Purgatory

In the second volume of his definitive translation of The Divine Comedy, Mark Musa again brings his poetic sensitivity and skill as a translator and annotator to the difficult task of making Dante's masterpiece vital for English-speaking readers. In Purgatory, Dante deals with the origins of sin as he struggles up the terraces of Mount Purgatory on his arduous journey toward God. In Musa's fine idiomatic translation - complete with prose introductions, bibliography, and glossary - Dante comes alive as the universal poet - sublime, grim, intellectual, simple, humorous, tender, and ecstatic.

'It moves one to virtual awe... The language itself becomes, as it should, a religious experience.

Los Angeles Times

About The Author

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. He followed a normal course of studies, possibly attending university in Bologna, and when he was about twenty he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had several children. He had first met Bice Portinati, whom he called Beatrice, in 1274, and when she died in 1290, he sought distraction by studying philosophy and theology and by writing La Vita Nuova.

During this time he became involved in the strife between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; he became a prominent White Guelf, and when the Black Guelfs came to power in 1302, Dante, during an absence from Florence, was condemned to exile. He took refuge first in Verona, and after wandering from place to place - as far as Paris and even, some have said, to Oxford - he settled in Ravenna. While there he completed The Divine Comedy, which he began in about 1308. Dante died in Ravenna in 1321.