Dante (Penguin Lives)

Rating:
Summary: Dante is poet nr.1
Review: A luminous gem, this short biography, i.e.,Dante (Penguin Lives)
by R. W. B. Lewis , gives us the greatest medieval poet through the eyes of one of our most acute modern critics. With lucid economy, Lewis sketches out the essential facts of Dante's life--his childhood encounter with the enchanting Beatrice Portinari, his feats as a leader in Florentine politics and as a cavalryman in the Tuscan army, his bitter exile as a partisan of the vanquished White Guelphs. But Lewis always keeps his focus fixed on the power of Dante's imagination to transform terrestrial fact into the deathless art of poetry, a power exemplified supremely in the Commedia. Thus, former political adversaries metamorphose into characters trapped in hell, and the beloved Beatrice rises radiant and supreme as an image of redemption. With Lewis as our guide, readers explore a poet whose remarkable synthesis of satire and adoration would have a powerful effect on American letters through such writers as Emerson, Pound, and Eliot. The ideal commentary for readers discovering Dante for the first time

Rating:
Summary: helpful
Review: In order to understand Dante, one must be familiar with the times he lived in & his life, not only his writing. This book starts by telling you about Italian society he was born into, relevant history of the Guelphs & Ghibellines & Italy. This book also tells us a lot about Dante's personal circumstances & life. Much of the book, toward the 2nd half, gives a sort of synposis of parts of the Inferno, Purgatorio, & Paradiso. That part of the book I enjoy less. It's interesting, but there's very little organisation to it, & I wish more of the book were about Dante's life. I do anyway, though, want people to read this book to get to know Dante's life, times, & writing.

Rating:
Summary: Elusive
Review: Lewis's short biography of Dante is a pleasure to read. But at the end of it, one discovers that the book's subject is still elusive.

Lewis shines in setting the background against which Dante lived and wrote, helping those who aren't specialists in the tortured politics of 13th and 14th century Florence orient themselves in that whirlwind world. He also does a good job of describing the passion young Dante acquired for Beatrice and how his love influenced his ambitions as a poet. Finally, Lewis provides a pretty good walkthrough of Dante's poetic journey through hell, purgatory and paradise.

But in all fairness, most people who read this book will probably be more or less familiar with all three of these topics. My guess is that what they'll yearn for is a better understanding of who Dante the man was, an understanding that plumbs more deeply than the usual stories about Beatrice and Florentine feuds do.

Lewis's book won't help there. Dante the man remains elusive, hidden behind his poetry and the images. This isn't necessarily a criticism of Lewis's book. Dante is something of an enigma, even more so than many other poets. It may well be that no biographer can reveal Dante as he was to us of us who live today, half a millenium later.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Poet: His Life
Review: Several years ago I read The Divine Comedy. I've had some sense that Dante was a poet whose influence has rippled through the centuries. I'd even seen The prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the great scene where her class stares at Maggie Smith as she is lost in romantic musings about Dante and his Beatrice. But now, having read R.W.B. Lewis' Dante, part of the wonderful series Penguin Lives, I finally know something about the poet himself. Under the author's tutelage I was transported to 14th century Florence--its feuds and political upheavals--and the wonderful Dante soon to be exiled for life. This short, loving biography is a great filler-in of missing history and incomplete understandings. I recommend it to all serious readers of literature.

Rating:
Summary: Dazzling Spirituality
Review: This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept. My only regret is that even an abbreviated index is not provided. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject are directed to other sources.

When preparing to review various volumes in this series, I have struggled with determining what would be of greatest interest and assistance to those who read my reviews. Finally I decided that a few brief excerpts and then some concluding comments of my own would be appropriate.

On Dante's masterpiece: "The Commedia, to which the adjective Divina was affixed two centuries afterward, is, all things considered, the greatest single poem ever written; and in one perspective, as has been said, it is autobiographical: the journey of a man to find himself and make himself after having been cruelly mistreated in his homeland. It is also a rhythmic exploration of the entire cultural world Dante had inherited: classical, pre-Christian, Christian, medieval, Tuscan, and emphatically Florentine. And it is the long poetic tribute to Beatrice Portinari which Dante promised, at the end of the Vita Nuova." (pages 12 and 13)

On Dante's response to Beatrice's death: He "did more than write an occasional poem of memorial grief; he put together the work to which he gave the title La Vita Nuova di Dante Alighieri. It was essentially an act of compilation, probably begun in 1293 and finished two years later. Dante drew up[ a narrative account of his relationship with Beatrice Portinari, from his first sight of her at the May Day party in 1274 to her death sixteen years later, sprinkling through it the poems -- canzones, sonnets, a ballad -- written to enshrine each successive moment." (page 59)

On progression in the Paradiso: In it, "Dante ascends; he does not climb, as in the Purgatorio, but, as he is constantly remarking, is propelled upward with the speed of an arrow. He is swept up through the lower planets -- the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn; into the Fixed Stars; then upwards to the Primum Mobile, when come all distinctions of space and time, of 'where' and 'when,' through itself beyond space and time; to the Empyrean, the actual and eternal dwelling-place of the Three-in-One God, of the angels and the saints, of the community of the blessed." (page 170)

In the concluding portion of his biography, Lewis briefly but eloquently suggests the ubiquitous and energizing presence of Dante in English and American literature, notably in the works of Shelley, Byron, Robert Browning, Rossetti, Emerson, Pound, Eliot, and Warren. According to Lewis, that presence "sparkles and sings and smiles like one of the spirits in Paradise." The same can be said of Lewis' writing style which, in combination with his erudition, enables the modern reader to gain a greater appreciation of someone who lived more than 600 years ago but whose Comedy is as contemporary as tomorrow's sunrise.

As is also true of the other volumes in the "Penguin Lives" series, this one provides all of the essential historical and biographical information but its greatest strength lies in the extended commentary, in this instance by R.W.B. Lewis. He also includes a brief but sufficient "Bibliographical Notes" section for those who wish to learn more about Dante. I hope these brief excerpts encourage those who read this review to read Lewis' biography. It is indeed a brilliant achievement.