Today is the 689th anniversary of the death of Divine Comedy author Dante Alighieri

              PER ME SI VA LA NELLA CITTÀ DOLENTE

              PER ME SI VA NELL'  ETERNO DOLORE,

              PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE...  

              LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH'ENTRATE! 

                               - Id., Canto III, line 1 

                                 (inscription at the entrance to Hell) 

                (Through me is the way to the sorrowful city.

                Through me is the way to eternal suffering.

                Through me is the way to join the lost people.

                Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!) 

Today is the 689th anniversary of the death in Ravenna of the proto-Italian poet, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), whose allegorical traversal of hell, purgatory, and heaven in the Divina Commedia (the "Divine Comedy") is one of the major works of Renaissance - nay, world - literature.  A Florentine patrician, Dante was deeply affected by an early unrequited love for a noblewoman, Beatrice Portinari, that colored his outlook and writing for the rest of his life.  He was also active in local politics and as a result of the ongoing conflict between the Guelph and Ghibelline parties was banished from Florence in 1302 and wrote the Divina Commedia in exile, eventually settling in Ravenna.  With his magnum opus, Dante almost single-handedly established Tuscan as the literary language of Italy, and he also wrote a collection of prose and lyrics that celebrated his love for Beatrice, as well as treatises on language and politics. 

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