PEOPLE MENTIONED A WEEK DURANTE DEGLI ALIGHIERI1

63 Pages·1991·4.27 MB·English

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK:
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DURANTE DEGLI ALGHIERI
ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY
by Thomas Carlyle:
I. The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism:
Scandinavian Mythology.
II. The Hero as Prophet. Mohammed: Islam.
III. The Hero as Poet. Dante: William Shakespeare.
IV. The Hero as Priest. Martin Luther; Reformation:
John Knox; Puritanism.
V. The Hero as Man of Letters. Samuel Johnson,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Burns.
VI. The Hero as King. Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte:
Modern Revolutionism.
1.For Henry Thoreau’s familiarity with Dante Alighieri, consult J. Chesley Mathews’s “Thoreau’s Reading in Dante,” Italica
27 (1950):77-81.
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Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,
With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,
Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,
Like Farinata from his fiery tomb.
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;
Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
What soft compassion glows, as in the skies
The tender stars their clouded lamps relume!
Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks,
By Fra Hilario in his diocese,
As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks,
The ascending sunbeams mark the day’s decrease;
And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
Thy voice along the cloister whispers, “Peace!”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In his “The Allegash” manuscript, Thoreau offered that
there is little prospect that we may be able to indulge
in much good mythmaking in our grand future. Instead he
complained that as “Anglo Americans” advanced, poetry
and mythology seemed to retire. We ignorantly erase the
mythological tablets to print mere handbills and town
meeting warrants on them. In his late revisions, Thoreau
cancelled the two sentences that followed this passage:
“This wilderness is a great mythic poem worth a thousand
of Spenser’s Faery Queens & Dante’s Divine Comedies.
Spenser and Dante Alighieri translated only such
sheets[?] of it as came round their grounds.”
1260 CE
The Guelf faction of Firenzi, after a period of ascendancy, was defeated in the battle of Montaperti (Dante
Alighieri’s INFERNO X, XXXII).
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, I
1265 CE
Between May 21 and June 20, most likely on May 29th, Durante degli Alighieri (for us, Dante) was born into
the important Alighieri family of Firenzi (for us, Florence).
During this late spring, the 17th-year cicadas Magicicada septendecim were swarming
inwhateventuallywould become New England.
NEW ENGLAND
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1266 CE
As a sequel to the defeat of Manfred at Benevento, Charles of Anjou conquered Naples and Sicily.Until1442,
the Angevin Dynasty at Naples.
The Guelf faction of Firenzi, supported by papal and French armies, defeated the Ghibelline faction at
Benevento and exiled them forever from their native city. The Guelphs, to whose party Dante Alighieri’s
family adhered, at this point became able themselves to return to their homes in Firenzi. (Dante’s father had
evidently not been of sufficient influence to have himself been sent into this exile.) Dante would thus grow up
as an entitled member of a proud and expanding city-state as it sought to dominate the region of Tuscany.
1274 CE
May: Dante Alighieri, at a private feast in Firenzi, was entirely enraptured by a self-possessed little girl, another9-
year-old named Beatrice Portinari.
1277 CE
Dante Alighieri became betrothed to Gemma Donati.
1279 CE
Dante Alighieri’s mother Bella had died by this point, before he reached the age of 14.
1283 CE
Since Dante Alighieri, having as of the age of 18 come into his majority, was able as an orphan to sell a credit
owned by his father and to take in marriage Gemma Donati, we can infer that by this point in time Dante’s
father was deceased. (They would have four children, Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni, and Antonia.) Bythispoint,
he would assert in Chapter III of his LA VITA NUOVA, he had taught himself the art of making verse.
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1289 CE
Dante Alighieri fought as a cavalryman against the Ghibellines in the battle of Campaldino in which the Guelf
League (Firenzi and Lucca) defeated the Ghibellines of Arezzo. (Dante would recall this battle,
inPURGATORIO.)
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, II
1290 CE
Beatrice Portinari died.
DANTE
1292 CE
During this year and the next, Dante Alighieri was putting together his LA VITA NUOVA, the first of two
collections of verse and prose he would make in his lifetime. Later, the CONVIVIO would contain the
compositions from just prior to 1294 up to the writing of LA COMMEDIA (later named LA DIVINA COMMEDIA,
THE DIVINE COMEDY).
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1294 CE
Dante Alighieri met Charles Martel, King of Hungary and heir to the kingdom of Naples and the country of
Provence (he would report this meeting in PARADISO VIII).
Supremacy of the Visconti at Milan.
1295 CE
For the purpose of entering public life, Dante Alighieri joined the guild of the apothecaries.
1300 CE
Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed this to be a Jubilee Year. Eastertime of this year would provide the fictional
date for the journey which Dante Alighieri would take in THE DIVINE COMEDY.
June 15-August 15For two months Dante Alighieri was a Prior of Florence, one of their six highest magistrates.
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1301 CE
The army of Charles of Valois was approaching Firenzi, and Dante Alighieri was sent as an envoy to Rome to
seek assistance from Pope Boniface VIII.
1302 CE
January 27: When the Black Guelphs seized power in Firenzi, they initially banished Dante Alighieri from the city for
two years beginning as of this date, and permanently forbade him to occupy any public office. (This2-year
banishment would be reconsidered and made perpetual and he would be condemned to be burned alive should
he ever be discovered within the territory of the Florentine Republic.)
1304 CE
Dante Alighieri wrote the 1st and part of the 2nd of a planned 4-volume history and rhetoric of vernacular
literature, DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. During this same period he was writing at the CONVIVIO, onlyfour of a
projected fifteen books of which would be completed.
