All language subtitles for Dante.Inferno.to.Paradise.S01E02.720p.WEBRip.x264-BAE

♪

Narrator as Dante:
O reader, do not ask of me

how I grew faint and frozen.

I cannot write it: all words

would fall far short
of what it was.

♪

I did not die,
and I was not alive;

think for yourself,
if you have any wit,

what I became,
deprived of life and death.

♪

Webb: As Dante was finishing
the "Inferno,"

which was just
the first part of

his 3-part epic poem,
the "Commedia,"

he'd been in exile
for almost 7 years,

forced from his beloved
city of Florence, homeless.

♪

Being exiled in Dante's time

is something we really can't
comprehend fully now.

[Thunder]

Within the gates of
the city was security.

Alone,
lost and uprooted, vulnerable,

Dante had to keep moving,

and the "Commedia," his guide
through the afterlife.

It is because of his exile
we get the gift of this poem,

but it's a very painful
condition from which he writes.

♪

[Wind blowing]

♪

Narrator: By the spring of 1307,

6 Easters had come and gone

since Dante's exile
had begun.

6 years of wandering,
impoverished, unmoored--

far from family and home,
at constant risk.

An itinerant beggar, he wrote,

forced to rely
on the mercy of the lords

of the Tuscan high country
for protection,

and consumed now with
the creation of a vast poem

unlike anything that had
ever been written before--

a poem which, he hoped,
if he could only

find a way to finish it,
might serve to confirm

his greatness as a writer

and provide him
with a passport

which might carry him
triumphantly home.

♪

The poem itself
told of a fateful
and phantasmagorical journey

Dante had undertaken
6 years earlier,

in the spring of 1300, before
his woeful exile had begun--

a journey that would
take him through

the 3 realms of the underworld
and afterlife--

from darkness to redemption.

♪

A journey that
had itself started,

with haunting specificity,

3 days before Easter--
in the early hours of

April 8th, 1300--

in the terrible
darkness, anguish,

and despair of Good Friday.

♪

Bruscagli: In the "Divine
Comedy," there's this crossing

between the individual life
of Dante

and the collective life
of Christianity.

Because the week of Easter,
which goes from

the passion and crucifixion
of Christ

to his resurrection,

is the crucial moment
of the Catholic faith,

the moment where
you go from the bottom

of destitution and desperation

to the peak of
hope and happiness.

♪

In this sense, the "Comedy"
reflects what happens

during the week of Easter,
which goes from

the abyss of
death and abandonment

to the resurrection,
to the new life
of Easter Sunday.

♪

Narrator: Every spring,
at Easter time in particular,

the pain of his situation
came over him acutely,

along with an enormous longing
to go home,

to return to the city
that had spurned him,

to the great baptistry
of St. John--

the center of all that was good
in Florence, for Dante--

the beating heart of all hope
and love and renewal...

♪

a place that he wished
to return to

almost as much as he longed
to find some way back

to the haunting beautiful
Florentine girl

he had loved passionately
since childhood,

and who had died more than
15 years earlier--Beatrice.

♪

Webb: For Dante, the notion of
returning to Florence

is something that looms
so large for him.

You know, he talks about
going back to

the baptistry of Florence,
but already in terms where

we know he suspects
that may not be possible.

♪

Timothy Verdon: When Dante
speaks of the baptistry,

he calls it "his beautiful
San Giovanni"--

"il bel San Giovanni."

♪

The baptistry was
the most magnificent building

in the city of Florence

and, perhaps,
in all of Tuscany.

And Dante speaks of it
as a place of identity.

♪

Dante's great ancestor,
Cacciaguida,

in the "Divine Comedy"
very specifically says,

"In this place I became,
at the same time,

Cacciaguida and a Christian."

He might have added,
"I also became a Florentine,"

because all children
born in Florence

were brought here
to be baptized.

No other church had
the privilege of being

able to give
the sacrament of baptism.

And Florentines returned
to this building

on any number of
important occasions.

♪

Every year, in Dante's time,

on the day when
the church remembers

the death of Christ,
Good Friday,

in Florence, all house fires
were extinguished.

♪

The city went
dark and cold on Good Friday

and would remain so for
two days, until Holy Saturday,

the day before
Christ's resurrection.

♪

And when they
begin to celebrate

the signs of
his resurrection,

here in the baptistry, in
the afternoon of Holy Saturday,

they lit a bonfire
inside the baptistry.

♪

If we imagine for a moment
on what might be

a dark spring day,
a bonfire whose flames

illuminate the glittering gold
background mosaics

and the then-gleaming marbles,

and from that bonfire then,

the flame for the Easter
candle--the pastoral candle,

which symbolizes Christ's
resurrection--was taken,

and from that same bonfire,
the heads of

all Florentines families came,
with little buckets,

to take ardent coals

to take them to their homes,

to again light
the fires that would

make it possible to cook,

to end the fast that began
on Good Friday.

And so, the light and heat
and warm food,

with which Florentines
lived all year,

came from a fire
that had been illuminated

in this place of baptism

where, as children,
they had been inducted

into the hope of eternal life.

♪

This was a refining fire.
It was a vital fire.

It was, in some way,
a symbol of

the fire of the Holy Spirit,
which consumes sin

and which makes us, as it were,
flaming torches,

giving light
and truth to others.

♪

[Wind blowing]

Narrator: Sometime
in the spring of 1307,

as the exiled poet
made his way east

towards the protection of
new patrons at Casentino,

the unfinished manuscript
of "Inferno"

in a satchel on his back,

Dante found himself, not for
the first time, as he wrote,

"in a flash of lightning"--

lovestruck,
and all but overwhelmed

by the beauty of a woman
he chanced to encounter

somewhere along the streams
of the Arno--

a brief if wild
storm of tempestuous feeling

of the kind he had
long sought to master,

which would come back
to haunt him

before he came to the end

of the next part of
his poem--"Purgatorio."

Barolini: Dante was famous
for lust.

That's how the early biographers
talk about him.

His poems before the "Comedia"

are among the most erotic poems
that have ever been written.

I actually think this was a man

of enormous erotic life.

So, in terms of
what he struggled with,

I don't know with
precision--certainly pride--

but I think it did
have more to do with passion.

♪

Narrator: It was summertime,
in all likelihood,

when he neared Casentino
and the headwaters of the Arno,

and finally came under the
refuge of Count Guido Salvatico,

at the castle of Poppi.

♪

It was there, as he settled
into his new haven,

that Dante would soon begin
to step in his mind

up the first luminous terraces
of the mountain of Purgatory

on a journey that would lead
to the very top of the world

and thence on to the farthest
reaches of Heaven.

♪

Adoyo: As Virgil and Dante
emerge out of Inferno

and end up on the shores
of Purgatory,

they're realizing that
now they're in Easter Sunday,

the moment of resurrection,
the re-emergence...

and they're re-emerging into
the realm of penitence.

♪

I like to think of Purgatorio
as a realm of hope.

Inferno had been
the realm of no hope.

Purgatorio is
a realm of hope. Why?

Because with the purging
of the sins,

then one ends up in the realm
of salvation, in Heaven.

I think that one of
the things that is in Dante

is a tension between

what human beings are
in their worst moments,

and what they can aspire to be.

And this is part of what makes
the "Purgatorio" so moving,

is to see people who are still
part of their old lives,

but are now becoming better.

Or they're better versions
of themselves.

♪

Ledda: In the first canto
of "Purgatorio,"

the first thing that Dante sees
is the sky before the dawn.

And he says, "Sweet color of
eastern sapphires--

dolce color d'oriental zaffiro."

Narrator: As Dante and Virgil
stood in silent wonder

at the foot of the mountain
on Purgatory's rocky shore,

their gaze was drawn
to a solitary figure

standing at
the mountain's foot,

looking with stern perplexity
at the living being before him

and his phantom companion.

♪

[Thunder]

It was the guardian
and gate-keeper of Purgatory--

Cato of Utica--
a Roman Senator

who had committed suicide

46 years before
the birth of Christ,

so dedicated to the freedom
of Republican Rome

that he had stabbed himself
in the bowels

rather than submit
to a life of slavery

under the tyranny of Caesar.

