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Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 Time: 1:26 AM

In his survey of Western Literature, The Western Canon, Harold Bloom has ranked two writers higher than all others: Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri, the medieval Italian poet. This rating has been commonplace for as long as the formal study of literature has existed; for hundreds of years Dante’s most important work, The Divine Comedy has been considered a cornerstone of all that is good and beautiful in Western Civilization. It has been embraced as a work of Christian piety despite the fact the poem was based on the somewhat heretical notion that a woman whom Dante had a romantic infatuation with, Beatrice Portinari, was afforded the same honor as the pagan mentor of Dante, Virgil, honor not much below the blessed virgin.

Life

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. At the time, the city was divided between two political parties: the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Dante’s family belonged to the Guelphs. These political divisions would have a lasting effect on Dante’s life and work. Cod liver oil

In Dante’s early work, Vita Nuova, he recounts a formative experience that would haunt him all his life, his first encounter with his lifelong muse, Bice (Beatrice) Portinari. His recounting of the first sight of her walking with some other noble girls up a boulevard in Florence is one of the most famous meetings in all of literature. Although Dante loved Portinari, there is no historical evidence that the infatuation was returned, and his father arranged a marriage for his son to Gemma De Manetto Donati. The couple would have two sons.

In 1295 Dante became active in politics. He served as an ambassador to Pope Boniface’s court. While in Rome in 1301, Dante’s political enemies took control of Florence. He was never allowed to return to the city of his birth, and it is uncertain whether he ever saw his wife again. Fish oil dosage

He lived in Ravenna from 1313 until his death in September 1321, under the protection of his patron, Guido Novello da Polenta.

Work

Dante’s first major work, Vita Nuova, was composed between the years 1292 to 1300. It was written in Italian, a matter of huge import since most poets of the age composed in Latin rather than the vernacular tongue. Vita Nuova is an idealized cycle of poems about Dante and his beloved but unattainable Beatrice. Many critics consider this to be his greatest work of lyrical poetry because the love poems are not complicated by the religious imperative that would mark Dante’s later work. Even when such themes appear, they are relatively muted.

Dante’s next work, The Convivio (The Banquet) also has love as a main concern, but is more philosophical in nature, asking the reader to consider the religious and allegorical nature of love as well as its fleshly attributes.

Dante began work on his masterpiece, La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) in 1305 and would work on it until right before his death in 1321. The book has one hundred cantos divided equally between its three books: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradisio (Heaven). In telling of his own metaphorical journey from hell to heaven, Dante would strike a chord in readers for over six hundred years who would see their own journey reflected in his. The book is a technical as well as a metaphorical masterpiece, employing a complex metre called terza rima throughout. Fish oil for dogs

Dante begins the book in his 35th year ‘lost in a dark wood’, ‘in the middle journey’ of his life. The sense of lostness is relayed with such gut-wrenching forcefulness that it is hard not to identify with him. Knowing the pain of his exile and romantic isolation it is not difficult to imagine where the well springs of his pain begins. The Roman poet Virgil guides Dante through the first part of his journey, which is fitting since Dante regarded the poet as his mentor in the art of poetry. Beatrice will be Dante’s guide through purgatory. Virgil, the poet, must leave Dante’s side. This represents Dante having to renounce pure poetry for something of a deeper nature. In purgatory, Beatrice is not just the object of Dante’s earthly affection, but is referred to by Virgil as ‘lady philosophy’. In giving up Virgil for Beatrice, Dante is mirroring the earlier journey he made from the earthly delights of Vita Nuova to the more mature concerns of The Convivio. At the end of the journey in purgatory one more renunciation is needed. Beatrice leaves to be replaced by St. Bernard of Clairvoux. Bernard represents something even greater than wisdom: the love of God for man; specifically the sacrificial love of Christ for the poor wandering pilgrims like Dante. It has taken a journey of one hundred Cantos but Dante and the reader are finally able to experience the love at the end of the pilgrimage.

Dante’s greatness rests in his understanding of the small human gestures that lead one towards grace. Though he employed complex poetic formulas to achieve his effects, and his work is as philosophically demanding as the scholastic philosophers who were his contemporaries, his work rests on romantic love, sacrifice and exile, and on the everyday sorrows and disappointments that make up a human life in any time period. Dante’s humanity and his continued appeal rest in the recognition that the journey towards God can begin with the sight of a beautiful stanger on a boulevard and that the lady philosophy when unveiled may be familiar beyond your dreams.

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