) seems to be a flame born of both of these circles.

In the second of the circles, which seemed to be a reflection of the first (and symbolizing the god-son), Dante distinguishes the outlines of a human face.

Having reached the highest spiritual tension, Dante ceases to see anything. But after the illumination he experienced, his passion and will (heart and mind) in their striving are forever subordinated to the rhythm in which divine Love moves the universe.

The Divine Comedy, Dante's pinnacle, began to take shape when the great poet had just experienced his exile from Florence. "Hell" was conceived around 1307 and was created over the course of three years of wandering. This was followed by the composition of "Purgatory", in which Beatrice occupied a special place (the entire work of the poet is dedicated to her).

And in the last years of the creator's life, when Dante lived in Verona and Ravenna, "Paradise" was written. The plot basis of the poem-vision was the afterlife journey - a favorite motif of medieval literature, under the pen of Dante, received its artistic transformation.

Once upon a time, the ancient Roman poet Virgil depicted the descent of the mythological Third Ney into the underworld, and now Dante takes the author of the famous Aeneid as his guide through hell and purgatory. The poem has been called a "comedy" and, unlike a tragedy, it begins anxiously and gloomily, but ends with a happy ending.

In one of the songs of "Paradise", Dante called his creation a "sacred poem", and after the death of its author, the descendants gave it the name "Divine Comedy".

We will not present the content of the poem in this article, but dwell on some features of its artistic originality and poetics.

It is written in terza, that is, three-line stanzas in which the first verse rhymes with the third, and the second with the first and third lines of the next terza. The poet relies on Christian eschatology and the doctrine of hell and heaven, but with his creation significantly enriches these ideas.

In collaboration with Virgil, Dante steps beyond the threshold of a deep abyss, above the gates of which he reads an ominous inscription: "Abandon hope, everyone who enters here." But despite this grim warning, the satellites continue their march. They will soon be surrounded by crowds of shadows, which will be of particular interest to Dante, since they were once people. And for the creator, born of the new time, man is the most fascinating object of knowledge.

Having crossed in the boat of Heron across the infernal river Acheron, the satellites enter Limbo, where the shadows of the great pagan poets rank Dante among their circle, declaring the sixth after Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Lucan.

One of the remarkable signs of the poetics of a great work is the rare recreation of the artistic space, and within its limits, the poetic landscape, that component that did not exist in European literature before Dante. Under the pen of the creator of the Divine Comedy, the forest, the swampy steppe, the icy lake, and the steep cliffs were recreated.

Dante's landscapes are characterized, firstly, by their vivid depiction, secondly, by their permeation with light, thirdly, by their lyrical coloring, and fourthly, by natural variability.

If we compare the description of the forest in "Hell" and "Purgatory", we will see how a terrible, frightening picture of him in the first songs is replaced by a joyful, bright image, permeated with the greenery of trees and the blueness of the air. The landscape in the poem is extremely laconic: "The day was leaving, And the dark air of the sky / The earthly creatures were taken to sleep." It is very reminiscent of earthly pictures, which is facilitated by detailed comparisons:

Like a peasant, resting on a hill, -
When he hides his eyes for a while
The one with whom the earthly country is illuminated,

and mosquitoes, replacing flies, circle, -
The valley sees full of fireflies
Where he reaps, where he cuts grapes.

This landscape is usually inhabited by people, shadows, animals or insects, as in this example.

Another significant component of Dante is the portrait. Thanks to the portrait, people or their shadows turn out to be alive, colorful, rendered in relief, full of drama. We see the faces and figures of giants chained in stone wells, we peer into the facial expressions, gestures and movements of former people who came to the underworld from the ancient world; we contemplate both mythological characters and contemporaries of Dante from his native Florence.

The portraits sketched by the poet are distinguished by plasticity, which means tangibility. Here is one of the memorable images:

He carried me to Minos, who wrapped
Tail eight times around the mighty back,
Even biting him out of malice,
Said …

The spiritual movement reflected in the self-portrait of Dante himself is also distinguished by great expressiveness and vital truth:

So I perked up, with the courage of grief;
The fear was resolutely crushed in the heart,
And I answered boldly…

In the appearance of Virgil and Beatrice, there is less drama and dynamics, but on the other hand, the attitude towards them of Dante himself, who worships them and passionately loves them, is full of expression.

One of the features of the poetics of the Divine Comedy is the abundance and significance in it of numbers that have a symbolic meaning. A symbol is a special kind of sign, which already in its external form contains the content of the representation it reveals. Like allegory and metaphor, the symbol forms the transfer of meaning, but unlike the named tropes, it is endowed with a huge variety of meanings.

