Dante Alighieri, profile by Sandro Botticelli.
Translating Purgatorio is a challenge for me, here is my first effort. Purgatorio is often overlooked, sitting as it does between the more famous Inferno and Paradiso. It is all about striving to live a good life, to overcome one’s burdens and one’s sins, the hope for salvation and rising above one’s present state. That is why I feel this passage has great significance for the human condition today, most especially in these two stanzas:
And so as we pardon those who have wronged us,
The same way you pardon us, kindly,
And do not look upon what we deserve.For our virtue, so fragile and light, we pray,
That you make us not fight the old foe,
But free us from the one who torments us.
Here is my English translation of this famous passage from the first part of Canto XI of Dante’s Purgatorio. In this circle of Purgatory, the souls are punished for the sin of pride and must carry heavy weights on their backs, and learn to be humble, in order to earn their passage out of Purgatorio and into Paradiso.
This translation is just of the first 10 stanzas of Canto XI. The first 8 stanzas are a version of the Our Father that Dante hears the souls there praying aloud. They praise God, ask for His blessings, His forgiveness and to be freed from old conflicts. The next 2 stanzas describe the scene as it unfolds before him.
This is my first attempt at translating Dante, after working on the other translations on this site for the last few years. I always found Dante to be more difficult to read and more forbidding to translate, yet I am happy with the results from these thirty lines of the poem.
Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto XI (first part)
Translation (c) 2018 Chris DiMatteo. All rights reserved.
“O our Father, whose home is in heaven,
Yet not confined, by the limitless love
Of your earliest labors up in that place,
Praised be your name and your great virtue,
From every creature, as you deserve,
To thank you and your sweet spirit.
Come show us the peace of your reign,
For we can not reach it alone, and we have
no way to get there, by all of our wits.
Just as the angels, by free will alone,
Make you sacred offerings singing Hosanna,
Do the people sing praises to you, of their own.
Grant us the manna of every day,
Without it, in this arid desert, we only go
Backwards the more that we try to advance.
And so as we pardon those who have wronged us,
The same way you pardon us, kindly,
And do not look upon what we deserve.
For our virtue, so fragile and light, we pray,
That you make us not fight the old foe,
But free us from the one who torments us.
Dear Lord, hear this prayer here made,
Which we make not for ourselves,
But for those whom we left behind.”
And so to themselves and to us, good wishes,
Those shadows prayed, as they carried their burdens,
In just such a way as we often dream,
On the first terrace, in anguish they went round,
Some of them suffering more than the others,
Cleansing the souls imprisoned in darkness.
Dante: Purgatorio, Canto XI
(original text)
“O Padre nostro, che ne’ cieli stai,
non circonscritto, ma per più amore
ch’ai primi effetti di lassù tu hai,
laudato sia il tuo nome e il tuo valore
da ogni creatura, com’ è degno
di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore.
Venga ver noi la pace del tuo regno,
Ché noi ad essa non potem da noi,
s’ ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno.
Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi
fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna,
così facciano li uomini de’ suoi.
Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna,
sanza la qual per questo aspro diserto
a retro va chi più di gir s’ affanna.
E come noi lo mal ch’avem sofferto
perdoniamo a ciascuno, e tu perdona
benigno, e non guardar lo nostro merto.
Nostra virtù che di legger s’ adona,
non spermentar con l’ antico avversaro,
ma libera da lui che sì la sprona.
Quest’ ultima preghiera, Signor caro,
già non si fa per noi, che non bisogna,
ma per color che dietro a noi restaro.”
Così a sé e noi buona ramogna
quell’ ombre orando, andavan sotto ‘l pondo,
simile a quel che tal volta si sogna,
disparmente angosciate tutte a tondo,
e lasse su per la prima cornice,
purgando le caligini del mondo.