♪

Bruscagli: Cato is
the guardian of Purgatory.

Cato was a pagan
and committed suicide.

So, why is he there?

Because he chose
to sacrifice his life

not to become
a servant of Caesar.

So, he is there
as a champion of liberty.

♪

Who are you--who,
against the hidden river,

were able to escape
the eternal prison?...

Who was your guide?
when, you were set free?

The laws of the abyss--
have they been broken?

♪

Virgil: I do not come
through my own self.

♪

There was a lady
sent from Heaven.

Her pleas led me
to help and guide this man...

♪

Ledda: Dante in the beginning of
"Purgatorio" is described

by Virgil as one who is
searching for freedom.

"Purgatorio" is the voyage
to freedom--

freedom from vice, from sin.

Now may it please you
to approve his coming;

he goes in search of liberty--

so precious, as he who gives
his life for it must know.

[Wind blowing]

...Go then; but first

wind a smooth rush around his
waist and bathe his face,

to wash away
all of Hell's stains;

for it would not be seemly

to approach with eyes
still dimmed by any mists,...

the first custodian angel,
one from Paradise.

♪

Narrator:
As Cato finished speaking,

a light of dazzling whiteness

approached from across the sea.

It was a winged angel of God--

ushering a boatload bearing
more than 100 new spirits

to the shore where
Virgil and Dante stood.

♪

And with that,
Cato bid them start

the long and arduous journey
up the mountain towards Heaven.

♪

The ascent of
Purgatory had begun.

♪

Bruscagli: The realm
of Purgatory

is really Dante's invention--

from a theological,
moral, psychological,

and even topographical
point of view.

♪

Christianity had always
known--more or less--

that there was a Hell--

a dark, underground realm,
horrific place,

reserved for
the unrepentant sinners,

and that there was
a Paradise--

a beautiful place
in the heavenly empyrean

destined for the eternal
happiness of the good.

But what about Purgatory?

Did a place called Purgatory
actually exist?

And if so, where was it,
and for what purpose?

Purgatory really was not
a very well defined place

before Dante got
his hands on it.

So, there's this very odd
way in which

this literary figure
had an immense influence

over the ways
that Catholic doctrine

got depicted from then on.

♪

Narrator: As Dante the pilgrim
would soon discover,

with Virgil at his side,
the steeply rising

rock-strewn terraces
of Purgatory,

on the other side of the world,

mirrored in reverse

the 9
descending circles of Hell...

ascending from more
grievous sins, now repented,

in the lower terraces--

pride, envy, wrath, and sloth--

to less grievous ones
further up--

avarice, gluttony,
and, finally, lust.

But where the souls in Hell
were fixed for all eternity

in the circle to which
they had been assigned,

the penitent souls
in Purgatory

were in constant movement up.

And where time did not exist

in the eternal hopeless
darkness of Hell,

Purgatory existed in
the same temporal realm

as the human world itself,

moved by the same
shifting winds,

illuminated by the same
shifting light

of sun, moon, and stars.

♪

Bruscagli: The mountain of
Purgatory according to Dante

is a part of
the earth's landscape.

It is something that exists
on the surface of our planet.

And that's why
Purgatory seems

like an extension
of human life.

Dante goes to sleep
in Purgatory and dreams.

So, Purgatory really is
a restoration

of this almost biological
rhythm of human life.

Ledda: In "Purgatorio,"
the souls are there--

but not eternally,
temporarily, for a time.

They have to move
to the next terrace.

So, there is also a journey,
a pilgrimage.

The journey
of the life continues.

Purgatory is
the continuation of the exile

from the earthly exile
to the homeland, towards God.

♪

Gragnolati: One can understand
the process of Purgatory

as that which
allows the soul precisely

to go out of
its own obsessions.

♪

One can think of Hell as
the rigidity of identity.

It's like continuing
to be stuck

in one's own obsessions,
in the past.

Purgatory is the therapy
that allows the soul

to abandon all that rigidity.

♪

And it's the moment where
the collectivity is revealed.

Souls in Purgatory
help each other.

And this is really
like a transformation

that helps the soul
precisely to go beyond.

Webb: Throughout the
"Purgatorio," in fact, we see

these groups working together.

They pray together,
they speak together.

We might even think of it as
a kind of a group therapy.

In "Inferno," it's as if
time is frozen.

♪

Bruscagli:
Purgatory is the opposite.

Everything is
in movement in Purgatory.

We enter a dimension
where not only time counts,

but everything revolves about

a new perception of time.

♪

Because Purgatory is ephemeral.

Purgatory is not
destined to last forever.

So, it is structurally tied
to the passing of time.

♪

Guy Raffa: Dante makes Purgatory
into a very earthly

sort of place.

And he will meet spirits
who, while they are

purifying themselves,
getting ready to go to Heaven,

are still very attached
to their earthly lives.

They're almost nostalgic
for the lives

that they left behind, and the
people that they left behind.

He really describes
Purgatory as this mountain

in which spirits who are
destined for Heaven,

everybody in Purgatory
is saved, but they have to

purify themselves first
by going through

the different levels
of Purgatory

before they are ready
to ascend to the stars.

♪

Narrator: On the lowermost
terraces of the mountain,

as Dante imagined it,
was a special zone

for souls who must wait before
entering Purgatory itself.

One such soul was the first
that Dante would meet--

on the mountain's
second terrace--

when he encountered Manfred,
a great Ghibelline soldier,

the son of
Frederick the Second

and sworn enemy of the church,

who had been killed at
the Battle of Benevento

and excommunicated by the pope--
not once but twice--

but who, just before dying,
had surrendered to God

and been saved,

though his broken body itself
had been cast out,

and buried ignominiously,
never to be found.

♪

Whoever you may be, as you
move forward, turn and see:

consider if beyond--
you've ever seen me.

♪

Look now.

♪

I am Manfred, the grandson of
the Empress Constance;

♪

thus, I pray that, when you
reach the world again,

you may go to
my lovely daughter,

mother of kings of
Sicily and Aragon--

♪

Tell her the truth,

lest she's been told
something other.

♪

After my body had been
shattered by two fatal blows,

in tears, I then
consigned myself

to Him who willingly forgives.

♪

My sins were ghastly,
but the Infinite Goodness

has arms so wide
that It accepts

who ever would return,
imploring It.

Now...rain bathes my bones,

♪

the wind has driven them
beyond the Kingdom,

near the Verde's banks...

♪

but despite the Church's curse,
there is no one so lost

that the eternal love
cannot return--

as long as hope shows
something green.

♪

Raffa: Manfred was the son
of an emperor

who died in a battle in 1266.

And because he'd
been excommunicated
not once but twice

by different popes,
when he was buried,

because he was a heretic,
his bones needed to be thrown

into territory that was
not sacred.

But yet, he's still saved.

And so, he makes that point
to Dante,

that it doesn't matter
what other people

think on earth, even the pope.

It matters what was
going on in his heart.

♪

Narrator: Continuing their
ascent up the rocky slopes
of Purgatory,

Dante and Virgil
soon encountered

another group of souls:

those who had died
violent deaths

and achieved salvation only at
the last possible moment...

♪

including, among them,
a young woman from Siena,

Pia de' Tolomei, who had been
murdered by her husband

in the swamp lands of Maremma

and died without
receiving absolution.

♪

Voices: O soul.

♪

O soul.

♪

O soul who make
your way to gladness

with the limbs
you had at birth,

do stay
your steps awhile...

to see if there are any
among us whom you knew,

that you might carry word
of him--or her--beyond.

♪

Raffa: One of the most beautiful
parts of Dante's Purgatory

is the reciprocity between
the living and the dead,

the spirits in Purgatory
persistently ask Dante

to tell their relatives
and other people

that they left behind
to pray for them

so that they can speed their
journey up the mountain

and get
to Heaven more quickly.

[Wind blowing]

Dante even goes against
the theology of his day.

He allows the souls
in Purgatory

to pray for the people on earth
and to help them.

Dante says, "I'm going to
create this world in which

"the living and the dead
really have a communion,

a conversation between them."

♪

Narrator: At the very end
of the scene,

Pia de' Tolomei implored Dante
not to forget her

when he returned to
the land of the living,

as she had no one else
to pray for her deliverance.

