Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy
In his amazing, terrifying creation" The Divine Comedy“Dante Alighieri painted pictures of the punishments of sinners. The expression “9 circles of hell” received a vivid visualization, which undoubtedly had a strong effect on believers. And in our time, Dante’s work is studied and interpreted, because as long as religion continues to exist, punishments will continue to be relevant for transgressions before God. Our article is devoted to describing the circles of hell according to famous work. Let us imagine the unique picture that stretches before the eyes of the heroes of the Divine Comedy.
Generalized features of Dante's hell
Traveling around terrible circles hell, you can see a pattern. The first circles represent eternal punishment for intemperance during life. The further you go, the less material human sins are, that is, they affect the moral aspects of life. Accordingly, with each round the torture of sinners becomes more terrible. The way Dante presented the 9 circles of hell to readers causes a storm of emotions and, as we hope and what the ancient author hoped for, will warn people from bad deeds.
Dante's picturesque idea of the geography of hell, naturally, was not the original information. The poet expressed the experience and theories of philosophers and scientist predecessors, describing the 9 circles of hell. According to the Bible, such a concept is expressed in seven levels that cleanse the souls of sinners.
Thus, Dante in his work relies on the centric structure of hell, where groups of circles are characterized by different severity of sins. As we have already noticed, the closer to the center, the more serious the sin.
Aristotle in his work “Ethics” classifies sins into categories: the first is intemperance, the second is violence against others and oneself, the third category is deception and betrayal.
Now we will embark on a journey through the world, where punishment reigns, and every misdemeanor is rewarded in full - we begin to get acquainted with the circles of hell.
First lap. Limbo
In the first circle of hell, the suffering of sinners is painless. The punishment here is eternal sorrow, and it fell to the lot of those who were not baptized.
Thus, among the grieving souls on Limbo there are the righteous from (Noah, Abraham, Moses), ancient philosophers (including Virgil). The circle is guarded by Charon - the same carrier of souls through Next - about the interesting things that Dante's "Divine Comedy" contains, on other circles.
Circle two. Voluptuousness
In the second circle, created to punish those who are intemperate in love during life, sinners are guarded by the very father of the monster Minotaur. Here he also acts as fair judge, distributing souls into appropriate circles.
There is constant darkness in this circle, in which a hurricane rages. The souls of those who cheated on their spouse are mercilessly thrown by the wind.
Circle three. Gluttony
In the third circle of hellish torment are those who were incontinent in food during their lifetime. The glutton is showered with cold rain, there is eternal mud underfoot.
A hellish dog with three heads, Cerberus, is assigned as guard to the gluttons. Those sinful souls that fall into his clutches, he gnaws. And we will continue to delve into how Dante presented the 9 circles of hell.
Circle four. Greed
On the next round, the punishments become even harsher. Here are the souls of those who were greedy in different areas life. The punishment looks like this: on a vast plain, two masses of souls push huge stones towards each other. When the lines collide, you have to separate again and start the work again.
Plutos, the wealth mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, stands guard over greedy sinners.
Circle five. Anger and laziness
The fifth circle is a wide swamp. Violent and lazy souls fight incessantly while swimming in swamp water. Phlegias, the founder of the Phlegian robbers, the son of Ares, was assigned as a guard to the circle of terrible punishments.
Circle six. False teachers and heretics
Anyone who preached other gods and misled peoples ended up in the seventh (according to Dante) circle of hell. In the Burning City are the souls of such sinners. There they suffer in open, hot, oven-like graves. They are guarded by terrible monsters - mythical Fury sisters with snakes instead of hair. Between the sixth and next circles there is a fetid ditch demarcating it. Distant regions begin, where people are tortured for even more serious sins.
Seventh circle. Murderers and rapists
The 9 circles of hell presented by Dante continue with the seventh - a place where the souls of murderers of various types, including suicides and tyrants, are tormented.
The murderers and perpetrators of violence are in the middle of the steppe, over which a fiery rain is pouring. It scorches sinners, and here they are torn apart by dogs, caught and tortured by harpies. Even trees, forever standing helpless, are turned into murderers in the seventh circle of hell. The terrible mythical monster Minotaur monitors the regularly tortured souls.
Circle eight. Deceived
Ahead of us are the most impressive of the 9 circles of hell. According to the Christian Bible, just like in other religions, deceivers are subject to one of the most severe punishments. So in Dante they got a place so destructive that only immortal souls can exist here.
