La Divine Comédie (Dante)

Overview

La Commedia, called Divina from the sixteenth century, is the long poem in which Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) describes a journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Heaven (Paradiso), guided first by Virgil and then by Beatrice. It is written in Italian, in 100 cantos of terza rima, and is dated to roughly 1308-1320. It was the founding text of literary Italian, and in Marie's century it was the book that every educated visitor to Italy was expected to have read. (Wikipedia, "Divine Comedy".)

Marie owned it in more than one form: a "tout petit Dante" travelled with her in 1877 (074.0053), and she says she "learned Italian in Dante" (096.0326, 1882). She quotes it in the original, and misquotes it from memory. The stub `people/mentioned/DANTE.md` is the author entry; this page is the work.

Marie and this work

1873-1874: first allusions. On 2 June 1873, a free evening at the salon piano, "J'ai récité un chant de Dante" for the family (005.0143; the canto is not named). On 19 June 1873, waiting for the carriage that is to fetch her paintings, she has been "comme les sospesi de Dante" for a week (006.0027): the souls of Limbo, Inferno II.52, "Io era tra color che son sospesi". On 8 May 1874, weeping and grumbling over the family's travel preparations, she writes "Ora incomincian le dolenti note a tarmisi sentire" (019.0146), Inferno V.25-26 ("Or incomincian le dolenti note / a farmisi sentire"), in a corrupted form. (These three were identified by another batch of this project, entry `DIVINA_COMMEDIA`, which this entry absorbs.)

1876: Dante as a companion. She packs "Dante, Ariosto, Shakespeare" for the journey to Russia (062.0852, 3 July 1876), and a first allusion is the "robe de Béatrice" with a bare neck she praises on 26 June 1876 (062.0714). On 17 October 1876 (067.0134) a cousin's "ideally vast thoughts" are such that "Dante could have borrowed from him his divine love for Beatrice", and on 25 October (067.0314) she writes: "J'adore ma mère et la Divine comédie de Dante." In Poltava station she scolds her maid in "la langue de Dante" for the crowd's amusement (067.0986, 15 November 1876).

Rome, winter 1876-77. Dante supplies her with images for her ordeal over Antonelli: her mother, twisting her head round in the carriage on the Pincio, is "comme un damné de Dante" (068.0301, 26 December 1876; probably an allusion to the diviners of Inferno XX, whose heads are twisted round to face backwards). On 23 February 1877 (068.1632) she wilts "comme ces fleurs abattues par la gelée nocturne dont parle Dante" -- the simile of Inferno II.127-129 (flowers bowed and closed by night frost that open again in the sun).

Naples and Sorrento, spring 1877: her Dante season. This is when she quotes him in Italian. At sunrise in Sorrento she writes out Inferno I.37-40, "Temp'era del principio del matino..." (070.0085, 4 April 1877). On 22 April a young admirer, Santasiglia, copies out for her a sonnet she identifies as Dante's (070.0808-0809): it is "Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare" from the Vita nuova (chapter XXVI), not the Commedia; the bracketed editorial note in the print that says "ce sonnet n'est pas de Dante, mais de Pétrarque" is wrong and Marie right (RSR note, 070.0808). On 23 April, watching the Chiaia at dawn, she quotes Inferno I.16-18 ("Guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle...", 070.0845-0847) and then I.41 "Sì ch'a bene sperar m'era cagione" (070.0858). On 26 April a Neapolitan acquaintance, Melissano, has "drummed up all over Naples that I know Dante by heart" (071.0011). On 9 May in Florence, in front of the tombs of Santa Croce, she says that since she has studied Dante more she finds him "vraiment miraculeux" and is proud that she admires him not because everyone says so (071.0211).

June-July 1877. Beneath her double portrait of Alexandre and Melissano, bound by a cord to their moneylender Buonocore, she writes a verse of Inferno V: "Maestro, chi son quelle / Genti che l'aer nero si castiga?" (071.0615, 10 June 1877; the lines are Inf. V.50-51, in the circle of the lustful). She jokes that being "en l'air" while shopping is "un tourment que Dante a oublié" (072.0298, 22 June). On 25 July she quotes Inferno II.52, "Io era tra color che son sospesi" ("among those who are suspended", the souls of Limbo), garbled to "Intra calor" (073.0155). A "tout petit Dante" is among her portable library in August (074.0053).

Later. She knows Schwarz's face "comme un chant du Dante" (082.0032, 10 August 1878); "j'ai appris l'italien dans le Dante" (096.0326, 2 October 1882, while painting on the Grande Jatte); a question that makes "l'enfer du Dante tout rose et parfumé" (098.0188, 27 January 1883); and the dream of "des choses babyloniennes, des chants du Dante mis en sculpture" (100.0422, 23 July 1883).

Notes

Sources

Supersedes (author-type stub, not to be deleted): `people/mentioned/DANTE.md`. Duplicate to merge: `culture/literature/DIVINA_COMMEDIA.md` (written in parallel by another batch; its three mentions are folded in above).