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Dante Alighieri

Andrea del Castagno
Mural of Dante in the Uffizi Gallery
c. 1450.
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see also:
Dante Alighieri "The
Divine Comedy"
(Illustrations by G.
Dore, W. Blake, S. Dali)
Dante
(Illustrations by
Botticelli)
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Dante
Italian poet
in full Dante Alighieri
born c. May 21–June 20, 1265, Florence, Italy
died Sept. 13/14, 1321, Ravenna
Overview
Italian poet.
Dante was of noble ancestry, and his life was shaped by the conflict
between papal and imperial partisans (the Guelfs and Ghibellines). When
an opposing political faction within the Guelfs (Dante’s party) gained
ascendancy, he was exiled (1302) from Florence, to which he never
returned. His life was given direction by his spiritual love for
Beatrice Portinari (d. 1290), to whom he dedicated most of his poetry.
His great friendship with Guido Cavalcanti shaped his later career as
well. La Vita Nuova (1293?) celebrates Beatrice in verse. In his
difficult years of exile, he wrote the verse collection The Banquet (c.
1304–07); De vulgari eloquentia (1304–07; “Concerning Vernacular
Eloquence”), the first theoretical discussion of the Italian literary
language; and On Monarchy (1313?), a major Latin treatise on medieval
political philosophy. He is best known for the monumental epic poem The
Divine Comedy (written c. 1308–21; originally titled simply Commedia), a
profoundly Christian vision of human temporal and eternal destiny. It is
an allegory of universal human destiny in the form of a pilgrim’s
journey through hell and purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, and
then to Paradise, guided by Beatrice. By writing it in Italian rather
than Latin, Dante almost singlehandedly made Italian a literary
language, and he stands as one of the towering figures of European
literature.
Main
Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and
political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La
commedia, later named La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy).
Dante’s Divine Comedy, a great work of medieval literature, is a
profound Christian vision of man’s temporal and eternal destiny. On its
most personal level, it draws on the poet’s own experience of exile from
his native city of Florence; on its most comprehensive level, it may be
read as an allegory, taking the form of a journey through hell,
purgatory, and paradise. The poem amazes by its array of learning, its
penetrating and comprehensive analysis of contemporary problems, and its
inventiveness of language and imagery. By choosing to write his poem in
Italian rather than in Latin, Dante decisively influenced the course of
literary development. Not only did he lend a voice to the emerging lay
culture of his own country, but Italian became the literary language in
western Europe for several centuries.
In addition to poetry Dante wrote important theoretical works ranging
from discussions of rhetoric to moral philosophy and political thought.
He was fully conversant with the classical tradition, drawing for his
own purposes on such writers as Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius. But, most
unusual for a layman, he also had an impressive command of the most
recent scholastic philosophy and of theology. His learning and his
personal involvement in the heated political controversies of his age
led him to the composition of De monarchia, one of the major tracts of
medieval political philosophy.
Early life and the Vita nuova
Most of what is known about Dante’s life he has told himself. He was
born in Florence in 1265 under the sign of Gemini (between May 21 and
June 20) and remained devoted to his native city all his life. Dante
describes how he fought as a cavalryman against the Ghibellines, a
banished Florentine party supporting the imperial cause. He also speaks
of his great teacher Brunetto Latini and his gifted friend Guido
Cavalcanti, of the poetic culture in which he made his first artistic
ventures, his poetic indebtedness to Guido Guinizelli, the origins of
his family in his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, whom the reader
meets in the central cantos of the Paradiso (and from whose wife the
family name, Alighieri, derived), and, going back even further, of the
pride that he felt in the fact that his distant ancestors were
descendants of the Roman soldiers who settled along the banks of the
Arno.
Yet Dante has little to say about his more immediate family. There is
no mention of his father or mother, brother or sister in The Divine
Comedy. A sister is possibly referred to in the Vita nuova, and his
father is the subject of insulting sonnets exchanged in jest between
Dante and his friend Forese Donati. Because Dante was born in 1265 and
the exiled Guelfs, to whose party Dante’s family adhered, did not return
until 1266, Dante’s father apparently was not a figure considerable
enough to warrant exile. Dante’s mother died when he was young,
certainly before he was 14. Her name was Bella, but of which family is
unknown. Dante’s father then married Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi and
they produced a son, Francesco, and a daughter, Gaetana. Dante’s father
died prior to 1283, since at that time Dante, having come into his
majority, was able as an orphan to sell a credit owned by his father.
The elder Alighieri left his children a modest yet comfortable patrimony
of property in Florence and in the country. About this time Dante
married Gemma Donati, to whom he had been betrothed since 1277.
Dante’s life was shaped by the long history of conflict between the
imperial and papal partisans called, respectively, Ghibellines and
Guelfs. Following the middle of the 13th century the antagonisms were
brutal and deadly, with each side alternately gaining the upper hand and
inflicting gruesome penalties and exile upon the other. In 1260 the
Guelfs, after a period of ascendancy, were defeated in the battle of
Montaperti (Inferno X, XXXII), but in 1266 a force of Guelfs, supported
by papal and French armies, was able to defeat the Ghibellines at
Benevento, expelling them forever from Florence. This meant that Dante
grew up in a city brimming with postwar pride and expansionism, eager to
extend its political control throughout Tuscany. Florentines compared
themselves with Rome and the civilization of the ancient city-states.
Not only did Florence extend its political power, but it was ready to
exercise intellectual dominance as well. The leading figure in
Florence’s intellectual ascendancy was a returning exile, Brunetto
Latini. When in the Inferno Dante describes his encounter with his great
teacher, this is not to be regarded as simply a meeting of one pupil
with his master but rather as an encounter of an entire generation with
its intellectual mentor. Latini had awakened a new public consciousness
in the prominent figures of a younger generation, including Guido
Cavalcanti, Forese Donati, and Dante himself, encouraging them to put
their knowledge and skill as writers to the service of their city or
country. Dante readily accepted the Aristotelian assumption that man is
a social (political) being. Even in the Paradiso (VIII.117) Dante allows
as being beyond any possible dispute the notion that things would be far
worse for man were he not a member of a city-state.
A contemporary historian, Giovanni Villani, characterized Latini as
the “initiator and master in refining the Florentines and in teaching
them how to speak well, and how to guide our republic according to
political philosophy [la politica].” Despite the fact that Latini’s most
important book, Li Livres dou Trésor (1262–66; The Tresor), was written
in French (Latini had passed his years of exile in France), its culture
is Dante’s culture; it is a repository of classical citation. The first
part of Book II contains one of the early translations in a modern
European vernacular of Aristotle’s Ethics. On almost every question or
topic of philosophy, ethics, and politics Latini freely quotes from
Cicero and Seneca. And, almost as frequently, when treating questions of
government, he quotes from the book of Proverbs, as Dante was to do. The
Bible, as well as the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca, as
represented in Latini’s work, were the mainstays of Dante’s early
culture.
Of these Rome presents the most inspiring source of identification.
The cult of Cicero began to develop alongside that of Aristotle; Cicero
was perceived as not only preaching but as fully exemplifying the
intellectual as citizen. A second Roman element in Latini’s legacy to
become an important part of Dante’s culture was the love of glory, the
quest for fame through a wholehearted devotion to excelling. For this
reason, in the Inferno (XV) Latini is praised for instructing Dante in
the means by which man makes himself immortal, and in his farewell words
Latini commits to Dante’s care his Tresor, through which he trusts his
memory will survive.
Dante was endowed with remarkable intellectual and aesthetic
self-confidence. By the time he was 18, as he himself says in the Vita
nuova, he had already taught himself the art of making verse (chapter
III). He sent an early sonnet, which was to become the first poem in the
Vita nuova, to the most famous poets of his day. He received several
responses, but the most important one came from Cavalcanti, and this was
the beginning of their great friendship.
As in all meetings of great minds the relationship between Dante and
Cavalcanti was a complicated one. In chapter XXX of the Vita nuova Dante
states that it was through Cavalcanti’s exhortations that he wrote his
first book in Italian rather than in Latin. Later, in the Convivio,
written in Italian, and in De vulgari eloquentia, written in Latin,
Dante was to make one of the first great Renaissance defenses of the
vernacular. His later thinking on these matters grew out of his
discussions with Cavalcanti, who prevailed upon him to write only in the
vernacular. Because of this intellectual indebtedness, Dante dedicated
his Vita nuova to Cavalcanti—to his best friend (primo amico).
Later, however, when Dante became one of the priors of Florence, he
was obliged to concur with the decision to exile Cavalcanti, who
contracted malaria during the banishment and died in August 1300. In the
Inferno (X) Dante composed a monument to his great friend, and it is as
heartrending a tribute as his memorial to Latini. In both cases Dante
records his indebtedness, his fondness, and his appreciation of their
great merits, but in each he is equally obliged to record the facts of
separation. In order to save himself, he must find (or has found) other,
more powerful aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual sponsorship than
that offered by his old friends and teachers.
One of these spiritual guides, for whom Cavalcanti evidently did not
have the same appreciation, was Beatrice, a figure in whom Dante created
one of the most celebrated fictionalized women in all of literature. In
keeping with the changing directions of Dante’s thought and the
vicissitudes of his career, she, too, underwent enormous changes in his
hands—sanctified in the Vita nuova, demoted in the canzoni (poems)
presented in the Convivio, only to be returned with more profound
comprehension in The Divine Comedy as the woman credited with having led
Dante away from the “vulgar herd.”
La vita nuova (c. 1293; The New Life) is the first of two collections
of verse that Dante made in his lifetime, the other being the Convivio.
Each is a prosimetrum, that is, a work composed of verse and prose. In
each case the prose is a device for binding together poems composed over
about a 10-year period. The Vita nuova brought together Dante’s poetic
efforts from before 1283 to roughly 1292–93; the Convivio, a bulkier and
more ambitious work, contains Dante’s most important poetic compositions
from just prior to 1294 to the time of The Divine Comedy.
The Vita nuova, which Dante called his libello, or small book, is a
remarkable work. It contains 42 brief chapters with commentaries on 25
sonnets, one ballata, and four canzoni; a fifth canzone is left
dramatically interrupted by Beatrice’s death. The prose commentary
provides the frame story, which does not emerge from the poems
themselves (it is, of course, conceivable that some were actually
written for other occasions than those alleged). The story is simple
enough, telling of Dante’s first sight of Beatrice when both are nine
years of age, her salutation when they are 18, Dante’s expedients to
conceal his love for her, the crisis experienced when Beatrice withholds
her greeting, Dante’s anguish that she is making light of him, his
determination to rise above anguish and sing only of his lady’s virtues,
anticipations of her death (that of a young friend, the death of her
father, and Dante’s own premonitory dream), and finally the death of
Beatrice, Dante’s mourning, the temptation of the sympathetic donna
gentile (a young woman who temporarily replaces Beatrice), Beatrice’s
final triumph and apotheosis, and, in the last chapter, Dante’s
determination to write at some later time about her “that which has
never been written of any woman.”
Yet with all of this apparently autobiographical purpose the Vita
nuova is strangely impersonal. The circumstances it sets down are
markedly devoid of any historical facts or descriptive detail (thus
making it pointless to engage in too much debate as to the exact
historical identity of Beatrice). The language of the commentary also
adheres to a high level of generality. Names are rarely used—Cavalcanti
is referred to three times as Dante’s “best friend”; Dante’s sister is
referred to as “she who was joined to me by the closest proximity of
blood.” On the one hand Dante suggests the most significant stages of
emotional experience, but on the other he seems to distance his
descriptions from strong emotional reactions. The larger structure in
which Dante arranged poems written over a 10-year period and the
generality of his poetic language are indications of his early and
abiding ambition to go beyond the practices of local poets.
Dante’s intellectual development and public career
A second contemporary poetic figure behind Dante was Guido Guinizelli,
the poet most responsible for altering the prevailing local, or
“municipal,” kind of poetry. Guinizelli’s verse provided what Cavalcanti
and Dante were looking for—a remarkable sense of joy contained in a
refined and lucid aesthetic. What increased the appeal of his poetry was
its intellectual, even philosophical, content. His poems were written in
praise of the lady and of gentilezza, the virtue that she brought out in
her admirer. The conception of love that he extolled was part of a
refined and noble sense of life. It was Guinizelli’s influence that was
responsible for the poetic and spiritual turning point of the Vita
nuova. As reported in chapters XVII to XXI, Dante experienced a change
of heart, and rather than write poems of anguish, he determined to write
poems in praise of his lady, especially the canzone Donne ch’avete
intelletto d’amore (“Ladies Who Have Understanding of Love”). This
canzone is followed immediately by the sonnet Amore e ’l cor gentil sono
una cosa (“Love and the Noble Heart Are the Same Thing”), the first line
of which is clearly an adaptation of Guinizelli’s Al cor gentil ripara
sempre amore (“In Every Noble Heart Love Finds Its Home”). This was the
beginning of Dante’s association with a new poetic style, the dolce stil
nuovo (“the sweet new style”), the significance of which—the simple
means by which it transcended the narrow range of the more regional
poetry—he dramatically explains in the Purgatorio (XXIV).
This interest in philosophical poetry led Dante into another great
change in his life, which he describes in the Convivio. Looking for
consolation following the death of Beatrice, Dante reports that he
turned to philosophy, particularly to the writings of Boethius and
Cicero. But what was intended as a temporary reprieve from sorrow became
a lifelong avocation and one of the most crucial intellectual events in
Dante’s career. The donna gentile of the Vita nuova was transformed into
Lady Philosophy, who soon occupied all of Dante’s thoughts. He began
attending the religious schools of Florence in order to hear
disputations on philosophy, and within a period of only 30 months “the
love of her [philosophy] banished and destroyed every other thought.” In
his poem Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (“You Who Through
Intelligence Move the Third Sphere”) he dramatizes this conversion from
the sweet old style, associated with Beatrice and the Vita nuova, to the
rigorous, even severe, new style associated with philosophy. This period
of study gave expression to a series of canzoni that were eventually to
form the poetic basis for the philosophic commentary of the Convivio.
Another great change was Dante’s more active political involvement in
the affairs of the commune. In 1295 he became a member of the guild of
physicians and apothecaries (to which philosophers could belong), which
opened his way to public office. But he entered the public arena at a
most perilous time in the city’s politics. As it had been during the
time of the Guelf and Ghibelline civil strife, in the 1290s Florence
once again became a divided city. The ruling Guelf class of Florence
became divided into a party of “Blacks,” led by Corso Donati, and a
party of “Whites,” to which Dante belonged. The Whites gained the upper
hand and exiled the Blacks.
There is ample information concerning Dante’s activities following
1295. In May 1300 he was part of an important embassy to San Gimignano,
a neighbouring town, whose purpose it was to solidify the Guelf league
of Tuscan cities against the mounting ambitions of the new and embattled
pope Boniface VIII. When Dante was elected to the priorate in 1300, he
presumably was already recognized as a spokesman for those in the
commune determined to resist the Pontiff’s policies. Dante thus
experienced a complete turnabout in his attitudes concerning the extent
of papal power. The hegemony of the Guelfs—the party supporting the
Pope—had been restored in Florence in 1266 by an alliance forged between
the forces of France and the papacy. By 1300, however, Dante had come to
oppose the territorial ambitions of the Pope, and this in turn provided
the intellectual motivation for another, even greater change: Dante, the
Guelf moderate, would in time, through his firsthand experience of the
ill effects of papal involvement in political matters, become in the
Convivio, in the later polemical work the Monarchia, and most
importantly throughout The Divine Comedy, one of the most fervently
outspoken defenders of the position that the empire does not derive its
political authority from the pope.
Events, moreover, propelled Dante into further opposition to papal
policies. A new alliance was formed between the papacy, the French (the
brother of King Philip IV, Charles of Valois, was acting in concert with
Boniface), and the exiled Black Guelfs. When Charles of Valois wished
permission to enter Florence, the city itself was thrown into political
indecision. In order to ascertain the nature of the Pope’s intentions,
an embassy was sent to Rome to discuss these matters with him. Dante was
one of the emissaries, but his quandary was expressed in the legendary
phrase “If I go, who remains; if I remain, who goes?” Dante was
outmaneuvered. The Pope dismissed the other two legates and detained
Dante. In early November 1301 the forces of Charles of Valois were
permitted entry to Florence. That very night the exiled Blacks
surreptitiously reentered Florence and for six days terrorized the city.
Dante learned of the deception at first in Rome and then more fully in
Siena. In January 1302 he was called to appear before the new Florentine
government and, failing to do so, was condemned, along with three other
former priors, for crimes he had not committed. Again failing to appear,
on March 10, 1302, Dante and 14 other Whites were condemned to be burned
to death. Thus Dante suffered the most decisive crisis of his life. In
The Divine Comedy he frequently and powerfully speaks of this rupture;
indeed, he makes it the central dramatic act toward which a long string
of prophecies points. But it is also Dante’s purpose to show the means
by which he triumphed over his personal disaster, thus making his poem
into a true “divine comedy.”
Exile, the Convivio, and the De monarchia
Information about Dante’s early years in exile is scanty; nevertheless,
enough is known to provide a broad picture. It seems that Dante at first
was active among the exiled White Guelfs in their attempts to seek a
military return. These efforts proved fruitless. Evidently Dante grew
disillusioned with the other Florentine outcasts, the Ghibellines, and
was determined to prove his worthiness by means of his writings and thus
secure his return. These are the circumstances that led him to compose
Il convivio (c. 1304–07; The Banquet).
Dante projected a work of 15 books, 14 of which would be commentaries
on different canzoni. He completed only four of the books. The finished
commentaries in many ways go beyond the scope of the poems, becoming a
compendium of instruction with much of the random display of an amateur
in philosophy. Dante’s intention in the Convivio, as in The Divine
Comedy, was to place the challenging moral and political issues of his
day into a suitable ethical and metaphysical framework.
Book I of the Convivio is in large part a stirring and systematic
defense of the vernacular. (The unfinished De vulgari eloquentia [c.
1304–07; Concerning Vernacular Eloquence], a companion piece, presumably
written in coordination with Book I, is primarily a practical treatise
in the art of poetry based upon an elevated poetic language.) Dante
became the great advocate of its use and in the final sentence of Book I
he accurately predicts its glorious future:
This shall be the new light, the new sun, which shall rise when the
worn-out one shall set, and shall give light to them who are in shadow
and in darkness because of the old sun, which does not enlighten them.
The revolution Dante described was nothing less than the twilight of
the predominantly clerical Latin culture and the emergence of a lay,
vernacular urban literacy. Dante saw himself as the philosopher-mediator
between the two, helping to educate a newly enfranchised public
readership. The Italian literature that Dante heralded was soon to
become the leading literature and Italian the leading literary language
of Europe, and they would continue to be that for more than three
centuries.
In the Convivio Dante’s mature political and philosophical system is
nearly complete. In this work Dante makes his first stirring defense of
the imperial tradition and, more specifically, of the Roman Empire. He
introduces the crucial concept of horme, that is, of an innate desire
that prompts the soul to return to God. But it requires proper education
through examples and doctrine. Otherwise it can become misdirected
toward worldly aims and society torn apart by its destructive power. In
the Convivio Dante establishes the link between his political thought
and his understanding of human appetite: given the pope’s craving for
worldly power, at the time there existed no proper spiritual models to
direct the appetite toward God; and given the weakness of the empire,
there existed no law sufficient to exercise a physical restraint on the
will. For Dante this explains the chaos into which Italy had been
plunged, and it moved him, in hopes of remedying these conditions, to
take up the epic task of The Divine Comedy.
But a political event occurred that at first raised tremendous hope
but then plunged Dante into still greater disillusionment. In November
1308 Henry, the count of Luxembourg, was elected king of Germany, and in
July 1309 the French pope, Clement V, who had succeeded Boniface,
declared Henry to be king of the Romans and invited him to Rome, where
in time he would be crowned Holy Roman emperor in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The possibility of once again having an emperor electrified Italy; and
among the imperial proponents was Dante, who saw approaching the
realization of an ideal that he had long held: the coming of an emperor
pledged to restore peace while also declaring his spiritual
subordination to religious authority. Within a short time after his
arrival in Italy in 1310 Henry VII’s great appeal began to fade. He
lingered too long in the north, allowing his enemies to gather strength.
