什麼是但丁

Dante Alighieri

義大利詩人。出身佛羅倫斯貴族世家，他的一生都在教宗和皇帝兩派黨羽（即歸爾甫派與吉伯林派〔Guelphs and Ghibellines〕）之間的衝突中度過。1302年當敵對的政治派系獲得優勢時，他被逐出佛羅倫斯，流亡在外，此後不再回來。他對比阿特麗斯（Beatrice Portinari，卒於1290年）精神上的愛情使生活有了方向，併爲她題獻了大部分的詩歌。與卡瓦爾坎蒂（Guido Cavalcanti）的偉大友誼有助於他往後的事業發展。他在《新生》（La Vita Nuova, 1293?）的詩中歌頌了比阿特麗斯。在流亡的艱難歲月裏，寫出了：《饗宴》（The Banquet，約1304～1307年）；《論俗語》（De vulgari eloquentia, 1304～1307），第一部關於義大利文學語言的理論性着作；《帝制論》（On Monarchy, 1313?），論述中世紀政治哲學的重要拉丁論文。他最聞名的作品是畫時代的史詩《神曲》（The Divine Comedy，約寫於1310～1314年，原標題僅爲Commedia），從深刻的基督教觀點來看待人類暫時和永遠的歸宿。這是一部關於普世人類宿命的寓言，形式上，朝聖者由羅馬詩人維吉爾（Virgil）帶領，行經地獄和煉獄，再由比阿特麗斯帶領到天堂。但丁以義大利文而非拉丁文寫作，幾乎隻手使義大利文成爲一種文學語言，而他也成爲歐洲文學史上的頂尖人物之一。

1265～1321年

Dante Alighieri

Italian poet. A native of Florence of noble ancestry, his life was shaped by the conflict between papal and imperial partisans (the Guelphs and Ghibellines). When the opposing political faction gained ascendancy, he was exiled (1302) from Florence, to which he never returned. His life was given direction by his spiritual love for Beatrice Portinari (died 1290), to whom he dedicated most of his poetry. His great friendship with Guido Cavalcanti shaped his later career as well. La Vita Nuova (1293?) celebrates Beatrice in verse. In his difficult years of exile, he wrote the verse collection The Banquet (c. 1304-7), De vulgari eloquentia (1304-7; “Concerning Vernacular Eloquence”), the first theoretical discussion of the Italian literary language; and On Monarchy (1313?), a major Latin treatise on medieval political philosophy. He is best known for the monumental epic poem The Divine Comedy (written c. 1310-14; originally titled simply Commedia), a profoundly Christian vision of human temporal and eternal destiny. It is an allegory of universal human destiny in the form of a pilgrim's journey through hell and purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, then to Paradise, guided by Beatrice. By writing it in Italian rather than Latin, Dante almost singlehandedly made Italian a literary language, and he stands as one of the towering figures of European literature.