Dante (Penguin Lives)

pretty good book

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In depth about his life, but fortunately was only about 200 pages.

Defining Presence in Italian Literature

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Dante was the poet-historian of Florence. He associated himself with his native city. He was an ardent personality. In Florence there was a surging economy and seven guilds. City walls were extended to form a new circuit completed in 1333.

Virgil's AENEID was the poem Dante admired most. Dante died in 1321 in Ravenna and is buried there. In 1373 Boccaccio offered a series of lectures on Dante's life and work. Dante's father died in the early 1280's. Brunetto Latini became a role model. Dante provides a portrait of the old master in his COMEDY.

Dante had divergent impulses. Love and death are counter themes in VITA NUOVA. Following Beatrice's death, Dante became immersed in THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY by Boethius describing a soul finding comfort in the vision of God. Dante was gifted in discourse. He led a private and family life during the years he held public office.

Florentine discord began in family feuding between the Donatis and the Cerchis. Dante became a literary man, exalting the welfare of the commune over the warfare of the two sides. Around 1301 Dante incurred the Pope's displeasure. Subsequently the poet suffered banishment and the threat of the imposition of the death sentence. First he lived in Verona, like Florence a daughter of Rome.

Next Dante went to Padua, briefly, and then to Bologna. He was on his own. He identified fourteen separate Italian dialects in one of his books. He wrote much of the INFERNO on the run. He settled in Verona from 1312 to 1318. The PURGATORIO was written there and the PARADISIO begun. There is a tone in the former work of hope refreshed.

In 1318 Dante moved to Ravenna. The Christian humanism of Thomas Aquinas appealed to him. Both men hold the idea that grace perfects nature. Examination of what he truly believed found Dante a changed man. Peter, James, and John represent faith, hope, and love. The PARADISIO was completed in 1320.

T.S. Eliot's mind was infested with Dante.

Tuscan Sun

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The Peguin Lives series thrives on its clever and sometimes surprising pairings of subjects and writers, often non-specialists with a more personal take on the life. Giving Dante to a Yale English professor isn't the most inspired choice, though Lewis's expertise is mainly American lit. The book shows the marks of several pleasant vacations in Tuscany, with brief pen portraits of the various sites and geographical features that shaped Dante's world providing most of the color in an otherwise dry march through the facts of his life. Lewis often circles back to people or scenes described earlier in the work, which is either a tribute to Dante's own narrative style or a sign of slack editing. If you don't know something about Dante already, this isn't the book to convince you he's one of the world's great writers, or to help explain why. But for a quick tourist map of a complex place and time, it's a short, effective read.

An excellent biographical introduction to Dante

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Prior to this biography on Dante, R. W. B. Lewis had established himself as one of the leading authorities on Edith Wharton and had also written a book about Florence. Although he is not widely acknowledged as a Dante scholar, this brief volume is testimony to his obvious love for Florence's greatest poet. Unlike many brief biographies of great literary figures, this is a remarkably balanced account of Dante's life and career. Given the strictures on what can be covered in a small number of pages, other biographers of other writers often focus on an individual's life to the near exclusion of all else, or on the greater cultural context of their work, or on a discussion of the writings, ignoring the writer's world and life. Lewis strikes a marvelous balance between explaining the historical-especially the political-context for Dante's life, in detailing the significant biographical moments that informed his career (including most of what we know about his limited encounters with Beatrice), and the development of his art. Lewis's skill in refusing to neglect any significant aspect of Dante's life and work is laudable.

Lewis's narrative progresses chronologically on a number of parallel levels. He reverts on several occasions to Dante's genealogy, on the political situation in Florence in the conflict between the Ghibellines (who favored the claims of the Holy Roman Emperor in Europe) and the Guelphs (who favored the Pope and later split into the Black and White Guelphs, Dante being associated with the latter), Dante's platonic adoration of Beatrice, the development of Dante's poetry, Dante's role in the government of Florence, his eventual banishment from Florence, and the composition and content of his COMEDY. I was especially encouraged by the number of theological figures who were crucial to Dante and essential for understanding the theological structure of the COMEDY.

