THE MEGA-INFLUENTIAL DIVINE COMEDY

The only reason why I want to share with you this masterpiece written by Dante A., is for its amazing connection with the Catholic religion, but let me try to give you some of the knowledge that almost every Italian learns from high school on.

In fact every Italian kid starts to read the Divine comedy, when at middle school (eleven y/o) we are taught about the hell, purgatory and heaven (main structure),later we read few “canti”, we have to write essays on their content, to demonstrate not only that we understand the meaning of the canto, but (probably very much more) that we can relate what Dante wrote 7 centuries ago to our daily life – which makes me wonder if this is done for our kids in the USA, but let me now make some bullet points about information about the comedy and its writer that I doubt are very well known in the USA.

Let me start saying that The Divine Comedy was written by Dante Alighieri (last name with territorial reference) in what became the “modern Italian” that every Italian has been using since, before ever region in Italy was a State with a different language, from the “Frenchy” accent/dialect in Piemonte to the “Greeky” dialect, in Sicily, in fact I believe that it was the Divine Comedy that unified my country, well before the Garibaldi war effort (unità) – from this la  Divina Commedia is an Italian long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, who begun to write it  around 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. ... In Dante's work, Virgil is presented as the human reason (hell + purgatory) and Beatrice is presented as divine knowledge (heaven).

·         When asked about the source of the material used to write his comedy, Dante always said that he just wanted to put in writing some of the stories that the street bums of the XII century were telling to each other while looking for something (anything  J) to eat.

·         Then there’s the sign at the entrance of Hell, that’ been debated for centuries: “leave every hope thou who enters” which in my (injured) intelligence can be paraphrased in this way (maybe) The third canto of the Inferno by Dante Alighieri has as its setting the “Antinferno”, or rather the place of the underworld where the sloths are kept and which precedes the entrance to hell itself. When Dante and Virgil arrive in front of the door of Hell, the first cannot help but notice the dark and mysterious writing placed on it.

THROUGH me you pass into the city of woe:     

Through me you pass into eternal pain:

Through me among the people lost for aye.

Justice the founder of my fabric moved:

To rear me was the task of Power divine,

Supremest Wisdom and primeval Love      

      

·         Not having immediately grasped the meaning of the sentence, Dante asks to Virgil for the meaning, the latter warns him by telling him that he should not be afraid of entering hell and that he should rather prepare himself psychologically to face the vision of the sad souls of the damned leaving every hesitation (suspicion) and hesitancy, this being a place where people who have lost God, the intellectual good par excellence, meet.The great beauty of the comedy is that Dante is guided through hell and purgatory by Virgil but as he “walks” into heaven it’ll be his eternal love – Beatrice – who’ll be guiding him. Here is when I want to invite you all to go to the link I put below, that’s a very simple google search about the comedy and its author…….don’t want to write a whole book here about the comedy…..you can find tens of thousands of copies already around the world, pretty much in every single language still used today (almost as many as the holy bible). In fact my reason to talk about this is the unbelievable (to me) “appropriation”  - done by the Catholic Church, the Vatican and the entire Christianity - of the main “structure” with explanation of the Catholic afterlife J. It’s actually even more than the Christians, who very often say something fully related to the comedy……”if you won’t make your homework…..you’ll go to hell where Beelzebub will eat your brain directly out of your cracked open skull” (FUCK! daddy… gimmie a pen with da book….. NOW!!).

In fact, has anyone ever read Jesus telling to someone else that “hell isn’t much fun and it’s where the souls of the sinners will end up after they die”? And how many Vatican soldiers (priests) threaten sure hell UNLESS you donate (to Jesus or to the church you like so much……BUT NOT TO ME!!.........soldiers always say) the more you want…..up to how much you can afford?

As I’m writing this I’m sure that all “fervent believers” after their death will be sitting on a stool in front of (from their own consciousness) their image of God, who will decide H.T.F your soul will spend “eternity”.

I bet that hundreds of comedians make fun of the God (and its existence), of the Catholic religion (i.e. too dangerous to make fun of Islamism) and predict that this is going to be the millennium when every religion will disappear, meaning every war on earth.

In fact I fully agree with the idea that most of the past wars we fought in the last millennium was a religious one…..including communism vs. capitalism including the Vietnam War.

Lastly, don’t get me started to mention what the “holy crusades” truly meant, with the thousands of people (families) who died, on both sides.

Let me simply anticipate that soon I’ll be posting on the “worldwide conflict” of the real existence of Jesus Christ…..in my own mind NOT an “extraterrestrial” (as per Biglino) but very much closer to earth, the less complicated fabrication of the Roman Empire of which and my treasures are all part………at least genetically.

1. https://www.bartleby.com/20/103.html
2. http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu/reader?reader%5Bcantica%5D=1&reader%5Bcanto%5D=3
3. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&ei=fhClXKrzNrSy0PEP69GUYA&q=origins+of+the+divine+comedy&oq=origins+of+the+divine+comedi&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.33i299.39184.39184..44953...0.0..0.132.132.0j1......0....2j1..gws-wiz.....0.Cnth7AZ22x0
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri
5. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-called-the-Divine-Comedy
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy

EXPLAINED ALREADY

DANTE’S DESCRIPTION OF GOD IN THE DIVINE COMEDY......ORIGINAL IN ITALIAN:

Quella circulazion che sì concetta

pareva in te come lume reflesso,

da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta,

  dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso,

mi parve pinta de la nostra effige:

per che 'l mio viso in lei tutto era messo.

