Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)


Mt Purgatorio on the left side of this painting, the city of Florence on the right
Painting by Domenico di Michelino (Florence, 1465)

La Commedia (routinely translated as "The Divine Comedy") is an immortal poem of three books.  The opening lines are great entry points into Dante's "universal" poetry.

Inferno

Midway this way of life we're bound upon,
    I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
    Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Ay me! how hard to speak of it - that rude
    And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath
    Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood;

It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death;
    Yet there I gained such good, that, to convey
    The tale, I'll write what else I found therewith.

How I got into it I cannot say,
    Because I was so heavy and full of sleep
    When first I stumbled from the narrow way;

But when at last I stood beneath a steep
    Hill's side, which closed that valley's wandering maze
    Whose dread had pierced me to the heart-root deep,

Then I looked up, and saw the morning rays
    Mantle its shoulder from that planet bright
    Which guides men's feet aright on all their ways;

And this a little quieted the affright
    That lurking in my bosom's lake had lain
    Through the long horror of that piteous night.

                                                              ~ Translation by Dorothy Sayers

Illustration by Gustave Doré

Purgatorio

For better waters, now, the little bark
of my poetic powers hoists its sails,
and leaves behind that cruelest of the seas.

And I shall sing about that second realm
where man's soul goes to purify itself
and become worthy to ascend to Heaven.

Here let death's poetry arise to life,
O Muses sacrosanct whose liege I am!
And let Calliope rise up and play

her sweet accompaniment in the same strain
that pierced the wretched magpies with the truth
of unforgiveable presumptuousness.

The tender tint of orient sapphire,
suffusing the still reaches of the sky,
as far as the horizon deeply clear,

renewed my eye's delight, now that I found
myself free of the deathly atmosphere
that had weighed heavy on my eyes and heart.

The lovely planet kindling love in man
made all the eastern sky smile with her light,
veiling the Fish that shimmered in her train.

                                                           ~ Translation by Mark Musa

Paradiso

The glory of the One who moves all things
    penetrates the universe with light,
    more radiant in one part and elsewhere less:
I have been in that heaven He makes most bright,
    and seen things neither mind can hold nor tongue
    utter, when one descends from such great height,
For as we near the One for whom we long,
    our intellects so plunge into the deep,
    memory cannot follow where we go.
Nevertheless what small part I can keep
    of that holy kingdom treasured in my heart
    will now become the matter of my song.
O good Apollo, for this last work of art,
    make me fit as a vessel of your power
    as you demand when you bestow the crown
Of the beloved laurel. Till this hour
    one peak of twin Parnassus has sufficed,
    but if I am to enter the lists now
I shall need both. Then surge into my breast
    and breathe your song, as when you drew the vain
    Marsvas from the sheath of his own limbs.
   
                                                               ~ Translation of Anthony Esolen