Foremost among the opposition to this divinely ordained moment, as Dante
regarded it, was the commune of Florence.
During these years Dante wrote important political epistles—evidence
of the great esteem in which he was held throughout Italy, of his
personal authority, as it were—in which he exalted Henry, urging him to
be diligent, and condemned Florence. In subsequent action, however,
which was to remind Dante of Boniface’s duplicity, Clement himself
turned against Henry. This action prompted one of Dante’s greatest
polemical treatises, his De monarchia (c. 1313; On Monarchy) in which he
expands the political arguments of the Convivio. In the embittered
atmosphere caused by Clement’s deceit Dante turned his argumentative
powers against papal insistence on its superiority over the political
ruler, that is, against the argument that the empire derived its
political authority from the pope. In the final passages of the
Monarchia Dante writes that the ends designed by Providence for man are
twofold: one end is the bliss of this life, which is conveyed in the
figure of the earthly paradise; the other is the bliss of eternal life,
which is embodied in the image of a heavenly paradise. Yet despite their
different ends, these two purposes are not unconnected. Dante concludes
his Monarchia by assuring his reader that he does not mean to imply
“that the Roman government is in no way subject to the Roman
pontificate, for in some ways our mortal happiness is ordered for the
sake of immortal happiness.” Dante’s problem was that he had to express
in theoretical language a subtle relationship that might be better
conveyed by metaphoric language and historical example. Surveying the
history of the relationship between papacy and empire, Dante pointed
with approval to specific historical examples, such as Constantine’s
good will toward the church. Dante’s disappointment in the failed
mission of Henry VII derived from the fact that Henry’s original sponsor
was apparently Pope Clement and that conditions seemed to be ideal for
reestablishing the right relationship between the supreme powers.
The Divine Comedy
Dante’s years of exile were years of difficult peregrinations from one
place to another—as he himself repeatedly says, most effectively in
Paradiso [XVII], in Cacciaguida’s moving lamentation that “bitter is the
taste of another man’s bread and . . . heavy the way up and down another
man’s stair.” Throughout his exile Dante nevertheless was sustained by
work on his great poem. The Divine Comedy was possibly begun prior to
1308 and completed just before his death in 1321, but the exact dates
are uncertain. In addition, in his final years Dante was received
honourably in many noble houses in the north of Italy, most notably by
Guido Novello da Polenta, the nephew of the remarkable Francesca, in
Ravenna. There at his death Dante was given an honourable burial
attended by the leading men of letters of the time, and the funeral
oration was delivered by Guido himself.
The plot of The Divine Comedy is simple: a man, generally assumed to
be Dante himself, is miraculously enabled to undertake an ultramundane
journey, which leads him to visit the souls in Hell, Purgatory, and
Paradise. He has two guides: Virgil, who leads him through the Inferno
and Purgatorio, and Beatrice, who introduces him to Paradiso. Through
these fictional encounters taking place from Good Friday evening in 1300
through Easter Sunday and slightly beyond, Dante learns of the exile
that is awaiting him (which had, of course, already occurred at the time
of the writing). This device allowed Dante not only to create a story
out of his pending exile but also to explain the means by which he came
to cope with his personal calamity and to offer suggestions for the
resolution of Italy’s troubles as well. Thus, the exile of an individual
becomes a microcosm of the problems of a country, and it also becomes
representative of the fall of man. Dante’s story is thus historically
specific as well as paradigmatic.
The basic structural component of The Divine Comedy is the canto. The
poem consists of 100 cantos, which are grouped together into three
sections, or canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Technically
there are 33 cantos in each canticle and one additional canto, contained
in the Inferno, which serves as an introduction to the entire poem. For
the most part the cantos range from about 136 to about 151 lines. The
poem’s rhyme scheme is the terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.) Thus, the
divine number of three is present in every part of the work.
Dante’s Inferno differs from its great classical predecessors in both
position and purpose. In Homer’s Odyssey (Book XII) and Virgil’s Aeneid
(Book VI) the visit to the land of the dead occurs in the middle of the
poem because in these centrally placed books the essential values of
life are revealed. Dante, while adopting the convention, transforms the
practice by beginning his journey with the visit to the land of the
dead. He does this because his poem’s spiritual pattern is not classical
but Christian: Dante’s journey to Hell represents the spiritual act of
dying to the world, and hence it coincides with the season of Christ’s
own death. (In this way, Dante’s method is similar to that of Milton in
Paradise Lost, where the flamboyant but defective Lucifer and his fallen
angels are presented first.) The Inferno represents a false start during
which Dante, the character, must be disabused of harmful values that
somehow prevent him from rising above his fallen world. Despite the
regressive nature of the Inferno, Dante’s meetings with the roster of
the damned are among the most memorable moments of the poem: the
Neutrals, the virtuous pagans, Francesca da Rimini, Filipo Argenti,
Farinata degli Uberti, Piero delle Vigne, Brunetto Latini, the
simoniacal popes, Ulysses, and Ugolino impose themselves upon the
reader’s imagination with tremendous force.
The visit to Hell is, as Virgil and later Beatrice explain, an
extreme measure, a painful but necessary act before real recovery can
begin. This explains why the Inferno is both aesthetically and
theologically incomplete. For instance, readers frequently express
disappointment at the lack of dramatic or emotional power in the final
encounter with Satan in canto XXXIV. But because the journey through the
Inferno primarily signifies a process of separation and thus is only the
initial step in a fuller development, it must end with a distinct
anticlimax. In a way this is inevitable because the final revelation of
Satan can have nothing new to offer: the sad effects of his presence in
human history have already become apparent throughout the Inferno.
In the Purgatorio the protagonist’s painful process of spiritual
rehabilitation commences; in fact, this part of the journey may be
considered the poem’s true moral starting point. Here the pilgrim Dante
subdues his own personality in order that he may ascend. In fact, in
contrast to the Inferno, where Dante is confronted with a system of
models that needs to be discarded, in the Purgatorio few characters
present themselves as models; all of the penitents are pilgrims along
the road of life. Dante, rather than being an awed if alienated
observer, is an active participant. If the Inferno is a canticle of
enforced and involuntary alienation, in which Dante learns how harmful
were his former allegiances, in the Purgatorio he comes to accept as
most fitting the essential Christian image of life as a pilgrimage. As
Beatrice in her magisterial return in the earthly paradise reminds
Dante, he must learn to reject the deceptive promises of the temporal
world.
Despite its harsh regime, the Purgatorio is the realm of spiritual
dawn, where larger visions are entertained. Whereas in only one canto of
the Inferno (VII), in which Fortuna is discussed, is there any
suggestion of philosophy, in the Purgatorio, historical, political, and
moral vistas are opened up. It is, moreover, the great canticle of
poetry and the arts. Dante meant it literally when he proclaimed, after
the dreary dimensions of Hell: “But here let poetry rise again from the
dead.” There is only one poet in Hell proper and not more than two in
the Paradiso, but in the Purgatorio the reader encounters the musicians
Casella and Belacqua and the poet Sordello and hears of the fortunes of
the two Guidos, Guinizelli and Cavalcanti, the painters Cimabue and
Giotto, and the miniaturists. In the upper reaches of Purgatory, the
reader observes Dante reconstructing his classical tradition and then
comes even closer to Dante’s own great native tradition (placed higher
than the classical tradition) when he meets Forese Donati, hears
explained—in an encounter with Bonagiunta da Lucca—the true resources of
the dolce stil nuovo, and meets with Guido Guinizelli and hears how he
surpassed in skill and poetic mastery the reigning regional poet,
Guittone d’Arezzo. These cantos resume the line of thought presented in
the Inferno (IV), where among the virtuous pagans Dante announces his
own program for an epic and takes his place, “sixth among that number,”
alongside the classical writers. In the Purgatorio he extends that
tradition to include Statius (whose Thebaid did in fact provide the
matter for the more grisly features of the lower inferno), but he also
shows his more modern tradition originating in Guinizelli. Shortly after
his encounter with Guinizelli comes the long-awaited reunion with
Beatrice in the earthly paradise. Thus, from the classics Dante seems to
have derived his moral and political understanding as well as his
conception of the epic poem, that is, a framing story large enough to
encompass the most important issues of his day, but it was from his
native tradition that he acquired the philosophy of love that forms the
Christian matter of his poem.
This means of course that Virgil, Dante’s guide, must give way to
other leaders, and in a canticle generally devoid of drama the rejection
of Virgil becomes the single dramatic event. Dante’s use of Virgil is
one of the richest cultural appropriations in literature. To begin, in
Dante’s poem he is an exponent of classical reason. He is also a
historical figure and is presented as such in the Inferno (I): “. . .
once I was a man, and my parents were Lombards, both Mantuan by birth. I
was born sub Julio, though late in his time, and I lived in Rome under
the good Augustus, in the time of the false and lying gods.” Virgil,
moreover, is associated with Dante’s homeland (his references are to
contemporary Italian places), and his background is entirely imperial.
(Born under Julius Caesar, he extolled Augustus Caesar.) He is presented
as a poet, the theme of whose great epic sounds remarkably similar to
that of Dante’s poem: “I was a poet and sang of that just son of
Anchises who came from Troy after proud Ilium was burned.” So, too,
Dante sings of the just son of a city, Florence, who was unjustly
expelled, and forced to search, as Aeneas had done, for a better city,
in his case the heavenly city.
Virgil is a poet whom Dante had studied carefully and from whom he
had acquired his poetic style, the beauty of which has brought him much
honour. But Dante had lost touch with Virgil in the intervening years,
and when the spirit of Virgil returns it is one that seems weak from
long silence. But the Virgil that returns is more than a stylist; he is
the poet of the Roman Empire, a subject of great importance to Dante,
and he is a poet who has become a saggio, a sage, or moral teacher.
Though an exponent of reason, Virgil has become an emissary of divine
grace, and his return is part of the revival of those simpler faiths
associated with Dante’s earlier trust in Beatrice. And yet, of course,
Virgil by himself is insufficient. It cannot be said that Dante rejects
Virgil; rather he sadly found that nowhere in Virgil’s work, that is, in
his consciousness, was there any sense of personal liberation from the
enthrallment of history and its processes. Virgil had provided Dante
with moral instruction in survival as an exile, which is the theme of
his own poem as well as Dante’s, but he clung to his faith in the
processes of history, which, given their culmination in the Roman
Empire, were deeply consoling. Dante, on the other hand, was determined
to go beyond history because it had become for him a nightmare.
In the Paradiso true heroic fulfillment is achieved. Dante’s poem
gives expression to those figures from the past who seem to defy death.
Their historical impact continues and the totality of their commitment
inspires in their followers a feeling of exaltation and a desire for
identification. In his encounters with such characters as his
great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida and SS. Francis, Dominic, and
Bernard, Dante is carried beyond himself. The Paradiso is consequently a
poem of fulfillment and of completion. It is the fulfillment of what is
prefigured in the earlier canticles. Aesthetically it completes the
poem’s elaborate system of anticipation and retrospection.
Assessment and influence
The recognition and the honour that were the due of Dante’s Divine
Comedy did not have to await the long passage of time: by the year 1400
no fewer than 12 commentaries devoted to detailed expositions of its
meaning had appeared. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a life of the poet and
then in 1373–74 delivered the first public lectures on The Divine Comedy
(which means that Dante was the first of the moderns whose work found
its place with the ancient classics in a university course). Dante
became known as the divino poeta, and in a splendid edition of his great
poem published in Venice in 1555 the adjective was applied to the poem’s
title; thus, the simple Commedia became La divina commedia, or The
Divine Comedy.
Even when the epic lost its appeal and was replaced by other art
forms (the novel, primarily, and the drama) Dante’s own fame continued.
In fact, his great poem enjoys the kind of power peculiar to a classic:
successive epochs have been able to find reflected in it their own
intellectual concerns. In the post-Napoleonic 19th century, readers
identified with the powerful, sympathetic, and doomed personalities of
the Inferno. In the early 20th century they found the poem to possess an
aesthetic power of verbal realization independent of and at times in
contradiction to its structure and argument. Later readers have been
eager to show the poem to be a polyphonic masterpiece, as integrated as
a mighty work of architecture, whose different sections reflect and, in
a way, respond to one another. Dante created a remarkable repertoire of
types in a work of vivid mimetic presentations, as well as a poem of
great stylistic artistry in its prefigurations and correspondences.
Moreover, he incorporated in all of this important political,
philosophical, and theological themes and did so in a way that shows
moral wisdom and lofty ethical vision.
Dante’s Divine Comedy is a poem that has flourished for more than 650
years: in the simple power of its striking imaginative conceptions it
has continued to astonish generations of readers; for more than a
hundred years it has been a staple in all higher educational programs in
the Western world; and it has continued to provide guidance and
nourishment to the major poets of our own times. William Butler Yeats
called Dante “the chief imagination of Christendom”; and T.S. Eliot
elevated Dante to a preeminence shared by only one other poet in the
modern world, William Shakespeare: “[They] divide the modern world
between them. There is no third.” In fact, they rival one another in
their creation of types that have entered into the world of reference
and association of modern thought. Like Shakespeare, Dante created
universal types from historical figures, and in so doing he considerably
enhanced the treasury of modern myth.
Ricardo J. Quinones
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THE DIVINE COMEDY
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Type of work: Poem
Author: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Type of plot: Christian allegory
Time of plot: The Friday before Easter, 1300
Locale: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise
First transcribed: с 1320
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Dante's greatest work, an epic poem in one hundred cantos, is
divided equally after an introductory canto into sections, each
thirty-three cantos in length, which see Dante and a guide respectively
through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The cosmology, angelology, and
theology of the poem are based on St. Thomas Aquinas. Dante's literal
journey is also an allegory of the progress of the human soul toward God
and the progress of political and social mankind toward peace on earth.
Characterization is drawn from ancient Roman history and from Dante's
contemporary Italy, making the work a realistic picture and an intensely
involved analysis of human affairs and life, even though in structure it
appears to be a description of the beyond. It is, in essence, a
compassionate, oral evaluation of human nature and a mystic vision of
the Absolute toward which mankind strives, and it endures more through
the universality of the drama and the lyric quality of the poetry than
through specific doctrinal content.
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Principal Characters
Dante (dan'ta), the exile Florentine poet, who is halted in his path of
error through the grace of the Virgin, St. Lucy, and Beatrice, and is
redeemed by his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. He learns
to submerge his instinctive pity for some sinners in his recognition of
the justice of God, and he frees himself of the faults of wrath and
misdirected love by participating in the penance for these sins in
Purgatory. He is then ready to grow in understanding and love as he
moves with Beatrice nearer and nearer the presence of God.
Beatrice (Ьё'э-tre'cha), his beloved, who is transformed into an angel,
one of Mary's handmaids. Through her intercession, her compassion, and
her teaching, Dante's passion is transmuted into divine love, which
brings him to a state of indescribable blessedness.
Virgil, Dante's master, the great Roman poet who guides him through Hell
and Purgatory. The most favored of the noble pagans who dwells in Limbo
without hope of heavenly bliss, he represents the highest achievements
of human reason and classical learning.
St. Lucy, Dante's patron saint. She sends him aid and conveys him
through a part of Purgatory.
Charon, traditionally the ferryman of damned souls.
Minos, the monstrous judge who dooms sinners to their allotted torments.
Paolo and Francesca, devoted lovers, murdered by Paolo's brother, who
was Francesca's husband. Together even in hell, they arouse Dante's pity
by their tale of growing affection.
Ciacco, a Florentine damned for gluttony, who prophesies the civil
disputes which engulfed his native city after his death.
Plutus, the bloated, clucking creature who guards the entrance of the
fourth circle of Hell.
Phlegyas, the boatman of the wrathful.
Filippo Argenti, another Florentine noble, damned to welter in mud for
his uncontrollable temper.
Megaera, Alecto, and Tisiphone, the Furies, tower warders of the City of
Dis.
Farinata Degli Uberti, leader of the Ghibelline party of Florence,
condemned to rest in an indestructible sepulcher for his heresy. He
remains concerned primarily for the fate of his city.
Cavalcante, a Guelph leader, the father of Dante's friend Guido. He
rises from his tomb to ask about his son.
Nessus, Chiron, and Pholus, the courteous archer centaurs who guard the
river of boiling blood which holds the violent against men.
Piero Delle Vigne, the loyal adviser to the Emperor Frederick,
imprisoned, with others who committed suicide, in a thornbush.
Capaneus, a proud, blasphemous tyrant, one of the Seven against Thebes.
Brunetto Latini, Dante's old teacher, whom the poet treats with great
respect; he laments the sin of sodomy which placed him deep in Hell.
Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, Jacopo Rusticucci, and Guglielmo
Borsiere, Florentine citizens who gave in to unnatural lust.
Geryon, a beast with human face and scorpion's tail, symbolic of fraud.
Venedico Caccianemico, a Bolognese panderer.
Jason, a classical hero, damned as a seducer.
Alessio Interminei, a flatterer.
Nicholas III, one of the popes, damned to burn in a rocky cave for using
the resources of the Church for worldly advancement.
Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eurypylus, Michael Scot, and Guido
Bonatti, astrologers and diviners whose grotesquely twisted shapes
reflect their distortion of divine counsel.
Malacoda, chief of the devils who torments corrupt political officials.
Ciampolo, one of his charges, who converses with Dante and Virgil while
he plans to outwit the devils.
Catalano and Loderingo, jovial Bolognese friars, who wear the gilded
leaden mantles decreed eternally for hypocrites.
Caiphas, the high priest who had Christ condemned. He lies naked in the
path of the heavily laden hypocrites.
Vanni Fucci, a bestial, wrathful thief, the damned spirit most arrogant
against God.
Agnello, Francisco, Cianfa, Buoso, and Puccio, malicious thieves and
oppressors, who are metamorphosed from men to serpents, then from
serpents to men, before the eyes of the poet.
Ulysses and Diomed, Greek heroes transformed into tongues of flame as
types of the evil counselor. Ulysses retains the splendid passion for
knowledge which led him beyond the limits set for men.
Guido de Montefeltro, another of the evil counselors, who became
involved in the fraud and sacrilege of Pope Boniface.
Mahomet, Piero da Medicina, and Bertran de Born, sowers of schism and
discord, whose bodies are cleft and mutilated.
Capocchio and Griffolino, alchemists afflicted with leprosy.
Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha, sinners who disguised themselves because of
lust and greed, fittingly transformed into swine.
Master Adam, a counterfeiter.
Sinon and Potiphar's Wife, damned for malicious lying and treachery.
Nimrod, Antaeus, and Briareus, giants who rebelled against God.
Camincion de' Pazzi, Count Ugolino, Fra Alberigo, Judas Iscariot,
Brutus, and Cassius, traitors to family, country, and their masters.
They dwell forever in ice, hard and cold as their own hearts.
Cato, the aged Roman sage who was, for the Middle Ages, a symbol of
pagan virtue. He meets Dante and Virgil at the base of Mount Purgatory
and sends them on their way upward.
Casella, a Florentine composer who charms his hearers with a song as
they enter Purgatory.
Manfred, a Ghibelline leader, Belacqua, La Pia, Cassero, and Buonconte
da Montefeltro, souls who must wait many years at the foot of Mount
Purgatory because they delayed their repentance until the time of their
death.
Sordello, the Mantuan poet, who reverently greets Virgil and accompanies
him and his companion for part of their journey.
Nino Visconti and Conrad Malaspina, men too preoccupied with their
political life to repent early.
Omberto Aldobrandesco, Oderisi, and Provenzan Salvani, sinners who walk
twisted and bent over in penance for their pride in ancestry, artistry,
and power.
Sapia, one of the envious, a woman who rejoiced at the defeat of her
townspeople.
Guido del Duca, another doing penance for envy. He laments the
dissensions which tear apart the Italian states.
Marco Lombardo, Dante's companion through the smoky way trodden by the
wrathful.
Pope Adrian, one of those being purged of avarice.
Hugh Capet, the founder of the French ruling dynasty, which he
castigates for its crimes and brutality. He atones for his own ambition
and greed.
Statius, the author of the "Thebaid." One of Virgil's disciples, he has
just completed his penance for prodigality. He tells Dante and Virgil of
the liberation of the truly repentant soul.
Forese Donati, Dante's friend, and Bonagiunta, Florentines guilty of
gluttony.
