Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy 2: Purgatorio

THE DIVINE COMEDY 2: PURGATORIO

DANTE ALIGHIERI was born in Florence in 1265 into a family from the lower ranks of the nobility. He may have studied at the university of Bologna. When he was about twenty, he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had four children. He first met Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice, in 1274, and when she died in 1290 he sought consolation by writing the Vita nuova and by studying philosophy and theology. During this time he also became involved in the conflict between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Florence; he became a prominent White Guelf and, when the Black Guelfs came to power in 1302, Dante was, during his absence from the city, condemned to exile. He took refuge initially in Verona but eventually, having wandered from place to place, he settled in Ravenna. While there he completed the Commedia, which he began in about 1307. Dante died in Ravenna in 1321.

ROBIN KIRKPATRICK graduated from Merton College, Oxford. He has taught courses on Dantes Commedia in Hong Kong, Dublin and for more than twenty-five years at the university of Cambridge, where he is Fellow of Robinson College and Professor of Italian and English Literatures. His books include Dantes Paradiso and the Limitations of Modern Criticism (1987), Dantes Inferno: Difficulty and Dead Poetry (1987) and, in the Cambridge Landmarks of World Literature series, Dante: The Divine Comedy (2004). His own published poetry includes Prologue and Palinodes (1997), and currently he is working on a long poem (in five acts) entitled Paradise Rag.

DANTE ALIGHIERI

Translated and edited by
ROBIN KIRKPATRICK

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This translation first published in Penguin Classics 2007
1

Translation copyright Robin Kirkpatrick, 2007
The text of the Commedia is reprinted from La Commedia secondo lantica vulgata,
edited by Giorgio Petrocchi, Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Dante Alighieri a cura della
Societ Dantesca, copyright 1994 by Casa Editrice Le Lettere Firenze

The moral right of the editor has been asserted

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