A Biography of Dante Alighieri

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About A Biography Of Dante Alighieri

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.The foregoing line of Italian poetry is the first one of Dante's supreme work, of his world-poem generally known as The Divine Comedy. The present author, having learned by heart, ruminated, and repeated off and on for more than sixty years the said line, in fact from his college days when he first read it and memorized it in Dr. J. A. Carlyle's translation of the Inferno, may be permitted to say here that it has been and still is, according to his experience, the most suggestive line in all Dante for the poet's life and its right title, most embryonic and premonitory of his continuously evolving biography. Hence we shall dare place it to the fore in his own poetic vernacular as a kind of stepping-stone for the reader, and write it down in the very signs of the voice-tones of its maker. But probably these seven vocables of Italy will sound too foreign for some of our native students, and so an easy English translation of them will be appended, with every word telling its sense in the same consecutive order as the original, thus: In the middle of the journey of our life. Not a complete sentence and not intended to be: well, what comes next?First, then, it behooves us to select from this fragment one short phrase for immediate use: the Journey of our Life—the two nouns being capitalized for a little added stress (el Cammin di nostra Vita). Such is Dante's title of his own biography, as he writes it down in the opening line of his most distinctive book; and so we shall follow closely his example, in naming this record of his career Dante's Life Journey. Let it also be here noted that this title appears to have been given by the poet to his work after its completion during his last years (1320-21). Herein he would seem with the prime stroke of his pen to hit not only the exact designation but also the germinal conception of his masterpiece. Thus we may likewise deem the foregoing seven Ita