Guido Guinicelli and Arnaut, love poets who submit to the flames which
purify them of lust.
Matilda, a heavenly lady who meets Dante in the earthly paradise at the
top of Mount Purgatory and takes him to Beatrice.
Piccarda, a Florentine nun, a fragile, almost transparent spirit who
dwells in the moon's sphere, the outermost circle of heaven, since her
faith wavered, making her incapable of receiving greater bliss than
this.
Justinian, the great Roman Emperor and law-giver, one of the champions
of the Christian faith.
Charles Martel, the heir to Charles II, King of Naples, whose early
death precipitated strife and injustice.
Cunizza, Sordello's mistress, the sister of an Italian tyrant.
Falco, a troubadour who was, after his conversion, made a bishop.
Rahab, the harlot who aided Joshua to enter Jerusalem, another of the
many whose human passions were transformed into love of God.
Thomas Aquinas, the Scholastic philosopher. He tells Dante of St.
Francis when he comes to the sphere of the sun, the home of those who
have reached heaven through their knowledge of God.
St. Bonaventura, his companion, who praises St. Dominic.
Cacciagiuda, Dante's great-great-grandfather, placed in the sphere of
Mars as a warrior for the Church.
Peter Damian, a hermit, an inhabitant of the sphere of Saturn, the place
allotted to spirits blessed for their temperance and contemplative life.
St. Peter, St. James, and St. John, representatives, for Dante, of the
virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. The three great disciples examine the
poet to assure his understanding of these three qualities.
Adam, the prototype of fallen man, who is, through Christ, given the
greatest redemption; he is the companion of the three apostles and sits
enthroned at the left hand of the Virgin.
St. Bernard, Dante's guide during the last stage of his journey, when he
comes before the throne of the Queen of Heaven.
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The Story
Dante found himself lost in a dark and frightening wood, and as he was
trying to regain his path, he came to a mountain which he decided to
climb in order to get his bearings. Strange beasts blocked his way.
however, and he was forced back to the plain. As he was bemoaning his
fate, the poet Virgil approached Dante and offered to conduct him
through Hell, Purgatory, and blissful Paradise.
When they arrived at the gates of Hell, Virgil explained that here were
confined those who had lived their lives without regard for good or
evil. At the River Acheron, where they found Charon, the ferryman. Dante
was seized with terror and fell into a trance. Aroused by a loud clap of
thunder, he followed his guide through Limbo, the first circle of Hell.
The spirits confined there, he learned, were those who, although they
had lived a virtuous life, had not been baptized.
At the entrance to the second circle of Hell, Dante met Minos, the
Infernal Judge, who warned him to take heed how he entered the lower
regions. Dante was overcome by pity as he witnessed the terrible
punishment which the spirits were undergoing. They had been guilty of
carnal sin, and for punishment they were whirled around without
cessation in the air. The third circle housed those who had been guilty
of the sin of gluttony. They were forced to lie deep in the mud, under a
constant fall of snow and hail and stagnant water. Above them stood
Cerberus, a cruel monster, barking at the helpless creatures and tearing
at their flesh. In the next circle, Dante witnesses the punishment of
the prodigal and the avaricious, and realized the vanity of fortune.
He and Virgil continued on their journey until they reached the Stygian
Lake, in which the wrathful and gloomy were suffering. At Virgil's
signal, a ferryman transported them across the lake to the city of Dis.
They were denied admittance, however, and the gates were closed against
them by the fallen angels who guard the city. Dante and Virgil gained
admittance into the city only after an angel had interceded for them.
There Dante discovered that tombs burning with a blistering heat housed
the souls of heretics. Dante spoke to two of these tormented spirits and
learned that all the souls in Hell, who knew nothing of the present, can
remember the past, and dimly foresee the future.
The entrance to the seventh circle was guarded by the Minotaur, and only
after Virgil had pacified him could the two travelers pass down the
steep crags to the base of the mountain. There they discerned a river of
blood in which those who had committed violence in their lifetimes were
confined. On the other side of the river they learned that those who had
committed suicide were doomed to inhabit the trunks of trees. Beyond the
river they came to a desert in which were confined those who had sinned
against God, or Art, or Nature. A stream flowed near the desert and the
two poets followed it until the water plunged into an abyss. In order
that they might descend to the eighth circle, Virgil summoned Geryon, a
frightful monster, who conducted them below. There they saw the tortured
souls of seducers, flatters, diviners, and barter-ers. Continuing along
their way, they witnessed the punishment accorded hypocrites and
robbers. In the ninth gulf were confined scandalmongers and spreaders of
false doctrine. Among the writhing figures they saw Mahomet. Still
farther along, the two discovered the horrible disease-ridden bodies of
forgers, counterfeiters, alchemists, and all those who deceived under
false pretenses.
They were summoned to the next circle by the soul of a trumpet. In it
were confined all traitors. A ring of giants surrounded the circle, one
of whom lifted both Dante and Virgil and deposited them in the bottom of
the circle. There Dante conversed with many of the spirits and learned
the nature of their particular crimes.
After this visit to the lowest depths of Hell. Dante and Virgil emerged
from the foul air to the pure atmosphere which surrounded the island of
Purgatory. In a little while, they saw a boat conducted by an angel, in
which were souls being brought to Purgatory. Dante recognized a friend
among them. The two poets reached the foot of a mountain, where passing
spirits showed them the easiest path to climb its slope. On their way up
the path they encountered many spirits who explained that they were kept
in Ante-Purgatory because they had delayed their repentance too long.
They pleaded with Dante to ask their families to pray for their souls
when he once again returned to earth. Soon Dante and Virgil came to the
gate of Purgatory, which was guarded by an angel. The two poets ascended
a winding path and saw men, bent under the weight of heavy stones, who
were expiating the sin of pride. They examined the heavily carved
cornices, which they passed, and found them covered with inscriptions
urging humility and righteousness. At the second cornice were the souls
of those who had been guilty of envy.
They wore sackcloth and their eyelids were sewed with iron thread.
Around them were the voices of angels singing of great examples of
humility and the futility of envy. An angel invited the poets to visit
the third cornice, where those who had been guilty of anger underwent
repentance. Dante was astonished at the examples of patience which he
witnessed there. At the fourth cornice he witnessed the purging of the
sin of indifference or gloominess. He discussed with Virgil the nature
of love. The Latin poet stated that there were two kinds of love,
natural love, which was always right, and love of the soul, which might
be misdirected. At the fifth cornice, avarice was purged. On their way
to the next cornice, the two were overtaken by Statius, whose spirit had
been cleansed and who was on his way to Paradise. He accompanied them to
the next place of purging, where the sin of gluttony was repented, while
voices sang of the glory of temperance. The last cornice was the place
for purging by fire of the sin of incontinence. Here the sinners were
heard to recite innumerable examples of praiseworthy chastity.
An angel now directed the two poets and Statius to a path which would
lead them to Paradise. Virgil told Dante that he might wander through
Paradise at his will until he found his love, Beatrice. As he was
strolling through a forest, Dante came to a stream; on the other bank
stood a beautiful woman. She explained to him that the stream was called
Lethe and helped him to cross it. Then Beatrice descended from heaven
and reproached him for his unfaithfulness to her during her life, but
the virgins in the heavenly fields interceded with her on his behalf.
Convinced of his sincere repentance and remorse, she agreed to accompany
him through the heavens.
On the moon Dante found those who had made vows of chastity and
determined to follow the religious life, but who were forced to break
their vows. Beatrice led him to the planet Mercury, the second heaven,
and from there to Venus, the third heaven, where Dante conversed with
many spirits and learned of their virtues. On the sun, the fourth
heaven, they were surrounded by a group of spirits, among them Thomas
Aquinas. He named each of the spirits in turn and discussed their
individual virtues. A second circle of blessed spirits surrounded the
first, and Dante learned from each how he had achieved blessedness.
Then Beatrice and Dante came to Mars, the fifth heaven, where he saw the
cherished souls of those who had been martyred. Dante recognized many
renowned warriors and crusaders among them.
On Jupiter, the sixth heaven, Dante saw the souls of those who had
administered justice faithfully in the world. The seventh heaven was on
Saturn, where Dante found the souls of those who had spent their lives
in meditation and religious retirement. From there Beatrice and her
lover passed to the eighth heaven, the region of the fixed stars. Dante
looked back over all the distance which extended between the earth and
this apex of Paradise and was dazzled and awed by what he saw. As they
stood there, they saw the triumphal hosts approaching, with Christ
leading, followed by Mary.
Dante was questioned by the saints. Saint Peter examined his opinions
concerning faith; Saint James, concerning hope, and Saint John,
concerning charity. Adam then approached and told the poet of the first
man's creation, of his life in Paradise, and of his fall and what had
caused it. Saint Peter bitterly lamented the avarice which his apostolic
successors displayed, and all the sainted host agreed with him.
Beatrice then conducted Dante to the ninth heaven, where he was
permitted to view the divine essence and to listen to the chorus of
angels. She then led him to the Empyrean, from the heights of which, and
with the aid of her vision, he was able to witness the triumphs of the
angels and of the souls of the blessed. So dazzled and overcome was he
by this vision that it was some time before he realized Beatrice had
left him. At his side stood an old man whom he recognized as Saint
Bernard, who told him Beatrice had returned to her throne. He then told
Dante that if he wished to discover still more of the heavenly vision,
he must join with him in a prayer to Mary. Dante received the grace to
contemplate the glory of God, and to glimpse, for a moment, the greatest
of mysteries, the Trinity and man's union with the divine.
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Critical Evaluation
Dante was born into an aristocratic Florentine family. Unusually well
educated even for his time and place, he was knowledgeable in science
and philosophy and was an active man of letters as well as an artist. He
lived in politically tumultuous times and was active in politics and
government. All of his knowledge, his experience, and his skill were
brought to bear in his writings. During an absence from Florence in
1302, he was sentenced to exile for opposing the government then in
power; he was never allowed to return to his beloved Florence. In exile,
Dante wrote The Divine Comedy. He died in Ravenna.
This masterpiece was written in Italian, but Dante also wrote in Latin,
the language of scholarship at that time. His Latin treatise De Vulgari
Eloquentia (On the Vulgar Tongue)—a compelling defense of the use of the
written vernacular, instead of Latin—argued in conventional Latin the
superiority of unconventional written Italian as a medium of expression.
His other major Latin treatise was De Monarchia (About Monarchy), a
political essay. He also used Latin for some very important letters and
for
a few poems. But Dante's choice was his native Italian. His earliest
major work—La Vita Nuova (The New Life), a mystical-spiritual
autobiography, combining prose and poetry—was written in Italian. So,
too, was // Convivio (The Banquet), a scholarly and philosophical
treatise. And he wrote a number of lyric poems in Italian as well.
Standing above all as a tribute to the eloquence of written Italian is
The Divine Comedy.
La Commedia—as it was first titled; Divina was added later—is an
incredibly complex work. It is divided into three sections, or
canticles, the Inferno (Hell), the Pur-gatorio (Purgatory), and the
Paradiso (Heaven). The entire work is composed of 100 cantos,
apportioned into segments of 34 (Inferno), 33 (Purgatorio), and 33 (Paradiso).
The rhyme scheme is called terza rima—aba bab cbc dcd—an interlocking
pattern which produces a very closely knit poem. This structure is
neither arbitrary nor a mere intellectual exercise.
Number symbolism plays an important part in The Divine Comedy. As an
essentially Christian poem, it relies heavily on mystical associations
with numbers. Inasmuch as the poem deals with Christian religious
concepts, it is not difficult to discern the relationship between one
poem in three canticles and one God in Three Persons. So, too, terza
rima becomes significant. But then more complex intricacies come into
play. The unity or oneness of God is diffused on a metric basis: one is
divided into one hundred cantos, for example. And two becomes the
duality of nature: corporeal and spiritual, active and contemplative,
Church and State, Old Testament and New, and so on. Three signifies
Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Power, Wisdom, Love; Faith, Hope, Charity; and
other combinations. Four—as in seasons, elements, humors, directions,
cardinal virtues—combines with three to make a mystical seven: days of
creation, days of the week (length of Dante's journey), seven virtues
and seven vices (reflected in the seven levels of Purgatory), planets,
and many more. Moreover, multiples of three—three times three equals
nine—create further permutations: choirs of angels, circles of Hell, and
the like. And adding the mystical unity of one to the product nine makes
ten, the metric permutation of one discussed above.
These complex relationships of number symbolism were deliberately
contrived by Dante and other medieval writers. Dante himself explained,
in// Convivio, his view of the four levels of interpretation of a
literary work and by doing so legitimized such explanations of number
symbolism. He proposed that a text be read literally, alle-gorically,
morally, and anagogically. The literal reading attended to the story
itself. The allegorical reading uncovered hidden meanings in the story.
The moral reading related to matters of human behavior. And the
ana-gogical reading, accessible to only the most sophisticated,
pertained to the absolute and universal truths contained in a work.
Hence, The Divine Comedy can be appreciated on each of these four levels
of interpretation.
As a literal story, it has the fascination of autobiographical elements
as well as the features of high adventure. The protagonist Dante, led by
Vergil, undertakes a journey to learn about himself, the world, and the
relations between the two. In the course of his journey, he explores
other worlds in order to place his own world in proper perspective. As
his journey progresses, he learns.
As an allegorical story, The Divine Comedy traces the enlightenment of
Dante's soul. It also delineates social, political, cultural, and
scientific parables. By integrating all of these aspects into an
intricately interwoven pattern, the poem becomes an allegory for the
real and spiritual world order.
As a moral story, the work has perhaps its greatest impact as a
cautionary tale to warn the reader about the consequences of various
categories of behavior. In the process, it helps the reader to
understand sin (Hell), penance (Purgatory), and salvation (Heaven).
Thus. The Divine Comedy becomes a vehicle for teaching moral behavior.
As an anagogical story, the poem offers a mystical vision of God's grand
design for the entire universe. The complex interdependency of all
things—including the web of interrelationships stemming from number
symbolism—is, in this view, all part of the Divine Plan, which humankind
can grasp only partially and dimly. For God remains ineffable to the
finite capacities of human beings, and His will can never be fully
apprehended by humans, whose vision has been impaired by sin. The
anagogical aspects of The Divine Comedy are therefore aids for the most
spiritually enlightened to approach Eternal Truth.
To be sure, no brief explanation can do justice to the majesty of this
monumental achievement in the history of Western poetry. The very
encyclopedic nature of its scope makes The Divine Comedy a key to the
study of medieval civilization. As such, it cannot be easily or properly
fragmented into neat categories for discussion, and the reader must
advance on tiptoe, as it were. Background in history and theology are
strongly recommended. But, above all, the reader must recognize that no
sweeping generalization will adequately account for the complexity of
ideas or the intricacy of structure in The Divine Comedy.
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The Divine Comedy
Translated by
James Finn Cotter
INFERNO

Illustrations by Gustave Dore
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-
Halfway
through the journey we are living
-
I found myself
deep in a darkened forest,
-
For I had lost
all trace of the straight path.
-
-
Ah how hard it
is to tell what it was like,
-
5
How wild the forest was, how dense and rugged!
-
To think of it
still fills my mind with panic.
-
-
So bitter it
is that death is hardly worse!
-
But to
describe the good discovered there
-
I here will
tell the other things I saw.
-
-
10
I cannot say clearly how I entered there,
-
So drowsy with
sleep had I grown at that hour
-
When first I
wandered off from the true way.
-
-
But when I had
reached the base of a hill,
-
There at the
border where the valley ended
-
15
That had cut my heart to the quick with panic,
-
-
I looked up at
the hill and saw its shoulder
-
Mantled
already with the planet's light
-
That leads all
people straight by every road.
-
-
With that my
panic quieted a little
-
20
After lingering on in the lake of my heart
-
Through the
night I had so grievously passed.
-
-
And like a
person who with panting breath
-
Struggles
ashore out of the wide ocean
-
Only to glance
back at the treacherous surf,
-
-
25
Just so my mind, racing on ahead,
-
Turned back to
marvel at the pass no one
-
Ever before
had issued from alive.
-
-
After resting
awhile my worn-out body,
-
I pressed on
up the wasted slope so that
-
30
I always had one firm foot on the ground.
-
-
But look!
right near the upgrade of the climb
-
Loomed a fleet
and nimble-footed leopard
-
With coat
completely covered by dark spots!
-
-
He did not
flinch or back off from my gaze,
-
35
But blocking the path that lay before me,
-
Time and again
he forced me to turn around.
-
-
The hour was
the beginning of the morning,
-
And the sun
was rising with those stars
-
That first
attended it when divine Love
-
-
40
Set these lovely creations round in motion,
-
So that the
early hour and the pleasant season
-
Gave me good
reason to keep up my hopes
-
-
Of that fierce
beast there with his gaudy pelt.
-
But not so
when — to add now to my fears —
-
45
In front of me I caught sight of a lion!
-
-
He appeared to
be coming straight at me
-
With head held
high and furious for hunger,
-
So that the
air itself seemed to be shaking.
-
-
And then a
wolf stalked, ravenously lean,
-
50
Seemingly laden with such endless cravings
-
That she had
made many live in misery!
-
-
She caused my
spirits to sink down so low,
-
From the dread
I felt in seeing her there,
-
I lost all
hope of climbing to the summit.
-
-
55
And just as a man, anxious for big winnings,
-
But the time
comes instead for him to lose,
-
Cries and
grieves the more he thinks about it,
-
-
So did the
restless she-beast make me feel
-
When, edging
closer toward me, step by step,
-
60
She drove me back to where the sun is silent.
-
-
While I was
falling back to lower ground,
-
Before my eyes
now came a figure forward
-
Of one grown
feeble from long being mute.
-
-
When I saw him
in that deserted spot,
-
65
"Pity me!" I shouted out to him,
-
"Whoever you
are, a shade or living man."
-
-
"Not a man,"
he answered. "Once a man,
-
Of parents who
had come from Lombardy;
-
Both of them
were Mantuans by birth.
-
-
70
"I was born late in Julius's reign
-
And dwelt at
Rome under the good Augustus
-
In the period
of false and lying gods.
-
-
"A poet I was,
and I sang of the just
-
Son of
Anchises who embarked from Troy
-
75
After proud Ilium was burned to ashes.
-
-
"But why do
you turn back to so much grief?
-
Why not bound
up the delightful mountain
-
Which is the
source and font of every joy?"
-
-
"Are you then
Virgil and that wellspring
-
80
That pours forth so lush a stream of speech?"
-
Shamefacedly I
responded to him.
-
-
"O glory and
light of all other poets,
-
May the long
study and the profound love
-
That made me
search your work come to my aid!
-
-
85
"You are my mentor and my chosen author:
-
Alone you are
the one from whom I have taken
-
The beautiful
style that has brought me honor.
-
-
"Look at the
beast that drove me to turn back!
-
Rescue me from
her, celebrated sage,
-
90
For she causes my veins and pulse to tremble."
-
-
"You are
destined to take another route,"
-
He answered,
seeing me reduced to tears,
-
"If you want
to be clear of this wilderness,
-
-
"Because this
beast that forces you to cry out
-
95
Will not let anyone pass by her way
-
But harries
him until she finally kills him.
-
-
"By nature she
is so depraved and vicious
-
That her
greedy appetite is never filled:
-
The more she
feeds, the hungrier she grows.
-
-
100
"Many the animal she has mated with,
-
And will with
more to come, until the Greyhound
-
That shall
painfully slaughter her arrives.
-
-
"He shall not
feast on property or pelf
-
But on wisdom,
love, and manliness,
-
105
And he shall be
born between Feltro and Feltro.
-
-
"He shall save
low prostrated Italy
-
For which
Nisus, Turnus, and Euryalus,
-
And the virgin
Camilla died of wounds.
-
-
"He shall hunt
the beast through every town
-
110
Until he chases her back down to hell
-
From which
envy first had thrust her forth.
-
-
"I think and
judge it best for you, then,
-
To follow me,
for I will be your guide,
-
Directing you
to an eternal place
-
-
115
"Where you shall listen to the desperate screams
-
And see the
spirits of the past in torment,
-
As at his
second death each one cries out;
-
-
"And you shall
also see those who are happy
-
Even in
flames, since they hope to come,
-
120
Whenever that may be, among the blessed.
-
-
"If you still
wish to ascend to the blessed,
-
A soul
worthier than I shall guide you:
-
On my
departure I will leave you with her.
