In the biography of every artist there was a woman who inspired the creation of works and imprinted in them for centuries. The creator of the Divine Comedy, a philosopher, poet and politician, admired the muse named Beatrice all his life.

History of creation

The name of Beatrice Portinari, most likely, would have been forgotten and lost in numerous legends about beautiful girls, if not for the ardent love of a fan. In the work of Dante Alighieri, there are references to a woman remembered by Florence and the educated world. The muse of the great poet and her dignity, subtly emphasized in the lyrical statements of Dante, subsequently inspired the poets of the following centuries.

Coming from a simple family that did not have enough money to give his son an education, Dante showed a romantic mental warehouse from a young age. At the age of 9, he met a pretty girl who gave birth to strong and unshakable love in his heart. The daughter of a wealthy Florentine became an object of worship, the admiration of which Alighieri carried through life and work.

The origin and status of the girl suggested marriage with a representative of her class, so Beatrice did not take Alighieri's attentions seriously. She was betrothed to the rich Simon de Bardi, who was favored by the girl's mother. History is silent about how happy the union of Beatrice and Simon, who were married, was. Dante, on the other hand, was happy with dreams of the one who was considered a witch, seeing how the poet was fascinated by her.

The second meeting of Dante and Beatrice took place seven years after they met. This date also did not give Alighieri reason to believe in the possibility of reciprocity and joint happiness with his beloved. According to legend, the girl remained the only love of his life, bearing an exclusively platonic character. Thanks to the feeling, the image of Beatrice was captured in the life and work of Dante, as well as in the history of Italy. Researchers of the artist's biography connect his death with longing for his beloved woman.

A few years after the death of Beatrice, her husband married a wealthy girl from an eminent family. Everything that Dante wrote about from that moment on was permeated with memories of his beloved. On the way from Venice, where the poet went on a diplomatic mission, he contracted malaria. The end was inevitable. Dante's tomb, which appeared at the burial site many years later, is decorated with a portrait. The poet looks unnatural on him, as his face is framed by an unusual beard for Alighieri. There were rumors that Dante lost interest in life and even stopped monitoring his appearance, the longing for Beatrice was so strong.

It is curious that Beatrice's appearance was not as outstanding as Alighieri presented it. The mediocre girl was far from the goddess, as she was portrayed by the author of the Divine Comedy. The past psychological crisis associated with the death of Beatrice marked the beginning of a new stage in the life of the writer. He began to write a work called "New Life", but spiritual anguish haunted him, preventing him from throwing off the heavy burden of memories and experiences.

Biography

A fleeting date in childhood became fateful for a boy named Durante degli Alighieri, the future great poet. It also turned out to be an ordinary meeting for Beatrice Portinari. Scientists suggest that the girl's name was Bice, but the poet in love made the name euphonious, altering it in his own way. The meaning of the name Beatrice is akin to Beatrice, stands for "happy" or "giving happiness." The neighbor's daughter on the spot struck the heart of a boy who had a romantic nature, but Dante knew the true feeling in adulthood. This revelation coincided with the marriage of his beloved.

Boccaccio, writing a lecture in which he analyzed "Hell" in Dante's "Divine Comedy", paid attention to Beatrice not as a poet, but as a distant relative of the girl. His stepmother turned out to be the second cousin of Dante's beloved. Boccaccio confirms the origin of the Florentine and describes her social position, which he knew firsthand.

Beatrice was one of the six daughters of the generous Folco Portinari, and the rich man's son was Dante's best friend. Researchers who have studied Beatrice's biography do not have much information and build theories based on her father's will and artifacts from the archives of the Bardi dynasty.

Contact between young people never lasted more than a few minutes. The shy poet met Bice a couple of times on the streets of the city. Due to shyness, Dante never spoke to her, and the girl hardly suspected how strong his feeling was, because the poet paid attention to other ladies as a cover. Despite the fact that he married for convenience, Alighieri's heart belonged to Beatrice.

The legend says that the girl died at the age of 24, the cause of death was a difficult birth. The tomb of the muse Dante is located at the church of Santa Margherita de Cherchi, in the crypt where her ancestors are buried. But, according to rumors, the place where Beatrice found her last refuge may be the Basilica of Santa Croce.

In the works of Dante

The image of Beatrice is found in the Divine Comedy by Dante and in the New Life. Her image, light, airy and ghostly, according to Alighieri, was angelic. He believed that the Almighty took the girl to heaven. The heroine of the author was allowed to have discussions with the hero of the poem, talking about religion. According to the idea of ​​the writer, the heroine Beatrice allowed the character with whom Alighieri identified himself to visit the divine domain. The blessed beloved in the poem responds to the chosen one with reciprocity, which he did not receive during his lifetime.

Dante's Divine Comedy books

In the New Life, the poet covered the story of meeting a girl, drawing parallels with numerological symbols in his own destiny. In the work, Beatrice appears as an exalted being. She is a young angel, whose meaning has a mystical background.

Researchers of the work of Dante Alighieri talk about the earthly and theological Beatrice. According to the logic of the author's works, she carried a symbol of divine Knowledge, keeping a refined femininity. The author equated everything human with the divine, using the image of a beloved woman.

Illustration for the work "The Divine Comedy"

31 poems included in 45 chapters are dedicated to the poet's love for his chosen one. The biographical data described in the New Life today seems to be both real and fictional due to the spiritual and lyrical manner of the narrative.

The image of Beatrice has repeatedly figured in the works of poets of the Silver Age and finds echoes in popular culture. So, for example, her image is used in an anime called "Devil's Beloved".

Born in 1265, died in 1321.

Vita nova comedia divina. Trade, banking, crafts flourished in Florence - Florence becomes the most prosperous city. The rich surrounded themselves with artists and poets who glorified them.

Dante was a Florentine, belonged to the guild of pharmacists (educated, sacred people), most likely studied law in Bologna. Dante's life is covered in darkness, not everything is known from his biography.

