On September 14, 1321, Dante, a great philosopher from the small town of Florence, Italy, whom Engels called "the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of the New Age", forever closed his wise eyes that could see through heaven and hell.
What Dante left to the world is a 14,233-line three-rhyming poem, in which the poet weaves a brilliant picture of red dust, which contains great spiritual power. In some future era, this work will be full of vitality and will be praised by the world for thousands of years and will last forever.
2021 marks the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, and in his native Italy, March 25 is designated as "Dante's Day" in honor of the "Father of Italian". On this day, people not only meet to go to Dante's cemetery to mourn the great undead, but also gather together to sing the Divine Comedy he left behind.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="9" >01 The love of a lifetime and the birth of the Divine Comedy</h1>
The Divine Comedy is an encyclopedic work that encompasses almost all the humanistic knowledge of medieval Europe. Dante writes from hell to heaven, and more than a hundred characters appear in the book, these souls from ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the Middle Ages in which Dante lived, including mythological characters, literary figures, and real people who were contemporaries of Dante.
Therefore, the Divine Comedy is not an easy work to read, and if you lack an understanding of the history and culture of the West, it is difficult to fully understand the Divine Comedy and understand the ideas that Dante wants to express in this work.
But this does not mean that ordinary people cannot appreciate this magnificent and magnificent masterpiece. We can start from a very small entry point to appreciate the supreme charm of the Divine Comedy, slowly approach it, appreciate it, fall in love with it, and at that time, slowly peel back the cocoon, digest and absorb this spiritual feast little by little.
This entry point is Dante's romantic but bumpy love story.
The heroine of the Divine Comedy is named Beatrice, and this lady is dante's lifelong love. It is said that when Dante first met Beatrice, she was an 8-year-old girl, but her smile fascinated the 9-year-old Dante, even to the point of deep affection.
As Dante later described in his poem: "At this time, the spirit of life, hidden in the deepest part of life, began to tremble violently, and even a very weak pulse felt a vibration. ”
Eight years later, on the famous Trinity Bridge in Florence, Dante met the girl who haunted him again. At that time, sixteen-year-old Beatri was dressed in a long light-colored dress, holding a bouquet of roses, raising her hands and feet, and had a girlish style.
However, the shy Dante had no experience with girls, and just as he hesitated and did not know how to greet the goddess of his dreams, Beatrice had already walked away from his companions, and the two men passed each other again. By the time Dante finally plucked up the courage to confess to Beatriche, she had become a countess.
Since then, the parting of the bridge has become an inextricable pain in Dante's heart. Perhaps, only once wrote "Since the spring is late, do not have to worry about the time." The wind fell a deep red, and the green leaves became full of branches. Du Mu of this poem can best understand the sadness in Dante's heart.
But perhaps it was the frustration of the love scene that inspired Dante's endless inspiration, and from then on, he devoted all his deep love to his creative career.
A few years later, Beatrice's face was red, and on the night of her death, Dante dreamed of his beloved girl, who took Dante to the Yellow Spring, traveled all over heaven and hell, and finally returned to earth.
When Dante woke up, he recalled his dream experience, and if he felt something, he put down all his work and concentrated on composing the Divine Comedy, and Beatrice's name was immortalized with this masterpiece.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="94" >02 Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven as Seen by Dante</h1>
It can be said that the long poem "Divine Comedy" is actually a fantasy dream woven by Dante. At the beginning of this dream, Dante, in a groggy state, stumbled into a dark forest.
There are three fierce beasts in the forest, leopards, lions and she-wolves, and just as Dante is about to be eaten by the beast, his lover Beatrice asks the ancient Roman poet Virgil to let him take Dante out of this terrible forest.
Virgil came to Dante and guided him through hell. On the first floor of Hell, Dante met thirty-five great human beings, Caesar, Homer, Socrates, and Euclid.
The second to fifth levels of hell are held by those who have committed the crime of "indulgence", such as adulterers, misers, profligates, angry people, etc., who are tortured in hell, some are burned by fire, some are quagmire, and only by redeeming the sins of their lives can the painful punishment be ended.
In the seventh to ninth layers of hell, there are human beings who commit serious crimes such as malice and violence, and among them are war maniacs such as Alexander the Great and Attila, the Hun king, tyrants, greedy popes and rogues of the city, and Cain, Judas, and other notorious betrayers in the Bible. These people will be punished in hell with the harshest punishment and will never be able to live again.
