Biblio Library

The Divine Comedy – PURGATORIO

This is an unabridged version of PURGATORIO, the second part of The Divine Comedy, an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri.

The Divine Comedy is written in the first person, and tells of Dante's journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting from the night before Good Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory, and Beatrice, Dante's ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise/Heaven), but at a deeper level, it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God.

In PURGATORIO, Dante and Virgil having survived the depths of Hell, ascend out of the undergloom to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world. The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere, created by the displacement of rock which resulted when Satan's fall created Hell (which Dante portrays as existing underneath Jerusalem).

The mountain has seven terraces, corresponding to the seven deadly sins or "seven roots of sinfulness." The classification of sin here is more psychological than that of the Inferno, being based on motives, rather than actions. Below the seven purges of the soul is the Ante-Purgatory, containing the Excommunicated from the church and the Late repentant who died, often violently, before receiving rites.

This translation by Charles Eliot Norton from 1891 is written in prose, a form of grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than the original blank verse. The translation includes more than 1,300 footnotes and explanations.

Audiobook read by Tony Addison, running time 5 hours, 25 min. Also available as E-Book: ePUB, contains 55,800 words including the endnotes. Average reading time should be around 4 hours and 40 min, but is likely longer due to the content text.

The Divine Comedy is available in one full volume including all three parts, or as separate E-Books or audio books;INFERNO (5 hours, 16 min), PURGATORIO (5 hours, 25 min), and PARADISO (5 hours, 38 min.

Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321), was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.