He loved Florence very much, he could not imagine his existence outside of Florence. He enjoyed authority as a poet, philosopher and politician. He took part in public life, was elected to the post of prior (he was one of the rulers of Florence). Party passions were in full swing in Florence - there were two parties Guelphs and gibellines. Basically, the Guelph party included wealthy people, owners of manufactories and banks. The Ghibellines are mainly the Florentine aristocracy. And between these two parties there was a merciless struggle for power. Dante himself also took part in these party feuds, which were further complicated by the fact that the Guelph party was divided into white and black Guelphs. Dante's misfortune was that his opponents won. Dante was expelled from Florence by his political opponents. We do not know exactly in what year he left Florence, but apparently it happened at the very beginning of the 14th century. By that time, Dante had already gained fame and glory, and in exile he was received with honors in various cities of Italy, but dreamed of returning to Florence. To do this, it was necessary to perform a rite of repentance. He was supposed to put on a white robe and in the afternoon with a candle go around all of Florence. Dante did not want to repent and continued to work in exile.

Dante's main work "The Divine Comedy".

"New life" - on which Dante worked in the 90s of the 13th century. NJ is the first autobiography of the poet. The new life is written both in verse and in prose, here the prose text is combined with the poetic. NZh tells about the meeting and love of Dante for Beatrice (“giving bliss”). This is a real young girl, apparently, she did not know that Dante was in love with her, because Dante's love for her is also a kind of love from afar, love is exclusively platonic, spiritual, sublime. He interprets the image of Beatrice as the earthly incarnation of the Madonna. He worships her, bows before her, admires her. Beatrice symbolizes everything that is most important in Dante's life: nobility, faith, kindness, beauty, wisdom, philosophy, heavenly bliss. A new life began with a meeting with Beatrice. The first time he saw her was when she was 9 years old. She was in a red dress (everything is filled with symbols and red is a symbol of passion). He saw her a second time in nine years, when she was eighteen and she was in a white dress (cleanliness). And the happiest moment in Dante's life, when Beatrice gave him a faint smile. When he saw her for the third time, he rushed towards her, and she pretended not to recognize him. He realized that it was proper for him to exercise restraint and not show his feelings. And alas, this was their last meeting, because soon Beatrice died and grief pierced the poet's heart and he took a vow of glorification of Beatrice, in this he saw the meaning of life.

Everything is full of some inner meaning. In addition to the fact that he sets out very prosaically here, he captures the most intense moments of his spiritual life in verse. New Life includes 25 sonnets, 3 canzones and 1 ballad.

Sonnet - 14 lines. main lyric genre in Renaissance poetry. The sonnet is the most widespread expression of thoughts and feelings. Sonnets wrote about love, about the immortality of creativity, just about life, about death. Those. a sonnet is always a poem of a philosophical nature. The sonnet most likely originated in Italy in the 12th century, possibly in Sicily. 14 lines. Consists of two quatrains and two three-verses (4+4, 3+3).

The fame of the Sonnet genre came with the poetry of Dante, he demonstrated to the world the beauty of sonnet forms.

“... Severe Dante did not despise the sonnet

Petrarch poured out the heat of love in him ... ”(c) Pushkin.

Treatise "Pir". The name is borrowed from Plato. Of course, it has an allegorical meaning - a feast of knowledge, a feast of the mind.

Treatise on Monarchy. Dante was a supporter of imperial power, he believed that spiritual power should belong to the pope, and secular power to the emperor. Separated spiritual and secular power. His sympathies were on the side of the emperor.

Traktar "About folk eloquence". This treatise is written in Latin, but Dante argues that literature must exist in Italian. Italian language - "the language of Tuscany (a region of Italy) is the barley bread of poetry." Latin was appropriate in this treatise, because. he was more scientific.

The Divine Comedy

It was created in the 14th century and Dante worked on it for about 20 years. Wrote the work "Comedia". Comedies are works that begin with dramatic events and end with a happy ending. Comedy doesn't have to be dramatic. If we define the genre of the Divine Comedy, then this poem. This is a vision of the afterlife. "BK" is a work of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. "BK" begins with verses:

"Earthly life having passed up to half

I found myself in a dark forest

"BK" is written in stanzas, which consist of three lines. A-B-A > B-C-B > etc. It turns out a chain. Mandelstam in an essay noted that the weaving is so complex that it is impossible to single out individual lines. Compared with the Cathedral (the same slender and majestic). Pushkin said that even one plan of the BC testifies to the genius of Dante.

"The Divine Comedy" consists of three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise". This was the world order. The human soul seemed to go through three stages. Hell, Purgatory and Paradise consist of 33 songs. And there is one introductory song. It turns out the number 100 - for the literature of that period - a number denoting greater integrity. In the Divine Comedy, the number “3” and a multiple of three play a special role (the soul undergoes three stages; the divine trinity; 3 is a sacred number).

The Divine Comedy is the most complex work of world literature. The difficulty is that everything is full of allegorical meaning. “I found myself in a gloomy forest” - the forest is a symbol of wandering. There are three animals in this forest: a lion (pride), a she-wolf (greed), a panther (voluptuousness). These three beasts, which he met in a gloomy forest, symbolize the main human vices. But Beatrice, Dante canonizes her, declares a saint of her own poetic will, seeing Dante's wanderings in earthly life, wants to show him a different, afterlife world. Discover what awaits a person there, in another world. And he sends Virgil to meet him. Virgil is also a symbolic image - this is the earthly mind, this is a poet, this is a guide through the circles of hell. Whereas Beatrice embodies divine wisdom. Beatrice herself is in paradise.

The architecture of hell was not invented by Dante, this is how hell was imagined in the Middle Ages. Hell is divided into 9 circles;

19. "Limbo" - unbaptized babies, ancient poets and philosophers are deprived of heavenly bliss, but they do not suffer. There was no joy, but there was no particular suffering. They cannot go to heaven through no fault of their own.