After coming out of Hell, Virgil took Dante and crawled through the center of the earth along the body of satan the demon king and came to Purgatory. Those souls who have committed the seven deadly sins of pride, jealousy, anger, laziness, greed, greed, greed, etc., after atonement for their sins in hell, can enter purgatory, where they are tempered, washed away their faults, and gradually ascended layer by layer, and finally entered the kingdom of heaven.
After leaving Purgatory, Virgil gave Dante to Beatrice, who was waiting in front of the gates of heaven, and she continued to guide Dante through the kingdom of heaven. Dante, accompanied by his beloved, traveled from the first heaven and moon day to the seventh heaven Saturn, reveling in incomparable happiness.
Finally, Dante accepted the holy angel's examination of the three virtues of "faith", "hope" and "love", and entered into the last heaven of pure fire, paying homage to the Virgin Mary and the Trinity Of the Most High God God God.
At this time, Dante saw infinite goodness, endless light and boundless love, and his soul was baptized and sublimated. This is the synopsis of the story of the entire Divine Comedy.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="95" >03 The social metaphor hidden in the Divine Comedy</h1>
The Divine Comedy is an immortal poem about love and redemption, and what Dante really wants to tell in this psalm is the loss and redemption of human nature, which is precisely the stage of life that every mortal is bound to go through.
The dark forest at the beginning of the story symbolizes the sin of human nature, while the leopard, lion and she-wolf in the forest symbolize deception, ambition and greed, respectively. Virgil told Dante that mortals could not defeat these beasts of choice and devouring, and that to leave this dark forest, they could only find another way, a path for the brave.
Then, when Dante is distracted by what the undead are chatting about, Virgil says to him, "What do they have to do with you?" Follow me forward and let them talk! ”
Later, this sentence was quoted by Marx in Capital, and gradually evolved into the famous saying we often say today: "Go your own way, let others say go!" ”
This fantasy adventure is a journey of sublimation of human nature, from hell to purgatory, from purgatory to heaven, Dante gradually understands the true meaning of life. Thus, at the end of the Divine Comedy, Dante writes affectionately:
"In the depths of that flame of light, I saw everything in the universe, gathered together, bound into a book by love... This love pushes the sun and the sky full of stars. ”
It can be said that Dante's Divine Comedy has influenced generations of people, whether it is Shelley, Byron and Keats, or Freud, Jung and Hegel, all draw rich spiritual nutrients from the Divine Comedy.
Borges said: "Never before has a book given me such a strong shock. Mr. Lao She said: "There was a not short period when I became a Dante fan, and after reading the Divine Comedy, I understood what great literature and art are. Even Mr. Lu Xun, who has always been critical in his vision, has read the Divine Comedy many times, and every time he finishes reading it, he has different feelings.
Therefore, from ignorant teenagers to elderly people, they should at least read the Divine Comedy carefully in their lives. At different stages of life, the taste from the book is also very different:
When I read the Divine Comedy in my youth, I read the "Divine Comedy" with a broad vision, when I read the "Divine Comedy" in middle age, I read the "Divine Comedy" and read the wisdom of life.
There are many editions of the Divine Comedy on the market, but the set of Divine Comedy (all three volumes) published by the Commercial Press is particularly worth collecting.
The translator of this set of Commercial Press editions of the Divine Comedy is mr. Xiao Tianyou, a famous Italian literary translator, who has been teaching Italian for more than 50 years, and has translated Boccaccio's "Ten Days of Talk", Calvino's "If on a Winter Night, a Traveler" and other works, and its text is beautiful and smooth, concise and clear, and has the true taste of "Xinyada".
In the past, the translation of the Divine Comedy was often too much of a commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy, in a sense, dispersing or even hurting the reader's reading and appreciation of the Divine Comedy itself, while Mr. Xiao Tianyou's translation, from the reader's point of view, firmly grasped the content of Dante's Divine Comedy, the text was concise and clear, so that all ordinary readers, including students in high school and college, writers who did not understand foreign languages and all those who wanted to dabble in Italian Renaissance literature but did not know Italian could understand this difficult to understand this difficult tome.
A good translator can make a good book, and a good book can affect a person's life. If you are in a confused, imitative, and frustrating stage of life, may you get the wisdom of life out of difficulties and rejuvenation from this Divine Comedy.