♪

Pray, after your
returning to the world,

when, after your long
journeying, you've rested, ...

♪

May you remember me,
who am La Pia;

♪

Siena made me--
Maremma unmade me:

♪

he--who, when we were wed,
gave me his pledge...

and then, as nuptial ring,
his gem--knows that.

♪

[Wind blowing]
[Bird cawing]

♪

Narrator: In 1309,
stunning news

rocked the Italian peninsula

when word came that
the seat of the papacy

had been moved by Pope Clement
from Rome to Avignon in France,

where it would remain
for the next 69 years--

abducted, in effect,
by the French King Philip,

in a blow that for Dante,
and Italians everywhere,

struck at the very heart
of their pride and identity.

The Church, as Dante
would soon say

of the shocking removal,

had made itself a whore
to the French giant.

♪

That same year, however,

equally momentous news arrived

when word came that
far to the north,

Henry of Luxembourg
had been elected

Emperor of
the Holy Roman Empire,

and two months later
crowned King of Germany,

bringing the promise of
a restoration of political order

on the unquiet
Italian peninsula--

and accelerating
a transformation
long in the making

in Dante's
political allegiances--

as the prospect that
the new emperor

might chasten the corrupt
worldly ambitions of the pope

loomed like a utopian dream.

♪

Bruscagli: It's a kind of
moment of passage

in Dante's especially
political thought,

because this is the moment
where Dante

becomes such a fierce supporter
of the emperor.

♪

Narrator: In January 1311,
when Henry himself

came south
to be crowned in Milan,

Dante was there to meet him--

urging him to bring Florence
to heel,

and to bring to an end decades
of meddling by the pope.

♪

Pertile: Dante was hopeful
that Henry would in a sense

open up the doors
of the city to Dante.

Then Dante could
return to Florence

in a position of strength.

Webb: He wanted to go back
and be crowned poet laureate

at his bel San Giovanni,

the baptistry where he was

first baptized into the faith.

And so, there's this
kind of immense hope

for a resolution to his exile.

♪

All of the penitents

in each terrace of Purgatorio

are at different stages.

Everyone there is
going through their own

personalized experience
of penance.

And, therefore, some will be
further along than others.

♪

Some will be
deeper into the vice,

some will be closer
to the opposing virtue.

♪

Dante puts himself forward
not as particularly exemplary,

not as a shining paragon
of all virtues,

but rather as someone like
the rest of us reading the poem,

who ourselves will
have some of his faults

and might want to aspire
to some of the virtues

that are presented
throughout the "Purgatorio."

And so, he tells us,
for instance, that

he's going to have to spend
significant amounts of time

on the Terrace of Pride,

but envy's not really
his thing.

♪

Narrator: Having climbed
all the terraces but one,

Virgil and Dante ascended
now to the Terrace of Lust,

where purging souls
repented the tempests

of erotic feeling that had
so overtaken them in life,

and in refining fires,

not of punishment
but purification,

sought to accommodate
themselves to desires

they do not so much repudiate

as seek to understand
and refine.

♪

Quint: Poets before Dante,
and the poets after him,

did not particularly see
erotic love

leading towards the love
of God.

And I think that
that's what makes

the "Divine Comedy" powerful
and speaks to us,

is that we are sexual beings,
that we have these desires,

that they are not simply illicit
and lead us into temptations.

And they're not to be
simply overcome

but, in some ways,
to be transformed.

♪

Narrator: As the two
pilgrims neared

the very end of the terrace,

they found themselves
face to face

with two of the greatest
love poets of all time--

an exquisite lyricist named
Guido Guinezzelli--

and the great Provencal
troubadour Arnaut Daniel--

who more than anyone else
had inspired Dante

to use the vernacular
to put into words

feelings of longing and love.

♪

Man as Daniel: Ieu sui Arnaut,
que plor e vau cantan;

♪

I am Arnaut, who, going,
weep and sing;

♪

with grief, I see
my former folly;

♪

with joy, I see
the hoped-for day draw near.

♪

Now--I pray you--by
the Power that conducts you

to the summit of the stairway,

remember, at time opportune,
my pain!

♪

sovenha vos
a temps de ma dolor!

♪

Poi s'ascose
nel foco che li affina.

♪

Fazzini as Dante:
Then he withdrew once again

into the fire that refines.

♪

Narrator: The purging soul
of Arnaut Daniel

had scarcely withdrawn
into the flames,

when from beyond
the flickering wall of fire

an angelic emissary appeared,

and to Dante's deep dismay
made clear

that all who would go beyond
must themselves

pass through the same refining
wall of fire.

♪

Paralyzed with fear,
Dante adamantly refused

to step into
the wall of flames

until Virgil,
despairing he might never

get his frightened
charge across,

reminded him that Beatrice

was awaiting him
on the other side.

♪

Adoyo: Remember--when we first
got into the "Commedia"--

we learned that Beatrice
was the one who was responsible

for this journey happening
in the first place.

And we anticipate
her arrival

for the entire journey.

It's beautiful how Dante's
love and desire to see her

is always the impetus that
drives him forward

when his energy flags.

When he's too frightened,
when he gets distracted,

Virgil can always invoke
Beatrice's name

to get him moving.

Love prompted me.

That love which
makes me speak.

♪

Giunta: Dante writes
the "Purgatorio"

at the beginning of the second
decade of the 14th century.

So, 1310-15.

Beatrice is dead since 1290,

so, it's a 25-years gap.

And the whole structure
of the "Comedy"

is like a journey to Beatrice.

So, very touching is this
long, long link of devotion

to a woman he never
touched, in fact.

♪

Narrator: Having passed
through the flames,

Virgil and Dante
rested for the night

on the steps above
the final terrace.

They had
neared the very summit.

And it was now here,
when they had reached

the highest step,
with the threshold of

the Garden of Earthly Paradise
before them,

that Virgil turned his gaze
lovingly to his charge

and spoke.

♪

Virgil: My son, you've seen
the temporary fire

and the eternal fire;

you have reached the place
past which my powers cannot see.

I've brought you here
through intellect and art;

♪

from now on,
let pleasure be your guide;

♪

you're past the steep
and narrow paths.

♪

Look at the sun that
shines upon your brow;

♪

look at the grasses, flowers,
and the shrubs born here,

spontaneously,
out of the earth.

♪

Among them,
you can rest or walk

until the coming of the glad
and lovely eyes--

♪

those eyes that, weeping,
sent me to your side.

♪

Await no further word from me:

your will is free, erect,
and whole--

to act against that
would be to err:

♪

therefore I crown and miter you
over yourself.

♪

Narrator: It was
a momentous turning point,

and for Dante, almost
overwhelming to conceive

that thanks to Virgil,
and the long journey

they had undertaken together,

he who had once been lost

had finally
found himself again--

that once so self-enchained,
he was now free.

♪

Glancing towards
his beloved mentor,

Dante now stepped
slowly and tremulously

into the world that
lay before him--

an ancient forest

unlike anything he had
ever seen before--

dense, alive with green,
divine.

♪

He had taken only a few steps
into this enchanted world

when a solitary figure--a woman
he had never seen before--

appeared through the trees,

singing softly as she
gathered flowers,

and when she had
come close enough,

confirming for him
that he had come to the place

where humankind
had once been innocent,

and where Adam and Eve
had first sinned and fallen.

♪

Deep in the shimmering
forest beyond her,

Dante could just make out
7 slender trees,

which, as he approached,
seemed to take the shape

of a sacred candelabra.

♪

Astonished, Dante turned
back to Virgil for a moment,

who returned his gaze
with eyes no less amazed.

♪

And now, when he turned back,

a shimmering procession
of figures

had begun to drift into view--

solemn elders, two by two,

angelic men and women,

singing as they moved,

with wreaths of lilies
on their heads,

and behind them
4 great 6-winged creatures

in whose midst a chariot moved,
drawn by a gryphon.

♪

It was then--as the procession
came to a halt--

that Dante finally
made out the figure

of an ineffably beautiful,

infinitely familiar woman
in its midst.

♪

It was the moment
of epiphany and return

Dante had been
dreaming of for years.