20. Lust is punished. Surrendered to the whirlwind of passion. One of the most wonderful songs is canto five, which tells the story of Francesca da Rimini, and the love of Paolo. This is a true story that was widely known. Francesca tells this story. The Divine Comedy is distinguished by its laconic style. This story is told very briefly. The principle of Dante's poetry is "According to sin and retribution." Dante makes the lovers Francesco and Paolo in one and the second circle rotate in a whirlwind, i.e. the metaphorical expression "whirlwind of passion" takes on a literal meaning. Francesca tells how she fell in love with Paolo (her husband's brother) and how they were passionate about each other, that they read together a chivalric romance about Lancelot and Francesca says very briefly: "That day we did not read anymore." Their crime becomes known, the husband commits reprisals, they die. Dante punishes them in hell, severely punishes them (i.e. acts like a medieval person), but after listening to Francesca's story, he himself sympathizes with them. He is immensely sorry for the suffering Francesco and Paolo.

21. Gluttons are punished. Here he portrays the famous gluttons in Florence.

22. Miserly and spendthrifts are punished. Dante believes that spenders and misers have lost their sense of proportion - and this is one sin.

23. Angry and envious.

24. Heretics. Here he acts like a medieval poet. The crime against God, against faith and religion is one of the most terrible.

25. Rapists. People who committed murder, suicide; very expressive image of suicides. They turned into dry branches, and when the poet, led by Virgil, accidentally broke the branch, blood oozed out of it.

26. Deceivers, seducers, cunning. For Dante, deception is also a terrible crime.

27. Traitors. Traitors. The worst crime is betrayal. The traitors are Judas, who betrayed Christ, and Brutus, who betrayed Caesar, which once again reminds that Dante was a supporter of strong imperial power.

Dante is symmetrical. 9 circles of hell and he makes 7 purgatory. And the human soul ascends the steps, is freed from 7 deadly sins, sins disappear from the human body and it approaches paradise.

There is more abstraction in Paradise and Purgatory. In Hell, the images are more earthly. In Paradise, of course, Dante meets Beatrice and Dante enjoys heavenly bliss.

The Divine Comedy is translated into Russian by Lazinsky.

DZ: Draw hell.

Dante. "The Divine Comedy".

Dante lived in 1265 in Florence. The plot is from medieval “walking”. Of particular importance is the Aeneid. The afterlife is not opposed to earthly life, but, as it were, its continuation. Each image can be interpreted in different ways.

The action begins in the forest. This song is a combination of concrete and allegorical meaning. The forest is an allegory of the delusion of the human soul and chaos in the world. All subsequent images of the prologue are also allegorical. D. meets 3 animals: a panther, a lion, a she-wolf. Each of them personifies a certain kind of moral evil and def. negative social force. Panther - voluptuousness and oligarchic government. Leo - pride and violence and tyranny of a cruel ruler. The she-wolf is greed and the Roman church, which is mired in greed.

Together, they are forces that impede progress. The top of the hill to which D strives is salvation (moral elevation) and a state built on moral principles. Virgil is an allegory of the human. wisdom. The embodiment of the knowledge to which the humanists devoted themselves. Beatrice - the connection of the image with the "New Life".

1 circle. Pagans and unbaptized babies. Dante meets Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan there, as well as a lot of ancient mythical and real-life creatures: Hector, Aeneas, Cicero, Caesar, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, etc. In this circle, only sighs are heard: they are not particularly tormented.

2nd circle: Minos sits in the second circle and decides who to send to which circle. Here, excessively loving personalities, incl. Paolo, Francesca, Cleopatra, Achilles (!), Dido, etc.

3 circle: gluttons suffer under freezing rain. I won’t list names further, don’t remember anyway, but I’ll look for them in scrap. There are mostly Dante's contemporaries. In the same circle lives Cerberus.

4: misers and spenders. They collide with each other, shouting “What to save?” or “What to throw?”. Here is the Stygian swamp (regarding the water surfaces in Hell: the Acheron River encircles the 1st circle of Hell, plunging down, forms the Styx (Stygian swamp), which surrounds the city of Dita (Lucifer). Below the waters of the Styx are transformed into the flaming river Phlegeton, and he, already in the center it turns into an icy lake Cocytus, where Lucifer is frozen.)

5: in the Stygian marsh sit the angry.

6: heretics. They lie in burning tombs.

7: three belts in which rapists of various types are tormented: over people, over themselves (suicides) and over a deity. In the first belt, D. meets centaurs. In the same circle - usurers as rapists of nature.

8: 10 evil cracks where they languish: pimps and deceivers, flatterers who sold the church. positions, soothsayers, astrologers, sorceresses, bribe takers, hypocrites, thieves, treacherous advisers (here Ulysses and Diomedes), instigators of strife (Mohammed and Bertrand de Born), counterfeiters who posed as other people, lied with a word.

9: Belts: Cain - betrayed relatives (named after Cain). Antenora - traitors of like-minded people (here - Ganelon). Tolomei - traitors to friends .. Giudecca (named Judas) - traitors to benefactors. Here Lucifer chews Judas. This is the very center of the earth. On wool L. Dante and Virgil get out on the surface of the Earth from the other side.

Hell - 9 circles. Purgatory - 7, + prepurgatory, + earthly paradise, paradise - 9 heavens. Geometrical symmetry of the Earth è symmetry in the composition: 100 songs = 1 introductory + 33 each for Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. This construction was a new phenomenon in the literature. D. relied on the medieval symbolism of the number (3 - the Trinity and its derivative 9). Building a model of Hell, D. follows Aristotle, who refers to the 1st category the sins of intemperance, to 2 - violence, to 3 - deceit. D. has 2-5 circles for the intemperate, 7 for rapists (6 I don’t know where, it’s not said, think for yourself), 8-9 for deceivers, 8 for just deceivers, 9 for traitors. Logic: the more material the sin, the more forgivable it is. Kara is always symbolic. Deception is harder than violence, because it destroys the spiritual ties between people.

