Synthesis of ancient and Christian traditions in the works of Dante Alighieri. Virgil and other spirit guides

“The Divine Comedy” is a famous epic work, studied by many generations of literary scholars and poetry lovers. As in many medieval opuses, the poem reflected the thoughts and judgments of the author himself about politics, religion and society. Dante was a true Christian and had very strong political convictions. In his works one can often find an assessment of certain historical events and personalities, and “Hell” - the first part of the “Divine Comedy” - is also no exception. Let's see which real people Dante considered worthy of eternal torment.

Pietro Angelari del Murrone, who became Pope Celestine V in 1294, is believed to be one of the souls at the entrance to Hell. Dante calls him the one “who renounced his great lot in his cowardice.” The author of The Divine Comedy calls the Pope's voluntary resignation 161 days after his election a renunciation of his great lot.

As a devout Christian, Dante saw this not only as a sin against God, but also as a crime against society. If you read The Divine Comedy, you will find that Dante was a supporter of a high social order and hated those who wished to violate it or avoid responsibility for its observance. Dante placed Celestine V in the threshold of hell, where the souls of people who have done neither good nor evil in life run in circles behind the banner of their own interests, and behind them are stung by horse flies and wasps.

Dante believed that Julius Caesar was destined to rule the world by divine providence, and his death meant the end of Italian unity. So why did the poet send the emperor to hell?

Julius Caesar is in the first circle of hell, called Limbo, along with the souls of other virtuous pagans such as philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, honest leaders and politicians.

But Dante, as we have already said, was an extremely devout Christian. He believed that baptism was necessary to go to heaven, and since Julius Caesar could not be baptized, he was doomed to live in a place that was only a pale shadow of Heaven.

According to Dante, Limbo is a castle surrounded by a green meadow with seven gates symbolizing virtues.

The souls of adulterers are surrounded by an eternal storm, not giving them a moment of peace.

Francesca da Rimini is encountered by Dante in the second circle of voluptuaries, that is, fornicators and adulterers. Francesca lived in the mid-13th century and was the daughter of Lord Guido da Polenta of Ravenna. The father forcibly married his daughter to Giovanni Malatesta, the eldest son of Lord Malatesta da Varucchio, ruler of Rimini, hoping for a political union. Francesca fell in love with Giovanni's younger brother Paolo, who is also in the second circle. Giovanni caught the lovers in place and stabbed them both to death with his sword. In The Divine Comedy, Francesca says that she and Paolo were inspired to have a love affair by the story of the passion of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur. Condemning the sin of adultery and despising lustful love, Dante still hints that Giovanni is destined for a much more terrible punishment in the ninth circle of fratricides.

Dante sentenced his personal enemy to the Stygian swamp

Fillipo Argenti was a famous politician and “black” Guelph. Dante meets him in the fifth circle of hell - the Stygian swamp of the angry and lazy.

In hell, Argenti meets with Dante on the River Styx, and the poet answers his enemy: “Cry, lament in the swamp of the eternal, damned spirit, drink the eternal wave!”, after which Argenti is torn to pieces by other condemned insane souls.

6. Frederick II

Even the emperor did not escape Dante's condemnation. During the Middle Ages, Frederick II was one of the most powerful rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. However, despite all his services to Italy, including the founding of the University of Naples and, in fact, the creation of the literary Italian language, Frederick was still condemned by Dante in the sixth circle along with the heretics in the fiery tombs, perhaps due to his repeated excommunication church and tradition anathema.

After his excommunication, Frederick went on the Crusade, ignoring the church prohibition from participating in any activities in the name of Jesus Christ. Later, the emperor liberated Jerusalem from the Muslims and declared himself its king, forcing the church to anathematize this entire center of Christianity for harboring a heresiarch. The hatred of the clergy for Frederick was so strong that the death of the emperor simply caused unbridled rejoicing.

Among Catholic priests of all times there were those who bought the order for money or services, like any secular position. In the 13th century, this was Pope Nicholas III, who deserved the most severe punishment for the sin of simony.

