"
Now to Dante as the man let us turn. To know the fibre of his manhood
will help us to appreciate the genius of his art. "It is needful to know
Dante as man" wrote Charles Elliot Norton, "in order fully to
appreciate him as poet." The thought is expressed in another way by
James Russell Lowell: "The man behind the verse is far greater than the
verse itself and Dante is not merely a great poet but an influence, part
of the soul's resources in time of trouble. From him the soul learns
that 'married to the truth she is a mistress but otherwise a slave shut
out of all liberty'" (The Banquet). But that knowledge is dependent upon
our intimacy with the life and spirit of Dante. In many other cases the
knowledge of the life and personality of an author may not be essential
to either our enjoyment or our understanding of his work. In the case of
Dante "he faces his own mirror and so appears in the mid-foreground of
his reflected word." Before looking into that mirror for Dante's
picture, let us first recall some of the established facts in his life
and then see what manner of man he appeared to those who were his
contemporaries or who lived chronologically near him.
Dante was born in Florence in the year 1265. His father was a notary
belonging to an old but decadent Guelph family, his mother, named Bella,
was a daughter of Durante Abati, a Ghibelline noble.
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