The role of the symbol in Dante's Divine Comedy

Dante's ego is unusual. On his way, he is hindered by three symbolic beasts - the three most terrible sins according to Dante. This is a panther (lynx), a lion and a she-wolf. The lynx is voluptuousness, the panther is the personification of the oligarchic power in Florence. He bypasses the lynx. The lion is the pride, as well as the political tyranny of the monarch and the state, he was on the coat of arms of Florence. Bypasses him too. The worst thing is greed, a she-wolf. In a broad sense. Virgil, sent by Beatrice. Dante does not want to go down to hell, he is afraid of the inscription above the gates of hell. Virgil persuades in the name of Beatrice, she is not just a woman.

Dante turns to passions for the first time in world literature, makes them the subject of depiction. Human image. Proverb: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Sinners in the highest circles of hell most often get there for good intentions. The lower circles are hardened criminals, but there are exceptions. In higher circles there is hope for forgiveness.

The image of Beatrice in the work of Dante ("New Life", "Divine Comedy")

Born Dante in Florence, his name is a family tradition. The Alighieri family was noble, middle-class. Ordinary people. When Dante becomes famous, the Italians begin to look for signs in ordinary events. Giovanni Boccaccio - the first biographer of Dante, tells the dream of Dante's mother. She lies in a meadow under a laurel, next to a clean spring. Unexpectedly, he gives birth to a son, he eats laurel berries, drinks from a spring, becomes a shepherd, tries to pick laurel leaves, gets tired, falls, and when he gets up, he is already a peacock. Symbolism: berries are the fruits of the labors of his predecessors, water is philosophy, laurel leaves are glory, the shepherd is the shepherd of peoples. Dante wanted to be crowned with a laurel wreath. The fall is death, the peacock is a symbol of eternity. Boccaccio does not present facts to us, but creates the spiritual image of a person living on the verge of centuries. Engels: "Dante is the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times." In his nature, the features of both eras coexisted - increased reflection, psychological conflict. Dante's image is by no means perfect. Excessively proud, ambitious, passionate, did not shy away from politics, but honest. One of the most educated people - but this is self-education. University of Bologna, studied law.

Italy in the Middle Ages was not a single state, most of all consisted of the so-called city-republics with guild self-government. Each department has a representative. Disagreements in the workshop should not be - the representative expressed a single point of view. The Italians understood that they had to unite. Separation of two parties: Guelphs and Ghibellines. Ghibellines - the highest nobility, the aristocracy, fought for the unification of the country under the rule of the German emperor - secular power. The Pope of Rome also claimed the unification - the Guelphs, for the most part the city nobility, stood for him. Dante was a Guelph by family tradition. He achieved success in politics, but after ruling for almost 20 years, the Guelphs split into blacks and whites. The whites, and with them Dante, were guided by the emperor, the blacks - by the pope. The coup in Florence, the whites were defeated, almost everyone was brought to court, Dante received such a summons, he fled from Florence, he never returns there in his whole life - a wanderer. A wife and children remained in Florence, only a third of the property remained. In exile, Dante wanted worldwide fame, wanted the Florentines to ask him to return. Glory came, but the Florentines did not forgive him. September 14, 1321 - dies in Rovenna, in the house of his great-nephew Francesca da Ramini. Dante's ashes are demanded by Florence, but Rovenna never returned them.

In 1283 Dante comes to the workshop of poets, brings the first sonnet. It is dedicated to Beatrice. At this time, the “new sweet style” (“dolce stil nuovo”) dominates in Italy. Knightly literature - castle, salon, and here - the townspeople, they write for the townspeople. Stylistic poets adapted the poetry of the troubadours for the townspeople - they reinforce the moment of worship of the lady - the lady angel, the madonna. Love for such a lady is the first step leading to God. The world was created by divine love, it is difficult to know, earthly love is the first step to this. The lady becomes incorporeal, in the poetry of the "stylists" - there are no descriptions. Beatrice is always dressed in scarlet robes - a sacred color. That's all, but a lot about the spiritual appearance. Scholars debate whether Beatrice was in fact. Beatrice is an image-symbol. There was such a girl, Dante knew her, she died early. Something in her struck Dante, and he created a conditionally ideal image.

“New Life” - Dante writes after the death of Beatrice, should perpetuate her appearance and explain to humanity the concept of love of stylists. Both poetry and prose. Starts seriously and clumsily. Wants to describe a new life after the death of Beatrice. He writes that he first met her when he was nine - a magic number (three triples). Then 18 is also a magic number. I always saw her in sacred scarlet robes. He begins to love her with the love of stylists at 18. At first, Beatrice's inattention hurts Dante, but gradually the bitterness goes away, as Dante realizes that love is valuable in itself, it is an incentive for constant spiritual work, self-improvement. Image idealization. In the third part, Beatrice dies, nature mourns her. Death is perceived as a global catastrophe. But there is also a 4th part, where Dante describes his illness, a lady looked after him - 4 sonnets are dedicated to her. It is clear that he loves her, but with an ordinary love. Dante forbids himself to deal with her. "New Life" is the first autobiographical story in the history of Western European literature, revealing to the reader the most intimate feelings. Then the exile and Dante for many years forgets about the lyrics.

Love stories. Middle Ages

Dante and Beatrice, 15th century miniature

One of the most famous poets, scientists, philosophers and politicians, the author of the Divine Comedy, which still amazes contemporaries, the great Durante degli Alighieri, better known to the world as Dante, was born in 1265 in Florence. His parents did not stand out in any way among the rest of the townspeople and were not rich, but they were able to raise funds and pay for their son's schooling. He was fond of poetry from an early age and composed poems that were full of romantic images and admiration for the beauty of nature, the best sides of the people around him and the charm of young women.

