The Portable Dante

THE PORTABLE DANTE

DANTE ALIGHIERI was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. He followed a normal course of studies, possibly attending University in Bologna, and when he was about twenty he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had several children. He had first met Bice Portinati, whom he called Beatrice, in 1274, and when she died in 1290, he sought distraction by studying philosophy and theology and by writing the Vita nuova. During this time he became involved in the strife between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; he became a prominent White Guelf, and when the Black Guelfs came to power in 1302, Dante, during an absence from Florence, was condemned to exile. He took refuge first in Verona, and after wandering from place to place—as far as Paris and even, some have said, to Oxford—he settled in Ravenna. While there he completed The Divine Comedy, which he began in about 1308. Dante died in Ravenna in 1321.

MARK MUSA is a graduate of Rutgers University, the University of Florence, and The John Hopkins University. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author of a number of books and articles. Best known for his translations of the Italian classics (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and the poetry of the Middle Ages) as well as his Dante criticism, he holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Italian at Indiana University.

The Portable
Dante

Translated, Edited and with an
Introduction and Notes by

MARK MUSA

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Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in the United States of America by Penguin Books 1995
This edition published 2003

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Copyright © Penguin Books USA Inc., 1995
All rights reserved

The Divine Comedy: Inferno

This translation first published in the United States of America by Indiana University Press 1971

Published in Penguin Books 1984

Copyright © Indiana University Press, 1971

Copyright © Mark Musa, 1984

The Divine Comedy: Purgatory

This translation first published in the United States of America by Indiana University Press 1981

Published in Penguin Books 1984

Copyright © Mark Musa, 1981

The Divine Comedy: Paradise

This translation first published in the United States of America by Indiana University Press 1984

Published in Penguin Books 1986

Copyright © Mark Musa, 1984

Vita Nuova

This translation first published in the United States of America by Indiana University Press 1973

Published in Great Britain in different format by Oxford University Press

Reprinted by arrangement with Indiana University Press

Copyright © Indiana University Press, 1973

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

[Selections. English. 1995]

The portable Dante / edited and with an introduction and notes by Mark Musa.

p. cm.

“A Penguin original”.

Includes bibliographical references.

EISBN: 9781101573822

1. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Translations into English. I. Musa, Mark. II. Title.

PQ4315. A3M87 1995

851l—dc20 94-15988

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Sabon

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FOR
ISABELLA
WITH
LOVE

CONTENTS

Editor’s Introduction

Translator’s Note

THE DIVINE COMEDY

Inferno

Purgatory

Paradise

VITA NUOVA

Selected Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

LIFE

DANTE ALIGHIERI WAS BORN in Florence in May 1265 in the district of San Martino, the son of Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero. His mother died when he was young; his father, whom he seems to avoid mentioning as much as possible, remarried and produced two more children. The Alighieri family may be considered noble by reason of the titles and dignities bestowed upon its members, although by Dante’s time it seems to have been reduced to modest economic and social circumstances. According to Dante himself, the family descended from the noble seed of the Roman founders of the city (Inferno XV. 73-78). This claim remains largely unsubstantiated, as nothing is known of Dante’s ancestors before his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, who was knighted by Emperor Conrad III and died, as Dante tells us, during the Second Crusade, about 1147 (Paradiso XV. 139-148).

Like most of the city’s lesser nobility and artisans, Dante’s family was affiliated with the Guelf party, as opposed to the Ghibellines, whose adherents tended to belong to the feudal aristocracy. These two parties came into Italy from Germany, and their names represent italianized forms of those attached to the two quarreling houses of Germany, Welf and Waiblingen.