Poetry
The Divine Comedy
La Divina Commedia
Dante Alighieri · 1321
Synopsis
In the spring of the year 1300, on the night of Maundy Thursday, the poet finds himself lost in a dark forest; three beasts, a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf, bar his way. Virgil comes to his aid and leads him through Hell, then up the mountain of Purgatory; Beatrice, the woman he loved, then takes over as far as Paradise. At each circle, the traveller meets the souls of the dead, questions them and reports what brought them there.
Context
The poem was written in exile, from about 1308 until the death of its author; it has three canticles, one hundred cantos and 14,233 lines in terza rima. Its original title was “Comedìa”: the adjective “divine” comes from Boccaccio, and the Venetian edition of Lodovico Dolce, in 1555, was the first to print it in the title. The first edition appeared in Foligno on 11 April 1472. In French, the recent translations are those of Jacqueline Risset, reissued in the Pléiade, and of Danièle Robert, published by Actes Sud.
Who it is for
A long poem in three parts, to be read with an apparatus of notes; an annotated bilingual edition is recommended.
Prizes and reception
The poem established vernacular Italian as the language of great literature.