Giotto di Bondone. Dante Alighieri. The Proto-Renaissance portrait is an early stage in the development of the portrait genre of the Italian Renaissance.

When Dante was nine years old, an amazing meeting took place in his life with a little girl, his age. They collided on the threshold of the church, and for a moment their eyes met. Only a second passed, the girl immediately lowered her eyes and quickly passed by, but this was quite enough for the romantic boy to fall passionately in love with a stranger. Only after some time did he learn that the girl was the daughter of the rich and noble Florentine Folco Portinari, and her name was most likely Bice. However, the future poet gave her the melodic and gentle name of Beatrice.

Simeon Solomon. Dante's first meeting with Beatrice. 1859-63

Many years later, in a work that Dante called "New Life", he described his first meeting with his beloved: "She appeared to me dressed in the noblest scarlet color ... girded and dressed in a way that befitted her very young age." The girl seemed to the impressionable child a real lady, who combined the most virtuous features: innocence, nobility, kindness. Since then, little Dante dedicated poems only to her, and in them he sang the beauty and charm of Beatrice.

Years passed, and Bice Portinari turned from a little girl into a charming creature, spoiled by her parents, a little mocking and impudent. Dante did not at all seek to seek new meetings with his beloved, and he accidentally learned about her life from acquaintances.

Mary Stillman. Beatrice (1895)

The second meeting took place nine years later, when a young man was walking along a narrow Florentine street and saw a beautiful girl walking towards him. With bated breath, Dante recognized in the young beauty his beloved, who, passing by, as it seemed to him, lowered her head slightly and smiled a little. From now on, beside himself with happiness, the young man lived this moment and, under the impression, wrote the first sonnet dedicated to his beloved. From that day on he longed to see Beatrice again.

Rossetti. Greetings Beatrice

Their next meeting took place at a celebration dedicated to the wedding of mutual acquaintances, but this day did not bring the poet in love anything but bitter suffering and tears. Always self-confident, Alighieri was suddenly embarrassed when he saw his beloved among his acquaintances. He could not utter a word, and when he came to his senses a little, he said something incoherent and absurd. Seeing the embarrassment of the young man who did not take his eyes off her, the lovely girl began to make fun of the uncertain guest and ridicule him along with her friends. That evening, the inconsolable young man finally decided never to seek rendezvous with the beautiful Beatrice and devote his life only to singing his love for Signorina Portinari. The poet never saw her again.

Rossetti. Beatrice, having met Dante at the wedding feast, refuses to greet him

I heard how I woke up in my heart
The loving spirit that slumbered there;
Then in the distance I saw love
So happy that I doubted her.

She said: "Time to bow
You are in front of me ... ”- and laughter sounded in the speech.
But only the mistress I heeded,
Her dear gaze fixed on mine.

And monna Vannu with monna Bice I
I saw those going to these lands -
Behind a marvelous miracle, a miracle without an example;

And, as is stored in my memory,
Love said: "This is Primavera,
And that one is Love, we are so similar to it.

However, the feeling for the beloved has not changed. Alighieri still loved her so passionately that all other women did not exist for him. Nevertheless, he nevertheless got married, although he did not hide the fact that he took this step without love. The poet's wife was the beautiful Italian Gemma Donati.

Beatrice married a wealthy signor Simon de Bardi, and a few years later died unexpectedly. She was not even twenty-five years old. It happened in the summer of 1290, after which, broken by grief, Dante vowed to devote all his work to the memory of his beloved.

Rossetti. Dante's dream at the time of Beatrice's death

Marriage to an unloved wife did not bring consolation. Life with Gemma soon began to burden the poet so much that he began to spend less time at home and devoted himself entirely to politics. At that time in Florence there were constant clashes between the parties of black and white Guelphs. The former were supporters of papal authority in the territory of Florence, while the latter opposed it. Dante, who shared the views of the "whites", soon joined this party and began to fight for the independence of his native city. At that time he was barely thirty years old.

Rossetti. First anniversary of Beatrice's death: Dante draws an angel

You laughed at me among your friends,
But did you know, Madonna, why
You can't recognize my face
When I stand before your beauty?

Oh, if you knew - with the usual kindness
You could not contain your feelings:
After all, Love, captivating me all,
Tyrannizing with such cruelty,

That, reigning among my timid feelings,
Executing others, sending others into exile,
She alone has her eyes on you.

That's why my unusual appearance!
But even then their exiles
So clearly I hear grief.

When a split occurred in the party to which the great poet belonged, and after Charles Valois came to power, the black Guelphs gained the upper hand, Dante was accused of treason and intrigue against the church, after which he was put on trial. The accused was deprived of all the high ranks that he had previously held in Florence, imposed a heavy fine and expelled from his native city. Alighieri took the last most painfully and until the end of his life he could not return to his homeland. From that day began his long-term wanderings around the country.

Jean Leon Gerome. Dante

Seventeen years after the death of Beatrice, Dante finally set about writing his greatest work, The Divine Comedy, to which he devoted a long fourteen years. "Comedy" was written in a simple, uncomplicated language, in which, according to Alighieri himself, "women speak." In this poem, the author wanted not only to help people understand the secrets of life after death and overcome the eternal fear of the unknown, but also to sing the Great Feminine Principle, which the poet raised to the heights through the image of his beloved Beatrice.

Bronzino. Allegorical portrait of Dante

In The Divine Comedy, the beloved long gone from the earthly world meets Dante and leads him through different spheres of the world - from the lowest, where sinners suffer, to the high, divine part, where Beatrice herself lives.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Meeting Dante and Beatrice in Paradise

In her eyes she keeps Love;
Blessed is everything she looks at;
She goes - everyone hurries to her;
Will he greet - his heart will tremble.

So, all confused, he bows down his face
And he sighs about his sinfulness.
Haughtiness and anger melt before her.
O donnas, who will not praise her?

