Introduction
The Divine Comedy is a work that has become a divine book for all generations. The reader can see in it an insight into the deepest human thoughts and feelings. This is because Dante was characterized by a new type of thinking and a new vision of the world and the human soul. Therefore, it is no coincidence that, for many centuries, interest in his personality has not lost its relevance and meaning. Exploring the text of the Comedy, one can see how allegory, morality, mysticism, and love are intertwined.
By its very essence, it is love that is present in the entire text of the work; its words cannot be torn out, they are written by the author under the influence of a strong feeling. The meaning Dante put into expressing the work’s divine lines is not reliably known, and many researchers interpret it in striking ways. However, Dante’s love is touching in its freshness and naivety, and at the same time, it feels the influence of a stern and attentive spirit, the hand of an artist who thinks about many things at once, and experiences the most complex dramas of the heart.
Inferno
The structure of the Lower Hell in Inferno, that is, the seventh, eighth, and ninth circles, presents particular difficulties of interpretation. In these circles, malice is punished by either force and violence or deception. These vices are opposed to love, acting as its complete antonyms, and therefore require the strictest punishment:
«In untruth, harmful to others,
The purpose of all malice is displeasing to heaven.
Deception and force are the tools of the evil ones.
Deception, vice, is only akin to man,
More abominable to the Creator; he fills the bottom
And he is executed with hopeless torture» (Dante 23-28).
These words are key to understanding the ethical architectonics of Hell rather than the feeling of love. It is stated here that the main, generic vice of the Lower Hell is malice, the purpose of which is insult, resentment, which entails harm, damage, and destruction (Dante 24). In Latin and Italian, this term has a wide range of meanings, making it almost impossible to choose an appropriate equivalent in English. However, its collective meaning can be understood as an antonym of love.
In the philosophical context of sin, anger, meanness, unfitness, treachery, and cunning acquire additional semantic meaning, denoting the imperfection of the will, which forms a vicious habit in a person. At the same time, Dante uses the concept of deception in its literal sense, emphasizing that, along with violence, it is the main cause of an unjust act and the main tool of evil and vicious souls (Dante 23). Moreover, deception, peculiar only to man, since animals and gods do not deceive, is a more serious sin than violence and therefore is executed with more severe torture in the lower circles – the eighth and ninth (Dante 28). Thus, Dante’s concept of sinless love consists not only in nonviolence but in honesty.
Purgatorio
The love that Dante dwells on in Purgatorio is not only love for people, but also for God. Dante argues that the soul’s love for God can be violated for two main reasons: the love of evil or the immeasurable love of good. Believing that the love of evil cannot be directed against oneself or against God, Dante concludes that it must be directed against one’s neighbor.
«My son, the whole creation, like the supreme Creator,”
he began, “you should know this,
Is full of love, natural or spiritual.
The natural one cannot make mistakes;
The second one may make a mistake,
Become excessively meager or excessive» (Dante 95-96).
Thus, pride, envy, and anger are understood as the three ways in which people love evil and in which they hate others. The last three vices – greed, gluttony, and lust – are forms of excessive love for lesser goods, none of which can satisfy a person’s deepest desire to return to God (Dante 95). Therefore, the ethical scheme of Purgatory does not correspond to the philosophical concepts of morality and ethics of its time, as it was with the description of Inferno.
This ethnic reorientation from the secular to the spiritual is already evident from the description of the first two ledges, where the greatest vices of pride and envy are cleansed. To exalt God, but rather to exalt oneself above other people, the envious are saddened by the superiority of others and, to prevent this from happening, reduce their own benefits(Dante 96). Instead of wishing others well, they take pleasure in others’ failures.
The root of pride and envy must be the pursuit of temporary benefits. Indeed, Dante connects pride and envy by listing four kinds of earthly things by which people can measure themselves relative to others (Dante 96). Thus, truth, kindness, or love do not become less shared; rather, like a ray of light in a mirror, they are refracted and fall on each person.
Paradiso
In the final part of Paradiso, there is the Empyrean, the center of Paradise; Dante also calls it the Rose of Paradise. Around a dazzling, shining circle, there are steps similar to those in an amphitheater. The most righteous and the most blessed souls sit on them. Beatrice’s place, by the way, is also on the steps of the Divine Rose, and she deserved to be there with her love. Among many, the poet recognizes the Virgin Mary, who gives everyone her smile. This is how Dante describes this place:
«The high spirit of the takeoff has exhausted itself here;
But passion and will have already aspired to me,
As if the wheel is given an even course,
The love that moves the sun and the luminaries» (Dante 111-112).
Saint Bernard appeals to the Mother of God, asking that the traveler be allowed to see the Lord. Dante himself cannot do this, because the light blinds him. With Mary’s blessing, Dante looks at the Light of the Ineffable and sees the circle of the One God in three persons – Christ is the reflection of God the Father, the Holy Spirit is the flame (Dante 111). In the poet’s vision, the Rose of Paradise blooms, and the poet experiences the deepest shock, enlightenment, and ecstasy (Dante 111). This rose is a symbol of eternal, boundless love, and many do not have a lifetime to comprehend it. This shows how powerful pure love is.
The poet’s strength and feelings leave him, and when he comes to himself, his vision of the other world turns out to be complete. After going all this way, Dante becomes like another person who knows what the meaning of life is and how to live on (Dante 112). He learns love in the form of a quintessence that only the brightest souls who have reached the highest stage of paradise can withstand.
In Dante’s Paradise, everything is luminous: his many shining spheres, souls dwelling in blissful contemplation of God and flaming with love for Him. Light is everywhere here, embracing everything; it is both the matter and the form of paradise (Dante 112). Without light and apart from it, no paradise is possible and unimaginable (Dante 112). This light, which is the basis of paradise, turns out to be love.
Conclusion
Thus, in the Divine Comedy, Dante comes to understand that the world is driven by love, which determines the harmony of the universe. He guides his characters and the reader through all the circles of Hell, through Purgatory to Paradise. The author thus demonstrated the way for all humanity to save the soul through love. The lines of Inferno remind the reader that a human life devoid of love becomes a real hell.
In Purgatorio, the author demonstrates the value of lost love. The third part of the Divine Comedy opens to the reader a new world full of beauty and goodness. The main goal of humanity is liberation from the chains of vices, which will eventually lead to the complete fusion of the human and divine principles in the human personality, resulting in love.
Work Cited
Dante. The Divine Comedy. Translated by Robert Hollander, and Jean Hollander, Vintage, 2002.