Purgatorio

Dante Alighieri, D.M. Black, D M Black , Robert Harrison

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English

NYRB Classics
05 October 2021

Poetry

A new translation of Dante's Purgatorio that celebrates the human elements of the second part of The Divine Comedy. This is a bilingual edition with an illuminating introduction from the translator.

A new translation of Dante's Purgatorio that celebrates the human elements of the second part of The Divine Comedy. This is a bilingual edition with an illuminating introduction from the translator.

Winner of the American Literary Translators Association 2022 National Translation Award in Poetry.

Purgatorio, the middle section of Dante's great poem about losing, and subsequently finding, one's way in the middle of one's life is, unsurprisingly, the beating heart of The Divine Comedy, as this powerful and lucid new translation by the poet D. M. Black makes wonderfully clear.

After days spent plumbing the depths of hell, the pilgrim staggers back to the clear light of day in a state of shock, the sense of pervasive dread and deep bewilderment with which he began his pilgrimage as intensified as it is alleviated by his terminal vision of evil. The slow and initially arduous climb up the mount of Purgatory that ensues, guided as always by Virgil, his poetic model and mentor, is simultaneously a reckoning with human limits and a rediscovery of human potential in the light of divine promise.

Dante's Purgatorio, which has been an inspiration to poets as varied as Shelley and T. S. Eliot, is a book full of human stories and philosophical inquiry; it is also a tale of individual reintegration and healing.

Black, a distinguished psychoanalyst as well as a poet, provides an introduction and commentary to this masterpiece by Dante from a contemporary point of view in this bilingual edition.

By: Dante Alighieri, D.M. Black
Preface by: Robert Harrison
Introduction by: D M Black
Imprint: NYRB Classics
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 127mm,
Weight: 368g
ISBN: 9781681376059
ISBN 10: 1681376059
Pages: 464
Publication Date: 05 October 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) most famous works are The New Life, which is available in the NYRB Poets series in a translation by Dante Gabriel Rosetti; De vulgari eloquentia, a defense of the use of the vernacular in literature; and his epic vision of the afterlife, The Divine Comedy. NYRB Classics also publishes Dante's Inferno in a translation by Ciaran Carson. D. M. Black is the author of seven poetry collections, includingClaiming Kindred (2011) andThe Arrow Maker (2017). He editedPsychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century- Competitors or Collaborators? (2006), and is the author ofWhy Things Matter- The Place of Values in Science, Psychoanalysis and Religion (2011). He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and lives in London. Robert Pogue Harrison is a critic, radio host, and the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature at Stanford University. His most recent book is Juvenescence- A Cultural History of Our Age.

Reviews for Purgatorio

Praise for Hell: Alasdair Gray has cast a spell over Dante's Hell, creating (and decorating) a verse translation that is modern, lyrical, yet faithful to the original New Statesman Powerfully conveys the appalling nature of a vision which has terrified and enthralled Western men and women down the centuries Times Literary Supplement No other translator has made the narratives so clear or strong, and the distinctive power of the work lies in the clarity of the storytelling . . . This Hell is a magnificent feat of reimagining of one of the greatest of all human creations Herald Slick, easy to read . . . Gray is rather good at catching the colloquial nature of the poem . . . An excellent primer to Dante . . . In terms of verve, vim and vigor Gray has succeeded here. It is, if such a thing can be, an 'easy' Dante, and one that does capture the comedy as well as the pathos and anguish of the poem Scotsman