Purgatorio (translation of Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatorio)

Overview

Dorothy L. Sayers's 1955 English verse rendering of Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio presents the second canticle of the Divine Comedy with a dual commitment to poetic form and intelligibility. The translation preserves the movement and moral drama of Dante's ascent of Mount Purgatory while supplying extensive commentary and notes that orient modern readers to the poem's historical, theological, and literary contexts. Sayers balances fidelity to Dante's meanings with a readable, energetic English diction that keeps the poem's spiritual optimism at the foreground.
Sayers treats Dante not as an antiquarian curiosity but as a living poet whose moral imagination demands careful explication. The volume situates Purgatorio between the moral horror of Inferno and the ecstatic vision of Paradiso, emphasizing the purifying work of penitence and the promise of eventual beatitude. Her aim is to make Dante's theology, symbolism, and allusive fabric accessible without flattening the poem's complexity.

Structure and translation approach

Sayers works within the constraints of English verse to evoke Dante's terza rima and tercet-driven movement, striving to reproduce the poem's cadence, rhetorical thrust, and rhyme movement rather than to offer a strictly literal line-by-line prose version. This poetic approach allows the translation to convey the musicality and rhetorical momentum of Dante's narrative while enabling Sayers to clarify syntax and nuance that would otherwise be opaque to contemporary readers.
The book includes a substantial introduction and running notes, where linguistic choices and theological references are explained succinctly. Sayers annotates mythological and historical figures, interprets doctrinal references, and often signals where interpretive decisions have been made, so readers can follow both the narrative and the larger doctrinal architecture that informs Dante's moral pedagogy.

Narrative and major scenes

Purgatorio traces the pilgrim's ascent of a mountain whose terraces host souls undergoing corrective suffering for the seven deadly sins. The structure moves from the island shore and the gate of Purgatory through successive terraces of pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust, and culminates in the Earthly Paradise at the summit. Along the way Dante encounters consolatory friendships, poetic exchanges, and character studies that illuminate moral failings and the means of spiritual reform.
Sayers renders key encounters with warmth and clarity: the consoling reunion with Casella, the civic loyalties voiced through the figure of Sordello, the intimate and candid exchange with Forese Donati, and the surprising presence of the Roman poet Statius, whose conversion exemplifies grace working alongside virtue. The final scenes in the Garden, where Beatrice supplants Virgil as guide and the pilgrim prepares for the heavenly journey, are handled with attention to symbolic detail and theological resonance.

Themes and theological content

Purgatorio emphasizes repentance, moral education, and the interplay of free will and divine grace. The canticle argues that human beings can and must cooperate with grace to effect their purification, and it presents suffering as remedial rather than retributive. Sayers highlights Dante's nuanced treatment of prayer, intercession, and the communion of saints, as well as the poem's insistence on hope and moral progress.
Her commentary draws attention to the Christian framework that shapes each terrace and exemplum, clarifying doctrinal points that might be unfamiliar to modern readers. The translation foregrounds Dante's synthesis of classical virtues and Christian salvation history, showing how poetic imagination and theological argument work together to map the soul's ascent.

Style, usefulness, and reception

Sayers's translation has been valued for its readable poetry and its scholarly conscientiousness, serving both general readers and students. Critics and lay readers have praised the combination of an energetic English idiom with learned notes that open Dante's dense allusions and theological claims. Some scholars debate particular lexical or metrical choices, but the translation's enduring usefulness lies in its capacity to make Dante speak with force to an English-speaking audience while retaining the canticle's spiritual and poetic integrity.
The edition remains a common entry point for readers approaching Purgatorio, especially those who want a translation that aims to replicate poetic form and to guide interpretation through informed, practical commentary.