♪

Narrator as Dante:
I have at times
seen all the eastern sky

becoming rose as day began;

and seen adorned in lovely blue
the rest of Heaven;

and seen the sun's face
rise so veiled

that it was tempered
by the mist,

and could permit the eye
to look at length upon it;

♪

so within a cloud of flowers

that were cast
by the angelic hands...

a woman showed herself to me--

above a white veil, she was
crowned with olive boughs--

her cape was green;
her dress beneath, flame-red...

♪

Within her presence, I had
once been used to feeling--

trembling--wonder,
dissolution;

Still, though...
now she was veiled-- ...,

by way of hidden force
that she could move,

I felt the mighty power
of old love.

♪

As soon as that deep force
had struck my vision

I turned around
and to my left--....

to say to Virgil:
"I am left with less than

"one drop of my blood
that does not tremble:

I recognize the signs
of the old flame."

♪

Narrator: But to
Dante's unutterable

grief and sorrow,

Virgil was no longer there.

♪

Narrator as Dante: Virgil
had deprived us of himself,

Virgil, the gentlest father,

Virgil, to whom I gave myself
for my salvation;

and even all
our ancient mother lost

was not enough to keep my
cheeks, though washed with dew,

from darkening again
with tears.

♪

Barolini: For many readers,

that moment
when we lose Virgil

near the end of Purgatory

remains the ultimate moment
of the poem.

Because what Dante
really gives us

is experiencing loss
in real time as readers.

Ledda: Virgil, the guide in
Hell and Purgatory, the poet,

the author, the beloved master,

had to go back to Limbo.

He is condemned to Hell.

He is in the eternal exile,
he never can see God,

never can have
the knowledge he desired.

But we love Virgil.
Dante loves Virgil.

Dante cries
when Virgil leaves.

♪

Dante, though Virgil
is leaving you,

♪

do not yet weep,
do not weep yet.

♪

Bruscagli: This is the first
time that Dante's name

is uttered in
the "Divine Comedy,"

when Beatrice addresses him,
calling him by name.

But, of course,
when Dante meets her

at the end of Purgatory,
when there is this meeting--

the Beatrice that he finds
is completely different.

♪

She has grown into
something totally unexpected,

when you come
to the end of Purgatory.

♪

Dante...Dante...Dante,
though Virgil is leaving you,

♪

do not yet weep,
do not weep yet,

♪

you'll need your tears for what
another sword must yet inflict.

♪

Pertile: She treats him
as a traitor,

with severity as a boy,
really, as a young man,

who's not grown enough
to take care of himself.

♪

Here Beatrice is
preparing herself

to become the Beatrice
of Paradiso.

Look here!

For I am Beatrice, I am!

♪

How were you able
to ascend the mountain?

Did you not know
that man is happy here?

Adoyo: When she finally arrives

and her demeanor is severe

and dismissive
and challenging--

"how dare you
show your face here"--

it is confounding, because
this is all he's wanted.

This is what has
driven him to this point.

And she will not have it.

♪

Narrator:
As Dante averted his gaze,

and looked down with
shame and mortification,

a sigh of sympathy
on his behalf

went up from the host of
angelic figures

in the procession
before them...

Angels: Lady, why shame him so?

Narrator: bringing Dante
to even greater tears,

and spurring Beatrice
to explain to them

why her manner was so severe.

♪

I'm more concerned that
my reply be understood

by him who weeps beyond,

so that his sorrow's measure
match his sin...

♪

Adoyo: And this is where then
she gets to articulate

that that thing
that he had intuited

when he was 9 years old--

that she signified, symbolized,

pointed to something beyond
the merely material--

♪

that is an intuition

that he ought
to have cultivated.

♪

He, when young,
was such--potentially--

that any propensity
innate in him

would have prodigiously
succeeded, had he acted.

But where the soil
has finer vigor,

there precisely--when untilled
or badly seeded--

♪

will that terrain grow
wilder and more noxious.

♪

My countenance
sustained him for a while;

showing him my youthful eyes,

I led him with me toward
the way of righteousness.

♪

As soon as I, upon the
threshold of my second age,

had changed my life,

he took himself away from me
and followed after another;

when, from flesh to spirit,
I had risen,

and my goodness and my beauty
had grown,

I was less dear to him,
less welcome:

♪

he turned his footsteps
towards an untrue path;

followed counterfeits
of goodness,

who will never pay in full

what they have promised.

♪

He fell so far there were
no other means

to lead him to salvation,
except this:

to let him see the people
who were lost.

♪

Adoyo: Here's Beatrice,
recalling to him

what he already knew,

and he recognizes it,

and is deeply,
deeply contrite.

Not because it's
a false accusation,

but because it is too true.

Humblingly so.

♪

Fazzini as Dante: Beneath
her veil, beyond the stream,

she seemed so to surpass
her former self in beauty...

♪

as, here on earth,
she had surpassed all others.

♪

The nettle of remorse
so stung me then, ...

that those among
all other things

that once allured my love

became most hateful to me.

♪

Such self-indictment
seized my heart

that I collapsed,
my senses slack;

♪

what I became is known to her
who was the cause of it.

♪

Narrator: When Dante's
piercing self-indictment

and heartfelt confession

had brought to a climax
his own purgatorial journey,

he was solemnly bathed
in the two unending streams

that flowed through
the enchanted forest--

first, in the waters of Lethe,

that washed away
the memories of sin,

then in the waters of Eunoe,

that restored memories
of goodness and innocence.

♪

And so, the final canto of
Purgatory came to an end--

and with it
the second great part

of Dante's vast poem.

And as it did,
Beatrice and Dante--

readied themselves
to leave Purgatory

once and for all--

"pure at last, and prepared
to climb unto the stars."

♪

All through the winter of
1311 and 1312,

Dante was in Genoa
as the armies of Henry VII

gathered to the south
near Rome,

where that spring, the emperor
was crowned yet again.

♪

Declaring papal authority
inferior to his own--

and all of Italy
subject to imperial rule--

Henry then prepared
to lay siege

to the Guelph stronghold
of Florence.

Bruscagli: When the emperor
Henry VII

came down to Italy to restore

the rights of the empire
around the peninsula,

it's a project that,
as we know,

Dante totally supported
at that point.

But the city of
Florence responded

in a very fierce way.

[Horse whinnying, explosions]

Narrator: For 6 weeks,
the city put up

staunch resistance,
until in the end,

the emperor's forces
were forced to withdraw,

to Dante's
bitter disappointment.

♪

The following year,
Henry regrouped his forces,

and was preparing
to lay siege to Siena

when late that summer,
he was stricken with malaria,

and died on
August 24th, 1313.

He was 40 years old,
and with his death

any hopes of imperial rule
on the Italian peninsula

quickly withered
and faded away.

♪

The following year,
in 1314, with Pope Clement

re-asserting papal rights
over the Holy Roman Empire,

"Inferno," the first canticle
of Dante's great poem,

was published
for the first time--

followed, not long after,
by "Purgatorio."

♪

Dante had in all probability
not yet even begun "Paradiso,"

the third and final canticle
of the monumental undertaking.

But as copies of the first
two parts of the poem

began to circulate through
the courts of northern Italy,

his reputation
began to soar upward.

♪

In May 1315,
officials in Florence,

after years of refusing
to grant him amnesty,

finally offered
the increasingly famous poet

a chance to return home--

on condition that
he publicly ask for grace,

pay a fee to the commune,

and undergo a humiliating
ceremony of confession

in front of civic dignitaries.

♪

Outraged that
the terms required

acknowledging himself to be
a criminal, Dante refused.

Alan Cox as Boccaccio:
And as the poet himself

wrote to the elders, in a fury:

If Florence is to be entered
by no other path,

then never
will I enter Florence.

♪

Webb: I think that probably
was one of the major points

when he sort of realized
he probably would
never be going back.

And then I think you do see
this shift where

he's no longer seeing, perhaps,
the most concrete solutions

for how things are going
to work out in this world.

There's this sort of sense
to where it's
the end of the "Paradiso"

where certain earthly chances
have been lost.

Dante does not see
the same kind of hope

for a resolution
in the earthly realm

that he had seen earlier.

So, I think there
is kind of a dark turn

that happens at some point...

