La Divina Commedia
English Translation
by
H. W. Longfellow,
Boston 1867
Illustrated by
famous
World artists
Sandro Botticelli
La Divina Commedia is Italian most important literary
work. It was written by Dante Alighieri in the vernacular
language, instead than in Latin as it was used in that time.
Therefore Dante is considered the Father of the Italian
Language.
La Divina Commedia is a poem divided in three parts,
which illustrates Dante’s imaginary travel into Hell,
Purgatory and Paradise.
Here he meets important writers and philosophers of the
past, political personalities, saints and sinners, but also
common people he has had the chance to meet in his
turbolent life.
The poem depicts immortal figures, taken in the moment
in which their mortal life has changed into eternity, fixing
forever the main traits of their personality. ….
In a difficult moment of his life, Dante understands he has lost
his guiding principles and he imagines he is wandering in a
dark wood, surrounded by ferocious animals.
He thus starts a journey into the underworld, accompanied by
Virgil, the Latin poet.
This journey will be both a religious and a human experience
and he will be deeply changed by it.
Entering the gates of Hell, Dante sees a huge door: the sign on
it warns passers-by to forget all forms of hope….
Hell is the place of eternal justice and eternal punishment
without hope of a final redemption
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been
lost.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and
stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
Canto I
Joseph Anton Koch
Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost.
Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore;
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapïenza e 'l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'.
Canto II
William Blake
Justice incited my sublime Creator;
Created me divine Omnipotence,
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.
Before me there were no created things,’
Only eterne, and I eternal last.
All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"
In Dante’s hell sinners are divided according to
their sins and the punishment is often subtly
connected to their human experience
We meet Paolo and Francesca in Canto V, the
two adulterous lovers lost in life because of
their love and now victims of an eternal
blowing wind which represents their
passionate souls
In Canto X we find Farinata Degli Uberti, an
important Florentine who in life was a heretic
and did’t believe in the eternity of the soul.
Now he is eternally stuck in a tomb, but this fact
doesn’t prevent him from speaking
passionately with Dante about politics.
Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize,
Seized this man for the person beautiful
That was ta'en from me, and still the mode offends
me.
Amor, ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende.
Amor, ch'a nullo amato amar perdona,
mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona.
Amor condusse noi ad una morte.
Caina attende chi a vita ci spense».
Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte.
Canto V
Mosè Bianchi
Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,
Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,
That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;
Love has conducted us unto one death;
Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!"
These words were borne along from them to us.
«O Tosco che per la città del foco
vivo ten vai così parlando onesto,
piacciati di restare in questo loco.
La tua loquela ti fa manifesto
di quella nobil patrïa natio,
a la qual forse fui troppo molesto».
Canto X
"O Tuscan, thou who through the city of fire
Goest alive, thus speaking modestly, Be
pleased to stay thy footsteps in this place.
Thy mode of speaking makes thee manifest
A native of that noble fatherland, To which
perhaps I too molestful was."
Andrea del Castagno
Moving along the different scenarios in Hell, Dante meets
other famous personalities of his time
An illustrious sinner is Ulysses, here punished for his
frauding advice.
The great Greek hero tells Dante how, back to Ithaca at the
end of his ten-year long adventures, he left again with his
old mates to pursue knowledge beyond the limits of the
known world….
At the end of a perilous journey, they fell down the border
of the known world, after having passed the Pillars of
Hercules…
"O frati", dissi, "che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti a l'occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia
d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanente
non vogliate negar l'esperïenza,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza".
Canto XXVI
O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand
Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West,
To this so inconsiderable vigil
Which is remaining of your senses still
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.
Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, But for
pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'
Another pitiful scene opens in front
of Dante’s eyes: a man eating from
someone’s head . It is Count
Ugolino,
He had been imprisoned in a
dungeon with his children and died
of hunger after having watched his
own children die and possibly
having eaten their bodies to
survive…
La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto
quel peccator, forbendola a' capelli
del capo ch'elli avea di retro guasto.
Poi cominciò: «Tu vuo' ch'io rinovelli
disperato dolor che 'l cor mi preme
già pur pensando, pria ch'io ne favelli.
Ma se le mie parole esser dien seme
che frutti infamia al traditor ch'i' rodo,
parlar e lagrimar vedrai insieme.
Auguste Rodin
Canto XXXIII
His mouth uplifted from his grim repast,
That sinner, wiping it upon the hair
Of the same head that he behind had wasted.
Then he began: "Thou wilt that I renew
The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already
To think of only, ere I speak of it;
But if my words be seed that may bear fruit
Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw,
Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together.
Dante feels contrasting
emotions towards the people
he meets: anger, admiration,
pity.
At the end of his long journey
in hell , he is finally allowed to
get out and admire once more a
sky full of stars…..
Salvator Dalì
Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascoso
intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo;
e sanza cura aver d'alcun riposo,
salimmo sù, el primo e io secondo,
tanto ch'i' vidi de le cose belle
che porta 'l ciel, per un pertugio tondo.
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.
Canto XXXIV
Gustave Dorè
The Guide and I into that hidden road Now
entered, to return to the bright world;
And without care of having any rest
We mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture Some of
the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;
Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.