Purgatorio
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"The enjoyment of The Divine Comedy is a continuous process," observed T.S. Eliot. "It is not necessary to understand the meaning first to enjoy the poetry...our enjoyment of the poetry makes us want to understand the meaning."
Arguably the greatest single poem ever written, The Divine Comedy presents Dante Alighieri's all-encompassing vision of the three realms of Christian afterlife. In the Purgatorio, Dante struggles up the terraces of Mount Purgatory, still guided by Virgil, in continuation of his difficult ascent to purity.
"The clean force of the original comes through with astonishing success," said poet and translator Dudley Fitts in praise of John Ciardi's rendition of the Purgatorio. "Dante cannot speak in English, perhaps; but Ciardi has given us the next best thing--a credible, passionate persona of the poet, stripped of the customary guards of rhetoric and false decoration, strong and noble in utterance."
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages, best known for his masterpiece, the epic Divine Comedy, considered to be one of the greatest poetic works in literature.
A native of Florence, Dante was deeply involved in his city-state’s politics and had political, as well as poetic, ambitions. He was exiled from Florence in 1301 for backing the losing faction in a dispute over the pope’s influence, and never saw Florence again.
While in exile, Dante wrote the Comedy, the tale of the poet’s pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. To reach the largest possible audience for the work, Dante devised a version of Italian based largely on his own Tuscan dialect and incorporating Latin and parts of other regional dialects. In so doing, he demonstrated the vernacular’s fitness for artistic expression, and earned the title “Father of the Italian language.”
Dante died in Ravenna in 1321, and his body remains there despite the fact that Florence erected a tomb for him in 1829.
More by Dante Alighieri
Allen Mandelbaum
Translated by
ALLEN MANDELBAUM (1926-2011) was a history and humanities professor whose translations of Homer, Dante, Virgil, Quasimodo, Ovid, and Ungaretti have all been richly praised. For his translation of The Aeneid, he won the National Book Award.
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