     
      ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY LONGFELLOW:

That circulation, which being thus conceived

   Appeared in thee as a reflected light,

   When somewhat contemplated by mine eyes,

Within itself, of its own very colour

   Seemed to me painted with our effigy,

   Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein.

This is the simple proof that my slow walk towards the idea that what we usually refer to as God is simply ourselves, sadly however the great Dante Alighieri had figured this out already 750 years ago (daaahhhh).

It’s taken me some time to find the exact websites to support this post and I must admit that it’s been truly impossible for me to find a better Youtube than the one I put here that – even if in Italian – is probably the best description and explanation of what Dante is saying about we humans and God (one entity only), well I can only say that you know somebody who understands Italian because this from Benigni is a true “work of art”.

1. http://www.divina-commedia.it/paradiso/33.htm
2. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy_(Longfellow_1867)/Volume_3/Canto_33
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri#Life 

DANTE SEES GOD

The importance of Dante Alighieri goes beyond the literature and his ability to reunite all the dialects and various languages that were spoken across Italy in the XIV century under the current Italian language. His divine comedy suggested to the Catholics the structure and organization of what happens after our death and in the very last “canto” of the Paradise he described that God is ourselves which to me is beyond literary genius. I can’t believe that someone who lived 700 years ago could write something like this:

And for what I saw

My words are not enough to call them meager.

O everlasting Light, you dwell alone

In yourself, know yourself alone, and known

And knowing, love and smile upon yourself!

That middle circle which appeared in you

To be conceived as a reflected light,

After my eyes had studied it a while,

Within itself and in its coloring
Seemed to be painted with our human likeness
So that my eyes were wholly focused on it.As the geometer who sets himself

To square the circle and who cannot find,

For all his thought, the principle he needs,

Just so was I on seeing this new vision

I wanted to see how our image fuses

Into the circle and finds its place in it,

Yet my wings were not meant for such a flight —

Except that then my mind was struck by lightning

Through which my longing was at last fulfilled.

.

Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,

By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Dante’s description of God having “our human likeness” has not had the impact that the rest of his comedy has been having for hundreds of years and this makes me believe that human kind prefers to believe that something superior and not human can control our lives because it’s much easier hoping in this to solve our problems rather than working very hard to figure out what to do about them by ourselves.
The existence of a God and having a soul are themes that have generated some of the best thoughts and pieces of literature since the invention of print and thinkers like Leibnitz and Averroè have produced parts of literature that still today in this second millennium are magnificent, I like very much their distinction between soul and intellect where the first is mortal unlike the second one. There exist very much to read and learn on the subjects that I just mentioned but only having an open intellect and mind is worth going further than what I’m writing here.

IACOPO VETTORI

Iacopo and I have become friends thanks to Dante Alighieri, our passion and understanding of Dante’s work and the metaphysics concepts that are involved to explain narrations in Dante’s Comedy.

The way I encountered Iacopo is through his Italian reading of the Divine Comedy http://www.iacopovettori.it/recitazione/commedia/Default.aspx

Which has arrived at the Paradise Canto VIII. Iacopo has written about the three hypotheses about what we should expect to find at the end of our lives, his intelligent reasoning can be read if you follow this link http://www.iacopovettori.it/laterzaipotesi/eng/The_three_hypotheses.aspx

When I first read it I had many questions to ask Iacopo because I was raised Catholic and I now believe that what Pascal said about believing in God is logic and safe to do.

Iacopo is an atheist even if he has been studying for years the work of Dante who wrote the report of the travel in the outer world which he organized like Christians believe is like and added details that were part of legends of peasants of his time.

Through our email discussions I’ve grown and matured very much so many questions, fears and doubts about my accident and future are now completely resolved.

DANTE ALIGHIERI: THE DIVINE COMEDY

Dante is primarily important because he wrote the Comedy in his dialect of Tuscany which given the popularity that his Comedy had at the time became the Italian language still spoken today.
The subject of the Comedy wasn’t his mental elaboration; it was just the collection of stories used by normal people when trying to explain what may happen to our soul after death.
This is why his Comedy has been always a “best seller”. The narration of a real man about a travel made to the outer world, or the world of the dead, in which many well known people are met, is very credible and acceptable.
Dante gave a structure to the outer world very acceptable and even intuitive to the point that it became the way the Catholic religion structured its own explanation of question of mankind.
Whoever reads it today in the second millennium reacts exactly like who read it seven hundred years ago, surprise, curiosity and fascination.
Dante explores the outer world in company of Virgilio who was who wrote the bucolic poems about country and simple living.
Together the walk through the Hell where the souls of the people who in life did the unjust and cruel will be forever, each type of what’s called sin is punished with a different penalty and in a different part of this world.
After Hell they go up to Purgatory which is where the souls can be cleaned of the sins that aren’t called mortal but venial sins so they must be purified in different ways and times.
The end of this trip is dedicated to Paradise or heaven where the souls can feel the closeness to God and enjoy absolute freedom that extends to influence earthly matters.
The large number of famous people nominated and met in person by Dante along his trip is omni comprehensive of all the people of notice for the time when it was written so not only it teaches things by examples using well known lives but it does this using a very logical way.
I believe that this is the reason why the Divine Comedy became soon a very popular book to read and study and it still is seven hundred years after having been written.