Divine Comedian

DANTE VIVO--Giovanni Papini--Macmillan ($3.50).

If a jury of competent literati could be panelled and polled on the question "What is the world's No. 1 Poem?" they might have some difficulty in arriving at a verdict. But certainly many a vote would be cast for the Divina Commedia of Dante. Unread in these days except by amateurs of literature or professional students, this Catholic epic is one of the boasted glories of Italy. Many a schoolboy has heard of Dante and his Beatrice, could even recognize a picture of the poet, but no one knows much about his actual life. Biographer Papini, adducing no factual discoveries, intends his book to be "a moral and spiritual portrait." Readers will find it disappointingly dogmatic but its controversial scrappiness may whet their curiosity.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was a poet, a Catholic and a Florentine. So is Biographer Papini: without that happy concatenation of coincidence, says he, a full understanding of Dante is impossible. But anybody can at least partly understand the few known facts about him. Though of gentle birth, his father was a moneylender. Like every upstanding Florentine Dante was an active citizen, fought for his town against Arezzo and Pisa. In the battle of Campaldino he admitted that "he experienced great fear." When the political pendulum swung the other way Dante was first banished from Florence, later condemned to death. But he was never captured; he spent his 20 years of exile roaming over Italy, died at 56 of malaria.

The Beatrice he idolized was the wife of one Simone dei Bardi. Dante rarely met or spoke with her and she died very young. But, says Papini, Dante was no saint; there were "at least a dozen women in his life . . . there is no doubt that Dante was a sensual man." As a Catholic he was guilty of three besetting sins--lust, wrath, pride. "Dante is always a little aloof, and easily shows a surly temper. . . . [His] love is more of the head than the heart, more theological than evangelical." Of his wife Gemma and the children she bore him Papini says hardly a word. Of the divine fire that must have blazed behind Dante's cold Catholic exterior his biographer does not give even a pale reflection.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.