-
-
"For the
Emperor who rules there above,
-
125
Since I lived in rebellion to his law,
-
Will not
permit me to enter his city.
-
-
"Everywhere
his kingdom comes: there he reigns,
-
There his
heavenly city and high throne.
-
Oh happy the
one elected to go there!"
-
-
130
And I said to him, "Poet, I entreat you,
-
By the God
whom you have never known,
-
So may I flee
from this and from worse evil,
-
-
"Lead me to
the place you just described
-
That I may
come to see Saint Peter's gate
-
135
And those you say are deeply sorrowful."
-
-
Then he moved on
and I walked straight behind.
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-
Day was now
fading, and the dusky air
-
Released the
creatures dwelling here on earth
-
From tiring
tasks, while I, the only one,
-
-
Readied myself
to endure the battle
-
5 Both
of the journey and the pathos,
-
Which flawless
memory shall here record.
-
-
O Muses, O
high genius, aid me now!
-
O memory that
noted what I saw,
-
Now shall your
true nobility be seen!
-
-
10 I
then began, "Poet, you guide me here:
-
Be on your
guard lest my power fail me
-
Before you
make me face that plunging pass.
-
-
"You tell us
how the father of Silvius,
-
While in the
flesh, to the eternal world
-
15 Journeyed,
with all his senses still alert.
-
-
"But if the
Enemy of every evil
-
Was kind to
him, considering the high purpose
-
He performed,
and who and what he was,
-
-
"This is not
hard for us to understand,
-
20 Since
in the highest heaven he was chosen
-
Father of
honored Rome and of her empire.
-
-
"The two —
city and empire — to tell the truth,
-
Were destined
to become the holy place
-
Where the
successor of mighty Peter sits.
-
-
25 "By
this journey which you praise him for
-
He came to
comprehend what was to bring
-
Triumph to him
and mantle to the pope.
-
-
"Later the
Chosen Vessel journeyed beyond
-
To bring back
reassurance in the faith
-
30 Which
is the source of the way to salvation.
-
"But I, why should I go? Who gives
permission?
-
I am not
Aeneas, nor am I Paul!
-
Not I nor
anyone else would judge me worthy.
-
-
"So, if I
surrender myself to going there,
-
35 I
fear the undertaking shall prove folly.
-
You are wise,
you see more than I say."
-
Just as the man who, unwilling what he
wills,
-
Thinks back
over each thing he proposes
-
And ends by
giving up all he has started,
-
40 So
I acted in that darkened place
-
As I undid, by
thinking, the same task
-
I had so
readily right away accepted.
-
-
"If I have
grasped the meaning of your words,"
-
That soul of
generosity responded,
-
45 "Your
heart has been beset by cowardice
-
-
"Which often
places burdens on a man
-
To turn him
back from honorable deeds
-
Like some
animal frightened by its shadow.
-
-
"Once and for
all to rid you of that fear
-
50 I
will tell you why I came and what I heard
-
From the first
moment I felt sorry for you.
-
-
"I was among
those spirits in suspense:
-
A lady called
me, so beautiful and blessed
-
That I at once
implored her to command me.
-
-
55 "Her
eyes outshone the light of any star.
-
Sweetly and
softly she began to speak
-
With the voice
of an angel, in her own words:
-
-
" 'O courteous
spirit from Mantua
-
Whose fame has
lasted in the world till now
-
60 And
shall endure as long as does the world,
-
-
" 'My
friend, who is no longer fortune's friend,
-
On a wasted
slope has been so thwarted
-
Along his path
that he turns back in panic.
-
-
" 'I fear that
he already is so lost
-
65 I
have arisen too late to bring him aid —
-
At least from
what I hear of him in heaven.
-
-
" 'Hasten now,
and with your polished words
-
And all that
is required for his rescue,
-
Help him, so
that I can be consoled.
-
-
70 "
'I am Beatrice who urges you to journey,
-
Come from a
place to which I long to return.
-
Love moved me
to speak my heart to you.
-
-
" ' When I
stand once more before my Lord,
-
I shall often
sing your praises to him.'
-
75 With
that she fell silent, and I ventured:
-
-
"O lady of
virtue, through whom alone
-
The human
race surpasses all contained
-
Within the
heavens to the smallest sphere,
-
-
"Your command
pleases me so thoroughly
-
80
That already to have done it would seem tardy:
-
Only let me
know what it is you want.
-
-
"Tell me,
however, why you are so bold
-
To descend as
far as to this center
-
Out of the
wide sky to which you would return?"
-
85 "
'Since you wish to know the inmost reason,
-
I will tell
you directly,' she answered me,
-
' Why I do not
dread to come down here.
-
-
" 'The only
things we really need to fear
-
Are those that
have the power to do harm:
-
90 Nothing
else should cause us to be fearful.
-
-
" 'God in his
mercy has so fashioned me
-
That I am not
affected by your pain;
-
The fires
burning here do me no hurt.
-
-
" 'There is a
noble Lady who weeps in heaven
-
95 For
this thwarted man to whom I send you,
-
So that
heaven's strict decree is broken.
-
-
" 'That Lady
called on Lucia with her request
-
And said:
"Your faithful follower has now
-
Such need of
you that I commend him to you."
-
-
100 "
'Lucia, the foe of every cruelty,
-
Started up and
came to where I was,
-
Sitting at the
side of the aged Rachel.
-
-
" 'She said,
"Beatrice, true credit to our God,
-
Will you not
help the man who so loves you
-
105 That
for your sake he left the common crowd?
-
-
" ' "Do you
not hear his pathetic grieving?
-
Do you not see
the death besieging him
-
On the river
which the ocean cannot sway?"
-
-
" 'No one in
this whole world was ever quicker
-
110 To
take advantage or escape from harm
-
Than I — when
such words as these were spoken —
-
-
" 'To come
below here from my blessed seat,
-
Putting my
trust in your honest speech
-
Which honors
you and those who listen to it.'
-
-
115 "After
she had discussed these matters with me,
-
She turned her
eyes, glittering with tears,
-
And so made me
more diligent to come.
-
-
"And I did
come to you, just as she wished:
-
I saved you
from the fierce beast barring you
-
120 From
the short route up the lovely mountain.
-
-
"So — what is
this? Why? why do you stay?
-
Why entertain
such cowardice of heart?
-
Why not be
courageous and straightforward
-
-
"When there
are three such blessed ladies
-
125 Caring
for you in the court of heaven
-
And my words
guarantee you so much good?"
-
-
As little
flowers in the chill of night
-
Drooping and
shriveled, when the sun lights them,
-
Straighten up
all open on their stalks,
-
-
130 So
I, with my limp stamina, now bloomed.
-
And such good
warmth coursed boldly to my heart
-
That like a
free man I once more began:
-
-
"O
tender-hearted lady who came to aid me,
-
And you, too,
so kind to obey swiftly
-
135 The
words of truth that she proposed to you!
-
-
"You, by your
words, have so filled my heart
-
With fervor to
go with you on this journey
-
That I am
turned again to my first purpose.
-
-
"Now go — one
will within the both of us —
-
140 You
the leader, you the lord and master!"
-
These things I
said to him. When he moved on,
-
-
I entered on
the rank and plunging path.
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-
Through Me Pass into the Painful City,
-
Through Me Pass into Eternal Grief,
-
Through Me Pass among the Lost People.
-
-
Justice Moved My Master-Builder:
-
5 Heavenly
Power First Fashioned Me
-
With Highest Wisdom and with Primal Love.
-
-
Before Me Nothing Was Created That
-
Was Not Eternal, and I Last Eternally.
-
All Hope Abandon, You Who Enter Here.
-
10 These
words in dim color I beheld
-
Inscribed on
the lintel of an archway.
-
"Master," I
said, "this saying's hard for me."
-
-
And he — as
someone who understands — told me:
-
"Here you must
give up all irresolution;
-
15
All cowardice must here be put to death.
-
-
"We are come
to the place I spoke to you about
-
Where you
shall see the sorrow-laden people,
-
Those who have
lost the Good of the intellect."
-
-
And with that,
putting his own hand on mine,
-
20
With smiling face, just to encourage me,
-
He led me to
things hidden from the world.
-
-
Here heartsick
sighs and groanings and shrill cries
-
Re-echoed
through the air devoid of stars,
-
So that, but
started, I broke down in tears.
-
-
25 Babbling
tongues, terrible palaver,
-
Words of
grief, inflections of deep anger,
-
Strident and
muffled speech, and clapping hands,
-
-
All made a
tumult that whipped round and round
-
Forever in
that colorless and timeless air,
-
30 Like
clouds of sand caught up in a whirlwind.
-
-
And I, my head
enwreathed with wayward doubts,
-
Asked,
"Master, what is this that I am hearing?
-
Who are these
people overwhelmed by pain?"
-
-
And he told
me: "This way of wretchedness
-
35
Belongs to the unhappy souls of those
-
Who lived
without being blamed or applauded.
-
-
"They are now
scrambled with that craven crew
-
Of angels who
elected neither rebellion
-
Nor loyalty to
God, but kept apart.
-
-
40 "Not
to mar its beauty, heaven expelled them,
-
Nor will the
depths of hell take them in there,
-
Lest the
damned have any glory over them."
-
-
And I:
"Master, what is so burdensome
-
To them that
they should wail so dismally?"
-
45 He
answered, "Very briefly, I will tell you.
-
-
"These people
have no hope of again dying,
-
And so
deformed has their blind life become
-
That they must
envy every other fate.
-
-
50 "The
world will not allow a word about them;
-
Mercy and
justice hold them in disdain.
-
Let us not
discuss them. Look and pass on."
-
-
And I, looking
again, observed a banner
-
Which, as it
circled, raced on with such speed
-
It did not
seem ever to want to stop.
-
-
55 And
there, behind it, marched so long a file
-
Of people, I
would never have believed
-
That death
could have undone so many souls.
-
-
After I had
recognized some there,
-
I saw and then
identified the shade
-
60 Of
that coward who made the great refusal.
-
-
Immediately I
understood for certain
-
That this
troop was the sect of evil souls
-
Displeasing
both to God and to his enemy.
-
-
These
wretches, who had never been alive,
-
65 Went
naked and repeatedly were bitten
-
By wasps and
hornets swarming everywhere.
-
-
The bites made
blood streak down upon their faces;
-
Blood mixed
with tears ran coursing to their feet,
-
And there
repulsive worms sucked the blood back.
-
-
70 Then,
looking again a little farther on,
-
I saw people
at the shore of a vast river.
-
At that I
said, "Master, permit me now
-
-
"To know who
these souls are and what law
-
Makes them
appear so eager to cross over,
-
75 As,
even in this weak light, I can discern."
-
-
And he: "These
things will become clear to you
-
After the two
of us come to a halt
-
Upon the
gloomy banks of the Acheron."
-
-
Then, with
eyes downcast, deeply abashed,
-
80 In
fear that what I said offended him,
-
I spoke no
more until we reached the river.
-
-
And look!
coming toward us in a boat,
-
An old man,
his hair hoary with age, rose
-
Yelling, "Woe
to you, you wicked souls!
-
-
85 "Have
no hope of ever seeing heaven!
-
I come to take
you to the other shore,
-
To endless
darkness, to fire, and to ice.
-
-
"And you over
there, the living soul,
-
Get away from
those who are already dead!"
-
90 But
when he saw that I had not moved off,
-
-
He said, "By
other routes, by other harbors,
-
Not here --
you shall cross over to this shore.
-
A lighter
skiff will have to transport you!"
-
-
And my guide:
"Charon, do not rack yourself!
-
95 This
deed has so been willed where One can do
-
Whatever He
wills — and ask no more questions."
-
-
With these
words he silenced the wooly cheeks
-
Of the old
ferryman of the livid marshes
-
Who had two
rings of flame around his eyes.
-
-
100 Those
souls, however, who were weak and naked
-
Began to lose
color and grind their teeth
-
When they
heard the ferryman's cruel words.
-
-
They called
down curses on God and their parents,
-
The human
race, the place, the time, the seed
-
105 Of
their conception and of their birth.
-
-
At that they
massed all the closer together,
-
Weeping loudly
on the malicious strand
-
Which waits
for those who have no fear of God.
-
-
The demon
Charon, with burning-ember eyes,
-
110 Gave
a signal and gathered all on board,
-
Smacking
lagging stragglers with his oar.
-
-
As in the
autumn the leaves peel away,
-
One following
another, until the bough
-
Sees all its
treasures spread upon the ground,
-
-
115 In
the same manner that evil seed of Adam
-
Drifted from
that shoreline one by one
-
To a signal —
like a falcon to its call.
-
-
So they
departed over the dark water,
-
And even
before they landed on that side
-
120 Already
over here a new crowd mustered.
-
-
"My son," my
kindly master said to me,
-
"Those who
have perished by the wrath of God
-
Are all
assembled here from every land,
-
-
"And they are
quick to pass across the river
-
125 Because
divine justice goads them on,
-
Turning their
timidity to zeal.
-
-
"No good soul
ever crossed by this way.
-
If Charon,
therefore, has complained about you,
-
You now know
clearly what he meant to say."
-
-
130 Just
as he finished, the blackened landscape
-
Violently
shuddered — with the fright of it
-
My memory once
more bathes me in sweat.
-
-
The harsh
tear-laden earth exhaled a wind
-
That hurtled
forth a bright-red flash of light
-
135 That
knocked me right out of all my senses,
-
-
And I fell as
a man drops off to sleep.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
A loud
thunderclap shattered the deep
-
Sleep in my
head, so that I started up
-
Like someone
shaken forcibly awake.
-
-
Then, looking
all around with rested eyes,
-
5
I stood straight up with a steady stare,
-
Attempting to
discover where I was.
-
-
The truth is I
found myself upon the edge
-
Of the chasm of
the valley of salt tears
-
Which stores
the clamor of unending crying.
-
-
10 Dark
and deep and foggy was the valley:
-
So, when I
strained my eyes to see the bottom,
-
I was not able
to discern a thing.
-
-
"Now let us
descend to the blind world
-
Below," the
poet, pale as death, began:
-
15
"I will be first, and you shall follow me."
-
-
And I,
observing the change in his color,
-
Asked, "How can
I come if you are frightened,
-
You who
strengthen me when I have doubts?"
-
-
And he told me,
"The anguish of the people
-
20
Who are down here blanches my complexion
-
With the pity
that you mistake for fear.
-
-
"Let us go on:
the long road makes it urgent."
-
So he went
down, and so he had me enter
-
The first
circle ringing the abyss.
-
-
25
Here, as far as listening could tell,
-
The only
lamentations were the sighs
-
That caused the
everlasting air to tremble.
-
-
Suffering
without torments drew these sighs
-
From crowds,
multitudinous and vast,
-
30
Of babies and of women and of men.
-
-
My gracious
teacher said, "Do you not question
-
Who these
spirits are whom you observe?
-
Before you go
on, I would have you know
-
-
"They did not
sin: yet even their just merits
-
35
Were not enough, for they lacked baptism,
-
The gateway of
the faith that you profess.
-
-
"And, if they
lived before the Christian era,
-
They did not
worship God in the right way:
-
And I myself am
one of those poor souls.
-
-
40
"For this failure and for no other fault
-
Here we are
lost, and our sole punishment
-
Is without hope
to live on in desire."
-
-
Deep sorrow
crushed my heart when I heard him,
-
Because both
men and women of great worth
-
45
I knew to be suspended here in limbo.
-
-
"Tell me, my
master, tell me, my good lord,"
-
I then began,
wishing to be assured
-
Of that belief
which conquers every error,
-
-
"Have any left
here, either through their merits
-
50
Or someone else's, to be blessed later on?"
-
And he,
grasping my unexpressed appeal,
-
-
Responded, "I
was newly in this place
-
When I saw come
down here a mighty One
-
Crowned with
the symbol of his victory.
-
-
55
"He snatched away the shade of our first parent,
-
Of his son
Abel, and the shade of Noah,
-
Of Moses, the
obedient lawgiver,
-
-
"Of Abraham the
patriarch, King David,
-
Israel with his
father, with his children,
-
60
And with Rachel for whom he worked so hard,
-
-
"And many
others, and he made them blessed.
-
But I would
have you know, before these souls
-
No human being
ever had been saved."
-
-
We did not keep
from walking while he talked,
-
65
But all along we journeyed through the forest —
-
I mean the
forest that was dense with spirits.
-
-
Our path had
not yet led us far away
-
From where I'd
slept, when I descried a fire
-
That overcame a
hemisphere of shadows.
-
-
70
We were still a little distance from it
-
But close
enough for me to dimly see
-
That honored
people tenanted that place.
-
-
"O you, glory
of the arts and sciences,
-
Who are these
souls who here have the high honor
-
75
Of being kept distinct from all the rest?"
-
-
And he told me,
"Their distinguished names
-
Which yet
re-echo in your world above
-
Win for them
heaven's grace which furthers them."
-
-
Meanwhile I
could hear a voice that called,
-
80
"Honor to the most illustrious poet!
-
His shade that
had departed now returns."
-
-
After the voice
had ceased and all was still,
-
I saw four
lofty shades approaching us,
-
In their
appearance neither sad nor joyful.
-
-
85
My worthy teacher now began by saying,
-
"Notice there
the one with sword in hand,
-
Coming before
the three others like a lord:
-
-
"That is
Homer, the majestic poet.
-
The next who
comes is Horace, the satirist;
-
90
Ovid is third, and Lucan last of all.
-
-
"Since each one
shares with me the name of poet,
-
The name you
heard the single voice call out,
-
They honor me,
and they do well to do so."
-
-
So I saw that
brilliant schola meeting
-
95
Under the master of sublimest song
-
Who above all
others soars like an eagle.
-
-
After
conversing for some time together,
-
They turned to
me with a cordial greeting:
-
With that, my
master broke into a smile.
-
-
100
And then they showed me a still greater honor,
-
For they
included me within their group,
-
So that I was
the sixth among those minds.
-
-
This way we
walked together toward the light,
-
Speaking of
things as well unmentioned here
-
105
As there it was as well to speak of them.
-
-
We came up to
the base of a royal castle,
-
Seven times
encircled by high walls,
-
Moated all
about by a beautiful stream.
-
-
This we
crossed as if it were firm ground;
-
110
Through seven gates I entered with these sages
-
Until we
reached a meadow of fresh grass.
-
-
People were
here with slow and serious eyes,
-
Of great
authority by their appearance.
-
They hardly
spoke, with their gentle voices.
-
-
115
We moved along then over to one side,
-
Into an open
clearing, bright and high up,
-
In order to
view all the persons there.
-
-
Straight
before me on the enameled green
-
Such eminent
spirits were presented to me
-
120
That I exult in having witnessed them.
-
-
I saw Electra,
with many companions,
-
Among whom I
noted Hector and Aeneas,
-
And Caesar, in
armor, with his falcon eyes.
-
-
I saw Camilla
and Penthesilea,
-
125
And on the other side I saw King Latinus
-
Who sat with
his daughter Lavinia.
-
-
I saw that
Brutus who banished the Tarquin,
-
Lucretia,
Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia,
-
And by
himself, I noticed Saladin.
-
-
130 When
I lifted up my eyes a little higher,
-
I saw
Aristotle, the master-knower,
-
Seated with the
family of philosophers.
-
-
All look up to
him, all do him honor;
-
There also I
saw Socrates and Plato,
-
Nearest to him,
in front of all the rest;
-
-
135
Democritus, who ascribes the world to chance,
-
Diogenes,
Thales, Anaxagoras,
-
Empedocles,
Zeno, and Heraclitus.
-
-
I saw the
worthy categorizer of herbs,
-
140
Dioscorides, I mean; and I saw Orpheus,
-
Tully, Linus,
Seneca the moralist,
-
-
Euclid the
geometer, Ptolemy,
-
Hippocrates,
Galen, Avicenna,
-
And Averroes,
who wrote the Commentary.
-
-
145
I cannot here describe them all in full,
-
For my lengthy
theme so presses me forward
-
That often
words fall short of the occasion.
-
-
The company of
six drops down to two.
-
My knowing
guide leads me another way,
-
150
Out of the quiet, into the quavering air,
-
-
And I come to a
scene where nothing shines.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
So I
descended from the first circle
-
Into the
second, encompassing less space
-
But
sharper pain which spurs the wailing on.
