The Divine
Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet. It
is widely considered the pre-eminent work of Italian literature and is seen as
the greatest works of world literature. The poem’s imaginative and allegorical
vision of the life after death (afterlife) is a culmination of the medieval
world-view as it developed in the Western
Church
The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines
that are divided into three canticas – Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory),
and Paradiso (Paradise ) – each consisting of
33 cantos. The number three is prominent in the work, represented in part by
the number of canticas and their lengths with the lines composing tercets
according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded,…
The poem is written in the first person, and
tells of Dante’s journey through the three places of the dead, lasting from the
night before Good Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of
1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him
through Hell and Purgatory; Beatrice, Dante’s ideal woman, guides him through
Heaven. Beatrice was a Florentine woman whom he had met in childhood and
admired from afar in the mode of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition,
which is highlighted in Dante’s earlier poems. At Paradiso (Heaven) Dante meets
and converses with several great saints of the Church, including Thomas
Aquinas, Bonaventure, Saint Peter and St.John. The Paradiso is consequently
more theological in nature than the Inferno (Hell) and the Purgatorio. However,
Dante admits the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes
permit him to see, and the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante’s own
personal one.
The Divine Comedy finishes with Dante seeing
the Triune God. In a flash of understanding, which he cannot express, Dante
finally understands the mystery of Christ’s divinity and humanity, and his soul
becomes aligned with God’s love. The Divine Comedy is primarily a religious
poem, discussing sin, virtue and theology. Dante also discusses several
elements of the science of his day. The poem can be described simply as an
allegory which contains many alternative meanings and they are highly complex.
Besides allegory, there are many levels of meaning: the historical, the moral,
the literal and anagogical. Dante called the poem “Comedy” because poems in the
ancient world were classified as High Tragedy or Low Comedy. Low poems had happy endings were written in
everyday language, whereas High poems treated more serious matters and were
written in elevated style. The adjective “Divine” was added later in the 14th
century. In the Middle Ages Dante was the first Italian poet to write of a
serious subject – the Redemption of humanity in the low and “vulgar”
Italian language and not in the Latin one might expect for such a serious
topic.
Although the Divine Comedy is primarily a
religious poem, discussing sin, virtue and theology, Dante also discusses several elements of the science of his
day. This mixture f science with
poetry has received both praise and blame over the centuries. The Purgatorio
repeatedly refers to the implications of a spherical Earth, such as the
different stars visible in the southern hemisphere, the altered position of the
sun, and the various time zones of the Earth. For example, at sunset in
Purgatory it is midnight at the Ebro river in Spain ,
dawn in Jarusalem, and noon on the River Ganges in India
Paradiso:
Canto XXI
In this part of the poem, Dante ascends with
Beatrice to the seventh heaven, which is the planet Saturn. Here a golden
ladder is placed and the height of the ladder is infinite and the top of the
ladder is not visible to Dante. Here Dante meets the souls who had passed their
earthly life in holy retirement and meditation and prayer. Piero Damiano (St.
Peter Damian ) is one of the souls of this place of heaven and the spirit comes
near them and answers questions put forward to him by Dante. Piero Damiano
speaks about his identity on his earthly life and ends the conversation by a
remark against the corrupted and luxurious priests and cardinals of the Church
of his period.
The narrator of
the poem is Dante himself. Beatrice the ideal beautiful woman guides the
narrator through Heaven. They are on the sphere of Saturn. Dante turns to face
Beatrice, but she is not smiling. She tells Dante that if she smiles, Dante
will be reduced to mere ashes. She tells Dante of the tragedy of a woman named
Semele who had been turned to ashes when smiled. The reason was that they have
climbed so high on the heavenly ladder and they have reached the point where
Dante’s senses cannot bear the great power of God’s reflected love.
