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The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Volume 2: Purgatorio

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This is one of the best traslations of the Purgatorio that i have been able to find. It is easy to understand and certainly not convoluted as many other versions are. In addition this version offers the italian text which is a nice addition. Finally, the notes and commentary povided in this book are amazing and perfect for use in the classroom or just6 for general enjoyment.

I can not wait for this translator's paradise to come out so i can buy it, i know it will be phenominal

I was required to read Inferno for a colloquial English class in college and we compared the translation adaptation aspects of different translators. This translator is one of my favorite, since he translates fairly straight-forward and gives a lot of notes and background information on the lines of the cantos in order to better understand the meaning behind the writings, rather than several other translators who try to retain the poetic aspect of it. To each their own. This version also is facing, with the original Italian on the opposite page. I've only just begun reading his translation of Purgatorio but so far the same elements remains.

In the second volume of Dante's Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Dante continues his journey from hell into purgatory, continuing to be guided by the skilled hand and mind of Virgil. Dante must climb up the Mount of Purgatory, beginning at the bottom with Ante-Purgatory, then the seven terraces - seven levels of suffering and spiritual growth - as associated with the seven deadly sins; at the very top is Earthly paradise. Just as in the first volume, Inferno, Dante continues to discuss politics and the Church in general, as well as relating to his own experiences during the writing of the Divine Comedy in the fourteenth century. Familiar characters in Dante's life again play a part, as he makes his intentions of them all too clear. It is in this volume that Dante is reunited with his long-lost love, Beatrice.

In this shorter introduction, Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez go into some detail on when this second volume was likely begun, how and when it was exactly written and how Dante was influenced by events and happenings in his life in the writing of it. Just as with the first volume, detailed notes are provided at the end of each canto, explaining locations, historical references, and short biographies on the people mentioned and what relevance they had to Dante. With these priceless details, any reader can pick up this translation of the Divine Comedy, and not feel lost or overloaded by all the historical setting, peoples and details, but are skillfully guided along Dante's unique journey.

At the end of the text are further detailed notes and fifteen short essays covering Dante's political views, his respect and use of Virgil and Ovid, his original conceptions of homosexuality, and on moral growth, to name a few. Durling and Martinez also explore similarities and possible linkages with the three volumes in analyzing similar cantos, their possible relations to each other, as well as the numbering system used in each volume. At the end is a bibliography and extensive index, allowing the reader to travel about the text freely and with little hindrance.

With this second volume, Durling continues what he began with Inferno, keeping the reader hooked with this accurate translation, along with the original Italian on the left-hand page, as Dante's true skill as a storyteller and descriptive writer are brought to light as never before.

Originally written on April 10, 2011 ©Alex C. Telander.

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This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
"The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante. Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity). This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature. Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical). The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Purgatorio
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem). The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere. At the shores of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil are attracted by a musical performance by Casella, but are reprimanded by Cato, a pagan who has been placed by God as the general guardian of the approach to the mountain. The text gives no indication whether or not Cato's soul is destined for heaven: his symbolic significance has been much debated. (Cantos I and II).

Dante starts the ascent on Mount Purgatory. On the lower slopes (designated as "ante-Purgatory" by commentators) Dante meets first a group of excommunicates, detained for a period thirty times as long as their period of contumacy. Ascending higher, he encounters those too lazy to repent until shortly before death, and those who suffered violent deaths (often due to leading extremely sinful lives). These souls will be admitted to Purgatory thanks to their genuine repentance, but must wait outside for an amount of time equal to their lives on earth (Cantos III through VI). Finally, Dante is shown a beautiful valley where he sees the lately-deceased monarchs of the great nations of Europe, and a number of other persons whose devotion to public and private duties hampered their faith (Cantos VII and VIII). From this valley Dante is carried (while asleep) up to the gates of Purgatory proper (Canto IX).

The gate of Purgatory is guarded by an angel who uses the point of his sword to draw the letter "P" (signifying peccatum, sin) seven times on Dante's forehead, abjuring him to "wash you those wounds within". The angel uses two keys, gold and silver, to open the gate and warns Dante not to look back, lest he should find himself outside the gate again, symbolizing Dante having to overcome and rise above the hell that he has just left and thusly leaving his sinning ways behind him. From there, Virgil guides the pilgrim Dante through the seven terraces of Purgatory. These correspond to the seven deadly sins, each terrace purging a particular sin in an appropriate manner. Those in purgatory can leave their circle whenever they like, but essentially there is an honors system where no one leaves until they have corrected the nature within themselves that caused them to commit that sin. Souls can only move upwards and never backwards, since the intent of Purgatory is for souls to ascend towards God in Heaven, and can ascend only during daylight hours, since the light of God is the only true guidance.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.