This year marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri (1265 – 14 September 1321), and as a great pioneer of the European Renaissance, Dante has left much more to posterity than the beautiful verses in his works. As a "political loser", why his works have been circulated for 700 years and are still regarded as classics by readers around the world today, what kind of "magic" in these works has caused countless scholars to spend a lot of energy just to explore the text. With great respect for the sages and a thirst for truth, I opened Dante's great work, the Divine Comedy, which took fifteen years and was finally completed in the final stages of his life.
Dante statue
Dante's creation and his life are very closely related to the times, interested friends can consult the preface to the Divine Comedy translated by Professor Tian Dewang, which is more detailed, here I take a small excerpt:
Dante, who failed in a series of political campaigns, was exiled by opposition parties. During the exile, Dante saw the magnificent rivers and mountains of the motherland, came into contact with all levels of society, deepened patriotic ideas, enriched the experience of life, and expanded his vision from Florence to the whole of Italy and even the entire Christian world. He saw that Italy and the whole of Europe were in a state of strife and chaos, explored the root causes of the chaos and the way to correct the chaos, realized that he had the historical mission of exposing reality, awakening people's hearts, and pointing out the road to political and moral rejuvenation to Italy, believing that as a poet, he wanted to complete this mission by creating a work with great artistic appeal. To this end, he interrupted the writing of the Analects and the Feast, and began composing the Divine Comedy around 1307. ”
Italian painter Michelino's Dante in the Florence Cathedral
Some people say that philosophy needs corresponding expression symbols to express its true meaning; where is the greatness of a great literary work, I think it is difficult to describe it clearly in ordinary words, at least I do not have the ability to learn it. Friends who have read Professor Tian Dewang's translation of the Divine Comedy must be like me, and they must have deeply understood the difficulty of reading this translation; the text full of metaphors and the passages containing philosophy bring a lot of difficulty to normal reading, not to mention that a large number of annotations are in the form of endnotes, so that readers need to "jump back and forth" to basically figure out what is being said!
The Italian proverb "Translator-betrayer" is a blatant rebuke of the translation of a literary work into another. Don't literary creators want the works that have condensed their efforts to be widely circulated? The answer is no. As Dante said: "Everyone knows that any work that is harmonious according to the laws of music cannot be translated from one language into another, without completely destroying its beauty and harmony." "The crux of the matter is here!"
I know that with my shallow literary literacy and comprehension, I will never be able to simplify and summarize this great work in a way that is completely in keeping with the logic and ideas of the book, let alone accurately reflect the true content of the book without reading the original Italian text and only the translated version of the prose. But in order to leave some reading traces for themselves, it also provides a way for friends who want to understand but can't turn the book for various reasons. In the days to come, I will share the completed Divine Comedy synopsis in chapter order according to my own understanding, so that friends who are interested in it can read it quickly; during the period, I may also introduce some other literary works, such as Homeric Epic, Aeneas, Decameron, etc., depending on the situation. Of course, the main starting point is personal hobbies, and if this process is suddenly interrupted, it is that I do not want to write or do not want to send it out; as for whether anyone reads it or likes it or not, it does not matter.
People who read the article are welcome to give sincere opinions, but I have no intention of arguing with others, and I hope that the trolls will be merciful under the mouth. Happy life to all! [Rose]
"Gaze" from Dante