I do have a couple of minor criticisms. One is that Lewis isn't always as sharp in his exposition as he clearly is capable of being. There are also some curiosities, such as his comments near the end identifying Robert Penn Warren as "the most complete man of letters of our time," a good if not great writer whom I believe will be largely forgotten in as little as twenty-five years (one wonders if Warren and Lewis were close friends). There is an annotated biography, but most of the secondary works Lewis discusses are either out of print or not readily available, while many key contemporary texts dealing with Dante are omitted, such as Freccero's THE POETICS OF CONVERSION. And how could any discussion of translations omit Singleton's, which is easily one of the highpoints of Dante scholarship in the past half century? Two other small complaints: no index and no chronology of Dante's life. My own feeling is that there is never justification for not including an index in an academic book; the omission sharply reduces the book's usability. Even in a short biography a chronology is useful, allowing one to make rapid comparisons between the various events in a writer's life and their work.

Nonetheless, for most readers of Dante in English, this brief biography will serve as a superb introduction to both Dante's life and his work.

Dazzling Spirituality

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This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept. My only regret is that even an abbreviated index is not provided. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject are directed to other sources.

When preparing to review various volumes in this series, I have struggled with determining what would be of greatest interest and assistance to those who read my reviews. Finally I decided that a few brief excerpts and then some concluding comments of my own would be appropriate.

On Dante's masterpiece: "The Commedia, to which the adjective Divina was affixed two centuries afterward, is, all things considered, the greatest single poem ever written; and in one perspective, as has been said, it is autobiographical: the journey of a man to find himself and make himself after having been cruelly mistreated in his homeland. It is also a rhythmic exploration of the entire cultural world Dante had inherited: classical, pre-Christian, Christian, medieval, Tuscan, and emphatically Florentine. And it is the long poetic tribute to Beatrice Portinari which Dante promised, at the end of the Vita Nuova." (pages 12 and 13)

On Dante's response to Beatrice's death: He "did more than write an occasional poem of memorial grief; he put together the work to which he gave the title La Vita Nuova di Dante Alighieri. It was essentially an act of compilation, probably begun in 1293 and finished two years later. Dante drew up[ a narrative account of his relationship with Beatrice Portinari, from his first sight of her at the May Day party in 1274 to her death sixteen years later, sprinkling through it the poems -- canzones, sonnets, a ballad -- written to enshrine each successive moment." (page 59)

On progression in the Paradiso: In it, "Dante ascends; he does not climb, as in the Purgatorio, but, as he is constantly remarking, is propelled upward with the speed of an arrow. He is swept up through the lower planets -- the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn; into the Fixed Stars; then upwards to the Primum Mobile, when come all distinctions of space and time, of 'where' and 'when,' through itself beyond space and time; to the Empyrean, the actual and eternal dwelling-place of the Three-in-One God, of the angels and the saints, of the community of the blessed." (page 170)

In the concluding portion of his biography, Lewis briefly but eloquently suggests the ubiquitous and energizing presence of Dante in English and American literature, notably in the works of Shelley, Byron, Robert Browning, Rossetti, Emerson, Pound, Eliot, and Warren. According to Lewis, that presence "sparkles and sings and smiles like one of the spirits in Paradise." The same can be said of Lewis' writing style which, in combination with his erudition, enables the modern reader to gain a greater appreciation of someone who lived more than 600 years ago but whose Comedy is as contemporary as tomorrow's sunrise.

As is also true of the other volumes in the "Penguin Lives" series, this one provides all of the essential historical and biographical information but its greatest strength lies in the extended commentary, in this instance by R.W.B. Lewis. He also includes a brief but sufficient "Bibliographical Notes" section for those who wish to learn more about Dante. I hope these brief excerpts encourage those who read this review to read Lewis' biography. It is indeed a brilliant achievement.