conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Divine, Comedy, Dante with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Poetry?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Divine Comedy'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a category for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A category could be 'Vintage Classics book'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first four paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Divine Comedy
  Naturally enough, such passages created great difficulties for the Scholastics. For one thing, if soul is form and appears last, perhaps being actualized only at birth, it would seem that some other agency must govern the formation of the animal, especially since only something "in act" (fully realized) could bring anything from potentiality into act. Following Aristotle, most Scholastics adopted his theory that the active principle in the development of the foetus was the father's seed, the mother supplying only the matter, identified with the menstrual blood. Galen had recognized that what we now call the Fallopian tubes brought into the womb a substance that joined with the sperm, but he remained uncertain as to its exact function. Albert the Great considerably qualified the Aristotelian antithesis:
  The human soul is partly from within [i.e., biologically produced] and partly comes from outside, for, although the vegetative and the sensitive [soul] are drawn forth from matter by the formative principle that is in the combined blood of mother and father, still this formative principle would not have brought them forth so as to be the powers of a rational and intellectual form and substance, unless the very formative principle were informed and moved by the Intellect that moves all things in the work of generation. And thus the last complement, the intellectual form, is not infused by the pure first Intellect, the First Cause, through an instrument or through matter, but through his own light. Thus God is not said to create the rational soul out of anything preexisting; the intellect enters the embryo from what is extraneous to matter, but not from what is extraneous to nature, for the Intellect, the Author of nature, is not external to nature, except in so far as he is pure and unmixed with matter... but is more intimately within natural things than all other natural principles, none of which can operate any effect unless it is moved and shaped by him.
  On each of the terraces of Purgatory, the souls are instructed in their practice of virtue by examples of it, and in each case the first example is the Virgin Mary's conduct in an incident from the Gospels:
  Four out of five of these incidents are from the Gospel of Luke, indeed from the first two chapters of Luke; they are not related in any of the other Gospels. The fifth incident is the Virgin's intervention at the Wedding at Cana; it appears in the Gospel of John and in no other.
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conversations.value: four more paragraphs
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conversations.value: Barnes, John C. 1995. "Vestiges of the Liturgy in Dante's Verse." In Barnes / Cuilleanáin 1995:231-69.
  Bologna, Corrado. 1998. Il ritorno di Beatrice. Simmetrie dantesche fra Vita nova, "Petrose" e Commedia. Roma: Salerno Editrice.
  Aeneas: 1.65-66, 135-36; 5.91-93; 6.28-48; 7.37-63; 10.55-69; 17.19-45, 77-78; 18.136-38; 20.114-14; 30.48; 31.73; 32.109-117
  Buti, Francesco da: 1.8-9, 115-16; 6.16-18; 8.89-93; 9.140; 11.25; 13.106-29, 122-23; 19.25-33; 24.99; 30.14,
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
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conversations.value: Virgil (Virgilio): 2.61; 3.74; 6.67; 7.7; 8.64; 10.53; 13.79; 19.28; 21.14, 101, 103, 125; 22.10; 23.130; 24.119; 27.20, 118, 126; 29.56; 30.46, 49, 50, 55
  Martinez' and Durling's notes are designed for the first-time reader of the poem but include a wealth of new material unavailable elsewhere. Fifteen short essays explore special topics and controversial issues, including Dante's debts to Virgil and Ovid, his radical political views, his original conceptions of homosexuality, of moral growth, and of eschatology. Robert Turner's illustrations include maps, diagrams of Purgatory and the cosmos, and line drawings of objects and places mentioned in the poem.
  ROBERT M. DURLING is Professor Emeritus of English and Italian Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
  ROBERT TURNER has been a professional illustrator for more than 20 years. He works at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe.
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conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Divine Comedy
  Corso, however, had a clearer eye for political advantage than Dante. He formed alliances with both the Church and Angevin armies, who were marching close to Florence. The city, under a supposedly non-partisan government, sought to rally the guilds, who failed, however, to muster any unified defiance to the military threat. In early November 1301, while Dante was out of the city on a last-ditch diplomatic mission to Rome, the French armies under Charles de Valois (1270–1325) came within striking distance of Florence and installed the Blacks in power. Along with members of the White Guelf faction, Dante was banished from the city.
  Even more original than Dante's depiction of Hell is his picture of Purgatory. The doctrine of Purgatory had only recently been formulated, and such descriptions as were available generally represented it as a subterranean region in which penitents suffered punishments identical to those suffered by the eternally damned, save that their sufferings were only temporary in duration, endured as a remedial preparation for the pleasures of Heaven. Dante, for his own purposes, takes a very different view, drawing upon a talent for invention more associated today with a writer of science fiction. On this understanding, when Satan fell from Heaven, the impetus of his fall drove him to the centre of the terrestrial globe. But what, Dante seems to have asked himself, was the logical result of this? Where did the mass of earthly matter that Satan had displaced disappear to? His answer is that, since Satan struck the earth at the point which was later to be named Jerusalem, the core of matter that he gouged out was extruded into the southern hemisphere, at the antipodes of Jerusalem, to form a mountain-island – on the summit of which is the Garden of Eden. This mountain is now Mount Purgatory, where penitents will spend centuries on its slopes, recovering by their own willing efforts the happiness that was lost to humanity by the fall of Adam and Eve. Free as this flight of rigorous fancy undoubtedly is, it serves to embody some of Dante's most characteristic emphases, in the philosophical as well as the poetic sphere. Hence, for instance, Satan's fall, so far from precipitating disaster in God's universe, serves to create a realm in which sin can always be redeemed. Adam and Eve are created in Satan's stead. And even when they sin, their sins can be redeemed through penitential assimilation to the sufferings of Christ. Nor is redemption simply a matter of transcending one's human nature in pursuit of some transcendently angelic ideal. On the contrary, Dante's Purgatory as a natural environment – subject to the passage of time, the play of the senses in the diurnal alternation of day and night – invites its inhabitants to recover the human selfhood that they were always intended to enjoy through the full exercise of their intellectual and sensuous natures.
