LETTER AND ALLEGORY.--The _Divina Commedia_ is a vision and an allegory. It is a vision of the world beyond the grave; it is an allegory, based upon that vision, of the life and destiny of man, his need of light and guidance, his duties to the temporal and spiritual powers, to the Empire and the Church. In the literal sense, the subject is the state of souls after death. In the allegorical sense, according to the Epistle to Can Grande, the subject is “man as by freedom of will, meriting and demeriting, he is subject to Justice rewarding or punishing” (_Epist._ x. 11). There is, therefore, the distinction between the essential Hell, Purgatory, Paradise of separated spirits--the lost and the redeemed--after death; and the moral or spiritual Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, of men still united to their bodies in this life, using their free will for good or for evil; sinning, doing penance, living virtuously. The _Inferno_ represents the state of ignorance and vice; the _Purgatorio_ is the life of converted sinners, obeying Caesar and reconciled to Peter, doing penance and striving God-wards; after the state of felicity has been regained in the Earthly Paradise, the _Paradiso_ represents the ideal life of action and contemplation, closing in an anticipation, here and now, of the Beatific Vision. The whole poem is the mystical epic of the freedom of man’s will in time and in eternity, the soul after conversion passing through the stages of purification and illumination to the attainment of union and fruition. It must be admitted that the allegorical interpretation of the _Commedia_ has frequently been carried to excess. This has led to a reaction, represented now by Benedetto Croce, who would separate the allegorical and didactic elements from the poetry, in which alone the true value of the work consists. Such a tendency in its turn, if pressed too far, derogates from Dante’s greatness and mars the unity of the poem. In Dante the poet and the practical man--teacher, prophet, politician, philosopher, reformer--are inseparable; more often purely doctrinal themes become so fused in his imagination, so identified with his personality, that the result is lyrical and great poetry. TITLE.--Dante unquestionably called his work simply _Commedia_, which he wrote _Comedia_ and pronounced _Comedìa_ (_Inf._ xvi. 128, xxi. 2). The epithet _divina_ first appears in the sixteenth-century editions; but it would be almost as pedantic to discard it now as it would be, except when reading the word where it occurs in the poem, to return to the original pronunciation, _comedìa_.[28]