♪

but that dark turn
does not occlude

the immense luminosity,
and the joy of the "Paradiso,"

because what he's suggesting
is that we need

to look beyond the immediacy
of our earthly situations.

[Wind blowing]

Narrator: Dante's whereabouts
in the years

following Henry's death

are veiled in uncertainty.

But sometime in 1316--
whether in Pisa or Verona--

he seems to have begun work on
the first cantos of "Paradiso."

♪

Narrator as Dante: The glory
of the One who moves all things

permeates the universe and glows

in one part more
and in another less.

I was within the heaven
that receives

more of His light;
and I saw things that he

who from that height descends,

forgets or cannot speak;

for nearing its desired end,

our intellect sinks
into an abyss

so deep that memory
fails to follow it.

Nevertheless, as much as I,

within my mind, could treasure
of the holy kingdom

shall now become
the matter of my song.

♪

Narrator: In the 33 cantos
that ensued--

the most luminous, daring,
and in many ways

groundbreaking
of the entire poem--

Dante would ascend with Beatrice

up through
the 9 heavenly spheres

radiating outward from the Earth

in the third unearthly region
of the afterlife, Paradise.

As the canticle began,
Dante and Beatrice

were still standing side
by side at the very summit

of the Mountain of Purgatory.

In the poem's chronology,
it was near noon

on Wednesday, April 13, 1300,

just 6 days after his sojourn
had begun in the dark forest.

The precise moment that
they left the Earth

would be described in a passage
equally beholden

to the drama
of the moment it captured,

to the dazzling interplay
of light that would dominate

and characterize
all of "Paradiso,"

and to the ineffability
of the new reality

he was experiencing.

♪

Narrator as Dante:
I saw Beatrice turn round

and left, that she might
see the sun;

no eagle has ever stared
so steadily at it.

And as a second ray
will issue from the first

and re-ascend much like
a pilgrim who seeks

his home again,

so on the sun I set my sight
more than we usually do

I did not bear it long,
but not so briefly

as not to see it sparkling
round about,

like molten iron emerging
from the fire;

and suddenly it seemed that
day had been added to day,

as if the One who can

had graced the heavens
with a second sun...

from the sun,

I turned aside;
I set my eyes on her.

In watching her,
within me I was changed.

Passing beyond the human
cannot be worded

until grace grant you
the experience.

Narrator: Uncertain whether
what he was experiencing

was happening only in his mind,
he was about to speak

when Beatrice began
to speak for him.

You are not on the Earth
as you believe;

but lightning, flying
from its own abode,

is less swift than you are,

returning home.

Barolini:
The first most remarkable thing

about the "Paradiso" is

the most beautiful language
in the world

in terms of feeling almost
materially and corporeally

what language of such density,

and such metaphoric richness
and such eros--

the most erotic language
in the poem is

in the "Paradiso."

All things, among themselves,
possess an order;

and this order
is the form that makes
the universe like God...

Within that order,
every nature has its bent,

according
to a different station,

near or less near
to its origin.

Therefore, these natures
move to different ports

across the mighty sea
of being,

each given the impulse
that will bear it on.

Narrator: As we are to discover,
the experience

of Paradise would be
radically unlike

what had come before.

While Inferno and Purgatory,
as Dante had experienced them,

were both real and existed
as such,

the Paradise Beatrice leads
him through

can only be a simulacrum
of Paradise as it actually is

because Paradise in its essence
is beyond human apprehension.

Paradise in itself is
an experience

beyond time and space.

The only way Dante can
receive this experience

and can live this experience

and can narrate this experience
must be rendered in time.

So the souls come
from the Empyrean

and appear to Dante,
heaven after heaven,

and that simulates some sort
of Paradise,

but we know that this is
just a show,

and this is not
the real Paradise.

This is a theater of Paradise,
which is performed just for him.

Pertile: Dante on the one hand
acknowledges the existence

of this Paradiso
beyond space and beyond time.

On the other hand,
he creates a kind of

accommodation for us,
for the readers,

and for himself
as a human being, as a visitor,

whereby Paradiso itself
condescends to

and adapts to the conditions
created by Dante's poem.

[Choir singing in Latin]

Narrator as Dante: Then it was
clear to me

how every place in Heaven
is in Paradise,

though grace does not rain
equally from the High Good.

♪

Adoyo: In Paradise, you almost
never see human figures

or any kind of anthropomorphic
representation of a soul

because everything is
a flame or a spark,

a scintilla of starlight,

and you can tell who's
speaking because that light

emanates more brightly
and then recedes.

♪

Bruscagli:
The exception is Beatrice.

Beatrice remains visible
all throughout Paradise,

and yet at the same time,
Beatrice is not

the same in Paradise,
heaven after heaven,

because her beauty increases.

Her beauty goes through
a continuous

augmentation of luminosity.

If in the fire of love,
I seem to flame

beyond the measure
visible on Earth,

so that I overcome
your vision's force,

you need not wonder;

I am so because
of my perfected vision--

as I grasp the good,

so I approach
the good in act.

Indeed I see that
in your intellect

now shines
the never-ending light;

once seen, that light,

alone and always,
kindles love.

Webb: What's so striking is how
much Dante leans

on Beatrice to provide

so many of the central
discourses of the "Paradiso."

Every so often, there are
other characters

who will come in and say things,
but really it's Beatrice

who takes the lead,
and she takes Dante

through the full range
of all that is in Paradiso

from the excitement and the joy
to the righteous anger

and all the rest of it.

Bruscagli: And so Dante goes
from one sky to the other,

dragged, almost propelled up

by the beautiful gaze,
luminous gaze of Beatrice.

Narrator: And so one by one
they ascended

through the heavenly spheres

up through the sphere of Mercury

and on still further
through the heaven of Venus,

where the many kinds
of human love

were unfolded and extolled--

erotic love, marital love,

the love of friends,
and love of the divine...

and on to the heaven
of the sun,

where wisdom and truth
were celebrated.

Webb: In Paradiso,
most of the souls are not

very visible because
they're so luminous,

but they still act as bodies
in that they gesture.

They move toward Dante.

They smile and grow brighter
when they smile.

There's that wonderful
poignant moment

when the souls all respond,
"Amme!"

a kind of "Amen"
to the declaration

of the fact that they
will get their bodies back,

maybe not for themselves,
but for their mothers

and fathers and others
who were dear to them.

So the notion is you
want to have a body

not for yourself
but in order to interact

with those
who are beloved to you,

and Dante makes that space
not just for family members

but for all those
who are dear to you.

Narrator:
It was in the next sphere,

in the heaven of Mars,

that Dante would have one
of the most moving, personal,

and fateful encounters
of the entire poem,

when he was brought face to face

with his own long dead ancestor
Cacciaguida...

a knight who had fought
in the Second Crusade

and died in the Holy Lands
in 1149.

♪

O you, my branch
in whom I took delight

even awaiting you,
I am your root.

The man who gave
your family its name,

who for a century
and more has

circled the first ledge
of Purgatory,

was son to me and was
your great-grandfather;

Florence, within her
ancient ring of walls,

that ring from which
she still draws tierce
and nones--

sober and chaste,
lived in tranquility...

To such a life--
so tranquil and so lovely--

of citizens
in true community,

into so sweet
a dwelling place did Mary,

invoked in pains of birth,
deliver me;

and I, within your
ancient Baptistery,

at once became Christian
and Cacciaguida.

♪

Narrator: The poignant
meeting occurs

halfway through Dante's ascent
with Beatrice up

through the 9 spheres
of Paradise

not long before the entire
life-changing sojourn

through the 3 realms
of the afterlife

was destined to come to an end.

♪

Beginning now to anticipate
his return

to what he would soon call

"the world of endless
bitterness below,"

Dante asked Cacciaguida
to tell him

what fate held in store for him.

♪

Hippolytus was forced
to leave his Athens

because of his stepmother,
faithless, fierce;

and so must you depart
from Florence: this

is willed already,
sought for, soon to be

accomplished by the one
who plans and plots

where--every day--Christ
is both sold and bought...

♪

You shall leave everything
you love most dearly:

this is the arrow that the bow
of exile shoots first.

♪

You are to know
the bitter taste

of others' bread,

how salt it is,

and know
how hard a path it is

for one who goes

descending and ascending
others' stairs.