Pope Nicholas III came from a noble family and throughout his short reign on the papal throne he tried to promote his relatives through the ranks. This also served to strengthen his power. For obvious nepotism and the use of the power given to him for selfish purposes, Dante placed Nicholas III in the eighth circle of hell, where all the Simonites are walled up in rocks upside down, and their feet are licked by fire.

In the same circle, Dante meets the soul of Bertrand de Born, convicted of sowing discord. This largest medieval troubadour in Provence played an important role in organizing and leading the uprising of Henry Plantagenet (“The Young King”) against his father Henry II of England.

Dante, believing that by this revolt Bertrand had betrayed the priesthood of poetry, placed him in one of the ditches of the eighth circle of hell, where all the instigators of discord are eternally tormented by disembowelment.

Crafty advisors are worthy of eternal wandering inside an unquenchable fire

Another reference to the hated Dante Pope and his entourage. Guido da Montefeltro, commander and adviser, was placed by the poet along with his crafty advisers in a deep ditch of the same eighth circle of hell.

Pope Boniface VIII, wanting to get rid of his enemies, especially the Colonna family, asked Montefeltro for help, and he advised him to take Palestrina, the Colonna possession, by deception. Guido suggested that the pope declare a false amnesty for them, and execute them after capturing the fortress. For this, the pope gave his adviser a plenary indulgence; Guido subsequently took monastic vows into the Franciscan order. Although Dante knew this, he still firmly believed that Montefeltro had not brought true repentance. The poet condemned the treacherous politician to eternal wandering in the eighth circle inside an unquenchable fire.

In the twenty-seventh canto of “The Inferno,” Guido tells Dante how, at the moment of his death, St. Francis came for him, but a black cherub immediately appeared and carried Montefeltro into the depths of hell.

There are few things worse than bringing punishment upon innocent children.

In the ninth circle there are traitors, condemned to eternal torment in the icy Lake Cocytus. Here the souls of sinners are frozen up to the neck, and their faces are lowered down in shame.

In one of the ditches of the circle, Dante encounters Count Ugolino eating Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. This is a mutual punishment: Ugolino was a tyrant for the Pisa Republic, and the archbishop, who at first allegedly supported him, subsequently raised a popular uprising.

Ugolino was walled up in the tower along with his innocent sons and grandsons. The keys to the tower were thrown into the river, dooming the prisoners to a slow death, and Ugolino, mad with hunger, ate the dead bodies of his children.

At the very bottom of the ninth circle in the ice funnel is Lucifer himself in the form of a monstrous beast with three heads and six wings. Three frozen souls are tormented in the ugly jaws of a fallen angel. Dante identified the three greatest traitors to the very bottom of hell: Judas Iscariot, Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus. To Dante, these three were the greatest sinners in human history and deserved the harshest punishment for their heinous crimes.

As we already mentioned, Dante believed that Julius Caesar was God's chosen ruler of the world, and not just as emperor. According to the poet, Caesar was to become the main disseminator of Christianity in Rome, and two traitors and instigators of the conspiracy against the emperor, Brutus and Cassius, were condemned to eternal torment.

Throughout Dante's Divine Comedy there are many other characters who are also interesting from the point of view of history and literature, including Virgil, the guide through hell, and the poet's beloved Beatrice. And although this is just a work of fiction, a journey through the circles of hell makes us think about the meaning of life and the correctness of the chosen path.

The eighth ditch of the eighth circle hides moving lights, in the flames of which wicked advisers are imprisoned. Here Dante meets Ulysses (Odysseus), punished for his trick with the Trojan Horse. Ulysses serves as Dante's mirror of self-knowledge. He is similar to Dante in his desire to break out of the framework of everyday life and discover new worlds.

I could not curb my melancholy,

And, placing my hopes on the sea, I was driven by the desire to find out

Other edges are distant outlines.

At the same time, Ulysses is the antipode of Dante. Ulysses is driven by curiosity, while Dante is driven by a thirst for truth. “Dante is a pilgrim, and Ulysses is a traveler,” sums up Yu.M. Lotman. Ulysses is the hero of the coming Renaissance, and it is characteristic that this image both attracts and repels Dante. Walking further, Dante and Virgil see in the distance the likeness of a tower. These are giants standing in a well that leads to the lowest part of Hell. Zeus threw them into the underworld because the Titans encroached on his power. The giant Antaeus carries Dante and Virgil in the palm of his hand to the bottom of the well, and they find themselves on the ice of Lake Cocytus. This is the ninth and final circle of Hell.