-
-
There
Minos stands, hideous and growling,
-
5
Examining the sins of each newcomer:
-
With
coiling tail he judges and dispatches.
-
-
I mean
that, when the ill-begotten spirit
-
Comes
before him, that soul confesses all
-
And then this
master-mind of sinfulness
-
-
10
Sees what place in hell has been assigned:
-
The times
he winds his tail around himself
-
Reveal the
level to which the soul is sent.
-
-
Always in
front of him a new mob stands.
- Each,
taking a turn, proceeds to judgment:
-
15 Each
owns up, listens, and is pitched below.
-
-
"You who
approach this dwelling-place of pain,"
-
Cried
Minos when he laid his eyes on me —
-
Forsaking
the performance of his office —
-
-
"Watch out
how you enter and whom you trust!
-
20
Do not let the wide-open gateway fool you!"
-
My guide
said to him, "Why do you cry out?
-
-
"Do not
obstruct his own predestined way:
-
This deed
has so been willed where One can do
-
Whatever
He wills — and ask no more questions."
-
-
25
Now the notes of suffering begin
-
To reach
my hearing; now I am arrived
-
At where
the widespread wailing hammers me.
-
-
I come to
a place where all light is muted,
-
Which
rumbles like the sea beneath a storm
-
30
When waves are buffeted by warring squalls.
-
-
The
windblast out of hell, forever restless,
-
Thrusts
the spirits onward with its force,
-
Swirling
and mauling and harassing them.
-
-
When they
alight upon this scene of wreckage,
-
35
Screams, reproaches, and bemoanings rise
-
As souls
call down their curses on God's power.
-
-
I learned
that to this unending torment
-
Have been
condemned the sinners of the flesh,
-
Those who
surrender reason to self-will.
-
-
40
And as the starlings are lifted on their wings
-
In icy
weather to wide and serried flocks,
-
So does
the gale lift up the wicked spirits,
-
-
Flinging
them here and there and down and up:
-
No hope
whatever can ever comfort them,
-
45
Neither of rest nor of less punishment.
-
-
And as the
cranes fly over, chanting lays,
-
Forming
one long line across the sky,
-
So I saw
come, uttering their cries,
-
-
Shades
wafted onward by these winds of strife,
-
50
To make me ask him, "Master, who are those
- People
whom the blackened air so punishes?"
-
-
"The first
among those souls whose chronicle
-
You want
to know," he then replied to me,
-
"Was
empress over lands of many tongues.
-
-
55
"Her appetite for lust became so flagrant
-
That she
made lewdness licit with her laws
-
To free
her from the blame her vice incurred.
-
-
"She is
Semiramis, whose story reads
-
That, as
his wife, she succeeded Ninus,
-
60
Controlling the country now ruled by the sultan.
-
-
"The
other, Dido, killed herself for love
-
And broke
faith with the ashes of Sychaeus;
-
Next comes
the lust-enamored Cleopatra.
-
-
"See
Helen, for whom many years of woe
-
65
Rolled on, and see the great Achilles
-
Who in his
final battle came to love.
-
-
"See
Paris, Tristan" — and then of a thousand
-
Shades, he
pointed out and named for me
-
All those
whom love had cut off from our life.
-
-
70
After I had listened to my instructor
-
Name the
knights and ladies of the past,
-
Pity
gripped me, and I lost my bearing.
-
-
I began,
"Poet, I would most willingly
-
Address
those two who pass together there
-
75
And appear to be so light upon the wind,"
-
-
And he told
me, "You will see when they draw
-
Closer to
us that, if you petition them
-
By the
love that propels them, they will come."
-
-
As soon as
the gust curved them near to us,
-
80
I raised my voice to them, "O wind-worn souls,
-
Come speak
to us if it is not forbidden."
-
-
Just as
the doves when homing instinct calls them
-
To their
sweet nest, on steadily lifted wings
-
Glide
through the air, guided by their longing,
-
-
85
So those souls left the covey where Dido lies,
-
Moving
toward us through the malignant air,
-
So strong was the loving-kindness in
my cry.
-
"O mortal
man, gracious and tenderhearted,
Who
through the somber air come to visit
90
The two of us who stained the earth with blood,
-
"If the
King of the universe were our friend,
We would
then pray to him to bring you peace,
-
Since you show pity for our wretched
plight.
-
"Whatever
you please to hear and speak about
95
We will hear and speak about with you
While the
wind, as it is now, is silent.
-
"The
country of my birth lies on that coast
Where the
river Po with its tributaries
Flows
downhill to its place of final rest.
-
100
"Love which takes quick hold in a gentle heart
Seized
this man for the beauty of the body
Snatched
from me — how it happened galls me!
-
"Love
which pardons no one loved from loving
Seized me
so strongly with my pleasure in him
105
That, as you see, it still does not leave me.
-
"Love led
the two of us to a single death:
Caina
awaits him who snuffed out our lives."
These were
the words conveyed from them to us.
-
When I had
heard those grief-stricken souls,
110
I bowed my head and held it bowed down low
Until the
poet asked, "What are you thinking?"
-
When I
replied, I ventured, "O misery,
How many
the sweet thoughts, how much yearning
Has led
these two to this heartbroken pass!"
-
115
Then I turned round again to speak to them,
And I
began, "Francesca, your sufferings
Move my
heart to tears of grief and pity.
-
"But tell
me, in the season of sweet sighs,
By what
signs did love grant to you the favor
120
Of recognizing your mistrustful longings?"
-
And she
told me, "Nothing is more painful
Than to
recall the time of happiness
In
wretchedness: this truth your teacher knows.
-
"If,
however, to learn the initial root
125
Of our own love is now your deep desire,
I will
speak here as one who weeps in speaking.
-
"One day
for our own pleasure we were reading
Of
Lancelot and how love pinioned him.
We were
alone and innocent of suspicion.
-
130
"Several times that reading forced our eyes
To meet
and took the color from our faces.
But one
solitary moment conquered us.
-
"When we
read there of how the longed-for smile
Was being
kissed by that heroic lover,
135
This man, who never shall be severed from me,
-
"Trembling
all over, kissed me on the mouth.
That book
— and its author — was a pander!
In it that
day we did no further reading."
-
While the
one spirit spoke these words, the other
140
Wept so sadly that pity swept over me
And I
fainted as if face to face with death,
-
-
And I fell just as a dead body falls.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Returning to
the consciousness I'd lost
-
In the pathos
of those kindred lovers
-
Whose plight
completely baffled me with grief,
-
-
I see new
sufferings and new suffering souls
-
5
Surrounding me no matter where I walk,
-
No matter
where I turn or where I look.
-
-
I am in the
third circle, a place of rain
-
Accursed,
freezing, heavy, and unending:
-
Its density
and direction never change.
-
-
10
Huge hailstones, mucky sleet and snow
-
Keep pouring
down through the gloom-filled air
-
So that the
soil that sucks it in is putrid.
-
-
Cerberus, that
weird and vicious beast,
-
15
Howls like a mad-dog out of all three throats,
-
Baying above
the people wallowing here.
-
-
His eyes are
red, his beard is greasy black,
-
His belly
bloated and talon-sharp his hands:
-
He claws the
spirits, skins and splits them up.
-
-
The downpour
forces them to howl like hounds.
-
20
Making a shield of one flank, then the other,
-
The impious
wretches flip and flop about.
-
-
When the fat
worm Cerberus had seen us,
-
He opened up
his mouths and showed his fangs.
-
He stood there
quivering in every muscle.
-
-
25
Then my guide, reaching down his hands,
-
Scooped up the
earth and hurtled two fistfuls
-
Straight into
those three rapacious jaws.
-
-
Just as a dog
that barks when he is hungry,
-
Then quiets
down while gnawing on his food,
-
30
Struggling and straining just to swallow it,
-
-
Such was the
change in the filth-spattered faces
-
Of the demon
Cerberus thundering loudly
-
Against the
souls who wish that they were deaf.
-
-
We tread upon
the shadows beaten down
-
35
By the heavy rain, and we set our feet
-
On emptiness
that seems like solid bodies.
-
-
All of them
were stretched out on the ground
-
Except for one
who sat up straight as soon
-
As he
perceived us passing on before him.
-
-
40
"Oh you who are led onward through this hell,"
-
He said to me,
"see if you can place me:
-
For you were
made before I was unmade."
-
-
And I told
him, "The distress that you endure
-
Perhaps has
wiped you from my memory
-
45
So it appears that I have never seen you.
-
-
"But tell me
who you are who in so sad
-
A place are
plunged to suffer such a torture
-
That, though
worse exists, none's more repulsive."
-
-
And he told
me, "Your city, so crammed full
-
50
Of envy that already the sack spills over,
-
Held me in its
walls in the tranquil life.
-
-
"You citizens
had nicknamed me Ciacco.
-
For the
damnable sin of gluttony,
-
As you can
see, I am drubbed by this rain.
-
-
55
"And I, unhappy soul, am not alone,
-
For all these
souls bear the same punishment
-
For the same
sin." With that he said no more.
-
-
I answered
him, "Ciacco, this anguish of yours
-
So weighs on
me it summons me to tears.
-
60
But tell me, if you know, what shall become
-
-
"Of the
citizens of that divided city?
-
Is anyone
there just? Tell me too the reason
-
Why so much
discord has assaulted it?"
-
-
And he
replied, "After long contention
-
65
They shall come to blood, and the rural party
-
Shall push the
other out with strong offense.
-
-
"Then that
party itself is doomed to fall
-
Within three
years: the other will prevail
-
By the might
of one now straddling the middle.
-
-
70
"This party shall hold its head up high
-
While keeping
the other under heavy burdens,
-
However much
it moans and feels ashamed.
-
-
"Two men are
just, but no one minds them there:
-
Pride,
spitefulness, and avarice
-
75
Are three sparks that have fired up their hearts."
-
-
Here his
mournful words came to a close.
-
I said to him,
"More I would have you tell me
-
And make me a
present of still further speech.
-
-
"Farinata and
Tegghiaio, once so worthy,
-
80
Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, Mosca,
-
And others who
put their talents to good use,
-
-
"Tell me where
they are and how to know them,
-
For keen
desire drives me on to learn
-
Whether heaven
heals or hell poisons them."
-
-
85
And he: "They are among the blackest souls:
-
Different sins
sink them to different pits.
-
If you go down
that far, there you will see them.
-
-
"But when you
have returned to the sweet world,
-
I pray you to
recall me to men's minds.
-
90
No more I say here and no more I answer."
-
-
His straight
eyes then he twisted to a squint;
-
He studied me
a moment, bent his head,
-
And sank down
with the others who are blind.
-
-
And my guide
said to me, "He wakens no more
-
95
Until resounds the trumpet of the angel
-
When the
hostile power of their Judge shall come.
-
-
"Each one
shall see again his woeful tomb,
-
Shall once
again don his own flesh and frame,
-
Shall hear
what blasts out to eternity."
-
-
100
So we passed on through that polluted mess
-
Of shades and
rainfall, our steps pacing slow,
-
And touched a
moment on the future life.
-
-
At that I
asked, "Master, these tormentings,
-
Will they
increase after the final judgment
-
105
Or lessen or be just as burning hot?"
-
-
And he said to
me, "Go back to your learning
-
Which holds
that when a thing is the more perfect
-
The more it
feels the grief as well as good.
-
-
"Although
these same detestable people
-
110
Never can arrive at true perfection,
-
They can look
to get closer then than now."
-
-
The two of us
walked on around that road,
-
Talking about
much more than I repeat.
-
We came to the
spot where the grade falls off.
-
-
115
There we found Plutus, the great enemy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
"Pape Satan,
pape Satan, aleppe!"
-
Plutus started
up with clacking voice,
-
And that kind
sage, who comprehended all,
-
-
Spoke for my
comfort, "Do not let your fear
-
5
Harm you: whatever power he possesses,
-
He cannot keep
us from climbing down this crag."
-
-
Then he turned
back to that puffed-up face
-
And said,
"Plutus, be still, wretched wolf!
-
Feed on
yourself with your own rabid rage.
-
-
10
"Not without cause we journey to the abyss.
-
It is so
willed on high, there where Michael
-
Wreaked
vengeance on that arrogant rebellion."
-
-
As sails
billowed by the wind collapse
-
Into a tangled
heap when the mainmast cracks,
-
15
So the ruthless beast fell to the ground.
-
-
At that we
moved on down to the fourth crater,
-
Taking in more
of that grief-stricken slope
-
Which stacks
all the evil of the universe.
-
-
Ah, justice of
God! Who has heaped up so many
-
20
Of the fresh trials and tortures that I saw?
-
Why does our
guilt devour us like this?
-
-
Just like the
wave, there over Charybdis,
-
Breaking
itself against the wave it strikes,
-
So must the
people here reel out their dance.
-
-
25
Here I saw more shades than I saw above,
-
On one side
and the other, with piercing howls,
-
Rolling
weights shoved forward with their chests.
-
-
They smashed
against each other. On the spot,
-
Each whipped
around and, rolling the weight back,
-
30
Yelled, "Why do you hoard?" or "Why do
you splurge?"
-
-
With that they
wheeled about the dismal circle
-
On either arc
to the opposing point,
-
Screaming over
again their scornful verses.
-
-
When they had
reached the end of one half-circle,
-
35
Each turned around to face the following joust.
-
And I — my
heart all but pierced by the sight —
-
-
Spoke up, "My
master, now instruct me here.
-
Who are these
people? Were they all clergy,
-
The tonsured
ones there on the left-hand side?"
-
-
40
And he replied, "All these were so squint-eyed
-
Mentally, in
the first life, that they
-
Were never
even-handed in their spending:
-
-
"Their voices
bark this truth out clearly
-
When they come
to the two points of the circle
-
45
Where contrary guilts set them against each other.
-
-
"These were
the clergy who have no crown of hair
-
On their
heads, both popes and cardinals,
-
Within whom
avarice runs to its extreme."
-
-
And I:
"Master, among the likes of these
-
50
Surely I should recognize some souls
-
Who were
befouled by these same misdeeds."
-
-
And he told
me, "You entertain vain thoughts.
-
The
imperceptive lives that dirtied them
-
Now blacken
them beyond all perception.
-
-
55
"Forever they will come to double butt:
-
These men
shall rise up from the sepulcher
-
With tight
fists and those men, with shaven heads.
-
-
"Ill-giving
and ill-keeping stole from them
-
The lovely
world and put them to this strife.
-
60
I will not lose fair words describing it.
-
-
"Now you can
see, my son, the brief foolery
-
Of the wealth
which Fortune holds in trust —
-
For this the
race of men rebuff each other.
-
-
"All the gold
that lies beneath the moon
-
65
And all the gold of old can bring no rest
-
To a single
one of all these wearied spirits."
-
-
"Master," I
said to him, "now tell me more.
-
This Fortune
whom you touch on with me here,
-
Who is she
with the world’s wealth in her grip?"
-
-
70
And he replied, "O foolhardy creatures,
-
What immense
ignorance trips you up!
-
Now I want you
to absorb my teaching.
-
-
"The One whose
wisdom transcends everything
-
Fashioned the
heavens and to them gave his guides,
-
75
So that one pole shines out to the other,
-
-
"Apportioning,
in equal measure, light.
-
In like
manner, for splendors of the world,
-
He ordained a
general minister and guide
-
-
"To shift
around at times the empty wealth,
-
80
From country to country and from house to house,
-
Beyond the
watchfulness of human judgment.
-
-
"And so one
country rules, one languishes,
-
In obedience
to the verdict that she gives,
-
Which is
hidden like a snake in the grass.
-
-
85
"Your wisdom is unable to withstand her:
-
She ever
foresees, judges, and purveys
-
Her kingdom as
the other gods do theirs.
-
-
"Her changes
never settle for a truce.
-
Necessity is
that which makes her swift,
-
90
So rapidly men come to take their turns.
-
-
"She is the
one so often crucified
-
Even by those
who ought to sing her praises,
-
But with
wrong, wicked voices they cast blame.
-
-
"She is
blessed, however, and hears nothing.
-
95
Rejoicing with the other primal creatures,
-
She rolls her
sphere and revels in her bliss.
-
-
"Now let us
pass below to deeper pathos.
-
Already all
the stars set that ascended
-
When I began;
we can no longer tarry."
-
-
100
We crossed the circle to the further bank
-
Above a source
that boils up and spills over
-
Into a gully
cut out from its stream.
-
-
The water was
far darker than black dye;
-
And we,
escorted by the murky waves,
-
105
Started down on this strange passageway.
-
-
Into the
marshland that is called the Styx
-
Flows this sad
stream after running downward
-
To the base of
these ruinous gray slopes.
-
-
And I,
standing there to stare intently,
-
110
Saw in that morass people smeared with mud,
-
All naked,
their faces lined with rage.
-
-
They beat each
other not just with their hands
-
But even with
their heads and chest and feet
-
And with their
teeth ripped each other to pieces.
-
-
115
My own good master said, "Son, now you see
-
The souls of
those whom anger overpowered.
-
I also want
you to accept for certain
-
-
"That under
the water there are people sighing
-
Who make the
surface of the water bubble,
-
120
As your eye tells you whichever way it turns."
-
-
Mired in
slime, they moan, "We were morose
-
In the sweet
air made cheerful by the sun;
-
We bore within
ourselves the torpid vapors:
-
-
"Now morbid we
are made in this black mud."
-
125
This canticle they gurgle in their gullets
-
Since they
can’t sound it with full syllables.
-
-
So we walked
around the wide curving rim
-
Of that foul
pool, between dry bank and bog,
-
With our eyes
turned to those who swallow slime.
-
-
130
We arrived at last at the base of a tower.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Moving on, I
say that long before
-
We came to the
base of that high tower
-
Our eyes were
drawn up to its pinnacle
-
-
By two flares
which we saw positioned there
-
5
While still a third responded to the signal
-
From so far
off the eye could scarcely see it.
-
-
And I turned
to that sea of all perception;
-
I asked, "What
does this mean? What answer
-
Does the other
make? And who is doing this?"
-
-
10
And he told me, "Above the filthy waves
-
Already you
can sight what waits for us,
-
Unless the
swamp’s thick vapors hide it from you."
-
-
Bowspring
never fired off an arrow
-
That streamed
through the air with such speed
-
15
As did the tiny dinghy that I spotted
-
-
Riding that
moment toward us on the water,
-
A single
boatman holding it on course.
-
He screamed,
"Now you are caught, wicked soul!"
-
-
"Phlegyas,
Phlegyas, you shout futilely,"
-
20
My lord replied; "this time your hold on us
-
Will last no
longer than crossing on the mire."
-
-
And just as
one who learns some huge deception
-
Has been
played on him, grows to resent it,
-
So Phlegyas
reacted, restraining his anger.
-
-
25
My guide then stepped down into the boat,
-
And next he
made me enter after him:
-
Only when I
was in did it seem weighted.
-
-
As soon as my
guide and I embarked,
-
The ancient
prow pushed off, ploughing down
-
30
Water more deeply than it does with others.
-
-
While we rode
over the dead channel
-
Before me rose
a figure smeared with mud
-
Who asked,
"Who are you come before your time?"
-
-
And I told
him, "I come, but do not stay.
-
35
But who are you who are made so ugly?"
-
He answered,
"You see that I am one who weeps."
-
-
And I told
him, "In weeping and in mourning,
-
Accursed
spirit, there may you remain,
-
For, filthy as
you are, I recognize you."
-
-
40
Then he stretched both his hands out to the boat.
-
At that my
ready master shoved him off,
-
Saying, "Get
away, with the other dogs!"
-
-
My guide then
put his arms around my neck,
-
Kissed me, and
said, "Soul of indignation,
-
45
Blessed is the woman who gave you birth!
-
-
"In the world
he was a man of arrogance;
-
Nothing good
bedecks his memory:
-
For that, his
shade down here is furious.
-
-
"How many up
there now think themselves kings
-
50
Who here shall wallow in the mud like pigs,
-
Bequeathing
only loathsome disrepute."
-
-
And I said,
"Master, eagerly would I like
-
To see that
spirit soused within this soup
-
Before we take
our leave of this morass."
-
-
55
And he told me, "Before the future shore
-
Comes into
view, you shall be satisfied,
-
For it is
right that your wish be fulfilled."