The eighth circle represents the Sinisters - 10 ditches in which fortune-tellers and soothsayers, delinquent priests, hypocrites, sorcerers, false witnesses, and alchemists walk among the sewage. Sinners are boiled in tar, beaten with hooks, chained to rocks and their feet doused with fire. They are tormented by various reptiles and diseases. The giant Geryon stands guard here.
Circle nine, center. Traitors and Traitors
In the center of hell, according to Dante's poem, there is Lucifer frozen in the icy lake Cocytus. His face is turned down. He also tortures other famous traitors: Judas, Brutus, Cassius.
In the midst of the hellish cold, all the other betrayed souls are also tormented. They are guarded by the giant Antaeus, the traitor to the Spartans Ephialtes and the son of Uranus and Gaia of the Briares.
Conclusion
Finally, we have emerged from the hellish world created by Dante Alighieri. The “Divine Comedy,” the content of which we have thus covered, is a work that has come to us through the centuries thanks to its ability to impress the minds of readers. The work is deservedly considered a classic and a must-read.
Now we know on what basis the legendary Dante created the 9 circles of hell, and what they are. Let us note once again that the pictures that appear before readers amaze with their scale and content: as if all of man’s fear of death was embodied in a single thought, expressed by the poem “The Divine Comedy”. If this book is not yet open in front of you, the 9 circles of hell are quite ready to accommodate your soul...
The action of “The Divine Comedy” begins from the moment when the lyrical hero (or Dante himself), shocked by the death of his beloved Beatrice, tries to survive his grief, setting it out in poetry in order to record it as specifically as possible and thereby preserve the unique image of his beloved. But here it turns out that her immaculate personality is already not subject to death and oblivion. She becomes a guide, the savior of the poet from inevitable death.
Beatrice, with the help of Virgil, an ancient Roman poet, accompanies the living lyrical hero- Dante - bypassing all the horrors of Hell, making an almost sacred journey from existence to non-existence, when the poet, just like the mythological Orpheus, descends into the underworld to save his Eurydice. On the gates of Hell it is written “Abandon all hope,” but Virgil advises Dante to get rid of fear and trepidation of the unknown, because only with with open eyes Man has the power to comprehend the source of evil.
Sandro Botticelli, "Portrait of Dante"
Hell for Dante is not a materialized place, but a state of soul of a sinned person, constantly tormented by remorse. Dante inhabited the circles of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, guided by his likes and dislikes, his ideals and ideas. For him, for his friends, love was the highest expression of the independence and unpredictability of the freedom of the human person: this is freedom from traditions and dogmas, and freedom from the authorities of the church fathers, and freedom from various universal models human existence.
On foreground Love comes out with capital letters, aimed not at the realistic (in the medieval sense) absorption of individuality into a ruthless collective integrity, but towards unique image the truly existing Beatrice. For Dante, Beatrice is the embodiment of the entire universe in the most concrete and colorful image. And what could be more attractive to a poet than the figure of a young Florentine woman, accidentally met on narrow street ancient city? This is how Dante realizes the synthesis of thought and concrete, artistic, emotional comprehension of the world. In the first song of Paradise, Dante listens to the concept of reality from the lips of Beatrice and is unable to take his eyes off her emerald eyes. This scene is the embodiment of deep ideological and psychological shifts when artistic comprehension actually strives to become intellectual.
Illustration for The Divine Comedy, 1827
The afterlife appears before the reader in the form of a solid building, the architecture of which is calculated in the smallest details, and the coordinates of space and time are distinguished by mathematical and astronomical accuracy, complete numerological and esoteric overtones.
The number three and its derivative, nine, appear most often in the text of the comedy: a three-line stanza (terzina), which became the poetic basis of the work, which in turn is divided into three parts - cantics. Minus the first, introductory song, 33 songs are devoted to the depiction of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, and each part of the text ends with the same word - stars (stelle). To the same mystical number series one can also include the three colors of clothes in which Beatrice is clothed, three symbolic beasts, three mouths of Lucifer and the same number of sinners devoured by him, the triple distribution of Hell with nine circles. This entire clearly constructed system gives rise to a surprisingly harmonious and coherent hierarchy of the world, created according to unwritten divine laws.
The Tuscan dialect became the basis of the literary Italian language
Speaking about Dante and his “Divine Comedy”, one cannot help but note the special status that the great poet’s homeland – Florence – had in a host of other cities of the Apennine Peninsula. Florence is not only the city where the Accademia del Chimento raised the banner of experimental knowledge of the world. This is a place where nature was looked at as closely as anywhere else, a place of passionate artistic sensationalism, where rational vision replaced religion. They looked at the world through the eyes of an artist, with elation and worship of beauty.