Cocytus is divided into four belts, and in the center is the lord of evil Lucifer himself. Here is the place of those whose sin is betrayed trust. Dante shows that he has learned Virgil's lessons well: he is full of hatred, beats one of the sinners, deceives another. Dante swears that he will clear the ice from the sinner's eyes if he tells him about himself, but then refuses to fulfill his promise.

Answer me first, sinful creature,

Who are you - and I will immediately rip

You are covered. And if it’s your desire

I will not fulfill, then in a cold ditch

With you I will freeze in the wind.

So be it, if I lie to you.

And this happens in that part of Hell where they are punished for violated trust. But this is an inverted world, a world of mirrored ethical standards, where such an act is a moral feat.

It was unfair to treat him - it was fair

And I didn’t remove the ice from it then...

The last song of "Hell" describes the meeting with Lucifer. From afar, Dante sees what looks like a giant windmill. To get out of Hell, Virgil tells Dante to wrap his arms around his neck and begins to descend down the devil's shaggy fur. Climbing along the Lethe stream, the wanderers come to the surface: they are on the island of Purgatory.

Chapter 4. Purgatory

The heroes go out to the first ledge of the Pre-Purgatory, where the souls of those excommunicated are located. Traveling along the ledges and circles of Purgatory, Dante often hears requests from souls to remind them of themselves upon their return. because the prayers of good people still living on earth can shorten the trials allotted to the inhabitants of Purgatory.

And since you are touched by my prayers,

Maybe you'd like to convey

Constance, everything that has been said between us.

The living must help the dead.

This is the request of Manfred, son of Frederick II.

The second ledge of Purgatory is a place where careless souls wait in the wings. Next, Dante gets to the gates of Purgatory, where, together with Virgil, he appears before the angel. The angel draws seven “Rs” on Dante’s forehead (peccatum - sin) and after the request unlocks the gate, warning that anyone who looks back will be punished. An angel lets travelers through. Why not the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice?

In the first circle, pride is redeemed:

A race of Christians, embarrassed by pride,

Do you think people are great?

Oh no! Turned away from the straight path,

You forgot that we are all worms.

In the second circle, envious people atone for their sin. Their eyes are sewn shut. The angry ones of the third circle are suffocating in thick smoke. The fourth circle is inhabited by the sad ones.

In the fifth circle, where stinginess and wastefulness are punished, Dante and Virgil meet Stadius, who, Dante believed, had secretly converted to Christianity and therefore found his way to Heaven. Stages is one of the author’s alter egos, a poet who has moved from pagan spirituality to Christian.

Then the travelers pass the sixth circle, where sinners guilty of gluttony starve near a tree rich in fruits (see the myth of Tantalus).

The last obstacle on the path to Paradise is in the seventh circle, where voluptuous people are purified. The poet has to go through a wall of fire in order to be cleansed of voluptuousness and the last “R” (the previous six disappeared in the previous circles).

Having led Dante through all the circles of Hell and Purgatory, Virgil fulfilled his role as a guide. The earthly mind (that is, Virgil) can no longer guide a person in the area in contact with the celestial worlds.

But I suddenly realized that there was no singer nearby,

Which she sent to me.

And the blood immediately drained from his face:

Virgil was no longer near me!

Antiquity accompanied and patronized Christianity for a long time. But then there is no more room for her. The end of the path will pass under the sign of heavenly wisdom (the essence is Beatrice).

Danger breathes in the alarming darkness.

Having walked with the poet through gloomy Hell,

Through everything that seemed impossible to me, Climbing the Mountain, I was glad

With my companion I will eventually ascend

To Paradise, where the immortal fires burn.

Chapter 5. Paradise

Next, the poet visits the earthly Paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory (here his long-awaited meeting with his beloved takes place) and ascends to the first heaven, falling into the sphere of the Moon. Taking off, travelers cross the sphere of Fire surrounding the earth (medieval idea of ​​the atmosphere?). On the Moon they meet pale shadows - passive souls who have not kept their vows, but are not burdened with sins.