-
-
Shortly
afterward I saw such a tearing
-
Of that shade
by the slimy people there
-
60
That still I praise and thank God for it.
-
-
All shouted,
"Get Filippo Argenti!"
-
And then the
frenzied Florentine spirit
-
Turned on
himself his own biting teeth.
-
-
We left him
there; I tell no more about him.
-
65
But wailing, then, so pounded on my ear
-
That I
intently strained my eyes ahead.
-
-
The kindly
master said, "Now, my dear son,
-
The city known
as Dis approaches near
-
With its grave
citizens and mighty hosts."
-
-
70
And I: "Master, already I see clearly
-
There in the
valley its mosques glowing
-
Bright red as
if just lifted from the fire."
-
-
And he said to
me, "The eternal flame,
-
Burning
within, shows them rosy-red,
-
75
As you discern, here in this lower hell."
-
-
We arrived at
last inside the deep ditch
-
Which moated
round that melancholy city,
-
The walls
appearing to me like cast iron.
-
-
After we had
first made a great circuit,
-
80
We came to a spot where the boatman loudly
-
Cried, "Get
out — this is the entry way!"
-
-
I saw above
the gates more than a thousand
-
Of those
poured out from heaven; they wrathfully
-
Called, "Who
is this one who without dying
-
-
85
"Passes through the kingdom of the dead?"
-
Then my
thoughtful master gave a signal
-
Of his wish to
speak to them in confidence.
-
-
At that they
barely checked their high disdain
-
And said, "You
come along — let that one go
-
90
Who so boldly enters through this realm.
-
-
"Let him
return alone on his fool’s path —
-
Try, if he
can! For you are staying here
-
Who guided him
into so dark a country."
-
-
Reflect,
reader, how I lost my courage
-
95
When I heard them speak the awful curse,
-
For I did not
think I ever would go back.
-
-
"O my dear
guide who more than seven times
-
Brought me
back to safety and who drew me
-
From the deep
peril that stood in my way,
-
-
100
"Don’t let me be forsaken so!" I cried,
-
"And if we are
denied to pass on further,
-
Quickly let us
retrace our steps together."
-
-
And that lord
who had led me to this spot
-
Said to me,
"Have no fear; our passage here
-
105
No one can take from us: such is the Donor.
-
-
"But wait for
me there, your weary spirit
-
Comforted and
nourished with strong hope,
-
Since I won’t
leave you in the lower world."
-
-
So he goes off
and here abandons me,
-
110
My tender father; and I am kept in doubt
-
While yes
and no battle in my brain.
-
-
I couldn’t
hear what he proposed to them,
-
But he did not
remain with them for long
-
When they all
scrimmaged to get back inside.
-
-
115
These enemies of ours slammed the gate
-
In my lord’s
face; he stood there left outside
-
And then
turned back to me with slow slack steps.
-
-
Eyes fastened
on the ground and brows shorn bare
-
Of any
boldness, he murmured between sighs,
-
120
"Who has forbidden me the house of pain?"
-
-
But he
informed me, "You — because I’m vexed —
-
Should not
lose heart — I will win this contest
-
No matter what
defense they try within.
-
-
"This
arrogance of theirs is nothing new,
-
125
For once they showed it at a less secret gate
-
Which still is
standing, in full view, unlocked.
-
-
"Above that
gate you read the deadly writing,
-
And already,
from this side and down the slope,
-
Passing
through the circles without escort,
-
-
130
"Comes one by whom the city will be opened."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
That color
cowardice painted on my face,
-
When I had
seen my leader turned around,
-
More quickly
caused him to repress his pallor.
-
-
Attentive he
halted, like a man listening,
-
5
Because his eyes could not lead him on farther
-
Through the
blackening air and thickening fog.
-
-
"Yet we must
overcome and win this fight —"
-
He began, "if
not — so much offered us —
-
How long it
seems before somebody comes!"
-
-
10
I saw quite clearly how he covered up
-
What he began
to say with what then followed:
-
His last words
were so different from his first.
-
-
Nevertheless,
his speech made me afraid
-
Because I drew
out from his broken phrases
-
15
A meaning worse perhaps than what they had.
-
-
"Down to the
bottom of this sorry pit
-
Do any ever
climb from the first level
-
Where the only
punishment is severed hope?"
-
-
This question
I put to him; he replied,
-
20
"Rarely it happens that any one of us
-
Makes the
journey I am making now.
-
-
"True, once
before I was here below,
-
Conjured by
that heartless Erichtho
-
Who summoned
shades back to their own bodies.
-
-
"Shortly after
I’d been stripped of flesh
-
25
She made me enter inside that same wall
-
To draw a soul
back from the zone of Judas.
-
-
"That place is
the lowest and the darkest
-
And the
farthest from all-encircling heaven.
-
30
I know the pathway well, so rest assured.
-
-
"The marshland
that breathes out a monstrous stench
-
Girdles all
about the tear-racked city
-
Where now we
cannot enter without wrath."
-
-
And more he
said, but it escapes my mind
-
35
For my eye had completely drawn me upward
-
To the high
tower with the flame-tipped top
-
-
Where at one
spot there straightaway stood up
-
Three infernal
Furies stained with blood,
-
Their bodies
and behavior that of women.
-
-
40
Their waists were cinctured with green hydras;
-
For hair they
had horned snakes and poison adders
-
With which
their savage temples were enwreathed.
-
-
And clearly
recognizing the handmaidens
-
Of the Queen
of unending mournfulness,
-
45
He said to me, "Look at the fierce Erinyes:
-
-
"That one
there on the left is Megaera,
-
And on the
right is Alecto, wailing;
-
Tisiphone is
in the middle." He ceased.
-
-
With her nails
each one tore at her own breasts,
-
50
Thrashed with her hands, and shouted out so loud
-
That in dread
I drew closer to the poet.
-
-
"Bring on
Medusa! We’ll turn him to stone!"
-
They all
screeched out together, staring down;
-
"We ill
revenged the raid of Theseus!"
-
-
55
"Turn your back now and keep your eyes shut tight,
-
For should the
Gorgon come and you see her
-
You would not
return to the world above."
-
-
So spoke my
master. He himself turned me
-
Around and,
not relying on my hands,
-
60
Covered my face as well with his own palms.
-
-
O you
possessing sound intelligence,
-
Study well the
doctrine which lies hidden
-
Under the veil
of my unusual verse!
-
-
For now there
came upon the muddy waves
-
65
A blasting sound, a fear-inspiring roar,
-
Causing both
sides of the shore to tremble:
-
-
Not unlike the
blast made by the wind,
-
Turbulent from
changing temperatures,
-
Which strikes
the forest and without check
-
-
70
Breaks and knocks down boughs, blows them away,
-
Sweeping on
proudly with a cloud of dust
-
And chasing
off shepherds and wild animals.
-
-
He freed my
eyes and told me, "Now direct
-
Your eyesight
straight into that ancient scum,
-
75
Right there to where the fog is hanging thickest."
-
-
Just as the
frogs before their enemy
-
The snake all
disappear into the water
-
Until each one
squats down upon the bottom,
-
-
I saw more
than a thousand wasted souls
-
80
Fleeing from the path of one who strode
-
Dry-shod above
the waters of the Styx.
-
-
Often he
brushed the foul air from his face,
-
Rhythmically
moving his left hand out in front,
-
And only with
that bother appeared weary.
-
-
85
Easily I knew that he was sent from heaven,
-
And I turned
to my master, but he signaled
-
That I stay
still and bow down there to him.
-
-
Ah how full of
deep disdain he seemed to me!
-
He then
approached the gate, and with a wand
-
90
He opened it without the least resistance.
-
-
"O outcasts
from heaven, detested race,"
-
He now began
upon the horrid threshold,
-
"Why is this
insolence so settled in you?
-
-
"Why are you
opponents to that Will
-
95
Which cannot be dissevered from its end
-
And which has
often swelled your sufferings?
-
-
"What good is
it to butt against the Fates?
-
Your Cerberus,
as you should well recall,
-
For just that
had his chin and gullet peeled!"
-
-
100
Then he turned back along the filthy road
-
Without a word
to us, but with the look
-
Of someone
pressed and spurred by other cares
-
-
Than those
that lie right there in front of him.
-
105
And we walked on, straight forward to the city,
-
Through the
safe-conduct of his sacred words.
-
-
Without a
fight we went directly in,
-
And I, filled
with a longing to find out
-
The state of
those shut up within that fortress,
-
-
Once I was
inside, cast my eyes around
-
110
And saw, on every side, a vast landscape
-
Rife with
distress and wretched punishment.
-
-
Just as at
Arles, where the Rhone is stagnant,
-
Just as at
Pola, near Quarnero’s gulf
-
That closes
Italy and bathes her borders,
-
-
115
The sarcophagi make all the ground uneven,
-
So did they
here, lying every whichway,
-
Except that
their condition was far worse.
-
-
For there
among the tombs were scattered flames
-
That made them
glow all over with more heat
-
120
Than any craftsman requires for his iron.
-
-
All of their
open lids were lifted up,
-
And from
inside such harsh laments escaped
-
As would come
from the wretched and the injured.
-
-
And I:
"Master, who are these people that,
-
125
Entombed within these chests of solid stone,
-
Make
themselves felt by their distressful sighs?"
-
-
And he told
me, "Here lie the arch-heretics
-
With their
disciples, from all sects, and more
-
Than you’ll
believe are loaded in these tombs.
-
-
130
"Like soul lies
buried here encased with like;
-
Some monuments
are hotter and some less."
-
And then he
made a turn to the right hand:
-
-
We passed
between the torments and high walls.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Now, by a
hidden passageway that wound
-
Between the
rack and ramparts of the city,
-
My master
travels and I after him.
-
-
"O highest
virtue who through these arrant rings
-
5
Lead me around as you please," I began,
-
"Speak to me
and satisfy my yearnings:
-
-
"The people
here who lie within the tombs,
-
Can they be
seen? Already all the lids
-
Are raised off
and no one is standing guard,"
-
-
10
And he responded, "They
shall all be sealed
-
When they come
back here from Jehosaphat
-
With the
bodies that they have left up there.
-
-
"In this
section is found the cemetery
-
Of Epicurus
and his followers,
-
15
All those who claim the soul dies with the body.
-
-
"So the
question that you have put to me
-
Soon shall be
satisfied while we are here,
-
As shall the
wish that you have kept from me."
-
-
And I: "Good
guide, I do not hide my heart:
-
20
I only want now to have less to say
-
As more than
once before you prompted me."
-
-
"O Tuscan,
passing through the fiery city
-
Alive and
speaking with such frank decorum,
-
Be kind enough
to pause now in this place.
-
-
25
"Your way of talking makes it clear you come
-
Of the stock
born of that same noble city
-
To which I was
perhaps too troublesome."
-
-
So suddenly
had this sound issued from
-
One of the
coffins there that I trembled
-
30
And drew a little closer to my guide.
-
-
"Turn around,"
he said. "What are you doing?
-
Look here at
Farinata straightening up!
-
From waist
high you will see the whole of him."
-
-
I had already
fixed my eyes on his
-
35
While he emerged with his forehead and chest,
-
Looking as
though he held hell in contempt.
-
-
The quick,
assuring hands of my leader
-
Pushed me
toward him between the sepulchers —
-
He said, "Suit
your words to the occasion."
-
-
40
When I had come up nearer to his tomb,
-
He stared a
moment and then, disdainfully,
-
Questioned me,
"Who were your ancestors?"
-
-
I who was
anxious to be dutiful
-
Kept nothing
back but told him everything.
-
45
At this he raised his brows ever so slightly,
-
-
Then said,
"They were so fiercely inimical
-
To me and to
my forebears and my party
-
That twice I
had to send them scampering."
-
-
"Though they
were driven out, yet from all sides
-
50
At both times they came back," I said to him;
-
"But your men
never really learned that art."
-
-
At that there
rose before my sight a shade
-
Beside him —
visible down to his chin —
-
I guess he
raised himself up on his knees.
-
-
55
He gazed all around me, as though intent
-
To see if I
were there with someone else,
-
But when his
hope had been completely dashed,
-
-
Tearfully he
said, "If you journey through
-
This blind
prison by reason of high genius,
-
60
Where is my son? Why is he not with you?"
-
-
I answered, "I
do not journey on my own:
-
He who awaits
there leads me through this place —
-
Perhaps your
Guido had felt scorn for him."
-
-
His question
and his form of punishment
-
65
Allowed me already to read his name;
-
On that
account, my answer was so full.
-
Suddenly he
stood and cried out, "How?
-
You said ‘had
felt’? Is he not still alive?
-
Does not the
lovely light still strike his eyes?"
-
-
70
And when he had observed my hesitation
-
Before I
answered him, he shrank back down
-
And would not
show his face to me again.
-
-
That
noble-hearted shade at whose request
-
I’d halted my
steps did not change his look
-
75
Or bow his head or bend his body down,
-
-
But, picking
up once more our first exchange,
-
He said, "If
they have poorly learned that art,
-
That fact
torments me far more than this bed.
-
-
"Not fifty
times, however, shall the face
-
80
Of the lady reigning here rekindle light
-
Before you
know how heavy that art weighs.
-
-
"And, so may
you return to the sweet world,
-
Tell me why
those people are so unjust
-
In all the
laws they pass against my kindred?"
-
-
85
Then I replied, "The rout and massacre
-
Which stained
the stream of the Arbia red
-
Inspires such
petitions in our temple."
-
-
At that he
sighed, shook his head, and said,
-
"In that harsh
action I was not alone:
-
90
Surely with cause I joined in with the others;
-
-
"But there I
was alone where all concurred
-
To topple
Florence to the ground, the only
-
One to stand
up for her openly."
-
-
"Ah, as you
wish your seed to find true peace,"
-
95
I answered, "help me to unravel the knot
-
That has so
tangled up my thinking here.
-
-
"It seems, if
I am right, that you can see
-
Beforehand
what time bears along with it,
-
But what the
present holds you cannot grasp."
-
-
100
"We see, like someone suffering poor vision,
-
Those things,"
he said, "that are far off from us:
-
Such light the
Sovereign Lord still proffers us.
-
-
"When things
approach or happen, our intellect
-
Is useless;
unless others inform us here
-
105
We would know nothing of your human state.
-
-
"So you can
comprehend how wholly dead
-
Shall be our
knowledge at that moment when
-
The door of
the future has slammed shut."
-
-
Then, as
though in sorrow for my failure,
-
110
I said, "Now will you tell that fallen man
-
That his son
is still there among the living.
-
-
"And if,
before, I remained silent
-
To his
response, inform him I was thinking
-
About the
problem you have just cleared up."
-
-
115
Already my master was calling me back,
-
And so I
begged that spirit with fresh haste
-
To tell me who
were with him in the tombs.
-
-
"Here lie with
me more than a thousand,"
-
He said; "Here
is Frederick the Second,
-
120
And the Cardinal. . ., but I name no more."
-
-
With that he
vanished, and I turned my steps
-
Toward the
ancient poet while I pondered
-
Those words
that seemed so threatening to me.
-
-
He moved
along, and then as we two walked,
-
125
He questioned me, "Why are you so perturbed?"
-
And I
satisfied him with my answer.
-
-
"Store in your
mind what you have heard set forth
-
Against
yourself," that sage commanded me.
-
"Now pay
attention," and he raised a finger:
-
-
130
"When you shall stand before the gentle beams
-
Of her whose
beautiful eyes see everything,
-
From her
you’ll learn the journey of your life."
-
-
With that he
turned his steps off to the left.
-
We quit the
wall and headed toward the center
-
135
Along a path that strikes down to a valley
-
-
Which, even
there, sickened us with its stench.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
On the
ridgetop of a high embankment
-
Shaped in a
circle by huge broken rockfalls,
-
We came above
an even crueler fold:
-
-
And here,
because of the overwhelming stench
-
5
Which that bottomless abyss throws up,
-
We recoiled —
back behind the covering lid
-
-
Of a large
tomb where I saw inscribed
-
These words:
"I hold Pope Anastasius
-
Whom Photinus
lured from the straight path."
-
-
10
"We must delay our downward journey here
-
So that our
sense may gradually grow used
-
To the foul
gas-fumes; then we will not mind it."
-
-
This my master
said, and I replied,
-
"Offset it
somehow, so we may not lose
-
15
Our time." And he: "That is my thought exactly."
-
-
"My son,
within the boundary of these boulders,"
-
He then began,
— "are three smaller circles,
-
From tier to
tier, like those you leave behind.
-
-
"All are
crammed full of ill-stricken spirits —
-
20
But, that sheer sight later may suffice you,
-
Listen to how
and why they are held bound.
-
-
"The aim of
all malicious acts that merit
-
Hatred in
heaven is injustice: all such actions,
-
By violence or
by fraud, harm someone else.
-
-
25
"Since fraud, however, is man’s peculiar vice,
-
It gives God
more displeasure; the fraudulent, then,
-
Lie lower down
and more pain harries them.
-
-
"The whole
first circle is for the violent;
-
But, as force
is turned against three persons,
-
30
This first is fashioned in three separate rings.
-
-
"On God, on
self, and on one’s neighbor force
-
Can turn: I
mean, on them and on their goods,
-
As you shall
now hear logically set forth.
-
-
"By violence
come death and painful wounds
-
35
To one’s neighbor; and to his possessions
-
Come hurtful
wrecking, arson, and extortion.
-
-
"So murderers,
robbers, plunderers,
-
And all who
wrongly do bodily injury
-
The first ring
tortures in assorted ranks.
-
-
40
"A man may lay violent hands on himself
-
And on his
property: so in the second
-
Ring each one
must fruitlessly repent
-
-
"Who wills to
rob himself of your bright world,
-
Gambles away
or wastes his own belongings,
-
45
And grieves up there where he should rejoice.
-
-
"Violence may
be done against the Godhead
-
By denial in
the heart and blasphemy
-
And by
despising nature and her bounty.
-
-
"And so the
smallest ring has set its seal
-
50
On both Sodom and Cahors and all those
-
Whose words
betray their hearts’ contempt of God.
-
-
"Fraud, that
chews away at every conscience,
-
A man may
practice on one who trusts him
-
Or on one who
has no confidence in him.
-
-
55
"For those who trust not, only the link of love
-
Which nature
forges appears to be cut;
-
Therefore, in
the second circle nest
-
-
"Hypocrites,
flatterers, and sorcerers,
-
Falsifiers,
thieves, and simoniacs,
-
60
Panders, graft-takers, and all that trash.
-
-
"For those who
trust, both the love nature
-
Forges is
forgotten and the love
-
Added to it
that creates a special bond.
-
-
"So, in the
smallest circle, at the center
-
65
Of the universe and the seat of Dis,
-
All traitors
are eternally consumed."
-
-
And I:
"Master, the logic of your words
-
Is crystal
clear and well delineates
-
The chasm and
the people it contains.
-
-
70
"But tell me, those mired in the slimy marsh,
-
Those the wind
blasts and those the rain beats on
-
And those that
clash with such savage tongues,
-
-
"Why aren’t
they punished in the red-hot city
-
If God holds
them as well in his great wrath?
-
75
And if he does not, why are they in torment?"
-
-
He said to me,
"Why does your mind drift off
-
So distantly
from its accustomed pathway?
-
Or do your
thoughts now turn to other things?
-
-
80
"Do you not remember those passages
-
In which your
Ethics treats in full detail
-
The three
perversities opposed by heaven:
-
-
"Incontinence,
maliciousness, and raving
-
Bestiality —
and how incontinence,
-
Offending God
the least, incurs least blame?
-
-
85
"If you will study this teaching carefully
-
And call to
mind the people up above
-
Who outside
the city endure penances,
-
-
"You’ll
plainly see why they are set apart
-
From these
felons and why divine vengeance
-
90
Hammers at them there with lesser anger."
-
-
"O sun that
clears up every troubled vision,
-
You so content
me when you solve my doubts
-
That doubting
pleases me no less than knowing.
-
-
"Once more go
back a little to the point,"
-
95
I said, "where you state usury offends
-
The divine
goodness, and untie the knot."
-
-
"Philosophy,
to one who understands,
-
Points out —
and on more than one occasion —
-
How nature
gathers her entire course
-
-
100
"From divine intellect and divine art.