And what will be most
hard for you to bear...

will be the scheming,
senseless company

that is to share your fall
into this valley;

and thus, your honor
will be best kept

if your party is your self.

Bruscagli: His ancestor
Cacciaguida finally lifts

the veil and really reveals
what awaits Dante.

No more illusions.

Now the future is
in front of him,

and it is a brutal future.

it's a future of rejection,

it's a future
of political disillusionment.

You leave everything
that you love.

Adoyo: Dante says
to Cacciaguida,

"I have been told that
there are dire times

"that await me and Florence
and my people,

"and throughout this journey,
I have also seen things

"that reveal to me
what the seeds

"of those dire times are,

"like how it is that we
get to these places

"that are so terrible.

"I want to tell people
what I've seen.

"I want them to see what
I have been able to discern,

"to understand
that we have a choice,

"but I'm afraid to lose
what I have,

"I'm afraid to be ostracized,

"and yet, if I am an enemy to
the truth that I know,

"then I am afraid that
I'll be doing a disservice

"to those who will call
our times ancient.

"I will be doing
a disservice to posterity

"if I don't dare speak out
against the corruption

"and the greed and the malice
that I've witnessed

"and what it looks like,

how it manifests
in our society."

And Cacciaguida tells Dante,
"Don't be afraid.

Speak the truth,
no matter what it costs you."

♪

Cacciaguida:
A conscience that is dark--

either through its
or through another's shame--

indeed will find that
what you speak is harsh.

Nevertheless,
all falsehood set aside,

let all that you have seen
be manifest,

and let them scratch
wherever it may itch.

For if, at the first taste,
your words molest,

they will, when they have
been digested, end

as living nourishment.

As does the wind,

so let your outcry do--
the wind that sends

its roughest blows
against the highest peaks.

Bruscagli: And Cacciaguida said,
"You go and tell the truth."

So Dante is stripped of any
illusion about his future,

but what remains
is the mission of his poem.

His life has become his poem.

All the broken, fragmentary
prophecies that he has

been collecting during
his journey come together,

and all of a sudden,
the poem is his destiny.

Forget about the exile,
forget about Florence,

forget about what happened
to you as a politician,

as a public figure.

What remains of your life
is this poem.

This is your future.

Cachey:
It's a self-authorization,

a self-certification

that is built completely
around the fact of his exile.

It is revealed that
his providential mission

is to be exiled
and to write the poem

from the position of exile

that will save the world
fundamentally.

♪

Narrator: Following Dante's
refusal of the offer

of amnesty in 1315,
the city fathers of Florence

had lashed out again,

condemning
the 50-year old poet

one last time
together with his sons

to yet another sentence
of death,

this time by decapitation,

with an additional
provision that anyone

who wished had permission
"to harm them,

in property and person,
freely and with impunity."

The doors of his native city
had closed one final time,

never again to be reopened
during his lifetime.

Cachey: Between 1319 and 1321,
he's between Verona and Ravenna,

and there's more questions
really than answers,

about what Dante's motivation
was for moving to Ravenna.

Bruscagli: He was already
a well-recognized poet

at that point.

"Paradise" had not yet been
completed or published,

but "Inferno" and "Purgatorio"
had been circulating already.

♪

Narrator: In 1318,
he moved one last time

from Verona to Ravenna

on the far eastern coast
of the peninsula,

where he came
under the protection

of the lord of the city
Guido Novello da Polenta,

a nephew of Francesca da Rimini.

Bruscagli:
The court of Guido Novello

might have been a harbor
for Dante.

Guido Novello was
a very kind and generous host

for Dante in Ravenna.

Certainly the atmosphere
in Ravenna was quieter.

Narrator: With its mysterious
air of history and time

and so much long gone
Ravenna seemed to take

powerful hold
of his imagination.

Bruscagli: The last cantos
of "Paradise"

might have been inspired
by the mosaics

of the great churches
in Ravenna.

Narrator: By 1321, the impact of
more than two decades of exile

and of the unimaginably
exhausting demands

of the poem itself
had taken an enormous toll

on the gaunt
and beleaguered writer.

Fulvido di fulgore.

Narrator: In many ways,
the experience

of writing the poem
and the narrative unfolding

within it had converged
almost completely.

Dipinte di mirabil
primavera.

Cachey: And in 1320,
he's writing the last canti

of the "Paradiso,"
the greatest poetry

that he ever wrote and that
has ever been written

from some perspectives.

E d'ogne parte si
mettien ne' fiori...

quasi rubin

che oro circunscrive;

poi, come
inebriate da li odori...

Cachey:
To me, that suggests

that underneath there's
a really deep vulnerability.

Narrator: By the spring of 1321,

Dante had completed 20
of the 33 cantos of "Paradise"

and sent all but the final 13
to his former patron in Verona.

Not long after in late July,

Guido da Polenta asked him
to undertake

an urgent ambassadorial mission

to the Republic of Venice,

a 3 days' ride
up the marshy Adriatic coast,

hoping that with war now looming

between Ravenna
and the Serenissima

"his eloquence and reputation
as poet," he said,

"might avert impending ruin."

The mission, though not
immediately successful,

probably laid the groundwork

for an eventually peaceful
resolution of the crisis,

though Dante himself
would not be around to see it.

Returning from Venice
through the pine woods of Classe

on which he had modeled
the heavenly forest

where he and Beatrice
had been reunited

at the end of "Purgatorio,"
he contracted malaria

coming through the swamplands
north of Ravenna

and died two weeks later
over the night

of September 13 and 14, 1321...

surrounded by close friends,
and his children.

♪

He was 56 years old.

Writing of his death,
Giovanni Boccaccio

would write that he had left
"the miseries

"of this present life behind

and rendered to his Creator
his toil-worn spirit."

♪

All Ravenna mourned
Dante's passing.

Guido Novello, stricken
it was said

with "the greatest grief,"

ordered he be honored
with rites reserved

only for the greatest of poets,

his body borne on the shoulders
of the city's

most distinguished citizens,

carried through the streets
accompanied

by public lamentations

to the Church
of San Pier Maggiore,

where it was placed
in a plain stone sarcophagus

and buried a few steps
from the church

in a simple tomb...

the first of many that would
eventually be erected there.

♪

To this day,
Italy's greatest poet lies

at the end of a narrow lane
within the modest

if dignified sepulcher

originally inscribed,
with an epitaph that itself

has long since vanished:

"Here I, Dante, am confined,

"an exile from my native shores,

Born of Florence,
a mother of little love."

It was widely presumed
that before setting off

on his final ill-fated mission
to Venice Dante

had finished
his great masterpiece,

but after the funeral,
it was soon revealed

to the enormous chagrin
of his family and friends

that the last 13 cantos
of "Paradise"

were nowhere to be found.

For months, his sons
Jacopo and Pietro searched

through their father's
manuscripts for any sign

of the missing cantos
to no avail.

The catastrophe could
not be overstated.

Dante Alighieri's gift
to the world,

the greatest poem, as he himself
fervently believed,

ever written in the history
of Western literature,

had been left tragically
unfinished.

♪

The survival and transmission
of literary texts

has always been subject
to accidents of fate

and the vagaries of time.

No manuscript
of the "Divine Comedy"

in Dante's own hand survives,

and from the moment
of his death,

the question of whether
his masterpiece would come down

to posterity intact
was fraught with uncertainty.

In this respect,
as in so many others,

posterity has Dante's
first biographer,

the writer Giovanni Boccaccio,
to thank for what is known

about the missing cantos
of "Paradise."

Visiting Ravenna in 1346,
25 years after Dante's death,

Boccaccio had met
with a close friend

and disciple of Dante's
Piero Giardino,

who had known the poet
in his final years,

who had provided Dante
with the home he had stayed in,

and who now shared
with Boccaccio

an extraordinary story.

In May 1322,
8 months after Dante died,

the poet's younger son Jacopo,
had come to Piero Giardino

in the middle of the night
in a state of agitation

and told him
of an uncanny dream he had had,

"a marvelous vision"
in which his father

had come to him in his sleep.

♪

That night, his father
had come to him clothed

in shining raiment

and with an unusual light
shining in his face.