The initial collection of ancient manuscripts reflected a shift in the center of gravity of intellectual interests to the device inner world and the creativity of man himself. Space ceased to be the habitat of God, and they began to treat nature from the point of view of earthly existence, they looked for answers to questions understandable to man, and took them in earthly, applied mechanics. New look thinking - natural philosophy - humanized nature itself.
The topography of Dante's Hell and the structure of Purgatory and Paradise follow from the recognition of loyalty and courage as the highest virtues: in the center of Hell, in the teeth of Satan, there are traitors, and the distribution of places in Purgatory and Paradise directly corresponds moral ideals Florentine exile.
By the way, everything we know about Dante’s life is known to us from his own memoirs, set out in The Divine Comedy. He was born in 1265 in Florence and remained loyal to his hometown all his life. Dante wrote about his teacher Brunetto Latini and his talented friend Guido Cavalcanti. The life of the great poet and philosopher took place in the circumstances of a very long conflict between the emperor and the Pope. Latini, Dante's mentor, was a man with encyclopedic knowledge and based his views on the sayings of Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle and, of course, the Bible - general ledger Middle Ages. It was Latini who most influenced the development of the personality of Buddhism. a great Renaissance humanist.
Dante's path was replete with obstacles when the poet faced the need difficult choice: So, he was forced to contribute to the expulsion of his friend Guido from Florence. Reflecting on the theme of the vicissitudes of his fate, Dante in the poem “ New life» dedicates many fragments to his friend Cavalcanti. Here Dante drew the unforgettable image of his first youthful love- Beatrice. Biographers identify Dante's lover with Beatrice Portinari, who died at the age of 25 in Florence in 1290. Dante and Beatrice became the same textbook embodiment of true lovers as Petrarch and Laura, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet.
Dante spoke to his beloved Beatrice twice in his life
In 1295, Dante entered the guild, membership in which opened the way for him into politics. Just at this time, the struggle between the emperor and the Pope intensified, so that Florence was divided into two opposing factions - the “black” Guelphs, led by Corso Donati, and the “white” Guelphs, to whose camp Dante himself belonged. The Whites were victorious and drove their opponents out of the city. In 1300, Dante was elected to the city council - it was here that the poet’s brilliant oratory abilities were fully revealed.
Dante increasingly began to oppose himself to the Pope, participating in various anti-clerical coalitions. By that time, the “blacks” had stepped up their activities, burst into the city and dealt with their political opponents. Dante was summoned several times to testify before the city council, but each time he ignored these demands, so on March 10, 1302, Dante and 14 other members of the “white” party were sentenced in absentia to death penalty. To save himself, the poet was forced to leave hometown. Disillusioned with the possibility of changing the political state of affairs, he began to write his life's work - The Divine Comedy.
Sandro Botticelli "Hell, Canto XVIII"
In the 14th century, in The Divine Comedy, the truth revealed to the poet who visited Hell, Purgatory and Paradise is no longer canonical, it appears to him as a result of his own, individual efforts, his emotional and intellectual impulse, he hears the truth from the lips of Beatrice . For Dante, an idea is the “thought of God”: “Everything that will die and everything that will not die is / Only a reflection of the Thought to which the Almighty / With His Love gives existence.”
Dante's path of love is the path of perception of divine light, a force that simultaneously elevates and destroys a person. In The Divine Comedy, Dante placed special emphasis on the color symbolism of the Universe he depicted. If Hell is characterized by dark tones, then the path from Hell to Heaven is a transition from dark and gloomy to light and shining, while in Purgatory there is a change in lighting. For the three steps at the gates of Purgatory, symbolic colors stand out: white - the innocence of a baby, crimson - the sinfulness of an earthly creature, red - redemption, the blood of which whitens so that, closing this color range, white appears again as a harmonious combination of the previous symbols.
“We do not live in this world for death to find us in blissful laziness.”
In November 1308, Henry VII became king of Germany, and in July 1309, the new Pope Clement V declared him king of Italy and invited him to Rome, where the magnificent coronation of the new emperor of the Holy Roman Empire took place. Dante, who was an ally of Henry, returned to politics, where he was able to use his literary experience, writing many pamphlets and speaking publicly. In 1316, Dante finally moved to Ravenna, where he was invited to spend the rest of his days by the city's lord, philanthropist and patron of the arts, Guido da Polenta.
In the summer of 1321, Dante, as ambassador of Ravenna, went to Venice with a mission to make peace with the Doge's Republic. Having completed an important assignment, on the way home Dante falls ill with malaria (like his late friend Guido) and suddenly dies on the night of September 13-14, 1321.