  This tendency has its roots in William Blake's observation that Milton in his depiction of Lucifer was 'of the devil's party without knowing it'. Since Blake first ventured this suggestion, it has become a wearisome cliché that spectacular displays of wickedness, which in real life would be abominable, are somehow more engaging in a literary work than a concern with goodness.
  In parallel with such optical exercises, Dante also calls upon his readers to train themselves in the field of speech and language. While vision may ultimately rise to heights to which language cannot aspire – thus Beatrice, who leads Dante to his final epiphany, is always superior to Virgil, who from the first is seen as Dante's teacher in the use of language – words are of utmost importance. They are the medium in which Dante himself is supremely a craftsman, one of the hallmarks of his style being a readiness to drawn upon all available registers of language, whether high or low, so as to dramatize or define his meaning.
  No translation is likely even to approach the voice print of Dante's verse unless it pays attention to effects such as these. But there is no real reason (save a lack of Dantean talent) why the rhythms of his eleven-syllable lines should not broadly be adopted in English. The translator needs to abandon too strong a commitment to the iamb as an organizing principle of a line. But free verse (along with Shakespeare) has taught us a great deal about how this might be achieved. The speaking voice never produces regular beats or equal stresses, but rather a constantly varied melody of half tones and quarter tones.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: four more paragraphs
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conversations.value: Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat. Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
  After receiving an answer so rigorously concerned with the natural workings of the mind, Dante's next question seeks assurance that our specifically human freedom of choice remains, and that, consequently, just rewards may be allocated after an assessment of our conscious decisions (lines 40–45). As before, Virgil says nothing directly about the actions of divine justice, nor about grace, redemption or charity. His approach is again philosophical, indeed scientific, and aims to demonstrate this by inductive reasoning from observable evidence. Our freedom is to be inferred from the way that human beings act. The argument concludes with a reference to how the moral laws that were first worked out by classical philosophers depend upon the existence of the inward freedom that Dante is now asking to have defined (lines 67–9). Moral laws are possible only because we are free and responsible beings. But in arguing this case, Virgil recognizes that there are areas of thought – eventually to be filled by the certainties of revealed religion – in which invisible realities can properly be known by arguments from visible effects.
  Lines 61–9: The southward expansion of French power, with each violent act, is registered by an ironic repetition of the phrase 'to put things right'. Normandy, Ponthieu, Gascony and Aquitaine had been in English hands until they were re-appropriated, the first two from King John in 1206, the latter two from Edward I in 1294.
  The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.. Normandy, Ponthieu, Gascony and Aquitaine had been in English hands until they were re-appropriated, the first two from King John in 1206, the latter two from Edward I in 1294.
  Lines 61–9: The southward expansion of French power, with each violent act, is registered by an ironic repetition of the phrase 'to put things right'. But in arguing this case, Virgil recognizes that there are areas of thought – eventually to be filled by the certainties of revealed religion – in which invisible realities can properly be known by arguments from visible effects. Moral laws are possible only because we are free and responsible beings. The argument concludes with a reference to how the moral laws that were first worked out by classical philosophers depend upon the existence of the inward freedom that Dante is now asking to have defined (lines 67–9). Our freedom is to be inferred from the way that human beings act. His approach is again philosophical, indeed scientific, and aims to demonstrate this by inductive reasoning from observable evidence. As before, Virgil says nothing directly about the actions of divine justice, nor about grace, redemption or charity.
  After receiving an answer so rigorously concerned with the natural workings of the mind, Dante's next question seeks assurance that our specifically human freedom of choice remains, and that, consequently, just rewards may be allocated after an assessment of our conscious decisions (lines 40–45). Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat
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conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
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conversations.value: Once this is clarified, the argument returns to the word 'rose' (line 106) and argues that this must be taken to indicate the ascent to a throne and therefore to kingship. Dante now designates kingly wisdom as the highest form of philosophy. Referring, at lines 95–6, to the Scriptural account in 1 Kings 3: 5–12, which speaks of Solomon's prayer to God, Aquinas identifies the height of Solomon's wisdom to be to ask for sufficient practical wisdom to rule his kingdom for the greater good of his fellow human beings. Unlike those concerned with the fine detail of theoretical or speculative knowledge, Solomon sought only the practical wisdom to benefit his subjects.
  Within [Wisdom] is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, sharp, irresistible, beneficent, loving to man, steadfast, dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all-surveying, penetrating all intelligent, pure and most subtle spirits; for Wisdom is quicker to move than any motion, she is so pure; she pervades and permeates all things. She is the breath of the power of God.
  At lines 37–60, Dante attributes to Solomon the great hymn of praise to the resurrection of the body. The Resurrection assures of our return to the bodily nature, now glorified, in which our temporal lives were lived. It is the height of Christian wisdom to see this as the final expression of God's purposes for us. And desire for the glorified body is now seen as the power that motivates even the Christian philosophers, who long for the restoration of their own 'dead bones' (line 63) and those of all who were dear to them.
  The office of bishop does not consist in peaked caps of sable or of some other wild beast from overseas, not in blazing red garments topped by collars of marten fur, not in flowing gold coverlets as ornamentation for their horses, and finally, not in the prancing lines of massed knights, nor in neighing horses champing at their spuming bits, but in uprightness of life and the practice of virtue.
  About an hour before sunrise at any point on earth, the sun, 6,000 miles to the east, will be at its noon-time point, below the horizon. At that same time, towards the west, the conical shadow that the earth casts into the cosmic system will be lowering close to the western horizon.