Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Purgatory
1321
Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Purgatory
1321
Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Dante emerges from Hell's darkness into golden dawn. This is Purgatory: not the place of punishment, but of hope. Here, souls climb the sacred mountain terrace by terrace, purging each sin through their own willing transformation. Longfellow's celebrated 1867 translation preserves the musical cadence and spiritual urgency of the original Italian. Guided by his beloved mentor Virgil, Dante witnesses the proud humbled beneath crushing stones, the gluttons wasting away before delicious feasts, the wrathful blinded by smoke. Yet unlike the damned, these souls actively choose their suffering, knowing redemption awaits at the summit. The journey builds toward the Earthly Paradise, where Dante encounters Beatrice, his lost love, now transformed into a divine messenger. Where Inferno showed the consequences of moral failure, Purgatorio reveals the luminous possibility of restoration. Dante's genius lies in his radical proposition: that the soul can be remade through choosing rightly, again and again, until it rises.
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“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.””
— Dante Alighieri
“The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.””
— Dante Alighieri
“L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.””
— Dante Alighieri
“The devil is not as black as he is painted.””
— Dante Alighieri
“Through me you pass into the city of woe:Through me you pass into eternal pain:Through me among the people lost for aye.Justice the founder of my fabric moved:To rear me was the task of power divine,Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.Before me things create were none, save thingsEternal, and eternal I shall endure.All hope abandon, ye who enter here.””
— Dante Alighieri
“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.””
— Dante Alighieri
“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?””
— Dante Alighieri
“Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice. ””
— Dante Alighieri
“The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.””
— Dante Alighieri
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Alighieri, Dante. Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Purgatory. Lex, lex-books.com/book/divine-comedy-longfellow-s-translation-purgatory-ea4bb58a-2927-46cb-b0a2-d1ef2456e619.Alighieri, D. (1321). Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Purgatory. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/divine-comedy-longfellow-s-translation-purgatory-ea4bb58a-2927-46cb-b0a2-d1ef2456e619Alighieri, Dante. Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Purgatory. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/divine-comedy-longfellow-s-translation-purgatory-ea4bb58a-2927-46cb-b0a2-d1ef2456e619.
