Dante's Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri

[Geoff]

Found it in a second hand book store, a 1964 edition, of this classic, initially printed in 1901. Looks that its kinda hard to read, so I am not sure if I will get far with it.

love,
Geoff

[theunim]

Have fun with it, though! Must be something to read the original Italian. I've only read Inferno, as translated by Robert and Jean Hollander.

[Sandy]

Hi Geoff,
George and I were discussing this just now and he said he read it in French some years ago. He thinks it might be helpful for you if you read the background of what was going on around the time of the book as it might make the text more understandable.
Love,
Sandy

[theunim]

Sandy,That reminded me of what the professor said, the one who had assigned that for reading that semester. She said there were a lot of political figures of that time period that were put into the levels they were in because it was believed that Dante did that to rile some of them up. Is that what George was referring to?

[Sandy]

Hi T,
Yes that is right...it was a rough ole time and Christianity was going rapidly downhill. Seems like I looked it up on wikkipedia once and read a little of the histroy around it...sadly, I didn't retain much. It is interesting to note that Dante had help from Midwayer Beatrice (ABC-3, Bzutu's big sister) with this writing endeavor. (George said she's very tall, very blonde and very loving. )
Love,
Sandy

[theunim]

Sandy,

Back when the professor talked about who the figure of Beatrice was to Dante, she was mentioning that the possibility existed that she was a noblewoman of some sort that Dante had admired from afar... and now that I know there was help from Midwayer Beatrice, then that just changes things all around now.

Love,
Theunim