Asking his father
if he were alive,

his father had said,
"Yes, but in the true life,

not in yours."

He then asked his father
if he had completed

his great work before passing
to the true life

and, if he had, where they might
find the missing pages,

whereupon his father took
him by the hand

and led him to the room
where in life he had slept,

and touching the wall
at a certain place said,

"Here is what you are
seeking for,"

and then departed.

And so the son and the disciple
started together

and went to the place
his father had touched

and there beneath a mat
on the wall

found a little cavity
neither had seen before,

reaching into which they
found papers mildewed

by the damp and nearly rotting

if they had stayed
a little longer.

Carefully cleaning them,
they saw they were

the 13 cantos so much sought,

and in great joy copied them

and sent them first, as was
the custom of the author,

to the Lord Cangrande
and then joined them

to the imperfect work.

♪

Narrator: One way or another,

by a quirk of fate
or a dream in the night,

the final 13 cantos
of "Paradise"

had finally been accounted for,

and with a full manuscript
in hand,

Jacopo and Pietro quickly copied
out all 100 cantos of the poem,

and "the work of so many years"
was now complete.

[Bell tolling]

Cox as Boccaccio:
Citizens of Florence,

welcome to this sacred place.

"Nel mezzo del cammin
di nostra vita."

"Midway upon the journey
of our life," et cetera.

I have been tasked,
good people of Florence,

with giving an exposition
on what lies

beneath the poetic veil
of our Dante's "Divine Comedy."

A divine comedy.

It is fitting
for a man to invoke

the divinity at the beginning
of a great enterprise,

and as is clear from the works
of Plautus and Terence,

a comedy is that which has
a tumultuous beginning

and ends in peace
and tranquility.

♪

So it is with our Dante.

Let us proceed.

♪

Narrator: Florentines began
to regret having banished Dante

almost immediately,
even before he died,

as word of the soaring
masterpiece spread

across the Italian peninsula.

In the decades following
his death in exile in 1321,

a younger generation
of Florentine writers,

outraged over the poet's fate,
rallied to his cause

and none more so than
Giovanni Boccaccio,

who, following in Dante's
footsteps, would go on

to write the next
great masterpiece

in the Florentine vernacular,
"The Decameron,"

and spend a lifetime championing
his work and reputation.

[Whispering]

Determined to keep the flame
of Dante's great work alive,

Boccaccio would compose
the first biography of Dante,

one of the first biographies
ever written,

inspired in part by the deeply
autobiographical character

of the poem.

Boccaccio even copied
out the entire text

of the "Comedy"
no fewer than 3 times

and recited it for rapt
public gatherings

in the sanctuary of the Badia,

not far from Dante's long-since
dispossessed home,

where he also gave lectures
about the poem's deeper meanings

and even conferred upon it
the name by which

it has ever after been known.

Bruscagli: Boccaccio read Dante
in the very Chiesa della Badia

just here in this chapel,

and that was the first time
that Dante was read publicly,

and it was the first time
that a secular text

was explained
and almost preached over

in a religious space.

So Dante,
the "Divine Comedy,"

was treated in a way like
the holy scriptures

and already like a national
glory of Florence.

Boccaccio would read and explain
the "Divine Comedy"

in vernacular
and would read for everybody.

All the citizens of Florence
were invited to get familiar

with or even memorize
a text which was already

a legendary text
of our civilization.

Florence was trying to regain
spiritually

the son that it had exiled.

A little too late
but better late than never.

Cox as Boccaccio:
A divine comedy.

♪

Narrator: As for Dante himself,

who had spent a lifetime
dreaming of Beatrice Portinari,

who had journeyed
to the afterlife and up

through the heavenly spheres

under her guidance
and protection,

and who had died still
longing to be reunited with her,

the final cantos of "Paradise"
would prove to be

at once an ecstatic vision
and a glorious fulfillment.

♪

Turn thee about
and listen;

Not in mine eyes
alone is Paradise.

Narrator: They had arrived
now in the seventh heaven,

the sphere of Saturn,

on the verge of the heaven
of the zodiac and fixed stars

at the outermost edge
of the Ptolemaic universe

at the very limits
of space and time

beyond which lay the Empyrean,

the realm of God,
the true Paradise,

beyond the simulacrum they had
just finished traveling through.

You are so near
the final blessedness

That you have need
of vision clear and keen

And thus, before you
enter further,

do look downward,

See what I have set
beneath your feet already.

Much of the world
is there;

if you see that

Your heart may then
present itself

with all
the joy it can

to the triumphant throng

That goes in gladness

through this
rounded ether.

♪

Bruscagli: When Beatrice
invites him to look down

and under his feet
he sees all the planets

and at the center of
the universe he sees the Earth,

this little globe that makes us
so ferocious to each other.

So the only solution is
to look down

and then look up
into the eyes of Beatrice.

Narrator as Dante:
My eyes returned through all

the 7 spheres

And all
the 7 heavens showed to me

their magnitudes, their speeds,
the distances

of each from each.

The little threshing floor

that so incites
our savagery was all--

from hills to river mouths--
revealed to me

while I wheeled
with eternal Gemini.

My eyes then turned again
to the fair eyes.

♪

Narrator: Leaving the sphere
of the fixed stars,

they ascended now
into the final heavenly sphere.

Pertile:
There is a moment in "Paradiso"

when Dante moves
into the Empyrean,

and the Empyrean is not a place.

It's not a time.

It's a concept.
It's an idea.

It is pure existence,
it's pure being.

Empyrean ultimately
is the mind of God,

and it is in that mind

that all that Dante
has been through

is somehow contained.

It is a thought of that mind,

and if that mind
stopped thinking about it,

our universe would vanish.

♪

Narrator: And now here,
in heaven's light,

on the very brink
of time and eternity,

Beatrice spoke to Dante
one last time.

♪

From matter's
largest sphere,

we now have reached
the heaven of pure light...

light of the intellect,

light filled with love,

love of true good,

love filled with happiness,

a happiness surpassing
every sweetness.

Here you will see both
ranks of Paradise

and see one of them
wearing that same aspect

which you will see again
at Judgment Day.

♪

Narrator: As Dante looked on,
a great river of light

seemed to take shape
before him in the sky,

curving slowly into
an ever-widening circle,

until at length
a flower-like court of light

loomed above him in the sky,

revealing the circumference
of a vast shimmering rose--

its circling rows of petals

forming 1,000 tiers
for all the souls of heaven,

each petal the seat
of one celestial soul.

Turning in awe and wonder
to Beatrice,

he saw now that she was
no longer at his side,

and in her place
a saint-like elder

had appeared, who to his
urgent cry "Where is she?"

pointed to a circle

near the highest rank of petals
in the rose,

where he now
saw Beatrice seated

at once far away and yet
to his now undimmed vision

so close he almost seemed
to touch her.

Bruscagli: When at the end

with the really moving
farewell to Beatrice,

the last time that
he sees Beatrice,

up in the Empyrean,
she's far away,

but in the Empyrean,
the space doesn't count

and the distance doesn't count.

She, for the last time,
looks at him,

but one last moment
of silent intimacy,

and then she looks up
towards God,

and Dante says farewell.

"O lady,

"You drew me out
from slavery to freedom

"by all those paths,

"by all those means
that were

"within your power.

"Do, in me, preserve
your generosity,

"so that my soul,
which you have healed,

"when it is set loose
from my body,

be a soul that
you will welcome."

So did I pray.

And she, however
far away she seemed,

smiled,
and she looked at me.

Then she turned back
to the eternal fountain.

♪

Narrator:
And so Beatrice Portinari left

Dante Alighieri one last time,

taken into the very heart

of the great heavenly
rose above him...

and in the pulsing lines
and passages that remained

of the great poem,
Dante felt his own desire

and volition come at last
into ultimate alignment

with the sublime harmony
of God's will.

Bruscagli: Once again,
Dante is not able to communicate

and to share the real
final experience of Paradise

because to describe Paradise,

the experience
of seeing God face to face,

according to the words
of Saint Paul,

that is--that is
simply impossible

for a human language,
for a human tongue,

so the real experience
of Paradise is

in the white space under
the last verse of the poem.