Here are the souls that violated the sacred

Vow; they have been removed here

By the will of Providence, unchangeable.

The second heaven is Mercury. The dignity of the local inhabitants is the active implementation of ideals. This is the abode of reformers and innocent victims.

I did good deeds through Caesar.

Now call me Justinian

You can... I repaid the country's debts,

Rushing to change laws for the better,

Highly respecting their purpose,

To make it easier to eradicate evil.

Flying up to the third sky - the sky of Venus, Dante sees small stars circling inside the luminary. These are the souls of lovers. Here the poet (the hatred for the Florentines who slandered him has not yet subsided!) creates an expressive image: Lucifer, like a bad seed, sprouted from the underworld as a stem, which is Florence. A cursed flower bloomed on the stem - a florin (a lily is depicted on the coin), multiplied by Florence to woe the people.

Your city has now begun to spread,

Having lost the habit of strictly observing decorum,

A cursed flower to knock down

Out of the way of the lambs. The shepherd has now become a wolf.

And only now Dante finds himself in the sphere of the Sun - the fourth circle (heliocentrism has not yet been invented). The poet paints an impressive picture of a constellation of great thinkers who, like two crowns, revolve around him in opposite directions, forming a “commonwealth of deities.” Among them are Thomas Aquinas, Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul Orosius, Boethius, Augustine, John Chrysostom, Joachim and many others. Among the sages of the fourth circle (and it belongs to them) there are many who, with their works, had a considerable influence on Dante in general and on the creation of the Divine Comedy in particular. But not everyone. Here you will not find the sages of antiquity - Dante kindly allocated living space for them in the first circle of Hell.

VIRGIL AND OTHER SPIRIT GUIDES

When the animals pushed Dante's Wanderer back into the dark forest, a guide came to the rescue. The guide was Virgil, a Roman poet born in 70 BC. e., whose writings Dante admired and in whose life he found important analogies with his own. Dante began writing The Divine Comedy after being exiled from Florence, where the city authorities had sentenced him to death at the stake if he dared return. He became a wanderer, a peripatetic teacher and mentor to wealthy families, and was destined to live his adult life never seeing Florence again. Virgil also lived in exile, his poems often recounting his journeys through a hostile world, and it is therefore not surprising that Dante identified with him and chose him as a reliable guide for the Wanderer.

Returning to the dark forest, the Wanderer hopes that Virgil has come to save him. However, Virgil brought bad news. He says to the sobbing and terrified Wanderer:

You must choose a new path...

And do not return to the wild log.

Virgil's news is getting worse and worse. He promises to guide the Wanderer through the world of pain:

And I will tell you in my turn:

Follow me and to the eternal villages

I will bring you from these places,

And you will hear screams of frenzy

And the ancient spirits in distress there,

Vain prayers for a new death...

A world of pain? Wasn’t this what the Stranger was trying to escape from? Virgil knows, but the Wanderer does not yet, that we - until we learn to recognize our own obstacles - will repeat the same pattern of suffering over and over again.

Virgil will lead the Wanderer to the place - Dante's Hell incarnate - where these patterns manifest themselves in the most terrible way, because he knows that first of all the spiritual seeker must recognize these patterns in himself. Recognizing your own patterns of suffering is the first step to liberation from them.

This bad news frightens the Wanderer even more, so Virgil, to help him overcome his fear, provides him with additional information. This is information that tells each of us about our hidden capabilities.

Chapter 3 Conductors Conductors are a completely special class of entities. They do not have a huge energy reserve, and they do not need it - they act differently, gaining energy for their actions directly in the process of performing a task. And purpose

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“The Divine Comedy” absorbed everything that had been growing stronger in the poet’s soul for years, feeding his thought and artistic genius. True to his long-standing oath, Dante dedicated the poem to Beatrice. Her image lives in the “Divine Comedy” as a bright memory of the great, only love, of its purity and inspiring power. Beatrice is an image-symbol, an image is an idea. Next to the ghost of the deceased beloved in “Comedy” another image appears - alive, reverent, real. That is the image of the poet’s homeland - Italy.

