When he reached the gate of death, Dante suddenly felt gloomy and gloomy. It says on the gate that everything has come in, leaving all hope behind. It means that if a person is sent to hell for punishment, there is no hope of being saved. Hell is like an inverted funnel, * * * is divided into nine layers, and the bottom reaches the center of the earth. All souls in hell have committed crimes before their lives and are punished here. The heavier the crime, the lower the level.
The pure world, also known as purgatory, is a place where souls atone, and souls with lighter sins practice here before they die. When the root of evil is cut off, you can live in heaven. If you don't practice well and change your viciousness, you may still be sent to hell. People in purgatory usually have the desire and confidence to work hard, so they will be full of patience, frustration and hope of being saved.
Hell is dark and violent, full of pain and despair. After swimming in the clear world, Virgil suddenly disappeared. Suddenly, he saw a flash of red light in the east, colorful purple fog, and Yue Xian appeared in the sky. I saw a fairy wearing a robe, a white gauze and a green shawl coming. She is the goddess in Dante's mind-Beatrice.
Under her guidance, Dante began his journey to heaven, which is divided into nine layers, namely, a wise monarch, a wise philosopher and so on. This is a carefree residence, where happy elves live forever. Here, there are colorful, colorful and endless joys. After being blessed by the Virgin Mary, Dante witnessed the noble side of God. But just in a hurry, poetry and dreams come to an abrupt end.
This long poem is about the author's sleepwalking, but it expresses a profound and realistic theme. It discusses how to save the human soul through symbolic metaphor. Specifically, in the dark and brutal era, how can individuals go through difficulties, pursuits and tests from the lost prison, find solutions and achieve perfection and perfection.
The Divine Comedy is actually trying to point out a way to be saved for those who are in pain and at a loss in reality. So what makes people fall into the abyss of suffering? The dark forest at the beginning of the long poem symbolizes the lost direction of life. The lion, leopard and wolf that stop the poet from advancing represent ambition, lust and greed respectively.
Poets use metaphors to tell people that these four ugly passions, ambition, lust, greed and jealousy, are obstacles for people to move towards the light, and the source of human evil lies in the ugly lust in people's own depths. This is Dante's reflection on Florence, Italy and even the whole human situation at that time.
At the beginning of the poem, we talk about the relationship between human disasters and human beings, and how human beings move towards the realm of perfection and beauty. So how do humans get out of the maze and get rid of the predicament?
Then the poet described in detail the dangers of hell, the hardships of purgatory and the beauty of heaven. His intention is to punish evil and promote good. He tried to tell people that only by hard training and abandoning worldly behaviors and ideological evils can we reach the paradise in heaven. Based on this, it reveals the process of human pursuit of perfection and the role of reason, belief or love in saving human beings.
According to the Christian concept, the only bridge to heaven is the church, but the Divine Comedy doesn't think so. People don't need a church to reach heaven, but their own cultivation, which led Dante to go to hell. The difference between purgatory and heaven is Beatrice, the lover of ancient Roman poet Virgil and Dante.
Virgil stands for reason and wisdom, while Beatrice stands for faith and love. Virgil led a tour of hell and purgatory, expressing the author's worship of knowledge and denying obscurantism. He also pointed out that rational knowledge can make people know their sins and restrain their four evil desires, but Virgil can only lead Dante to hell and purgatory, but not to heaven.
Because in Dante's view, the power of reason and knowledge is limited. If you want to achieve perfection and beauty in heaven, you must rely on the guidance of Beatrice, who represents faith and love. Beatrice was Dante's early lover. When he first met Beatrice at the age of 9, he was deeply impressed by her beauty and nobility. Nine years later, they met by chance in the street, and Dante had a strong love for her. Later, he wrote a series of poems. Expressing his deep love for her, Beatrice, 24, died at an early age, and Dante was heartbroken. Later, he expressed his grief for her with endless poems. His love for Beatrice was originally secular love.
However, in The Divine Comedy, the woman he deeply loved in those years has become a holy idol surrounded by angels, and the secular love between men and women has been sublimated into a broad spiritual love, that is, the love of the virgin, the love of God and the love of mankind. It is Beatrice who represents this kind of love and belief, and finally leads Dante to heaven, close to God, and reach the realm of perfection and beauty.
This shows that only love and faith can lead people to the realm of perfection and beauty. As far as reality is concerned, those who are put into hell are all people who have committed many crimes because of the lack of love in reality, and they can never be redeemed because of the evil they have committed. Those souls who are put in purgatory can only be rescued and ascended to heaven after hard training and full of love.
Obviously, the love and belief expressed in The Divine Comedy has a strong illusory color, but the author combines this love and belief, and even the tragic and happy fate of the whole mankind, with the self-cultivation of people and the transformation and transformation of society in reality, so it is clearly targeted, realistic and factual.
The overall framework of The Divine Comedy follows the Christian worldview, so it can be said to be a summative epic in the Middle Ages. However, the main spirit of poetry has new characteristics of the times, which is mainly manifested in the poet's full affirmation of knowledge, the affirmation of human wisdom and rational power, and personal self-efforts and value realization.
In a word, The Divine Comedy has a strong religious consciousness (humanistic consciousness of medieval religion)&; The secular humanistic consciousness of ancient Greece, with the individual humanistic consciousness of the new citizen class, embodies the ideological bud of Renaissance personality liberation and conveys the dawn of humanism in the new century. In this sense, The Divine Comedy is not only an epic masterpiece of medieval humanities, but also a pioneer of modern European literature.
Dante is a cultural giant who summed up one era and started another.
Note Editor: Mao Dong
Instructor: Jiang? Zhejiang Gongshang University