The symbol, according to A.F. Losev, has meaning not in itself, but as an arena for the meeting of known constructions of consciousness with one or another possible object of this consciousness. This also applies to the symbolism of numbers with their frequent repetition and variation. Researchers of literature of the Middle Ages (S.S. Mokulsky, M.N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, N.G. Elina, G.V. Stadnikov, O.I. Fetodov and others) noted the huge role of number as a measure of things in the Divine Comedy » Dante. This is especially true for the numbers 3 and 9 and their derivatives.

However, speaking of these numbers, researchers usually see their meaning only in the composition, the architectonics of the poem and its stanza (three canticles, 33 songs in each part, 99 songs in total, three repetitions of the word stelle, the role of the xxx song "Purgatory" as a story about meeting of the poet with Beatrice, three-line stanzas).

Meanwhile, mystical symbolism, in particular trinity, is subject to the entire system of images of the poem, its narrative and description, the disclosure of plot details and detail, style and language.

The trinity is found in the episode of Dante's ascent to the hill of salvation, where he is hindered by three animals (the lynx is a symbol of voluptuousness; the lion is a symbol of power and pride; the she-wolf is the embodiment of greed and greed), while depicting the Limbo of Hell, where there are creatures of three genera (the souls of the Old Testament righteous , the souls of babies who died without baptism, and the souls of all virtuous non-Christians).

Next, we see three famous Trojans (Electra, Hector and Aeneas), a three-headed monster - Cerberus (having the features of a demon, a dog and a man). The lower Hell, consisting of three circles, is inhabited by three furies (Tisiphon, Megara and Electo), three Gorgon sisters. Here, however, three ledges are shown - steps, appearing three vices (malice, violence and deceit). The seventh circle is divided into three concentric belts: they are notable for the reproduction of three forms of violence.

In the next song, together with Dante, we notice how “three shadows suddenly separated”: these are three Florentine sinners, who “all three ran in a ring”, being on fire. Further, the poets see three instigators of bloody strife, the three-bodied and three-headed Geryon and the three-peaked Lucifer, from whose mouth three traitors stick out (Judas, Brutus and Cassius). Even individual objects in the world of Dante contain the number 3.

So, in one of the three coats of arms - three black goats, in florins - mixed 3 carats of copper. The tripartiteness is observed even in the syntax of the phrase (“Hecuba, in grief, in disasters, in captivity”).

We see a similar trinity in Purgatory, where the angels each have three radiances (wings, clothes and faces). Three holy virtues are mentioned here (Faith, Hope, Love), three stars, three bas-reliefs, three artists (Franco, Cimabue and Giotto), three varieties of love, three eyes of Wisdom, which looks with them past, present and future.

A similar phenomenon is observed in "Paradise", where three virgins (Mary, Rachel and Beatrice) are sitting in the amphitheater, forming a geometric triangle. The second song tells of the three blessed wives (including Lucia) and speaks of the three eternal creatures
(heaven, earth and angels).

Three commanders of Rome are mentioned here, the victory of Scipio Africanus over Hannibal at the age of 33, the battle of “three against three” (three Horatii against three Curiatii), it is said about the third (after Caesar) Caesar, about three angelic ranks, three lilies in the coat of arms of the French dynasty.

The named number becomes one of the complex definitions-adjectives (“triple” fruit, “triune God) is included in the structure of metaphors and comparisons.

What explains this trinity? Firstly, the teaching of the Catholic Church about the existence of three forms of other being (hell, purgatory and paradise). Secondly, the symbolization of the Trinity (with its three hypostases), the most important hour of Christian teaching. Thirdly, the influence of the chapter of the Knights Templar, where numerical symbolism was of paramount importance, affected. Fourthly, as the philosopher and mathematician P.A. Florensky showed in his works “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” and “Imaginary in Geometry”, trinity is the most general characteristic of being.

The number "three", wrote the thinker. manifests itself everywhere as some basic category of life and thinking. These are, for example, the three main categories of time (past, present and future), the three-dimensionality of space, the presence of three grammatical persons, the minimum size of a complete family (father, mother and child), (thesis, antithesis and synthesis), the three main coordinates of the human psyche (mind , will and feelings), the simplest expression of asymmetry in integers (3 = 2 + 1).

Three phases of development are distinguished in a person's life (childhood, adolescence and youth or youth, maturity and old age). Let us also recall the aesthetic pattern that prompts creators to create a triptych, a trilogy, three portals in a Gothic cathedral (for example, Notre Dame in Paris), built three tiers on the facade (ibid.), three parts of the arcade, divide the walls of the naves into three parts, etc. Dante took all this into account when creating his own model of the universe in the poem.

