Divina Commedia

1. Divina Commedia A Sonnet Cycle byHenry Wadsworth Longfellow

2. All hope abandon, ye who enter in! Longfellow’s 1882 translation the inscription over the Gate of Hell from Dante’s Inferno

3. The Longfellow family on the poet’s last trip to Italy, c. 1869. Longfellow sits at the center of the group.

4. A view of Florence, Italy. According to biographer Charles Calhoun, Italy had a great influence on Longfellow's life; he became “the most famous translator of Dante in nineteenth-century America” and in later life “became fascinated with the life and poetry of Michelangelo.”

5. Divina Commedia: Translation Longfellow was a scholar, translating many European masterworks into the English of his day. He was particu-larly fascinated with The Divine Comedy of Dante, the early Renaissance epic that is considered the masterpiece of Italy’s greatest poet. Long-fellow’s desire was to create an English version of the work that would remind his readers of the Italian original without slavishly imitating it. He published his translation in 1867. A manuscript page from Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s The Inferno, 1862-1866.

6. Divina Commedia: Inspiration The six sonnets in the cycle were written during the progress of Longfellow’s work in translating La Divina Commedia and were published as poetical fly-leaves to the three volumes of his completed 1867 edition. The first sonnet was written just after he had put the first two cantos of Inferno into the hands of the printer. This, with the second, prefaced Inferno. The third and fourth introduced Purgatorio, and the fifth and sixth Paradiso. All of the poems are associated with Longfellow’s grief at the death of his second wife Fanny in 1861. Frances Appleton Longfellow. Hers is the portrait referenced in “The Cross of Snow.”

7. Divina Commedia: Italian Source La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri, written between 1308 and Dante’s death in 1321, is considered the greatest epic poem in Italian and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem tells of the 35-year-old poet’s imaginative and allegorical journey through the Christian afterlife—Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Heaven (Paradiso) during the Easter Triduum (sunset Maundy Thursday through sunrise Easter Sunday) of Spring, 1300. The journey mirrors the passion of Christ and the salvation journey that Christians take. Opening page from a 1337 manuscript of The Divine Comedy

8. Divina Commedia: Italian Source In The Divine Comedy,Dante encounters historical figures and mythological creatures, each symbolic of a particular fault or virtue. The Roman poet Virgil, author of the epic Aeneid, guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory. Dante’s great love Beatrice, whom he regarded as a manifestation of the divine, is his guide through Paradise. Dante and Beatrice speak to two Sicilian saints in this fresco painting by Philipp Veit illustrating Canto 3 of Paradiso.

9. Divina Commedia: Italian Source The Divine Comedy is divided into three canticles (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) of thirty-three cantos each, plus one extra in the first canticle, making a total of one hundred cantos. Each canto is composed of three-line tercets; the first and third lines rhyme, and the second line rhymes with the beginning of the next tercet, establishing a kind of overlap. Dante’s realms are further subdivided: • Inferno is composed of nine levels, the vestibule making a tenth • Purgatorio has seven terraces, plus two ledges in an ante-purgatory; adding these to the Earthly Paradise (Eden) yields ten zones • Paradiso is composed of nine heavens; Empyrean makes the tenth.

10. Divina Commedia: Italian Source In Inferno, sinners are organized by three vices—Incontinence, Violence, and Fraud—and further divided by the seven deadly sins. In Purgatorio, penance is ordered on the basis of three types of natural love. In Paradiso, Dante travels through the nine celestial spheres organized on the basis of three types of Divine Love, and further subdivided according to the three theological and four cardinal virtues. Beyond the ninth sphere, Dante ascends to a region beyond physical existence, called the Empyrean Heaven where the souls of all the believers form the petals of an enormous rose. Dante and Beatrice see God as a point of light surrounded by angels.

11. Divina Commedia: Italian Sonnet The basic meter or rhythm of all sonnets is iambic pentameter, typically presented as a poetic line of ten syllables in which the even beats are stressed: Ĭn sóoth,/Ĭ knów/nŏt whý/Ĭ ám/sŏ sád. (Shakespeare) The Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet is divided into two sections by two different groups of rhyme schemes. The first 8-line section is called the octave. It consists of two quatrains and rhymes as follows: a b b a a b b a The remaining 6-line section is called the sestet and can have several rhyming schemes, arranged in a variety of ways: c d c d c d c d d c d d c d d c d c c d e c d e c d e c e d c d c e d c

12. Divina Commedia: Context Longfellow’s sonnets begin on a summer afternoon outside a medieval Italian cathedral, possibly the Duomo of Florence. The poet spends his afternoon touring the cathedral, beginning at noon and ending in early evening. Each of the six sonnets represents one stage in his own personal journey of faith, an allegorical journey similar to Dante’s. The medieval Italian cathedral of Milan.