The plot of the poem is an allegory, “walking through torment” - the path of the human soul from sin to righteousness, from the errors of earthly life to the truth. “Comedy” begins with a picture of a dense forest in which the poet gets lost. He was surrounded by predatory animals - a lion, a panther, a she-wolf. The poet is in danger of death. And then suddenly an old man appears in front of him, who drives away the animals and leads him out of the formidable forest thicket. This elder is the great Roman poet Virgil. He was sent by Beatrice, whose soul lives in heaven. From there, from heavenly heights, the deceased beloved saw the danger that threatened Dante.

Virgil invites Dante to follow him and leads him through the Underworld. They pass through hell and purgatory, where they see the torment of condemned sinners, and rise to the gates of heaven, where Virgil leaves Dante. He is replaced by Beatrice. She leads Dante further, through the heavenly spheres, where they behold the bliss of the righteous in heaven. Rising higher and higher, they reach the divine throne, where the image of God himself appears to the poet.

The forest thicket in which the poet got lost is an allegory of life’s catastrophes and moral failures of man. Predatory beasts are disastrous human passions. Virgil is earthly wisdom that guides a person to goodness. Beatrice is divine wisdom, which leads to moral purification and comprehension of truth. The path to a person’s spiritual rebirth lies through his awareness of his sinfulness (journeys through Hell) and the atonement of these sins (the path through purgatory), after which the soul, cleansed of filth, enters Paradise.

Dante depicts hell as a huge funnel going to the center of the earth. Hell is divided into nine concentric circles. Purgatory is a mountain surrounded by the sea with seven ledges. Dante depicts hell as a place of punishment for unrepentant sinners. In purgatory there are sinners who managed to repent before death. After purifying tests, they move from purgatory to Paradise - the abode of pure souls. He assigns to everyone a clear, precisely defined place in the corresponding circles of hell or purgatory. In Dante, Christian mythology is mixed with pagan mythology. The sad picture of the Christian monastery of the dead blossomed with poetic fantasy and lit up with unprecedented colors.

The imperishable beauty of ancient art burst into the realm of medieval ascetic dogma. History, embodied in human destinies, comes to life under the pen of Dante. The poet populated the kingdom of the dead with countless crowds of shadows, but he gave them flesh, blood, human passions, and the inhabitants of the underworld became indistinguishable from those who live on earth. Dante does not yet separate history from myth, fact from fiction. Along with his contemporaries, he depicts in the poem historical figures, heroes of biblical legends or literary works.

From song to song, the tragic scroll of Italian history unfolds in the poem. Fiery, indignant passion bursts uncontrollably from every line. The poet brought to the kingdom of shadows everything that burned him in life - love for Italy, irreconcilable hatred of political opponents, contempt for those who doomed his homeland to shame and ruin.

The poem evokes a tragic image of Italy, seen through the eyes of a wanderer who traveled all over its land, scorched by the fire of bloody wars: Italy, slave, hearth of sorrows, In a great storm, a ship without a helm, Not the mistress of nations, but a tavern!...

But your living ones cannot live without war, and they squabble, surrounded by one wall and a ditch. You, unfortunate one, should look back. To your shores and cities: Where will peaceful abodes be found? (“Number”, canto VI)

The poet speaks on behalf of the entire Italian people. The Italy of the dispossessed, deceived, and enslaved first found a voice in the searing images of Dante's terzinas. They sounded like alarm bells throughout the country, awakening the sleeping and indifferent, raising the despairing and calling Italy to battle with the forces of darkness and destruction. The poet angrily denounced the powerful, the criminal earthly rulers who incited wars and sowed devastation and death.

In the 7th circle of hell, where the “burning Phlegethon” bubbles - a river carrying streams of boiling blood instead of waters, he gathered war criminals from different times and peoples who rush about in the bloody glow of the hellish river:

...There is not only one tyrant here who thirsted for gold and blood: All who desecrated their dignity by violence. (“Hell.” Canto XII)

And everyone who is here, nearby and far away, was guilty of strife and discord. Among the living, and now they were dissected. ("Hell", canto XXVIII)

Dante placed popes and cardinals in hell, among covetous people, deceivers, and traitors. The poem will become a devastating weapon for humanists in the fight against the covetous of the Catholic Church. It is not for nothing that church censorship continually banned certain parts of the Divine Comedy, and to this day many of its poems arouse the ire of the Vatican. Life bursts into the hellish abyss in a whirlwind stream, deafening with roar, screams, bursts of rage, despair, pain.