All the sweetness and all the humility of thoughts
Knows the one who hears her word.
Blessed is he who is destined to meet her.

The way she smiles
Speech does not speak and the mind does not remember:
So this miracle is blissful and new.

She, who left without fully recognizing worldly life, helps the poet to reveal the whole philosophical meaning of life and death, to show the most unknown sides of the afterlife, all the horrors of hell and the miracles that the Lord creates on the highest peaks of the world, called paradise.

Until the end of his days, Dante Alighieri wrote only about Beatrice, praised love for her, sang and exalted his beloved. The Divine Comedy still amazes contemporaries with its deep philosophical meaning, and the name of the beloved author of the poem has forever remained immortal.

Whose spirit is captivated, whose heart is full of light,
To all those before whom my sonnet appears,
Who will reveal to me the meaning of his deaf,
In the name of the Lady of Love, - hello to them!

Already a third of the hours when it is given to the planets
Shine stronger, making your way,
When love appeared before me
Such that it is terrible for me to remember this:

In fun was Love; and in the palm of your hand
My heart was holding; but in the hands
She carried the Madonna, sleeping humbly;

And, having awakened, gave the Madonna a taste
From the heart, - and she ate in confusion.
Then Love disappeared, all in tears.

Dante spent the last years of his life in Ravenna, where he was buried in 1321. Many years later, the authorities of Florence declared the poet and philosopher an honorary citizen of their city, wishing to return his ashes to their homeland. However, in Ravenna they refused to fulfill the desire of the Florentines, who once expelled the great Dante and deprived him of the opportunity to walk through the narrow streets of the city, where he once met his only lover, Beatrice Portinari, for the rest of his life.

Text: Anna Sardaryan

“The cycle of frescoes in Casimo Massimo (Rome), the Dante Hall, the Empyrean and the eight heavens of Paradise. Fragment: Sky of the Sun. Dante and Beatrice between Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Peter of Lombard and Siger of Paris. White Philip

“The cycle of frescoes in Casimo Massimo (Rome), the Dante Hall, the Empyrean and the eight heavens of Paradise. Fragment: Sky of the Moon. Dante and Beatrice before Constance and Piccard. White Philip

Henry Holliday. "Dante and Beatrice"

Domenico Petarlini. Dante in exile. OK. 1860

La Disputa. Raphael

Frederic Leighton. Dante in exile

Sandro Botticelli. Portrait of Dante

Dante Alighieri. Works by Luca Signorelli (1499-1502). Detail.

Fresco by Domenico Di Michelino, Duomo in Florence

Ary Scheffer. Dante and Beatrice.(1851, Boston Museum)

WashingtonAlston(Washington Allston).Beatrice. 1819 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Santuario de la iglesia de Santa Margarita de Florencia. Encuentro entre Dante and Beatrice

So noble, so modest
Madonna, answering the bow,
That near her the language is silent, embarrassed,
And the eye does not dare to rise to it.

She goes, does not heed the enthusiasm,
And become her humility clothed,
And it seems: brought down from the sky
This ghost to us, but a miracle here is.

She brings such delight to her eyes,
That when you meet her, you find joy,
Which the ignorant will not understand,

And as if from her mouth comes
Love spirit pouring sweetness into the heart,
Firmly to the soul: "Sigh ..." - and sigh.

Rossetti - Blessing of Beatrice

Dante in a fresco of the Villa Carduccio by Andrea del Castagno (1450, Uffizi Gallery)

Michael Parkes, portraits of Dante and Beatrice

O deity of love, the beginning is in you.
Whenever you were gone
We would not know good thoughts:
It is impossible, having separated the picture from the light,
In the midst of total darkness
Art to admire or color.
You hurt my heart
Like the stars - the sun is clear;
You were not yet an omnipotent deity,
When I was already your slave
My soul: you wear it down
With one passionate desire -
Desire to admire everything beautiful
And admire the highest beauty.
And I, admiring the lady alone,
Captivated by unseen beauty
And the flame reflected
As in a mirror of water, in my soul:
She came in your heavenly rays,
And the light of your rays
I saw in her eyes lovely.

Great and famous people of Florence. Statue on the facade of the Uffizi Gallery.

Flowers in my gardens, sadness in yours...

Flowers in my gardens, sadness in yours.
Come to me, beautiful sadness
Bewitch like a smoky veil,
My gardens are a painful distance.

You are the petal of Iranian white roses,
Enter here, into the gardens of my languor,
So that there are no jerky movements,
So that the music was plastic poses,

To sweep from ledge to ledge
Thoughtful name Beatrice
And so that not the choir of maenads, but the choir of the girls
I sang the beauty of your sad lips.

Nikolay Gumilyov

Name

The name was quite popular in Italy, and, thanks to the consonance with the word " beata" - blessed, it had clear Christian connotations that would be useful to Dante in The Divine Comedy.

Further in the New Life, he gives a description of his life in the subsequent period: despite the fact that Beatrice, apparently, they revolved in the same society, they never spoke again. And so that his gaze would not betray his feelings, Dante made other ladies a visible object of his worship to avert his eyes, and once this even caused Beatrice to be condemned, who did not talk to him at the next meeting.

He also describes how he once met her at someone else's wedding, and how, a few years before Beatrice's death, he had a vision of her death, as well as various other situations related to his inner experiences and led to the creation of his poems.

The poet's biographer writes: “The poet's love story is very simple. All events are the most insignificant. Beatrice passes him down the street and bows to him; he meets her unexpectedly at a wedding celebration and comes into such indescribable excitement and embarrassment that those present, and even Beatrice herself, make fun of him, and his friend must take him away from there. One of Beatrice's friends dies, and Dante composes two sonnets on this occasion; he hears from other women how much Beatrice grieves for the death of her father ... These are the events; but for such a high cult, for such love, which the sensitive heart of a poet of genius was capable of, this is a whole inner story, touching in its purity, sincerity and deep religiosity.