The beauty of
Beatrice was more glorified and powerful when they reached the top step of the
ladder and God’s power of love and glory reflected on the face of Beatrice will
burn the mortal senses of Dante when he looks at her. She says that Dante will
become like a leaf of a tree which is burned to ashes when lightning and
thunder strike it. Beatrice now announces that they have reached the Seventh
Heaven.
It is just below the Constellation of Leo
which is always burning and light flashes everywhere downwards with the power
and glory of God. Beatrice again warns Dante to listen and concentrate his mind
and eyes and look where he usually looks and the see the reflected image of
what comes next. So Dante looks at Beatrice’s eyes. There the narrator sees the
wonderful landscape of Saturn reflected. Dante says that he is really grateful
to his escort, Beatrice and he blindly obeys every word of the ideal companion.
When he looks at her his joy was unlimited and
she was also very happy on seeing the pleasure of the narrator. The narrator
then saw a golden ladder was seen coming up and the sunlight is reflected on
it. The ladder is going up so high that the narrator cannot see its top. When
he looked down the steps, it was so bright that all the lights in the heaven
seemed to be appeared there. Dante saw an amazing sight.
Thousands of
souls are climbing down the steps of the ladder every minute just like flocks
of rooks (birds) fly away in the bright morning to various parts of the sky in
order to warm their cold feathers in the bright sunlight. Some of them fly off
without return, some others come back to where they started from and some
others flying round here and there. A multitude of shining spirits are climbing
up and down the ladder to a certain point made those different movements, as of
birds. One of the spirits came so near Dante and Dante turns to the nearest
soul and thinks that he is so bright, Dante wants to speak but must wait for
the permission from Beatrice before speaking to the soul. At this unspoken
thought, Beatrice promptly gives the signal and Dante speaks to the soul why he
stepped up so close and why there is perfect silence in this place, whereas
every other sphere is full of glorious music. The soul answers Dante that it is
quite silent here because if they were to sing, the power of the song would
break the ear-drums of Dante. In other words, Dante’s mortal hearing could not
bear the glory and power of the divine song at this level of heaven. Now the
soul answers the first question of Dante.
The soul says that he has descended the golden
ladder with the emergency purpose of meeting Dante. He also adds that the soul
is fully governed by God’s love and will and therefore the soul is asked to
move down the ladder to meet Dante. Dante agrees with the soul that the soul is
fully surrendered itself to God’s love and will, but Dante does not understand
why the soul in particular was predestined to meet Dante. Before the soul can
even say the last words, the spirit begins spinning at a high speed and its
spinning only makes the soul grow brighter, and it says that its sight is good
and this is why God blesses him with so much grace. No one can know the mind
of God. The soul warns Dante that he should remind this truth to the
earthly men when Dante returns home below.
This warning of
the spirit trembles Dante with fear and humbly asks the identity of the soul.
This time the spirit is willing to reveal his identity. The brightly burning
soul tells Dante once long ago he was a monk in a monastery at Catria. It was
called Santa Croce di Forte Avellana. He worshipped God in meditation and
prayer and he lived on a simple of vegetables cooked in olive juice. The
monastery used to supply truly virtuous souls during his time but now it is
corrupted and barren. When he first went to the monastery, he was called “Peter
the Sinner”. But now he names himself as St. Peter Damian. Dante nods in
realization.
St.Peter Damian continues his story. Form the
monastery, he was dragged out to become a cardinal. He preferred his monastery
life to the Papal dignity and power. St.
Peter Damian recalls that once upon a time Popes were good and they led very
simple and holy life, strictly following the teaching of the Bible as when St. Paul
But now, shaking
his head Peter says that the pops are plump and corrupted and that they need a
lot of servants and helpers to do everything because they love luxurious life.
Peter’s words have attracted other souls who are now gathered round in a
spectacle of light. When Peter stops talking, they cry out in agreement and
Dante drops like an achor because their combined voices have the power of
thunderbolt in the blue sky and he was trembled with fear, as his senses are
paralysed with shock. Kjt/15-03-2014
No comments:
Post a Comment