Everything here is humming, rushing, bubbling. A hellish whirlwind howls, circling in the thick darkness of the souls of voluptuaries (2nd circle of hell). They rush forever, not daring to stop even for a moment, “insignificant” on the eve of Hell. Rapists run through the circle of hell with such speed that “their legs seem like wings.” Seducers and pimps flow in a double counter stream. A snow blizzard rushes, a fiery rain dances, the Phlegethon river bubbles and, howling, falls to the bottom of the underworld.

But in the depths of the hellish abyss there is a terrible abode of silence. There is eternal darkness and the stillness of death. That is a circle of traitors, traitors. A land of bitter cold. Permafrost, where the icy Lake Cocytus shines like a dead mirror, trapping frozen bodies in its glassy surface. The poet poured out all the immensity of his contempt for betrayal, for treason, in the picture of a terrible execution - execution by cold, darkness, dead desert. He collected here all varieties of shameful vice. Traitors to the homeland, traitors to relatives, loved ones, friends, betrayers of those who trusted them... Cold souls, dead while still alive.

There is no mercy for them, no relief, they are not even allowed to cry out their torment, because their tears... from the very beginning, accumulating in the depths of the brow, harden like crystal visors. ("Hell", canto XXXIII)

But the torment of traitors does not touch the poet. But what inspired, what proud words Dante finds to glorify the beauty and greatness of the civil feat!

...was I alone when they decided to wipe Florence off the face of the earth? I saved her with my visor up. ("Hell", canto X)

The portrait of Cato Utticus, a Roman patriot who gave his life for the republic, is painted in the poem with the same bright and inspired brush. Dante calls the noble Roman “pure spirit”, “majestic shadow”:

His face was so brightly adorned with the sacred light of the four luminaries, It seemed to me that it was the sun shining. ("Purgatory", canto I)

Medieval moral philosophers wrote their works in ascetic denial of the world, in anticipation of an otherworldly existence. They called for repentance and cleansing from sin in the name of happiness in the eternal, afterlife. They declared sin to be the original property of human nature, an inevitable companion of the earthly path, a consequence of the fall of the first people and their curse by God. The moral pathos of The Divine Comedy is different. The poet calls for moral purification in the name of a decent life on earth. It is not difficult to notice that Dante’s most severe condemnation is not for carnal sins, which the church, in its hatred of the physical nature of man, condemned so mercilessly, but for social vices: violence, greed, betrayal, lies. They are punished in the darkest depths of Dante's Inferno.

« Dante calls greed the mother of dishonor and shame. Greed brings cruel social disasters: eternal strife, political anarchy, bloody wars. The poet brands the servants of greed and inflicts sophisticated torture on them. Dante looked into the depths of this vice and saw in it a sign of his era. People have not always been slaves to greed, she is the god of modern times, she was born of growing wealth, the thirst for possessing it. She reigns in the papal palace, has built a nest for herself in urban republics, and settled in feudal castles. The image of a skinny she-wolf with a red-hot gaze - a symbol of greed - runs like an ominous ghost throughout the poem. In a conversation with the shadow of “the pawnshop Marco,” the poet was not afraid to give open battle to church dogma. What is the reason for the modern decline in morals, he asks the shadow of Marco. Why: now no one. Good does not even wear a guise: Is evil both inside and above? ("Purgatory", Canto XVI)

What is to blame for this: the wrath of heaven or the original sinfulness of human nature? And Marco gives a startling answer. No, the reason is not in the divine will and not in the original depravity of man. Man is not a vessel of sin: he is capable of moral improvement, because he has reason and free will. The reason for the decline of morals is different: ... bad management is to blame for the fact that the world is so bad, and not the perversion of your nature. ("Purgatory", Canto XVI)

The image of Dante himself is always in the foreground, the image of a proud, passionate, rebellious man, with his diverse world of feelings: love, hatred, sorrow, anger, compassion. Having placed himself as a judge of human affairs, he does not separate himself from the sinful world. It is not for nothing that at the entrance to purgatory an angel marks the Latin letter “P” seven times on his forehead with a fiery sword as a sign that the poet is guilty of all seven deadly sins, and these signs gradually disappear one by one as the poet passes through the circles of purgatory .

