Review

"In the years of my reading Dante, after the first overwhelming, reverberating spell of the Inferno, which I think never leaves one afterward, it was the Purgatorio that I had found myself returning to with a different, deepening attachment, until I reached a point when it was never far from me . . . Of the three sections of [The Divine Comedy], only Purgatory happens on the earth, as our lives do, with our feet on the ground, crossing a beach, climbing a mountain. All three parts of the poem are images of our lives, but there is an intimacy peculiar to the Purgatorio. Here the times of day recur with all the sensations and associations that the hours bring with them, the hours of the world we are living in as we read the poem." --from the Foreword

Product Description

In The Inferno Dante described his journey to the depths of evil, to the recognition of the true nature of sin. In The Purgatorio he now describes his journey to the renunciation of sin, accepting his suffering in preparation for his entrance into the presence of God. This brilliant translation of Dante’s soaring canticle crystallizes the power and beauty inherent in the great poet’s immortal conception of the aspiring soul.