-
And if you
pore over your Physics closely,
-
You’ll find,
not many pages from the start,
-
-
"That, when
possible, your art follows nature
-
As a pupil
does his master; in effect,
-
105
Your art is like the grandchild of our God.
-
-
"From art and
nature, if you will recall
-
The opening of
Genesis, man is meant
-
To earn his
way and further humankind.
-
-
"But still the
usurer takes another way:
-
110
He scorns nature and her follower, art,
-
Because he
puts his hope in something else.
-
-
"But follow me
now since I want to go:
-
For the Fish
shimmer low on the horizon
-
And all the
Wain stretches over Caurus,
-
-
115
"And there, beyond, the road runs off the cliff."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
The place
where we had come to clamber down
-
The bank was
mountainous, and what was there
-
So grim all
eyes would turn away from it.
-
-
Just like that
rockslide on this side of Trent
-
5
That struck the flank of the Adige River —
-
Either by an
earthquake or erosion —
-
-
Where, from
the mountaintop it started down
-
To the plain
below, the boulders shattered so,
-
For anyone
above they formed a path,
-
-
10
Such was the downward course of that ravine;
-
And at the
brink over the broken chasm
-
There lay
outspread the infamy of Crete
-
-
That was
conceived within the bogus cow;
-
And when he
saw us, he bit into himself,
-
15
Like someone whom wrath tears up from inside.
-
-
My clever
guide cried out to him, "Perhaps
-
You believe
that this is the Duke of Athens
-
Who in the
upper world contrived your death?
-
-
"Go off, you
beast! this man does not approach
-
20
Instructed by your sister but comes here
-
In order to
observe your punishments."
-
-
Just as the
bull breaks loose right at that moment
-
When he has
been dealt the fatal blow
-
And cannot run
but jumps this way and that,
-
-
25
So I saw the Minotaur react —
-
And my quick
guide called out, "Run for the pass!
-
While he's
raging is our chance to get down!"
-
-
And so we made
our way down through the pile
-
Of rocks which
often slid beneath my feet
-
30
Because they were not used to holding weight.
-
-
I pushed on,
thinking, and he said, "You wonder,
-
Perhaps, about
that wreckage which is guarded
-
By that
bestial rage I just now quelled.
-
-
"Now you
should know that the other time
-
35
I journeyed here below to lower hell,
-
These boulders
as yet had not tumbled down:
-
-
"But for
certain, if I recall correctly,
-
It was shortly
before He came who took
-
From Dis the
great spoils of the topmost circle
-
-
40
"That this deep loathsome valley on all sides
-
Trembled so, I
thought the universe
-
Felt love,
because of which, as some believe,
-
-
"The world has
often been turned back to chaos.
-
And at that
instant this ancient rock split up,
-
45
Scattering like this, here and elsewhere.
-
-
"But fasten
your eyes below — down to the plain
-
Where we
approach a river of blood boiling
-
Those who harm
their neighbors by violence."
-
-
O blind
cupidity and rabid anger
-
50
Which so spur us ahead in our short life
-
Only to steep
us forever in such pain!
-
-
I saw a broad
ditch bent into a bow,
-
As though
holding the whole plain in its embrace,
-
Just as my
guide had explained it to me.
-
-
55
Between the ditch and the foot of the bank
-
Centaurs came
running single-file, armed
-
With arrows as
they hunted in the world.
-
-
Seeing us
descend, they all pulled up,
-
And from their
ranks three of them moved forward
-
60
With bows and with their newly selected shafts.
-
-
And from afar
one shouted, "To what tortures
-
Do you
approach as you climb down the slope?
-
Answer from
there, or else I draw my bow."
-
-
My master
said, "We will make our response
-
65
To Chiron there who hovers at your side —
-
To your own
harm, your will was always rash."
-
-
Then he nudged
me, and said, "That is Nessus,
-
Who died for
the lovely Dejanira
-
By taking his
own revenge upon himself;
-
-
70
"And in the middle, staring at his chest,
-
Is mighty
Chiron, who tutored Achilles;
-
The last is
Pholus, who was so full of frenzy."
-
-
Thousands on
thousands march around the ditch,
-
Shooting at
any soul that rises up
-
75
Above the blood more than its guilt allows.
-
-
When we drew
near to these fleet-footed beasts,
-
Chiron took an
arrow and with its notch
-
Parted his
shaggy beard back from his jaws,
-
-
And when he
had uncovered his huge mouth,
-
80
Said to his companions, "Have you noticed
-
How that one
there behind stirs what he touches?
-
-
"A dead man's
feet would not cause that to happen!"
-
And my good
guide, now standing at the chest
-
Where the two
natures fuse together, answered,
-
-
85
"He is indeed alive, and so alone
-
That I must
show him all the somber valley.
-
Necessity not
pleasure brings him here.
-
-
"A spirit came
from singing alleluia
-
To commission
me with this new office:
-
90
He is no robber nor I a thieving soul.
-
-
"But by the
power by which I move my steps
-
Along this
roadway through the wilderness,
-
Lend us one of
your band to keep by us
-
-
"To lead us
where we two can ford across
-
95
And there to carry this man on his back,
-
For he is not
a spirit who flies through air."
-
-
Chiron pivoted
around on his right breast,
-
Saying to
Nessus, "Go back and guide them — if
-
Another troop
challenges, drive them away!"
-
-
100
So with this trusted escort we moved on
-
Along the bank
of the bubbling crimson river
-
Where boiling
souls raised their piercing cries.
-
-
There I saw
people buried to their eyebrows,
-
And the strong
centaur said, "These are tyrants
-
105
Who wallowed in bloodshed and plundering.
-
-
"Here they
bewail their heartless crimes: here lie
-
Both Alexander
and fierce Dionysius
-
Who brought
long years of woe to Sicily;
-
-
"And there
with his head of jet-black hair
-
110
Is Azzolino; and that other blond one
-
Is Opizzo
d'Este, who in the world
-
-
"Actually was
slain by his own stepson."
-
With that I
turned to the poet, who said,
-
"Now let him
be your first guide, I your second."
-
-
115
A little farther on, the centaur halted
-
Above some
people who appeared to rise
-
Out of the
boiling stream up to their throats.
-
-
He pointed to
one shade off by himself,
-
And said, "In
God's own bosom, this one stabbed
-
120
The heart that still drips blood upon the Thames."
-
-
Then I saw
others too who held their heads
-
And even their
whole chests out of the stream,
-
And many of
them there I recognized.
-
-
So the blood
eventually thinned out
-
125
Until it scalded only their feet in it;
-
And here we
found a place to ford the ditch.
-
-
"Just as you
see, this side, the boiling brook
-
Grow gradually
shallower," the centaur said,
-
"So I would
also have you understand
-
-
130
"That on the other side the riverbed
-
Slopes deeper
down from here until it reaches
-
Again the spot
where tyranny must grieve.
-
-
"Heavenly
justice there strikes with its goads
-
That Attila
who was a scourge on earth
-
135
And Pyrrhus and Sextus, and forever milks
-
-
"The tears,
released by boiling blood from both
-
Rinier of
Corneto and Rinier Pazzo
-
Who waged such
open warfare on the highways."
-
-
Then he turned
back and once more crossed the ford.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Nessus had not
yet reached the other bank
-
When we on
this side moved into a wood
-
That was not
marked at all by any path:
-
-
No leaves of
green but of a blackish color,
-
5
No branches smooth but gnarled and tangled up,
-
No fruits were
growing, only thorns of poison.
-
-
No wild
beasts, shunning the furrowed farmlands
-
Between Cecina
and Corneto, burrow
-
Underbrush
that is so thick and barbed.
-
-
10
Inside here nest the repugnant Harpies
-
Who chased the
Trojans from the Strophades
-
With foul
prophecies of coming losses.
-
-
They have wide
wings, human necks and faces,
-
Feet with
claws, and big feathered bellies;
-
15
They shriek laments from up in the strange trees.
-
-
"Before you
enter farther," my kind master
-
Began saying
to me, "know you are here
-
Within the
second circle and will remain
-
-
"Until you
come out to the dreadful sand.
-
20
Look carefully, then, and you shall witness things
-
That would
destroy your faith in words of mine."
-
-
I heard deep
wailings rising from all sides,
-
Without
discerning anyone who made them,
-
So that,
completely baffled, I stopped short.
-
-
25
I think he thought that I was thinking that
-
All of the
voices from among the trunks
-
Rose up from
people who were hiding from us.
-
-
My master said
to me, "If you tear off
-
A tiny twig
from one of the growths here,
-
30
Your thoughts will also be nipped in the bud."
-
-
Then reaching
out my hand a bit ahead,
-
I snapped a
shoot off from a massive thornbush,
-
And the trunk
of it cried, "Why do you break me?"
-
-
And after it
had darkened with its blood,
-
35
It started up again, "Why do you rip me?
-
Do you possess
no pity in your soul?
-
-
"Men we were
and now we are mere stumps.
-
Surely your
hand ought to have been kinder
-
Even if we had
been the souls of serpents."
-
-
40
Just as a green log blazing at one end
-
Oozes sap out
of the other, all the while
-
Hissing with
the air that it blows out,
-
-
So from that
broken bough issued together
-
Words and
blood: at that I let the tip
-
45
Fall, standing like a man stricken with fear.
-
-
To him my sage
responded, "Wounded spirit,
-
Had he been
able to believe before
-
What he had
witnessed only in my verses,
-
-
"He would not
have raised his hand against you.
-
50
But so incredible a thing caused me
-
To urge him to
an act I now regret.
-
-
"But tell him
who you were, to make amends
-
By refreshing
your fame in the world above
-
To which he is
permitted to return."
-
-
55
And the trunk: "Your sweet words so attract me
-
I cannot
remain still, and be not loath
-
If I become
caught up in conversation.
-
-
"I am the one
who held both of the keys
-
To Frederick's
heart, and I turned them so,
-
60
Locking and unlocking, with such smoothness
-
-
"That I kept
his secrets almost from all men.
-
I stayed so
faithful to my glorious office
-
That for its
sake I lost both sleep and strength.
-
-
"The jealous
whore who never turns away
-
65
Her sluttish eyes from Caesar's palaces,
-
The deadly
plague and common vice of courts,
-
-
"Inflamed the
minds of all the rest against me,
-
And those
inflamed then so inflamed Augustus,
-
That happy
honors turned to tristful woes.
-
-
70
"My mind, because of its disdainful bent
-
Believing it
would flee disdain by dying,
-
Made me unjust
against my own just self.
-
-
"By the fresh
roots of this tree here I swear
-
To you that
never once did I break faith
-
75
With my lord who was worthy of such honor.
-
-
"And should
one of you return to the world,
-
Bolster up my
memory which still lies
-
Flattened by
the blow that envy gave it."
-
-
Waiting a
while, the poet next said to me,
-
80
"Since he is silent, do not lose the chance,
-
But speak and
ask him if you would hear more."
-
-
To this I
answered, "Do you ask him further
-
Whatever you
believe will satisfy me,
-
For I cannot,
such pity rends my heart."
-
-
85
So he began again, "That this man should
-
Gladly perform
what you request of him,
-
Imprisoned
spirit, may it yet please you
-
-
"To tell us
how the spirit is so bound
-
Into these
knots; and tell us if you can,
-
90
Are any ever freed from limbs like these?"
-
-
At that the
trunk puffed hard and afterward
-
That breath
was transformed to this speaking voice:
-
"The answer I
give you shall be concise.
-
-
"Whenever the
violent soul forsakes the flesh
-
95
From which it tore itself by its own roots,
-
Minos assigns
it to the seventh pit.
-
-
"It plummets
to the wood — no place is picked —
-
But wherever
fortune happens to have hurled it,
-
There it
sprouts up like a grain of spelt;
-
-
100
"It springs into a sapling and wild tree;
-
The harpies,
feeding on its foliage,
-
Cause pain and
then an outlet for the pain.
-
-
"Like others
we shall go to our shed bodies,
-
But not to
dress ourselves in them once more,
-
105
For it is wrong to own what you tossed off.
-
-
"Here shall we
haul them, and throughout the sad
-
Wood
forevermore shall our bodies hang,
-
Each from the
thornbush of its tortured shade."
-
-
We both
continued listening for the trunk,
-
110
Thinking it still might want to tell us more,
-
When a loud
uproar caught us by surprise,
-
-
Just as a
hunter is suddenly alarmed
-
By the wild
boar and chase — right at his post —
-
Hearing the
dogs bark and the branches crack.
-
.
-
115
And look! there on the left-hand side two wraiths,
-
Naked and
scratched, fleeing so frantically
-
That they
smashed all the bushes in the wood.
-
-
The front one:
"Now come quick, come quick, death!"
-
The other,
knowing himself out of the race,
-
120
Shouted, "Lano, your legs were not so nimble
-
-
"When you
jousted at the battle of Toppo!"
-
And then,
perhaps, from shortness of his breath,
-
He crouched
into a knot inside a thicket.
-
-
In back of
them the wood at once ran wild
-
125
With black bitches, ravenous and swift,
-
Like
greyhounds let loose from the leash.
-
-
On the
crouching shade they gripped their teeth
-
And piece by
piece they ripped him open-wide
-
And then they
carried off his wretched limbs.
-
-
130
Immediately my escort took my hand
-
And led me
forward to the bush that wept
-
In vain
laments through its bloody cuts:
-
-
"O Jacopo da
Sant' Andrea," it said,
-
"What have you
gained by making me your covert?
-
135
What blame have I for your own sinful life?"
-
-
After my
master had drawn up beside it,
-
He asked, "Who
were you who through many wounds
-
Now breathe in
blood your mournful speech to us?"
-
-
And he told
us, "O souls that have arrived
-
140
In time to see the dishonorable mangling
-
Which here has
torn my leaves away from me,
-
-
"Gather them
up at the foot of this sad bush.
-
I was of the
city that exchanged the Baptist
-
For its first
patron, Mars, for which reason
-
-
145
"He'll always make her regret it, with his art,
-
And were it
not that at the Arno's crossing
-
There still
remains some vestige of his statue,
-
-
"Those
citizens who later rebuilt the city
-
Upon the ashes
Attila left behind
-
150
Would have performed their labors without profit.
-
-
"Of my own
house I made myself a gallows."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Love of our
native city touched my heart:
-
I bent and
gathered up the scattered sprigs
-
And gave them
back to him whose voice grew faint.
-
-
From there we
reached the border that divided
-
5
The second from the third ring — and there
-
I witnessed
the horrendous art of justice.
-
-
To make these
unfamiliar sights quite clear,
-
I say that we
had come out on a plain
-
Which banishes
all verdure from its bed.
-
-
10
The grief-stricken wood enwreathed it all
-
Around, as the
sad ditch surrounds the wood.
-
Here, right at
the edge, we checked our steps.
-
-
Dry and dense
sand covered the ground’s surface,
-
A sand no
different in its texture from
-
15
That the feet of Cato once trampled on.
-
-
O vengeance of
God, how much you ought to be
-
Held in fear
by everyone who reads
-
The things
that were revealed before my eyes!
-
-
I saw myriad
flocks of naked souls,
-
20
All weeping wretchedly, and it appeared
-
That separate
sentences were meted to them.
-
-
Flat on their
backs, some spread out on the ground;
-
Some squatted
down, all hunched up in a crouch;
-
And others
walked about interminably.
-
-
25
More numerous were those who roamed around;
-
Fewer were
those stretched out for the torture,
-
But looser
were their tongues to tell their hurt.
-
-
Over all the
sand, large flakes of flame,
-
Falling
slowly, came floating down, wafted
-
30
Like snow without a wind up in the mountains.
-
-
Just like the
flames which Alexander saw
-
In the torrid
regions of India
-
Swarming to
the ground upon his legions,
-
-
So that he had
his troops tramp down the soil,
-
35
The better to put out the flaming flakes
-
And to prevent
them spreading other fires,
-
-
So descended
the everlasting blaze
-
By which the
sand enkindled, just like tinder
-
Under sparks
from flint — doubling the pain.
-
-
40 Restlessly
the dance of wretched hands
-
Went on and
on, on this side and on that,
-
Beating off
the freshly falling flames.
-
-
I began,
"Master, you can win out over
-
Everything —
except the arrogant demons
-
45
That sortied against us at the entrance gate —
-
-
"Who is that
giant who appears to ignore
-
The fire,
lying so scornful and scowling
-
That the rain
seems not to make him soften?"
-
-
And that same
wraith, when he observed how I
-
50
Questioned my guide about him, shouted out,
-
"What I was
alive, I am the same dead!
-
-
"Though
Jupiter wear out the smith from whom
-
He seized in
wrath the sharpened thunderbolt
-
Which on my
last day was to strike me down,
-
-
55
"Though he wear out the others, one by one,
-
Serving at
Mongibello’s soot-black forge —
-
As he bellows,
‘Good Vulcan, help me! help me!’
-
-
"The way he
did on the battlefield at Phlegra —
-
Though with
his whole force he flash out at me,
-
60
Yet he will never have his fond revenge."
-
-
My guide shot
back at him so strongly that
-
I had not
heard him use such force before,
-
"O Capaneus,
since your insolent pride
-
-
"Is still
unquenched, you are chastised the more:
-
65
No torture other than your own mad ravings
-
Can punish you
enough for your grim rage."
-
-
Then with a
gentler look he turned to me,
-
Saying, "That
was one of the seven kings
-
Who laid siege
to Thebes; he held and seems
-
-
70
"To hold God in disdain and prize him little;
-
But, as I told
you, these affronts of his
-
Are the right
decorations for his chest.
-
-
"Now follow me
and watch you do not ever
-
Set your feet
upon the scorching sand,
-
75
But always keep them back close to the trees."
-
-
In silence we
next reached a spot where gushed
-
Out of the
wood a small and narrow brook
-
Whose redness
makes me still shudder with fear.
-
-
As from the
Bulicame flows a stream
-
80
Which prostitutes then share for their own use,
-
So too these
waters coursed across the sand.
-
-
Its bed and
both its banks were made of stone,
-
As were the
borders all along its sides,
-
So that I saw
our passage lay that way.
-
-
85
"Of all the things that I have shown to you
-
From the time
we entered through the gate
-
Whose
threshold is prohibited to none,
-
-
"Nothing your
eyes have looked on up to now
-
Is so worthy
of note as the stream before you
-
90
That quenches all the flames above its path."
-
-
These were the
words my guide addressed to me.
-
At this I
begged him to give me the food
-
For which he
had whetted my appetite.
-
-
"In the middle
of the sea there lies a wasteland,"
-
95
He then declared to me; "it is called Crete,
-
Under whose
king the world had once been chaste.
-
-
"A mountain
rises there that long delighted
-
In plants and
water: Ida is its name;
-
Now it is
deserted like a withered thing.
-
-
100
"Rhea once chose it for the trusted cradle
-
Of her son
and, the better to hide him,
-
When he would
cry she made her servants shout.
-
-
"Within the
mountain stands a huge Old Man
-
Straight up,
his back turned to Damietta;
-
105
He gazes at Rome as if into a mirror.
-
-
"His head is
molded out of refined gold;
-
His arms and
breast are fashioned in pure silver;
-
Then he is
made of brass down to his crotch.
-
-
"From there on
downward he is all choice iron,
-
110
Except that his right foot is hard-baked clay,
-
And this foot
he favors over the other.
-
-
"But for the
gold, all the parts are cracked
-
By a fissure
from which the tears drip out
-
That, when
collected, penetrate the chasm.
-
-
115
"The tears run from the rocks into the valley,
-
Forming
Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon,
-
Then take
their course through the narrow sluice,
-
-
"And, at the
point where there is no way down,
-
They form
Cocytus; and what that pool is like
-
120
You shall see — I will not describe it here."
-
-
And I
responded, "If this rivulet
-
Pours down in
this way from our upper world,
-
Why do we view
it only at this fringe?"
-
-
And he
replied, "You know this place is round,
-
125
And, although you have traveled a good distance
-
Bearing ever
to the left toward the bottom,
-
-
"You have not
even yet turned a full circle.
-
So then if
something new appears to us,
-
It should not
bring such wonder to your looks."
-
-
130
And I again: "Master, where shall we find
-
Phlegethon and
Lethe? One you omit,
-
The other you
say is formed by tears of rain."
