外国人最想和你聊的名人话题：阿利盖利·但丁

　About Dante　关于但丁

     Durante degli Alighieri commonly known as Dante, was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, originally called Commedia and later called Divina by Boccaccio, is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.
     In Italy he is known as "The Supreme Poet" (il Sommo Poeta) or just il Poeta. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language".
     The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell(Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and of another of his works, La Vita Nuova. While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and knowledge to appreciate. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa"-"at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).
     Dante's other works include the Convivio ("The Banquet") a collection of his longest poems with an (unfinished) allegorical commentary; Monarchia, a summary treatise of political philosophy in Latin, which was condemned and burned after Dante's death by the Papal Legate Bertrando del Poggetto, which argues for the necessity of a universal or global monarchy in order to establish universal peace in this life, and this monarchy's relationship to the Roman Catholic Church as guide to eternal peace; De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"),on vernacular literature, partly inspired by the Razos de trobar of Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun; and, La Vita Nuova ("The New Life"),the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, who also served as the ultimate symbol of salvation in the Comedy.
     但丁是新旧交替时期的伟大诗人。基督教神学观念、中世纪的偏见和世界观上的种种矛盾，也在《神曲》中得到表现。《神曲》的结构建立在中古时期神秘的象征意义上，情节充满寓意。诗人歌颂现世生活，但又把它看作来世生活的准备。他批判教会至上，但又把神学置于信仰之上。他认为，人类在理性和哲学的指引下得以认识邪恶，但只有依靠信仰和神学，才能达到至善之境。他谴责禁欲主义，但又把一对苦恋的青年保罗和弗兰齐斯嘉作为贪色的罪人，打入地狱接受惩戒。
     《神曲》的伟大意义在于，它通过诗人幻游过程中遇到的上百个各种类型的人物的描写，以极其广阔的画面，反映出意大利从中世纪向近代世界过渡的转折时期的现实生活和各个领域发生的社会政治变革，透露了新时代的新思想--人文主义的曙光。《神曲》对古今政治、哲学、神学、诗歌、绘画、文化，作了艺术性的阐述和总结。因此，它不但在思想性方面达到了时代的先进水平，是一座划时代的里程碑，而且是一部反映当时社会生活、传授知识的百科全书式的鸿篇巨制。