But in the Divine Comedy, subordination is found not only to the number 3, but also to the number 7, another magical symbol in Christianity. Recall that the duration of Dante's unusual journey is 7 days, they begin on the 7th and end on April 14 (14 = 7 + 7). In the IV song, Jacob is remembered, who served Laban for 7 years and then another 7 years.

In the thirteenth song of "Hell" Minos sends the soul into the "seventh abyss". In the XIV song, 7 kings who besieged Thebes are mentioned, and in xx - Tirisei, who survived the transformation into a woman and then - after 7 years - the reverse metamorphosis from a woman to a man.

The week is reproduced most thoroughly in Purgatory, where 7 circles (“seven kingdoms”), seven stripes are shown; it speaks of the seven deadly sins (seven "R" on the forehead of the hero of the poem), seven choirs, seven sons and seven daughters of Niobe; a mystical procession with seven lamps is reproduced, 7 virtues are characterized.

And in "Paradise" the seventh radiance of the planet Saturn, the seven-star Ursa Major, is transmitted; it speaks of the seven heavens of the planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) in accordance with the cosmogonic ideas of the era.

This preference for the week is explained by the ideas prevailing in the time of Dante about the presence of seven deadly sins (pride, envy, anger, despondency, stinginess, gluttony and voluptuousness), about the desire for seven virtues that are acquired by purification in the corresponding part of the afterlife.

Life observations also affected the seven colors of the rainbow and the seven stars of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the seven days of the week, etc.

An important role was played by biblical stories associated with the seven days of the creation of the world, Christian legends, for example, about the seven sleeping youths, ancient stories about the seven wonders of the world, the seven wise men, the seven cities arguing for the honor of being the homeland of Homer, about the seven fighting against Thebes. The impact on consciousness and thinking was provided by images
ancient folklore, numerous tales about seven heroes, proverbs like “seven troubles - one answer”, “seven are spacious, and two are cramped”, sayings like “seven spans in the forehead”, “slurp jelly for seven miles”, “a book with seven seals "," seven sweats came down.

All this is reflected in literary works. For comparison, let's take later examples: playing around with the number "seven". In the “Legend of Ulenspiegep” by S. de Coster and especially in the Nekrasov poem “Who Lives Well in Russia” (with her seven wanderers,
seven owls, seven large trees, etc.). A similar impact of ideas about the magic and symbolism of the number 7 is found in the Divine Comedy.

The number 9 also acquires a symbolic meaning in the poem. After all, this is the number of celestial spheres. In addition, at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, there was a cult of nine fearless ones: Hector, Caesar, Alexander, Joshua Navi, David, Judas Maccabee, Arthur, Charlemagne and Gottfried of Bouillon.

It is no coincidence that there are 99 songs in the poem, before the top xxx song "Purgatory" - 63 songs (6 + 3 = 9), and after it 36 ​​songs (3 + 6 = 9). It is curious that the name Beatrice is mentioned 63 times in the poem. The addition of these two numbers (6 + 3) also forms 9. Yes, and this special name - Beatrice - rhymes - 9 times. It is noteworthy that V. Favorsky, creating a portrait of Dante, placed a huge number 9 over his manuscript, thus emphasizing its symbolic and magical role in the New Life and the Divine Comedy.

As a result, numerical symbolism helps to fasten the framework of the Divine Comedy with its multi-layered and multi-population.

It contributes to the birth of poetic "discipline" and harmony, forms a rigid "mathematical construction", saturated with the brightest imagery, ethical richness and deep philosophical meaning.

The immortal creation of Dante strikes with very common metaphors. Their abundance is closely related to the peculiarities of the poet's worldview and artistic thinking.

Starting from the concept of the Universe, which was based on the system of Ptolemy, from Christian eschatology and ideas about hell, purgatory and paradise, pushing the tragic darkness and the bright light of the kingdoms beyond the grave, Dante had to broadly and at the same time succinctly recreate worlds full of sharp contradictions, contrasts and antinomies, containing a grandiose encyclopedism of knowledge, their comparisons, connections and their synthesis. Therefore, movements, transfers and convergence of compared objects and phenomena have become natural and logical in the poetics of “comedy”.

To solve the tasks set, a metaphor was best suited that connects the concreteness of reality and the poetic fantasy of a person, bringing together the phenomena of the cosmic world, nature, the objective world and the spiritual life of a person by similarity and affinity to each other. That is why the language of the poem is so powerfully based on metaphorization, which contributes to the knowledge of life.