13. Divina Commedia: Cycle Structure I Outside the cathedral II Near the entrance III In the narthex IV Before the Virgin V In the nave prior to the Mass VI Exiting after the experience The Byzantine basilica of St. Mark in Venice.

14. Three views of the gothic Duomo or bishop’s cathedral of Florence. On the left, a detail from Giotto’s campanile, or bell tower. In the center, the west façade featuring Barabino’s mosaic of Christ between Mary and John the Baptist over the center door. On the right, a view of the nave from the position of the high altar and choir under Brunelleschi’s great dome.

15. Four views of Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the Flower), the Duomo of Florence, begun 1296. Left, a view of Giotto’s campanile, or bell tower. In the center, an aerial view of the cathedral campus and a detail of the stained-glass rose window from the west façade. Right, a view of Brunelleschi’s dome.

16. Divina Commedia: I Octave Oft have I seen at some cathedral door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er; “Our Father” Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Become an undistinguishable roar.

17. Divina Commedia: I Sestet So, as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate, church Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait.

18. Interior view of St. Mark showing gilded mosaic decoration. Floor plan of St. Mark in Venice. The basilica is in the shape of a Greek cross and covered with domes after the Byzantine tradition. The Venetians were influenced by the art and architecture of Constantinople (Istanbul) during the Crusades.

19. Divina Commedia: II Octave How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, porch, door And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!

20. Divina Commedia: II Sestet Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, What exultations trampling on despair, What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, Uprose this poem of the earth and air, This mediæval miracle of song!

21. Traditional Roman Catholic confession in the church of Gesu Nuovo in Naples.

22. Divina Commedia: III Octave I enter, and I see thee in the gloom Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine! melancholy And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. The air is filled with some unknown perfume; The congregation of the dead make room For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; prayerful Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.

23. Divina Commedia: III Sestet From the confessionals I hear arise Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, And lamentations from the crypts below; And then a voice celestial that begins With the pathetic words, “Although your sins As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.”

24. Two interpretations in Italian Carrara marble of the Virgin Mary—the Pieta of Michelangelo and Virgin and Child by Alberto Ayala.

25. Divina Commedia: IV Octave With snow-white veil and garments as of flame, She stands before thee, who so long ago Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe From which thy song and all its splendors came; And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name, The ice about thy heart melts as the snow On mountain heights, and in swift overflow Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.

26. Divina Commedia: IV Sestet Thou makest full confession; and a gleam, As of the dawn on some dark forest cast, Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase; Lethe and Eunoë—the remembered dream And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last That perfect pardon which is perfect peace. Before leaving Purgatory and proceeding to Paradise, souls who have completed their appointed course of suffering must drink first from the River Lethe, causing them to forget their sinful ways, and then from the River Eunoë, which strengthens and purifies the remembrance of their good deeds and honorable intentions.

27. Interior of a cathedral shown from the center of the nave looking toward chancel where the altar table has been prepared to celebrate Mass (the Lord’s Supper).

28. Divina Commedia: V Octave I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze With forms of Saints and holy men who died, Here martyred and hereafter glorified; And the great Rose upon its leaves displays window Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays, medallions With splendor upon splendor multiplied; And Beatrice again at Dante’s side Dante’s guide No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.

29. Divina Commedia: V Sestet And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love And benedictions of the Holy Ghost; And the melodious bells among the spires O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above Proclaim the elevation of the Host! bread used in Mass

30. The scenic countryside of Italy often features the rugged Apennines, a mountain range that runs the entire length of the Italian peninsula. This view is of Pietra di Bismantova in Emilia between Rome and Florence shows stone and tile roofed buildings in villages of the region.

31. Divina Commedia: VI Octave O star of morning and of liberty! O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines Above the darkness of the Apennines, mountains Forerunner of the day that is to be! The voices of the city and the sea, The voices of the mountains and the pines, Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!

32. Divina Commedia: VI Sestet Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights, Through all the nations, and a sound is heard, As of a mighty wind, and men devout, Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, disciples In their own language hear thy wondrous word, And many are amazed and many doubt.

33. Three of Longfellow’s six children (left to right): six-year-old Edith, nine-year-old Alice Mary, and four-year-old Anne Allegra. The painting still hangs in the dining room of Craigie House, the family home in Cambridge, Massachusetts