Dante reading

Then, 8 years after the second conversation and three years after the marriage, Beatrice died - she was only 24 years old. Boccaccio, in his biographical essay on an older contemporary, writes: “Her death plunged Dante into such grief, into such contrition, into such tears that many of his closest relatives and friends were afraid that the matter could only end in death. And they thought that it would follow soon, for they saw that he did not give in to any sympathy, any consolations. Days were like nights and nights were like days. None of them passed without groans, without sighs, without copious tears. His eyes seemed to be two of the most abundant sources, so much so that many wondered where so much moisture comes from to feed his tears ... Crying and grief felt in his heart, as well as neglect of all sorts of worries about himself, gave him the appearance of an almost wild man. He became thin, overgrown with a beard and ceased to be completely like the former. Therefore, not only friends, but everyone who saw him, looking at his appearance, was imbued with pity, although while this life full of tears lasted, he showed himself to few people except friends.

When she died, Dante studied philosophy in desperation and took refuge in reading Latin texts written by people who, like him, had lost a loved one. The end of his crisis coincided with the composition of the Vita Nuova (which literally means "rebirth, renewal"). On the pages of "Feast", his next work, it is said that after the death of Beatrice, Dante turned to searching for the truth, which "as if in a dream" he saw in the "New Life".

Real Portinari

Scholars have long debated the identification of the real Beatrice. The generally accepted version is that her name was Bice di Folco Portinari, and she was the daughter of a respected citizen of the banker of Florence, Folco di Portinari. (Folco di Ricovero Portinari). This version comes from Boccaccio, who writes in his lecture on "Hell" that the lady with whom Dante was in love was named Beatrice, that she was the daughter of a wealthy and respected citizen Folco Portinari and the wife of Simone de'Bardi from an influential family of Florentine bankers Bardi . It is significant that Boccaccio's stepmother, Margherita dei Mardoli, daughter of Monna Lappa, born of Portinari, was thus Beatrice's second cousin. At the end of 1339, Boccaccio could still catch Madame Lappa alive or hear her stories about the past in the family. Biographer Dante Golenishchev-Kutuzov writes that "despite the fact that Boccaccio sometimes added some details to Dante's biography, this evidence is credible."

Folco was a neighbor of the Alighieri family, born in Portico di Romagna and moved to Florence (d. 1289). Folco had 6 daughters and generously donated to the Santa Maria Nuova hospital. Dante writes that Beatrice's closest relative (obviously a brother) was his closest friend - a friendship of this kind is quite expected for two neighbor boys.

Beatrice's date of birth is calculated based on the words of Dante, who named how many years she was younger than him. However, there is not enough documentary evidence about it, which makes its existence unproven. The only document is the will of Folco di Portinare from 1287, which reads: « ..item d. Bici filie sue et uxoris d. Simonis del Bardis reliquite ..., lib.50 ad floren"- an indication of the daughter Bice (reduced from "Beatrice") and her husband. Beatrice married the banker Simone dei Bardi, called Mona, probably in January 1287. According to other sources - much earlier, even in adolescence. This assumption is based on new finds in the archives of the Bardi dynasty. A document from 1280 concerns the sale of Simone to his brother of a plot of land, which is made with the consent of "his wife Beatrice" - then she was about 15 years old. Another paper, from 1313, speaks of the marriage of Simone's daughter Francesca with Francesco Pierozzi Strozzi, but it is not indicated from which wife - the first Beatrice, or the second - Bilia (Sibilla) di Puccio Deciaioli. He also had a son, Bartolo, and a daughter, Gemma, in the marriage of Baroncelli.

Gravestone of Beatrice Portinari in the Church of Santa Margherita de Cerci

A plausible hypothesis is that Beatrice's early death is related to childbirth. It is traditionally believed that her grave is located in the church of Santa Margherita de Cherchi, not far from the houses of Alighieri and Portinare, in the same place where her father and his family are buried. This is where the memorial plaque is located. However, this version is doubtful, since, according to custom, she was to be buried in her husband's tomb (the Basilica of Santa Croce, next to the Pazzi Chapel).

Dante himself married by calculation 1-2 years after the death of Beatrice (the date is indicated - 1291) to Donna Gemma from the aristocratic family Donati.

In works

Dante's love for Beatrice is closely related to his love of poetry; in his works, Dante idealized his love for Beatrice.

Among the youthful poems of Dante there is a sonnet to his friend, Guido Cavalcanti, an expression of a real, playful feeling, far from any transcendence. Beatrice is called a diminutive of her own name: Bice. She is obviously married, because with the title of monna (Madonna), two other beauties are mentioned next to her, who were fond of and sung by the poet's friends, Guido Cavalcanti and Lapo Gianni.

"New life"

Beatrice was the main inspirer of Dante's work "Vita Nuova" (c. 1293), most of the poems in the book are about her, he calls her "gentilissima" (kindest) and "benedetta" (blessed) there. "New Life" consists of sonnets, canzones and a lengthy prose story-commentary about love for Beatrice.

With other ladies you are above me
Laughing, but you do not know the power,
What changed my mournful appearance:
I was amazed by your beauty.

Oh, if only they knew what kind of flour
I'm languishing, I would have been visited by pity.
Amor, bending over you like a luminary,
Everything is blinding; domineering hand

Confused spirits of my mind
With fire he burns or drives away;
And then I contemplate you alone.

And I take on an unusual appearance,
But I hear - who can help me? -
Exiles tormented sobs.

To Dante, love seemed to be something sacred, mysterious, carnal motives evaporated to the desire to see Beatrice, to the thirst for one of her greetings, to the bliss of singing her praises.

The feeling was tuned to the extremes of spiritualization, dragging along with it the image of the sweetheart: she is no longer in the company of cheerful poets (as in the early sonnet). Gradually spiritualized, she becomes a ghost, "the young sister of angels"; this is God's angel, they talked about her when she walked, crowned with modesty; they are waiting for her in heaven.

