There are poets, so well known that it is sufficient to name them to know, you are talking about. Dante Alighieri belongs to them. This Florentine writer created a work that readers found it unusual. The author called it a Comedy, which we know under the name of "the divine Comedy".
Dante loved the city expelled him. He was born in Florence in 1265. It was a time when Italy was not a unified state body, and consisted of city-States vying for economic and political influence. As a representative of one of the parties Alighieri was condemned to exile his political opponents. The writer left home at 1302, the rest of my life wandering around Italy. He died in 1321 in Ravenna.
The Bible says little about how looks like heaven and hell. But the believers wanted to know what to expect after death, and what will happen to their souls. Apocrypha gave the answer. But Alighieri has presented the most significant idea of the afterlife in medieval literature.
The divine Comedy of 100 songs tells of the journey of Dante through hell, purgatory, Paradise. Hell 9 circles of hell, 9 Purgatory, 9 celestial spheres of Heaven. Virgil, the Roman poet, guides him through hell. In Purgatory it takes the role of a symbol of the ideal of active life, which then transfers the care of Dante Beatrice beautiful (the dead beloved of the author), who became the guide through Paradise. Finally, Dante comes face to face with God himself and is able to contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
Dante begins his journey. He goes to the night from Holy Thursday to Good Friday, 1300. The whole path lasts for 3 days. He's 35 – this is important – he's halfway to his life. Wandering, Dante goes off the main path and is lost in a dense dark forest is an allegory of a lost person in a sinful world. He stops at the foot of the mountain, illuminated by the sun, and on his way there three of the beast (again three): Panther is an allegory of sensuality, the lion is the allegory of pride, the wolf is an allegory of greed.
The situation seems hopeless. And then there is Virgil. He shows Dante the way and becomes his guide. They can choose two ways. Virgil advises to choose a second, more difficult, but the right way: hell – purgatory – Paradise. "I think that for your own good you should follow me. I'll specify the path and I will lead you through the land of eternity, where you will hear cries of despair, will see mournful shadows, before you lived on earth, calling for the death of the soul after death," says Virgil.
Hell is under the earth has the shape of an inverted cone. Lucifer falling from the sky, made a hole and stuck in it. Hell has 9 circles (multiples of 3). The worse the crime, the more punishment. Betrayal is the greatest insult to Dante. This is due to his personal experience. In hell about 600 characters. Here the heretics, merchants, usurers, liars, blasphemers. Here he met Judas, Brutus, and some popes. Hell is described dramatically. The feelings experienced there is bitterness, sadness, sorrow, pain.
Purgatory has a shape tapering up the pyramid, divided into 9 floors. The path leads up, so Dante approaches God. Angel met in Purgatory, seven times draws the letter P on the forehead of Dante, which symbolize the 7 sins. To go to heaven, the hero must cleanse ourselves from these sins.
Dante goes to heaven during sleep. Virgil is a pagan, not baptized, cannot enter Heaven. Miraculously transports him back to St. Luke, and the following guide is beloved Beatrice. Paradise consists of 9 celestial spheres: Moon, mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, sphere of stars, 9 sky. Finally, the Empyrean – the abode of gods and blessed souls. In the Empyrean, Dante finally meets God. God appears before him in the form of three rotating circles (they correspond to the Holy Trinity), namely: the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Hell the author put almost all of his political enemies, and in Paradise people close to his heart. So, the hero went from repentance, through purification to the eternal reward. When we say "the divine Comedy", we think about the great love of Dante and Beatrice. He was 9 years old when he met 9-year-old Beatrice. Allegedly, he then fell madly in love with her. The girl died at the age of 24, and "the divine Comedy" is a tribute to that love. The second reason the writer wanted to warn people away from a life of sin. Love and fear of awful behavior was the driving force behind the creation of "the divine Comedy".
