United States or Russia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The friends of his youth are already in the region of spirits, and meet him there Casella, Forese; Guido Cavalcanti will soon be with them. In this upper world he thinks and writes as a friendless man to whom all that he had held dearest was either lost or imbittered; he thinks and writes for himself. So comprehensive in interest is the Commedia.
The delicacy and the dignity of meaning attaching to the word render it an epithet especially appropriate to Beatrice, as implying all that is loveliest in person and character. Its use in the Vita Nuova is the more to be remarked, as in the Divina Commedia it is never applied to Beatrice.
The Arthurian Legend is the greatest of mediæval creations as a subject a "fable" just as the Divina Commedia is the greatest of mediæval "imitations" and works of art. And as such it is inevitable that it should carry with it the sense of the greatest medieval differences, Chivalry and Romance.
The "Divina Commedia" is a splendid proof of the vitality which pervades a republican atmosphere.
I may mention incidentally that among the characters is a good-natured satyr, who consoles Ottimo in his hopeless passion for Diana. Another attempt at mingling the pastoral with the mythological drama, and one which likewise exhibits a tendency to borrow from the rustic compositions, is the Florentine 'commedia pastorale' first printed in 1545 under the title of Silvia.
This has been preserved in its entirety, together with the author's preface, from which valuable information may be gathered. The work is an attempt to turn into a lyric form the "Commedia dell' Arte," enacted in early times at village fairs in northern Italy. The characters are Arlecchino, Pantalone, Doctor Graziano, Brighella, Isabella, Lelio and others.
None of these men understood the heroic in Norse mythology, or the grandeur of Oliver Cromwell, or the supreme importance of the Divina Commedia as the embodiment of Catholic Feudalism. All this Carlyle felt as no Englishman before him had felt, and told us in a voice which has since been accepted as conclusive.
But no words can be stronger than those in which he disjoins himself from that "evil and foolish company," and claims his independence "A te fia bello Averti fatto parte per te stesso." Dante, by the Divina Commedia, was the restorer of seriousness in literature. He was so by the magnitude and pretensions of his work, and by the earnestness of its spirit.
By making books, graduation theses, articles, tales or any other document which can be memorized by a computer available all over the world, at any minute and free-of-charge. And Projetto Manuzio needs only a few people to make such a masterpiece as Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia available to millions of people. Our primary audience is English-speaking scholars and students.
But the whole idea and purpose of the Commedia, as well as its filling up and coloring, are determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things.
Word Of The Day