There are no facts in New Life, no love story; but every sensation, every meeting with Beatrice, her smile, refusal to say hello - everything takes on a serious meaning, which the poet thinks about as a secret that has happened to him. After the first dates, the thread of reality begins to be lost in the world of aspirations and expectations, the mysterious correspondences of the numbers three and nine and prophetic visions, set up lovingly and sadly, as if in an anxious consciousness that all this will not be long. The repeated repetition of the period in 9 (a multiple of the Holy Trinity), which Dante uses more than once, is one of the arguments about the rather large role of fiction in the love described by the poet: “The numbers“ nine ”and“ three ”in all Dante’s works are significant and invariably foreshadow Beatrice. The number "nine" marks her infantile appearance to the child Dante and her appearance at the Florentine festival at that spring time, when she appeared to the eyes of the young man in the full bloom of her beauty. Beatrice died when the perfect number ten was repeated nine times, that is, in 1290. .

The manner in which Dante expresses his love for Beatrice is consistent with the medieval concept of courtly love, a secret, unrequited form of admiration.

Once Dante Alighieri set to work on a canzone, in which he wanted to portray the beneficial influence of Beatrice on him. He accepted and probably did not finish, at least he reports only a fragment from it (§ XXVIII): at that time the news of the death of Beatrice was brought to him, and the next paragraph of the "New Life" begins with the words of Jeremiah (Lamentation I): "how lonely there is a city once populous! He became like a widow; great among nations, prince over regions, became a tributary. On the anniversary of her death, he sits and draws on a tablet: the figure of an angel comes out (§ XXXV).

His grief subsided so much that when one young beautiful lady looked at him with compassion, condoling with him, some new, vague feeling woke up in him, full of compromises, with the old, not yet forgotten. He begins to assure himself that in that beauty there is the same love that makes him shed tears. Every time she met him, she looked at him the same way, turning pale, as if under the influence of love; it reminded him of Beatrice, for she was just as pale. He feels that he is beginning to look at the stranger, and that, while before her compassion brought tears to his eyes, now he does not cry. And he catches himself, reproaches himself for the unfaithfulness of his heart; he is hurt and ashamed.

Pilgrims wandering in care
About something that is probably far away
Left, - after all, from a foreign land
You, judging by the fatigue, are wandering,

Isn't that why you don't shed tears,
That they entered the mournful city along the way
And they couldn't hear about misfortune?
But I believe my heart - you will leave in tears.

Heard at your will
It will hardly leave you indifferent
To the fact that this city suffered.

He left without his Beatrice,
And if you talk about it in words,
That strength is not enough to listen without tears. .

Beatrice appeared to him in a dream, dressed just like the first time he saw her as a girl. It was the time of the year when pilgrims passed in droves through Florence, heading to Rome to worship the miraculous image. Dante returned to his old love with all the passion of a mystical affect; he addresses the pilgrims: they go thinking, maybe that they left their homes in their homeland; by their appearance, one can conclude that they are from afar. And it must be from afar: they walk through an unknown city and do not cry, as if they do not know the reasons for the common grief.

The New Life ends with the poet's promise to himself not to speak of it again until he is able to do so in a worthy manner. “For this I work as hard as I can,” she knows about that; and if the Lord prolongs my life, I hope to say about her, which has not yet been said about any woman, and then may God vouchsafe me to see that glorious one who now contemplates the face of the Blessed from the Ages.

"The Divine Comedy"

She also acts as a conductor in The Divine Comedy. There she takes over as a guide from Virgil, since the Latin poet, being a pagan, cannot enter paradise, and also because, being the embodiment of divine love (as her name is interpreted), it is she who leads to beatific visions. (The third guide will be Bernard of Clairvaux).

The figure of Beatrice appears in his work as a savior, moreover, at the beginning of the poem, Dante agrees to follow Virgil, who met him, only after he reports that he sent him to Beatrice. If in the “New Life” she is still a real, albeit without any flaws, person, then in this poem she went through the stage of “deification” and turned into an angelic being.

Illustration for the "Divine Comedy": Beatrice carries the poet up to the Holy Trinity

Beatrice leads Dante in the last book "Paradise", and the last 4 songs of "Purgatory". At the end of Purgatory, when Dante enters the Earthly Paradise, a solemn triumphal procession approaches him; among it is a marvelous chariot, and on it is Beatrice herself, in a green dress and in a cloak of fiery color. Beatrice turns to the angels and, accusing Dante, tells the story of his delusions, especially emphasizing his extraordinary natural talents, using which he could “achieve perfection in every virtue”, but “uncultivated soil produces bad and wild plants the more abundantly, the more fertile” - is the embodiment of his conscience.

Purgatory, XXXIII

And Beatrice, wrapped in grief,
Heeded them, like in sorrow,
Perhaps only Mary at the cross.

When they gave room for speech,
She said, flashing like a fire in the darkness,
And getting up, and so her words sounded (...)

And, having moved before the week,
Me, the woman and the sage - for her
She ordered me to go with the mania of the right hand.

And earlier than on his path
She lowered her tenth step,
The light of her eyes flooded into my eyes.

Dante is carried away through the air after Beatrice; she looks up, he doesn't take his eyes off her. Passing from one planet to another, Dante does not feel this transition, it happens so easily, and learns about it every time only because the beauty of Beatrice becomes more radiant as he approaches the source of eternal grace. As they climbed to the top of the stairs. At the direction of Beatrice, Dante looks down from here to the earth, and she seems to him so pitiful that he smiles at her sight. Then the poet and his guide are in the eighth sphere, the sphere of the fixed stars. Here Dante sees Beatrice's full smile for the first time and is now able to endure its brilliance - able to endure, but not express in words. Beatrice, having disappeared for a moment, appears already at the very top, on the throne, "crowning herself with a crown of eternal rays emanating from herself." Dante turns to her with a plea.