Narrator as Dante: Here force
failed my high fantasy;

but my desire
and will were moved already--

like a wheel revolving uniformly

by the Love that moves the sun
and the other stars.

♪

Fazzini as Dante: A l'alta
fantasia qui mancò possa;

ma già volgeva il mio disio
e 'l velle,

sì come rota
ch'igualmente è mossa,

l'amor che move il sole
e l'altre stelle.

♪

Narrator: Looking back,
it would be almost impossible

to overstate the magnitude
of Dante's achievement

in the 14,233 lines
of hypnotically compelling verse

that constitute
the "Divine Comedy,"

a triumph
of the human imagination

and an incomparable outpouring
of literary and poetic genius

that would elevate
and permanently transform

the language, culture,
and self-understanding

not only
of the Italian peninsula

but of the European continent
at large

and eventually the world.

Bruscagli:
So what happened in Italy?

What happened is that
the language that Dante chose,

the Florentine on the street,

became the language
of my country.

Why? Because of the immense
prestige of Dante's work

and of the "Divine Comedy,"

which was followed
by two other masterpieces

written in the Florentine,
the "Rhymes" by Petrarch

and "The Decameron"
by Boccaccio.

The Italian language
and literature starts

with this kind of big bang.

In 50 years,
those 3 masterpieces,

but the one who really
indicated the path

and gave the courage
to the others to go

through that path was Dante.

♪

Raffa: After Dante dies
in 1321, the "Divine Comedy"

was widely disseminated.

It becomes essentially
a bestseller, you know,

if we can use that term
for medieval literature,

but not everybody is going
to like what Dante says,

because, in fact, he is being
harsh against people in power.

Narrator: Following
the enormous surge

of enthusiasm and praise
that greeted Dante's poem

after his death in 1321,
in the centuries to come,

the vernacular tradition
Dante had pioneered

was overshadowed for a time.

Man: Dante became thought
of perhaps even within Italy

as being rough
and old-fashioned,

as a noble example
but something that

they'd superseded
with a more sophisticated style,

and so Dante sort of went
out of fashion

certainly in Northern Europe
for a couple of hundred years.

Quint: In the 15th
and 16th and 17th centuries,

the "Divine Comedy"
continued to be read,

it continued to be imitated,

it continued to be
thought about,

but it didn't achieve the kind
of status that it has achieved

until the last two centuries,
till the 19th century

and the 20th century.

[Explosion]

Narrator: And then for Dante,
as for Shakespeare, too,

at essentially the same time,

something extraordinary
began to occur.

The change would coincide
with the dawning

of the Age of Revolution,
first the American

and then the French,

and with the coming of an age
of egalitarian hope and change,

a world Dante had
in so many ways anticipated.

Quint:
For the 19th century,

the Romantics found both
in Dante and in Shakespeare

these sort of
titanic imaginations

that really couldn't be held
within the rules

of neoclassical taste
and of decorum

and who exploded what were
the classical genres,

what were accepted as the forms
in which poetry should work.

Narrator:
In the English-speaking world,

where Dante had gone
untranslated

for half a thousand years,

the first complete translation
would appear in 1802,

inaugurating what would become
an almost ceaseless tide

of English translations
over the next 220 years,

109 to date, and counting,

and from very start
of the American experiment,

Dante spoke
to something very deep

in the emerging American
psyche and soul,

the Dante of exile,
of freedom, and free will.

Cachey: Dante's an American poet

in a way that people don't
really appreciate.

Dante is extremely important
at the foundations

of American literary history.

The oldest academic society
in the United States

is the Dante Society of America,

and Longfellow and Emerson
did a translation

of the "Vita Nuova."

Narrator: Praising Dante
for blazing a new path

for language and literature,

Ralph Waldo Emerson
boldly declared,

"Dante is Italian because
at that moment

"he could most
live as an Italian.

At this moment,
he would be born American."

Raffa:
Dante writes very explicitly

about spiritual liberation,

but people easily understood
that also

as a message
about political freedom,

about political liberation
and individual liberation,

and so it was easy
to translate Dante

from his Italian context
to the American context.

Narrator: In Italy itself,
for so long faction-torn

and fragmented
and long regarded by skeptics

as a mere region on the map
incapable of political unity,

Dante's epic work would undergo

a rapturous
cultural rehabilitation

in the middle
of the 19th century

as the struggle for Italian
nationhood gathered momentum.

In 1860, the great Italian
patriot and general

Giuseppi Garibaldi, who had
been campaigning for years

from one end of the peninsula
to the other,

led a series of brilliant
military expeditions

from Sicily to Calabria
to Naples,

at last making possible
the unification

of southern Italy
with the north.

[Chorus singing in Italian]

One year later, the age-old
dream of Italian unity

and independence came
to a sudden glorious culmination

when in March 1861
the new Senate at Turin

proclaimed Victor Emmanuelle II

the constitutional monarch

of the brand-new
Kingdom of Italy.

[Cheering and applause]

Almost overnight,
Italy had become a country

and Dante himself
its patron saint

as the icon and rallying point

of a common Italian culture
and identity.

Webb: The Italian language
is, in fact, built

on Dante's language,
which was so radical at the time

in the "Comedia" because it's
such a mixture of things.

You can see him kind of
inventing the fullest range

of the Italian language
in his poem.

Narrator: Not for nothing,
it turned out,

had Dante found Beatrice
at the top of Mount Purgatory

in the Garden
of Earthly Paradise,

wrapped ravishingly
in red, white, and green,

the very colors now
of the new Italian flag.

Quint: When a democratic unified
Italy came about,

Dante provided a kind
of model for using the words

that come from the street

and for a much more
colloquial Italian.

One of the things that was
found in the "Comedy" was

that it was a good blueprint

for the making
of a national language,

a language for the peninsula.

Narrator: in 1865 on
the 600th hundredth anniversary

of Dante's birth, the capital
of the newly united country

was officially moved
from Turin to Florence,

where that spring,
to mark the occasion,

a glorious 3-day celebration was
held in honor of the new nation

and the poet now
universally recognized

as its spiritual father.

Bruscagli: '65 was
this apotheosis of patriotism

and the new nation founded
in a new capital

and Dante being promoted
at that point

truly like the father
of the language,

the father of literature,
the father of Italy,

the father
of everything Italian.

Narrator: On May 14,
a crowd of nearly 20,000

gathered
in the Piazza Santa Croce,

where at noon, following
a series of soaring speeches

paying homage
to "the Supreme Poet,

"illustrious Philosopher,
and great Citizen

who had long sought
a free and united Italy,"

a towering 19-foot tall
marble monument was unveiled,

at long last acknowledging
Dante in the city of his birth.

♪

Bruscagli: Why should we care
about Dante, Dante Alighieri?

After all, he is so far away,
so remote from us.

7 centuries separate us
from him.

Our world is different,
our cosmology is different,

our science is different,
our religion is different,

so why should we care
about Dante?

Because Dante addresses
the core of our humanity.

Dante had the ambition
of embracing everything,

of embracing the sense

of us being humans
on this planet.

Cachey: Coming from whatever
social, political,

educational background,

what the reader discovers
is this question

of their
own ethical interiority.

You discover the problem
of the pilgrim

is your own problem,
this problem of identity,

this problem of ethics,

this problem of the vices
and the virtues,

of the intellect.

Webb: Dante manages
to convey so deftly

all of the range
of human experience

from deepest despair
to greatest moments

of hope and joy and love.

[Reading in Italian]

Lombardi: He had the sense
that he was writing for us.

Every time this text
is read by someone in a class,

by students of different ages
and different cultures,

we are these people.

Webb: There's no question
that Dante intends

this poem to
change your life,

and I think that if you
engage with it truly,

really trouble
all its difficulties,

work through its ambiguities
and sit with them,

it will change you.

Bruscagli: What you immediately
understand reading

the "Divine Comedy" is that, OK,
that was the life

of Dante Alighieri
700 years ago,

but the message is
your life matters.

Take care of it.
Take care of it.

Your life matters.

♪

♪

Announcer: To order

"Dante: Inferno
to Paradise"

on DVD,
visit ShopPBS

or call
1-800-PLAY-PBS.

This program is
also available

with PBS Passport

and on Amazon Prime Video.

♪