The Divine Comedy - Volume 1.: Inferno [antikvár]

AN INTRODUCTION TO DANTE AND HIS WORKS Not much is known about Dante Alighieri. We know he was born in Florence sometime in late May or early June (he was a Gemini) of the year 1265 in the district of San Martino, the son of Alighiero di Bellincione dAhghiero. His mother, Donna Bella, died when he was very young; his father, whom he seems to avoid mentioning as much as possible, remarried, and died while Dante was in his late teens. The Alighieri family may be considered noble by reason of the titles and dignities bestowed upon its members, although by the time Dante arrived on the scene the family seems to have been reduced to modest economic and social circumstances. According to Dante himself in Inferno XV, the family descended from the noble seed of the Roman founders of the city. This claim, however, remains largely unsubstantiated, as nothing is known of Dante's ancestors before his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida, who was knighted by Emperor Conrad III. In the company of Cacciaguida Dante spends several emotional cantos in the final part of the great poem: they are cantos that occupy the central portion of the Paradise, in which important questions are answered, tragic events are revealed, and major themes running through the entire Divine Comedy are resolved. Cacciaguida died, or so Dante tells us in Paradise XV (139-48), during the Second Crusade, about 1147. Like most of the city's lesser nobility and artisans, Dante's family was affiliated with the Guelf party, as opposed to the Ghibellines, whose adherents tended to belong to the feudal aristocracy. These two parties came into Italy from Germany, and their names represent Itahanized forms of the names attached to the two rival German clans of Welf and Waibling. In Italy, the parties were at first identified with broad alle-