DIVINE COMEDY, The. When Dante was nine years old he for the first time saw Beatrice, the daughter of Messer Folco Porti nari and Madonna Gilla Caponsacchi. She was his junior by one year; and Boccaccio says that he "received her fair image into his heart with such affection that from that day forth as long as he lived it never left him." Nine years elapsed before she spoke to him again, although he tried many times to see her. It is believed that she was married, while still a young girl, to Messer Simone de Bardi. She died in June, 1290, in her 23d year, and Dante was incon solable. In memory of her, that ((blessed Beatrice, who lived in heaven with the angels and on earth with his soul," he wrote, (La Vita Nuova' (The New Life), which is a mystical account of his passion, interspersed with many sonnets and canzoni, he having, as he says, dis covered ((the art of saying words in rime!' The book ends with this sentence: ((To me ap peared a wonderful vision, wherein I saw things which made me resolve to say no more of this Blessed One until I could more worthily descant upon her. And to attain this, I study to the utmost of my powers, as she truly knows ,• so that, if it shall be pleasing to Him through whom all things live, that my life shall be prolonged for some years, I hope to say of her what has never been said of any other woman." The work to which he thus promised to dedicate his life was 'La Divina Cotrunedia.) He himself called it simply "The Comedy,' the epithet "Divine' not having been applied to the poem until 1555, in an edition brought out by Dolce. In the text it is mentioned as "il sacro Dante, in a letter to Can Grande della says: "The title of the book is, 'Here begins the Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Floren tine by birth not by character.' To understand this one must know that "Comedic,' derived from comas (village) and oda (song) means about the same as village-song. And Comedy is a sort of poetic narrative, different from any other. As regards its matter, it differs from tragedy, since the latter is at first pleasing and quiet ; at the end, foul and horrible. . . . Whereas comedy begins with some degree of adversity but ends prosperously. . . . In the same way tragedy and comedy differ in style: the one being lofty and sublime, the other un studied and popular. . . . Whence it is evi dent why this work is called a Comedy: for if one regard the matter thereof it is at first hor rible and foul, being in Hell ; at the end it is prosperous, desirable and grateful, since it is in Paradise. If one regard the style, it is un studied and popular, because it is in the vernac ular, in which even ordinary women speak to one another.' He was indeed, for a time, criti cized for not having composed it in Latin, which during the Middle Ages was the polite lan guage.
Like many of the other great works of liter ature it may be interpreted in two ways: its pro tagonist may be conceived as either Dante him self, or as the human soul, the type of sinful man. This protagonist struggles first unaided to escape from the dangers of a wild, tangled and frightful forest and to climb the mountain of virtue, or of salvation, which he is prevented from doing by three symbolic wild beasts — a nimble-footed, sly panther, a `lion with head held high and ravenously hungry, and a lean, fierce wolf. He retreats into the depths of the forest and there becomes aware of one who "by reason of long silence seemed feeble." It is the shade of Virgil come to show him the right way to escape the wild beasts and to attain to "the delectable mountain, which is the beginning and the source of all joy.' There are several ways of interpreting the symbolism of this intro ductory canto. The obscure forest in which Dante, "in the midst of the road of this our life' (that is, when he has just reached the age of 35) in May 1365 — has wandered in sleep is the world, or sin. The panther is "luxury,* °dissolute pleasure,' "incontinent appetite,' or with a political significance, is the city of Florence, which had persecuted the poet, con demning him to death, with confiscation of his property, because as a Ghibelline he favored the Emperor and not the Pope. The lion is "pride' or "bestial violence,' or may be regarded as France. The greedy wolf taken subjectively
is "avarice," °greed," "materialism"; taken ob jectively it may refer to Dante's enemies, the Neri (the Guelfs or Black party) ; or, taken politically, it may mean Rome. Dante himself gives no clue to this symbolism, but leaves it to the reader to interpret. Virgil typifies Man's Reason, and therefore Dante hails him in a double sense as his "Teacher and Leader,' the poet from whom he has acquired the beautiful style which has brought him fame. Virgil prom ises to conduct him through the eternal place where he will hear groans of despair, where he will see the spirits in torment. Then they will ascend to the place of those that are content to dwell in fire, because they hope, after purifi cation, to attain the joys of the Blessed. Having had experiences of Hell and Purgatory, Dante, still in the flesh, will be admitted to Paradise, there to be guided by a spirit more worthy, since Virgil (or Human Reason) had not been obedient to the laws of that Emperor who reigns over the universe. This more worthy spirit is Beatrice, typifying Man's spiritual Nature, the functions of which are Faith, Hope and Love. Dante, after some demur, is encouraged to fol low, and with fear and trembling, begins the descent into the Inferno. Over the gate is the famous inscription which ends with the words, °Leave all hope behind ye who enter here.' Hell is divided into nine ever-narrowing circles, the last, at the centre of the earth, a place where, surrounded by a fourfold ring of ice, Lucifer crushes in his three mouths Judas, Brutus and Cassius, the three arch-traitors of history. In the circles and their subdivisions all varieties of the seven cardinal sins still continue under the inevitable punishments inherent in them. They are inflicted by the symbolical creatures of Greek mythology — Charon, Minos, Cer berus, the Centaurs, the Harpies and by the devils and other beings created by mediaeval theology, or else they are represented by physical analo gies, such as fire, mud, filth, worms, pitch, ice. Dante departed from the conception of Hell as depicted by his great contemporary, Thomas Aquinas, for he gives the sinners that had died in their sins, unrepentant, no room for remorse: lost souls, according to Dante's psychology, will to continue in the horrible state which they had chosen, while still alive, as their earthly environment ; they have no wish to escape; and so forever suffer in the whirlwind of passion and lust, the mud and mire of gluttony, the falling flakes of flame and the desert sands of atheism, the cannibalism of treachery, the never melting ice of the traitor. He lavishes all the awful symbolism of the Church to express the agony and hopelessness of Hell, and to each place he consigns with sardonic partisanship those that had been his personal or political enemies — popes and poets and teachers: a bit ter revenge, unrelenting and horrible. At the vestibule of the Inferno he places Limbo where dwell those that had lived virtuous lives, such as Virgil himself, but without knowledge of Christianity. Here Dante is met by four tall shades: Homer, the sovereign poet ; Horace, the satirist ; Ovid, who sang of the ancient mythol ogy; and Lucan, the poet of the Pharsalia, forming the School of that Lord of most lofty Song, °who soars above all as an eagle They salute him and with marks of honor accept him as the sixth of their august company. Here too he sees many folk with slow, grave eyes, of great authority. Among them he recognizes the heroes and worthies of pre-Christian days, philosophers and historians; they experience in this underworld desire without hope but are not unhappy or subject to other punishment. In the Fifth Canto of the Inferno occurs the famous episode of Paolo and Francesca, occupying more half of it —69 lines—and since expanded by poets and dramatists, in many forms. The lines, ((There is no greater woe than in misery remembering the happy time," is an almost literal translation from a Latin apothegm of Boethius. Dante here shows his sympathy with the sinners who died without chance for repent ance, because their sin grew out of genuine love. He never shows sympathy where a sin was due to meanness or ill-will.