The metaphors in the text of the three canticles are unusually varied. Being poetic tropes, they often carry a significant philosophical meaning, such as, for example, “the hemisphere of darkness” And “enmity is wicked” (in “Hell”), “joy rings”, “souls ascend” (in “Purgatory”) or “the morning has blazed ” and “the song rang” (in “Paradise”). These metaphors combine different semantic plans, but at the same time each of them creates a single indissoluble image.

Showing the afterlife journey as a plot often encountered in medieval literature, using theological dogma and colloquial style as necessary, Dante sometimes introduces commonly used language metaphors into his text.
(“warmed heart”, “fixed eyes”, “Mars is burning”, “thirst to speak”, “waves are beating”, “golden ray”, “day is leaving”, etc.).

But much more often the author uses poetic metaphors, which are distinguished by novelty and great expression, which are so essential in the poem. They reflect the variety of fresh impressions of the "first poet of the New Age" and are designed to awaken the recreative and creative imagination of readers.

These are the phrases “the depth howls”, “weeping hit me”, “a rumble broke in” (in “Hell”), “the firmament rejoices”, “smile of rays” (in “Purgatory”), “I want to ask for light”, “work of nature (in Paradise).

True, sometimes we meet a surprising combination of old ideas and new views. In the neighborhood of two judgments ("art ... God's grandson" and "art ... follows nature-") we are faced with a paradoxical combination of traditional reference to the Divine principle and the interlacing of truths, previously learned and newly acquired, characteristic of "comedy".

But it is important to emphasize that the above metaphors are distinguished by their ability to enrich concepts, enliven the text, compare similar phenomena, transfer names by analogy, collide the direct and figurative meanings of the same word (“cry”, “smile”, “art”), identify the main, permanent feature of the characterized object.

In Dante's metaphor, as well as in comparison, signs are compared or contrasted ("overlook" and "peeps"), but there are no comparative connectives (conjunctions "as", "as if", "as if") in it. Instead of a binary comparison, a single, tightly fused image arises (“the light is silent”, “cries fly up”, “plea of ​​the eyes”, “the sea beats”, “enter my chest”, “four circles run”).

The metaphors encountered in the Divine Comedy can be conditionally divided into three main groups depending on the nature of the relationship of cosmic and natural objects with living beings. The first group should include personifying metaphors, in which cosmic and natural phenomena, objects and abstract concepts are likened to the properties of animated beings.

Such are Dante’s “a friendly spring ran”, “earthly flesh called”, “the sun will show”, “vanity will reject”, “the sun ignites. and others. The second group should include metaphors (for the author of the “comedy” these are “splashing hands”, “building towers”, “mountain shoulders”, “Virgil is a bottomless spring”, “beacon of love”, “seal of embarrassment”, “fetters evil").

In these cases, the properties of living beings are likened to natural phenomena or objects. The third group is made up of metaphors that unite multidirectional comparisons (“the face of truth”, “words bring help”, “light shone through”, “wave of hair”, “thought will sink”, “evening has fallen”, “distance caught fire”, etc.).

It is important for the reader to see that in the phrases of all groups there is often an author's assessment, which makes it possible to see Dante's attitude to the phenomena he captures. Everything that has to do with truth, freedom, honor, light, he certainly welcomes and approves (“he will taste the honor”, ​​“the brilliance has grown wonderfully”, “the light of truth”).

The metaphors of the author of The Divine Comedy convey various properties of the captured objects and phenomena: their shape (“the circle lay at the top”), color (“accumulated color”, “black air is tormented”), sounds (“a rumble burst in”, “the chant will rise again”, “the rays are silent”) the location of the parts (“into the depths of my slumber”, “the heel of the cliff”) lighting (“the dawn overcame”, “the gaze of the luminaries”, “the light rests the firmament”), the action of an object or phenomena (“the icon lamp rises”, “ the mind soars”, “the story flowed”).

Dante uses metaphors of different construction and composition: simple, consisting of one word (“petrified”); forming phrases (of the one who moves the universe”, “flame from the clouds that fell”): deployed (a metaphor for the forest in the first song of “Hell”).

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The Mystery of Time: When Dante's Famous Journey Began

Dante dated his journey to the afterlife to the year 1300. This is evidenced by several clues left by the poet in the text. Let's start with the obvious: the first line of the Divine Comedy - "Crossing the border of mature years ..." - means that the author is 35 years old.

