Page 10 - Italian-American Herald - January 2024

10 ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM | JANUARY2024 ITALIAN-AMERICANHERALD LITERATURE
Why Dante will always matter
His ‘Divine Comedy’ is an unmatched masterpiece
DANTE’S NINE CIRCLES OF HELL Explained
1st circle: Limbo. Here we find ancient people who lived before Christ, and children who died before being baptized. Their only punishment is a permanent state of melancholy.
2nd circle: Lust. Here we find the sinners who could not control their passion/physical desire in life. These sinners are punished by being constantly swept away by an unceasing storm.
3rd circle: Gluttony. Sinners who overindulged sit here in the dirt like animals, exposed to storms and scraped and scratched by the monstrous dog Cerberus.
4th circle: Greed. We find here sinners who either hoarded or squandered their money, split into two groups and forced to push huge stones in opposite directions in a circle.
5th circle: Anger. The sinners who gave into anger in life are immersed naked into the infernal marsh.
6th circle: Heresy. These sinners lie down into burning graves.
7th circle: Violence. This circle is further subdivided into three sections: those who committed violence against others; those who committed violence against themselves; and those who committed violence against nature or God.
8th circle: Fraud. This circle is further subdivided into 10 sections, depending on the kind of fraud committed (for example, seducers, astrologers, etc.).
9th circle: Treachery. This circle is further divided into four sections: we find the sinners who betrayed their family; the sinners who betrayed their country; the sinners who betrayed their guests; and, finally, the sinners who betrayed their benefactors.
Bottom of hell: Here we find Satan, who is constantly chewing in his three mouths the three most infamous traitors: Brutus and Cassius (who betrayed Caesar)
in the lateral mouths, and Judas (who betrayed Christ) in the central mouth.
By Alessandra Mirra
Dante Alighieri, known today simply as Dante, is unanimously considered the father of Italian language. But what does that mean? In Dante’s time, the Italian vernacular, in its regional varieties, had actually already existed for a while. However, every text that aimed at being defined as high literature was still written in Latin, considered to be a more refined language.
Dante (circa 1265 to 1321) is the first intellectual to advocate for the need to hone the Italian language, and for its universal
use in literature. The Latin language, as used in classical literature, had ceased to exist centuries ago, and it didn’t make any sense anymore, Dante insisted, to adopt a dead language as the literary standard. Dante
also claimed that the Italian language, once perfected, could be as sophisticated as Latin. So he opted to compose his life’s masterwork, the epic narrative poem Comedia (later “Divine Comedy”) in the unprestigious vernacular Italian.
It was a revolutionary idea, and a triumph. The poet took a relatively young language and shaped it in every way, from vocabulary to syntax (he invented words and idiomatic expressions that are still used today) and made it adaptable to any possible register: from the low, comedic register to the highest,
sublime one. Most impressively, Dante provided Italy with a language that was not only as sophisticated as Latin, but was also able to endure for centuries: 80 percent of the Italian vocabulary used today can be already found in Dante’s work, 700 years ago! That’s why Dante is considered to be the father of Italian language.
Dante the literary architect
But Dante is also universally acknowledged as one of the foundations of the Western canon, together with Homer and Shakespeare – which means as one of the three authors whose work most significantly influenced Western literature. In my career,
I have constantly witnessed the complete amazement with which students encounter and fall in love with this author. But why? Where is this “Dante effect” coming from?
First, his Comedia is more than a
literary text. It is a visionary work of literary architecture. Dante literally designed an entire self-standing universe, an image of
the underworld that forever shaped our imagination, other works of art, cinema,
and pop culture as well, from comics to videogames. He designed it, and populated
it with a wide variety of characters: heroes and mythological figures, monsters and devils, kings and popes, common people and politicians, murderers and criminals, saints and angels.
Dante Alighieri in a posthumous portrait in tempera by Santro Botticelli, 1495.
While traveling through Heaven, Purgatory and Hell in his attempt to better understand himself and human nature, Dante manages to entertain and enlighten his audience with these characters’ memorable conversations. Sinners, in particular, are desperate to share their story: as long as their legacy on earth can be even partially restored, they are willing to confess and to expose their most tragic vulnerabilities, be it the inability to resist passion or to contain anger or
greed; or the unfortunate choice to abandon reason and justice to give in to violence and treachery. Dante cannot help seeing in each of these characters reflections of himself and of his own vulnerabilities.
His Inferno is a fresco portraying human
In this Sandro Botticelli painting that illustrates Virgil and Dante’s descent into hell, horned demons torment pimps and seducers. Below them, those guilty of flattery swim in excrement.