1306 CE
It was probably in this year that Dante Alighieri interrupted work on his CONVIVIO and began his DIVINA
COMMEDIA.
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, I
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, II
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, III
1310 CE
Henry of Luxembourg, Holy Roman Emperor, descended into Italy and Dante Alighieri addressed an Epistle
to him. This is also the possible date of DANTE MONARCHIA (we know it originated between 1310 and 1313).
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1314 CE
Dante Alighieri’s INFERNO:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would render as:2
MIDWAY upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, I
1315 CE
Dante Alighieri became a guest of Cangrande della Scala in Verona and there would work on his PURGATORIO
and PARADISO and compose his QUESTIO DE ACQUE ET TERRA.
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, II
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, III
1319 CE
Dante Alighieri became a guest of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna and entered into Latin
correspondence with Giovanni del Virgilio.
1321 CE
September 13: Dante Alighieri had fallen ill on his return to Ravenna from Venice, where he had been sent as
ambassador by his patron Guido Novello da Polenta, and on this day or the next he died.
2.You’ll do considerably better with Robert Pinsky’s THE INFERNO OF DANTE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994).
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1485
In London, the Bodyguard of the Yeoman of the Guard was established to provide security during the
coronation of Henry VII. This has become now the oldest extent royal bodyguard and the white crossbelts of
its traditional uniform had been originally intended to support the weight of an arquebus.
At about this point Leonardo da Vinci sketched some wheel-lock firing mechanisms.
For the Bereguardo Canal, the Duke of Milan’s engineer Bertola da Novato designed the first modern locks.
In Venice, Dante Alighieri’s DIVINA COMMEDIA was being printed by Petrus de Piasio. Between 1480 and 1483,
this printer had been in partnership with the A. Torresanus who had taken possession of Jenson’s printing
equipment upon Jenson’s death. (The edition of the COMMEDIA printed in Venice in 1491 by Petrus de Piasio
of Cremona is better known, but this happens to be the edition of which I have a page image.) Here is what
Dante had to say about what he supposed himself to be doing: “The subject of the whole work, taken literally,
is the state of souls after death, regarded as fact. Taken allegorically, its subject is man, insofar as by merit or
demerit, in the exercise of free will, he is exposed to the reward or punishment of justice.” In the narrative of
his journey, which was inspired by a version in 1300, the authorial persona is accompanied by two guides,
“Vigil, who stands for human reason, … and Beatrice, who symbolizes divine grace.” Virgil cannot pass
beyond Purgatory, but Beatrice lifts him by contemplation through the spheres of Paradise. The last line depicts
the “love which moves the sun and other stars.”
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1614
The Vatican put the DIVINA COMMEDIA of Dante Alighieri on its Index Expurgatorius, with the injunction that
the portion of INFERNO dealing with simoniac popes (XIX 48-117),
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, I
the portion of PURGATORIO dealing with Pope Adrian V’s avarice and conversion (XIX 106-18),
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, II
and the portion of PARADISO dealing with the avarice of the Vatican high clergy (IX 136-142) in addition to
being forbidden reading must be “suppressed.”
LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, III
At that time the verses were not being understood as a work of poetic art, but instead were being taken to be
the sheerest trash-writing. For instance, Paolo Beni (1552-1625) wrote in his IL CAVALCANTI that Dante’s
slack lines, forced rhymes, various improprieties, insufferable
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obscenities, frequent affectations, and, to be brief, the
horrid, stupid, licentious style, along with endless other
errors of learning and art, show clearly that Dante was a worse
than awful Poet, so little did he have any right to claim
superiority over other Poets. And so it seems to me that he was
very unfortunate, with a Poem in which one can perceive no
industry or need of effort, that it should make him (so he sings)
grow thin (the word is his) for many years.
1620
A more hedonistic view of poetry characteristic of the Baroque aesthetic began to work against the reputation
of the poet Dante Alighieri. For instance, F. Guarino wrote in Canto V of his L'INFERNO D'AMORE:
You sculpt well, Dante, but you do not polish;
you are good, but not beautiful;
you benefit, but do not please,
and with too much knowledge you oppress the Muse.
1782
There would be over the years many attempt to render the DIVINE COMEDY of Dante Alighieri into English,
some partial, some complete, some into poetry, some into poetry that accorded with Dante’s Terza Rima
scheme in the Italian, and some into straightforward prose. In this year the first such attempt was made by
Charles Rogers, with INFERNO only.
• 1785-1802 Reverend Henry Boyd’s DIVINE COMEDY
• 1805-1806 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s INFERNO only
• 1812 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s DIVINE COMEDY
• 1807 N. Howard’s INFERNO only
• 1812 Hume’s INFERNO only
• 1833-1840 I.C. Wright’s DIVINE COMEDY
• 1836 Odoardo Volpi’s ten cantos of INFERNO in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian
• 1842 C. Hindley’s INFERNO only (in prose)
• 1843 Reverend John Dayman’s INFERNO only
• 1849 Dr. John Aitken Carlyle’s INFERNO only (in prose)
• 1850 Patrick Bannerman’s DIVINE COMEDY
• 1851-1854 C.B. Cayley’s DIVINE COMEDY
• 1852 E. O’Donnell’s DIVINE COMEDY (in prose)
• 1854 T. Brooksbank’s INFERNO only
• 1854 Frederick Pollock’s DIVINE COMEDY
• 1846 Leigh Hunt’s STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS, portions of DIVINE COMEDY
• 1859 J.W. Thomas’s DIVINE COMEDY in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian
• 1859 Bruce Whyte’s INFERNO only
• 1862 “Hugh Bent” (nom de plume)’s INFERNO only
• 1862 W.P. Wilkie’s INFERNO only
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