And how mercilessly he exposes his vices to Beatrice! He does not hide any of his human weaknesses. How many times during his terrible journey was he overwhelmed by confusion, despair, fear, cowardice, and he is not ashamed to admit it.

In the eyes of the church, the decisive criterion for “righteousness” was not a person’s personal qualities, not feats of humanity, but devotion to the dogmas of faith. Dante rejects this theological criterion and judges a person by personal moral qualities and earthly affairs. He is righteous “who is righteous in deeds and thoughts, and has never done evil in life or speech” (“Paradise”, Canto XIX).

Following this criterion, the poet placed sinners in the afterlife, boldly violating the hierarchy of sins and retributions developed by the church. He saved the great thinkers of pagan antiquity from the torments of hell, assigning them a place in a special “limbo” of hell, where they remained in a state of “semi-bliss.”

In the same limbo, Dante also placed the “infidel” Muslim - Sultan Saladin, for the generosity of this man was glorified by folk parables and legends. In Dante's paradise there is a place even for non-Christians, if they are glorified by good deeds. And the servants of the “true faith” - popes and cardinals, guilty of shameful crimes, are placed in hell, and cruel punishments are determined for them.

His sinner can be righteous at the same time. There are many such “righteous sinners” in The Divine Comedy, and these are the most vivid, most humane images of the poem. They embodied a broad, truly humane view of people - the view of a poet who holds everything human dear, who knows how to admire the strength and freedom of the individual, the inquisitiveness of the human mind, who understands the thirst for earthly joy and the torment of earthly love.

Dante brought to poetry a whole world of new artistic images, so rich and vitally truthful that now, centuries later, world poetry draws from this source.

IllustrationsFrench engraver and painterGustave Doré (1832 - 1883).

At the heart of Dante's poem is humanity's recognition of its sins and 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 renounce blessings, and atone for 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”. A 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. It is recognized in world literature as a brilliant creation. The author himself gave it the name “Comedy”. In those days it was customary to call any work that had a happy ending. Boccaccio called it “Divine”, thus giving it the highest rating.

Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy", a summary of which schoolchildren study in the 9th grade, is difficult for modern teenagers to perceive. A detailed analysis of some songs cannot give a complete picture of the work, especially taking into account today’s attitude towards religion and human sins. However, acquaintance, albeit only a review, with Dante’s work is necessary to create a complete understanding of world fiction.

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

The main character of the work is Dante himself, to whom the shadow of the famous poet Virgil appears with an offer to travel through Dante. At first he doubts, but agrees after Virgil informs him that Beatrice (the author’s beloved, by that time long dead) asked the poet to become his guide. ).

The path of the characters begins in hell. Before entering it there are pitiful souls who during their lifetime did neither good nor evil. The Acheron River flows outside the gates, through which Charon transports the dead. The heroes are approaching the circles of hell:

Having gone through all the circles of hell, Dante and his companion went up and saw the stars.

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

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

Dante falls asleep and in his sleep is transported to the gates of purgatory. Here the angel writes seven letters on the poet’s forehead, indicating the Hero goes through all the circles of purgatory, cleansing himself of sins. After completing each circle, the angel erases the letter of the overcome sin from Dante’s forehead. 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 by 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 ones ascend to heaven. To the surprise of the main character, he was able to take off. Beatrice explained to him that souls not burdened with sins are light. Lovers pass through all the heavenly skies:

• the first sky of the Moon, where the souls of nuns are located;
• the second - Mercury for ambitious righteous people;
• third - Venus, here the souls of the loving rest;
• the fourth - the Sun, intended for sages;
• fifth - Mars, which receives warriors;
• sixth - Jupiter, for just souls;
• the seventh is Saturn, where the souls of contemplators are located;
• the eighth - 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 into the bright and blinding light and finds the highest truth. He sees divinity in its trinity.