Dante believed that human life lasts only 70 years, as it is written in the 89th psalm (“The days of our years are seventy years, and with a large fortress - eighty years”), and it was important for the poet to indicate that he had passed half of his life path . And since he was born in 1265, it is easy to calculate the year of travel to Hell.

The exact month of this campaign is suggested to researchers by astronomical data scattered throughout the poem. So, already in the first song we learn about "constellations with uneven meek light." This is the constellation "Aries", in which the sun is in the spring. Further clarifications give every reason to assert that the lyrical hero falls into the "dark forest" on the night from Good Thursday to Friday (from April 7 to 8) in 1300. On the evening of Good Friday, he descends into Hell.

Mystery of the Popadants: Pagan Gods, Heroes and Monsters in Christian Hell

In the underworld, Dante often meets mythological creatures: in Limbo, Charon is the mediator and carrier, the guardian of the second circle is the legendary King Minos, the gluttons in the third circle are guarded by Cerberus, the miserly are Plutos, and the angry and despondent are Phlegius, the son of Ares. Elektra, Hector and Aeneas, Helen the Beautiful, Achilles and Paris are tormented in different circles of Dante's Hell. Among the pimps and seducers, Dante sees Jason, and among the ranks of crafty advisers - Ulysses.

Why does the poet need all of them? The simplest explanation is that in Christian culture, the former gods turned into demons, which means their place is in Hell. The tradition of associating paganism with evil spirits has taken root not only in Italy. The Catholic Church had to convince the people of the failure of the old religion, and preachers of all countries actively convinced people that all ancient gods and heroes were adherents of Lucifer.

However, there is also a more complex subtext. In the seventh circle of Hell, where rapists endure torment, Dante meets the Minotaur, harpies and centaurs. The dual nature of these creatures is an allegory of sin, for which the inhabitants of the seventh circle suffer, the animal nature in their character. Associations with animals in The Divine Comedy very rarely carry a positive connotation.

Encrypted biography: what can you learn about the poet by reading "Hell"?

Actually, quite a lot. Despite the monumentality of the work, on the pages of which famous historical figures, Christian saints and legendary heroes appear, Dante did not forget about himself. For starters, he fulfilled a promise he made in his first book, A New Life, where he promised to say about Beatrice "things that have not yet been said about any." By creating the "Divine Comedy", he really made his beloved a symbol of love and light.

Something about the poet is said by the presence in the text of St. Lucia, the patroness of people suffering from eye disease. Having experienced vision problems early, Dante prayed specifically to Lucia, which explains the appearance of the saint along with the Virgin Mary and Beatrice. By the way, note that the name of Mary is not mentioned in "Hell", it appears only in "Purgatory".

There are in the poem and indications of individual episodes from the life of its author. In the fifth song, the lyrical hero meets a certain Chakko - a glutton who is in a stinking swamp. The poet sympathizes with the unfortunate man, for which he opens the future for him and tells about the exile. Dante began working on The Divine Comedy in 1307, after the Black Guelphs came to power and were expelled from their native Florence. In fairness, we note that Chacko tells not only about the misfortunes that await him personally, but also about the entire political fate of the city-republic.

A very little-known episode is mentioned in the nineteenth canto, when the author speaks of a broken jug:

Everywhere, and along the channel, and along the slopes,
I saw an innumerable number
Rounded wells in grayish stone.
<...>
I, saving the lad from suffering,
Broke one of them last year...

Perhaps, with this retreat, Dante wanted to explain his actions, which, perhaps, led to a scandal, because the vessel he broke was filled with holy water!

Biographical facts include the fact that Dante placed his personal enemies in Hell, even though some of them were still alive in 1300. So, among the sinners, was Venedico dei Cacchanemici - the famous politician, leader of the Bolognese Guelphs. Dante neglected chronology only in order to take revenge on his enemy at least in a poem.

Among the sinners clinging to Phlegius's boat is Filippo Argenti, a wealthy Florentine who also belongs to the Black Guelph family, an arrogant and wasteful person. In addition to the Divine Comedy, Argenti is also mentioned in the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.

The poet did not spare the father of his best friend Guido - Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti, an epicurean and atheist. For his beliefs, he was sent to the sixth circle.

The riddle of numbers: the structure of the poem as a reflection of the medieval worldview

If we ignore the text and look at the structure of the entire Divine Comedy, then we will see that much in its structure is connected with the number “three”: three chapters are “kantiki”, thirty-three songs in each of them (added to “Hell” still a prologue), the whole poem is written in three-line stanzas - tertsina. Such a strict composition is due to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the special meaning of this number in Christian culture.

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