-
-
"In all your
questions truly you please me,"
-
He answered;
"but the boiling blood-red water
-
135
Surely should have solved one you have asked.
-
-
"Lethe you
will see — but beyond this chasm —
-
There where the souls
alight to cleanse themselves
-
When their repented sins
are wiped away."
-
Then he told
me, "Now it is time to leave
-
140
This wood. See that you walk in back of me:
-
The margins
form a path that does not burn,
-
-
"And all the
flames above them are snuffed out."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Now one of the
stone margins bears us on.
-
Above, the
river’s smoke throws up a shadow
-
Which screens
the banks and water from the fire.
-
-
Just as the
Flemings, between Wissant and Bruges,
-
5
In terror of the tide that surges toward them
-
Build dikes to
make the flooding sea recede,
-
-
And as the
Paduans, along the Brenta,
-
Before the
heat wave comes to Chiarentana,
-
Build walls to
defend their towns and castles,
-
-
10
In the same fashion were these banks constructed,
-
Except the
builder, whoever he might be,
-
Had made them
not so high and not so wide.
-
-
Already we
were so far from the wood
-
That I could
not have noticed where it was
-
15
Even had I turned round to look for it,
-
-
When we came
across a troop of spirits
-
Walking along
the bankside, and each one
-
Stared at us
as men at dusk will study
-
-
Each other in
the light of a new moon,
-
20
Knitting their eyebrows at us in a squint
-
Like an old
tailor threading a needle’s eye.
-
-
Eyed in this
manner by that brotherhood,
-
I there was
recognized by one who grasped me
-
By the hem —
and cried, "How wonderful!"
-
-
25
And I, when he stretched out his arm to me,
-
So fixed my
eyes upon his burnt-out features
-
Even his
crusted face did not prevent me
-
-
From
apprehending him in my mind’s eye,
-
And bending
down my face to be with his,
-
30
I asked him, "Ser Brunetto, are you here?"
-
-
And he: "My
son, pray do not be displeased
-
If Brunetto
Latini stays back a while
-
With you and
lets that line trek on ahead."
-
-
And I: "With
all my heart, I beg you to,
-
35
And should you want me to sit here with you,
-
I will, if he
who goes with me permits it."
-
-
"My son," he
said, "whoever of this flock
-
Stops for an
instant must stay a hundred years,
-
Unable to
brush off the burning flames.
-
-
40
"Go on then. I will walk here at your hem,
-
And later I
will join my company
-
Who pass in
sorrow for their endless woes."
-
-
I did not dare
to step down from the path
-
To walk by
him; instead I held my head
-
45
Bowed down like a man reverently walking.
-
-
He then began,
"What chance or destiny
-
Brings you
down here before your final day
-
And who is
this one here who shows the way?"
-
-
"Up there
above in the sun-brightened life,"
-
50
I answered him, "I lost myself in a valley
-
Before
reaching the fullness of my years.
-
-
"Just
yesterday morning I turned my back
-
On it: when I
was lost, this one appeared
-
To lead me
home once more along this road."
-
-
55
And he said to me, "Follow your own star
-
And you cannot
miss your harbor of glory
-
If I judged
you rightly in that lovely life.
-
-
"And if I had
not died before the time,
-
60
Seeing how gracious heaven has been to you,
-
I should have
warmly championed your work.
-
-
"But that
unthankful, evil-minded people
-
Who long ago
came down from Fiesole,
-
And still have
the rock and mountain in them,
-
-
"For the good
you do shall be your enemy,
-
65
And the reason is: among the bitter sorb trees
-
It is not
right the sweet fig should bear fruit.
-
-
"The world’s
word of old for them was ‘blind’:
-
A greedy,
envious, and haughty stock,
-
Make sure you
rid yourself of their bad ways.
-
-
70
"Your future holds out such honor to you
-
That one party
and the other will hunger
-
For you — but
grass does not grow near the goat!
-
-
"Let the
beasts of Fiesole feed on
-
Each other,
and let them not touch the plant —
-
75 Should
any still be growing on their dungheap —
-
-
"A plant in
which lives on the holy seed
-
Of the Romans
who remained in Florence
-
When that nest
of foul wickedness was built."
-
-
"If my appeal
then had been fully granted,"
-
80
I responded to him, "you would not be
-
Still banished
from the ranks of humankind.
-
-
"For in my
memory is etched — it grieves me
-
Even now — the
dear, kind, fatherly image
-
Of you, when
in the world, hour by hour,
-
-
85
"You taught me how man makes himself immortal,
-
And I am so
grateful that, while I live,
-
I will
fittingly express it in my speech.
-
-
"What you tell
me of my course I write down
-
And keep it
with another text to read to
-
90
A lady who, if I reach her, shall gloss it.
-
-
"One thing at
least I purpose to make clear:
-
As long as my
conscience does not blame me,
-
Whatever fate
wills I am ready for it.
-
-
"Nothing new I
hear in this prediction,
-
95
So let Fortune, as she pleases, rotate
-
Her wheel and
let the peasant turn his spade."
-
-
At this my
master twisted his head back,
-
Around to his
right, and peering at me,
-
He said,
"Whoever notes this down, listens well."
-
-
100
But for all that, I did not cease from speaking
-
To Ser
Brunetto, and I asked who were
-
His most noble
and renowned companions.
-
-
And he told
me, "To know of some is good,
-
Of others it
is better to be silent,
-
105
As time would be too short for so much talk.
-
-
"Briefly, you
should know that all were clerics,
-
Great men of
letters, men of wide repute,
-
Dirtied by the
selfsame sin on earth.
-
-
"Priscian
travels with that stricken crowd,
-
110
And Francesco d’Accorso too, and you may see,
-
If you have
any appetite for such scurf,
-
-
"The one the
Servant of Servants transferred
-
From the Arno
to the Bacchiglione river
-
Where he left
his organs stretched by sin.
-
-
115
"I would say more, but my walking and my talk
-
May last no longer,
since I see over there
-
New smoke billowing
upward from the sandbar.
-
"People are
coming — I must not be with them.
-
Let me commend
my Treasury to you:
-
120
In it I still live and no more I ask."
-
-
At that he
turned and seemed like one of those
-
Who at Verona
run through the countryside
-
For the green
cloth, and among them he appeared
-
-
The winner of
the race and not the loser.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Already I was
where I heard the rumbling fall
-
Of water
running down to the next circle,
-
Like the sound
that a humming beehive makes,
-
-
When three
shades broke away together,
-
5
Racing, out of the squad that went on past us
-
Under the rain
of grating punishment.
-
-
They ran
toward us, each of them shouting,
-
"Stop! You —
by the clothes you wear — seem
-
To be like
someone from our rotten city."
-
-
10
Ah me, what old and recent wounds I saw
-
Seared into
their bodies by those flames!
-
Just to
remember it still gives me pain.
-
-
Their shouts
caught the attention of my guide.
-
He turned his
face toward me: "Now wait,"
-
15
He said; "we must be courteous to them.
-
-
"And were it
not for the hot darting fire
-
Which the
nature of this place rains down on them,
-
I’d say haste
suits you better than it does them."
-
-
While we stood
still, they once again began
-
20
Their ancient dirge, and when they came to us
-
The three of
them together formed a wheel,
-
-
As stripped
and oiled wrestlers often do,
-
First studying
their grip and their advantage
-
Before they
come to blows and holds between them,
-
-
25
So, wheeling, each one directed his face
-
Toward me, so
that, in constant motion,
-
His neck kept
turning opposite his feet.
-
-
"If the
debasement of this unsteady sand
-
And our bare
and burnt-out faces," one began,
-
30
"Makes you feel contempt for our pleas and us,
-
-
"May fame of
ours induce the soul in you
-
To tell us who
you are who in such safety
-
Can drag your
feet, still living, throughout hell.
-
-
"He in whose
footsteps you see me tread,
-
35
Although he turns about here, skinned and naked,
-
Was of a
higher rank than you may think:
-
-
"He was the
grandson of the good Gualdrada;
-
His name was
Guido Guerra — in his life
-
Much he
achieved by counsel and his sword.
-
-
40
"The other who thrashes the sand behind me
-
Is Tegghiaio
Aldobrandi, whose voice
-
In the world
above ought to have won favor.
-
-
"And I who am
placed with them in this torment
-
Was Jacopo
Rusticucci, and surely
-
45
My hell-cat wife — more than anyone — ruined me!"
-
-
If I had found
a shelter from the flames,
-
I would have
hurled myself below with them,
-
And I think my
teacher would have allowed it.
-
-
But since I
would have been baked and toasted,
-
50
Fear conquered my initially kind impulse
-
Which first
made me so eager to embrace them.
-
-
Then I began,
"Not disdain, but distress
-
For your
condition seized me — so deeply that
-
It will only
leave me slowly, and not soon —
-
-
55
"At the instant my lord spoke to me the words
-
Which led me
then to realize that such men,
-
Worthy as you
are, were coming here.
-
-
"I am of your
city, and at all times
-
I have spoken
and heard others speak
-
60
Of your achievements and your honored names.
-
-
"I quit the
gall and go for the sweet apples
-
Promised to me
by my truthful leader,
-
But first I
must pass down into the center."
-
-
"So may your
soul long lead on your body,"
-
65
Once more he answered me, "and may your fame,
-
After you have
passed on, shed its light,
-
-
"Tell us if
courtesy and valor still
-
Dwell in our
city as they did in our day
-
Or have they
been entirely driven out?
-
-
70
"For Guglielmo Borsiere, who just joined
-
Us in our
grief and goes with our comrades,
-
With his
reports has caused us deep distress."
-
-
"The new
arrivals and the instant profits
-
Have given
rise to such pride and unrestraint
-
75
In you, Florence, that you already weep."
-
-
These words I
cried out with my face raised high,
-
And the three,
who took it for my answer,
-
Gazed at each
other as though they heard the truth.
-
-
"If at other
times you find it so easy
-
80
To please other people," all three replied,
-
"Happy you to
speak so fluently!
-
-
"Should you
escape, then, from these sunless regions
-
And return to
view once more the splendid stars,
-
When it shall
gladden you to say, ‘I was there,’
-
-
85
"Be sure to tell the people about us."
-
At that they
broke out of their wheeling circle,
-
And, in
fleeing, their legs resembled wings.
-
-
An "Amen"
would take less time to pronounce
-
Than it took
for the three of them to vanish:
-
90
And so my master thought it well to leave.
-
-
I followed
him, and we hadn’t walked on far
-
Before the
sound of water was so near
-
We hardly
could have heard each other talk.
-
-
Just as that
river, which first takes its course
-
95
From Mount Visco and flows toward the east
-
On the left
slope of the Apennines —
-
-
Called the
Acquacheta up above
-
Before
descending to its lower bed
-
And at Forlм
is known as the Montone —
-
-
100
Roars above San Benedetto dell’Alpe,
-
Cascading in a
single waterfall
-
Where a
thousand falls could easily have settled:
-
-
Just so, down
from one steep and rocky bank
-
We found that
tainted water so thundering
-
105
That in no time it would have burst our ears.
-
-
I had a cord
tied fast around my waist,
-
And with it I
had thought on one occasion
-
To catch the
leopard with the gaudy coat.
-
-
As soon as I
unwrapped the cord completely,
-
110
Exactly as my guide directed me,
-
I passed it to
him wound in a tight coil.
-
-
At that he
swung around toward his right
-
And, far out
over from the edge, threw it
-
Right into the
depth of the dark chasm.
-
-
115
"Surely there will be a strange response,"
-
I said to
myself, "to this strange signal:
-
My master
follows it so closely with his eye."
-
-
Ah what care
men need to show with those
-
Who can not
only see the outward act
-
120
But have the mind to read our inner thoughts!
-
-
He said to me,
"Soon shall come up from below
-
What I wait
for and your mind dreams about:
-
Soon must it
be discovered to your sight."
-
-
Always, to the
truth that seems a lie,
-
125
As far as he can, one must close his lips,
-
For through no
fault of his, it still brings shame.
-
-
But here I
cannot remain silent — reader,
-
By the lines
of this Comedy, I swear
-
(So may my
verse attain long-lasting favor)
-
-
130
That I saw through that thick and darkened air
-
A figure come,
swimming up toward us —
-
A thing to
dumbfound any steadfast heart —
-
-
Like someone
coming up from depths below
-
Where he went
down to free an anchor snagged
-
135
On a reef or something else hid in the sea,
-
-
Stretching
upward and drawing up his legs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
"Look at the
beast with the pointed tail!
-
He passes
mountains, smashes walls and weapons!
-
Look at the
one that smells up the whole world!"
-
-
This way my
guide began to talk to me
-
5
As he signaled the beast to land on shore
-
Close to the
edge of our stone-paved pathway.
-
-
And that
repugnant picture of pure fraud
-
Came on,
landing his head and his chest first,
-
But darting
his tail out beyond the bank.
-
-
10
His face was the face of a saintly person,
-
So placid was
the surface of the skin,
-
But his whole
trunk was the shape of a snake.
-
-
He had two
paws, with hair up to his armpits;
-
His back and
breasts and both of his flanks
-
15
Were painted gaudily with knots and loops.
-
-
Tartars or
Turks never wove a cloth
-
With more
colors in background and design,
-
Nor did
Arachne ever loom such webs.
-
-
Just as boats
sometimes lie on shore
-
20
Half in the water and half still on land,
-
And just as
there among the guzzling Germans
-
-
The beaver
crouches ready to do battle,
-
So did that
worst of all wild beasts lay there
-
On the rim of
stone bordering the sand.
-
-
25
Out in the void all his tail stretched quivering,
-
Twisting in
the air its poisonous fork
-
Which had a
tip armed like a scorpion’s.
-
-
My leader
said, "Now we had better veer
-
Our way
slightly, until we come as far
-
30
As that wicked beast squatting over there."
-
-
We stepped
down, then, to the right-hand breast,
-
And walked ten
paces out along the ledge
-
To keep wholly
clear of the sand and flame.
-
-
And when we
had walked up to Geryon,
-
35
I noticed on the sand, a bit farther on,
-
People sitting
next to empty space.
-
-
Here my master
said to me, "That you may
-
Acquire the
full experience this ring offers,
-
Go now and see
the state that they are in.
-
-
40
"But let your conversation there be brief.
-
Till you come
back, I shall talk with this beast
-
To have him
lend us his strong shoulders."
-
-
So still
farther along the utmost brink
-
Of that
seventh circle I walked alone
-
45
To where the people deep in mourning sat.
-
-
Misery was
bursting from their eyes;
-
This way and
that, they ward off with their hands
-
One time the
flames and next the burning sands,
-
-
No differently
do dogs in summertime,
-
50
Now with muzzles, now with paws, when they are
-
Bitten by
fleas or gnats or by horseflies.
-
-
When I had
cast my eyes on certain faces
-
Of those on
whom the oppressive fire falls,
-
I recognized
none of them, but I observed
-
-
55
That from the neck of each there hung a purse
-
Having a
special color and coat of arms,
-
And on his own
each seemed to feast his eyes.
-
-
While I went
among them, looking about
-
I glimpsed a
purse of yellow upon azure
-
60
Which bore the face and figure of a lion.
-
-
Then, letting
my gaze wander over them,
-
I saw another
purse as red as blood
-
Displaying a
goose whiter than butter.
-
-
And one who
had an azure pregnant sow
-
65
Represented on his small white pouch
-
Asked me,
"What are you doing in this ditch?
-
-
"Now get going
— and since you’re still alive,
-
You should
know my neighbor Vitaliano
-
Shall have a
seat here soon at my left side.
-
-
70
"I, a Paduan, am with these Florentines;
-
Incessantly
they deafen my poor eardrums
-
With their
shouting, ‘Bring on the royal knight
-
-
" ‘Who bears
on him his pouch with the three goats!’ "
-
At this he
twisted his mouth around and stuck
-
75
His tongue out, like an ox licking its nose.
-
-
And I, in fear
that any longer stay
-
Might vex him
who had warned me not to tarry,
-
Turned my back
upon these worn-out sinners.
-
-
I found my
guide who had already climbed
-
80
Up on the rump of that wild animal,
-
And he said to
me, "Now be strong and stout!
-
-
"Our way down
from here is by stairs like these.
-
You mount in
front: I want the middle section
-
So that his
sharp tail cannot cause you harm."
-
-
85
As one who, feeling the shivers of a fever
-
So close his
nails already are turned blue,
-
Shudders just
at the sight of some cool shade,
-
-
So I became
when I had heard his words.
-
But then I
felt the taunt of shame which makes
-
90
A servant bold before his worthy master.
-
-
I hunched down
on those monstrous shoulders
-
Wanting to say
— but my voice did not come
-
As I thought —
"Make sure you hold on to me."
-
-
But he who had
at other times helped me
-
95
In other dangers, as soon as I was mounted,
-
Folded me in
his arms and held me tight.
-
-
He called,
"Now, Geryon, get up! Be sure
-
To make your
circles wide and move down slowly:
-
Remember the
strange weight that you now carry."
-
-
100
Just as a rowboat pulls out from its berth
-
Backwards,
backwards, so that beast pushed off,
-
And when he
felt himself all free in space,
-
-
There where
his chest had been he turned his tail,
-
Stretching it
out and waving it like an eel,
-
105
While with his paws he gathered in the air.
-
-
I do not think
the fear was any sharper
-
When Phaethon
let the sun’s reins drop away
-
(The reason
why the sky is scorched with stars)
-
-
Nor when
unhappy Icarus felt his flanks
-
110
Unfeathering as the wax started melting,
-
His father
shouting, "You’re going the wrong way!"
-
-
Than mine was
when I saw that on all sides
-
I floated in
the air and I saw all
-
Sights lost to
view except the beast himself.
-
-
115
He flew on slowly, slowly swimming on,
-
Spiraling and
gliding: this I knew only
-
By the winds
in my face and underneath me.
-
-
I heard
already on my right the whirlpool
-
Roaring with
such horror there beneath us
-
120
That I stretched out my neck and peered below.
-
-
Then I grew
more panicky of going down
-
For I saw
flames and I heard wailing cries;
-
So, trembling,
I pressed my legs in tighter.
-
-
And then I
saw, what I had not seen before:
-
125
His descent was spiraled, since I saw torments
-
On every side
were drawing nearer to us.
-
-
Just as a
falcon, a long while on the wing,
-
Who, without
spotting lure or prey,
-
Makes the
falconer cry, "Ah, you’re coming down,"
-
-
130
Descends, tired, with a hundred turnings
-
To where he
set out so swiftly, and perches,
-
Aloof and
furious, far off from his master,
-
-
So at the
bottom Geryon set us down
-
Right next to
the base of a jagged rockface
-
135
And, once rid of the burden of our bodies,
-
-
He vanished like an arrow from a
bowstring.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Lodged in hell
is a place called Malebolge,
-
All made of
stone the color of iron ore,
-
As is the
cliff wall that encloses it.
-
-
Right in the
middle of this cankered field
-
5
A broad and deep-cut chasm opens up —
-
In its place I
shall describe its structure.
-
-
The belt,
then, that is left between the chasm
-
And the steep
stony cliff, forms a circle
-
And its bottom
has been sliced into ten valleys.
-
-
10
Just as, where moat on moat encompasses
-
A castle to
defend its central walls,
-
The ground in
which they’re dug shapes a design,
-
-
Such a pattern
here these ditches formed;
-
And as such
fortresses have footbridges
-
15
Out from their gates up to the outer banks
-
-
So from the
bottom of the cliff ran ridges
-
Which crossed
above the embankments and ditches
-
Up to the
chasm where they end and merge.
-
-
In this spot
we found ourselves, dismounted
-
20
From the back of Geryon; the poet
-
Kept to the
left and I walked on behind him.
-
-
At my right
hand I saw fresh cause for pathos,
-
Fresh
punishments and fresh torturers
-
That fully
crammed the first of the ten pockets.
-
-
25
Naked sinners filed by on the bottom:
-
On the near
side they came facing toward us,
-
On the other
they moved along with us, but faster:
-
-
So the Romans,
because of the huge crowds
-
During Jubilee
year, have people pass
-
30
Over the bridge so that on the other side all face
-
-
(According to
the plan fixed to divide them)
-
Toward the
Castle and walk to Saint Peter’s,
-
While on the
other they walk toward the Mount.
-
-
This side and
that, along the gloom-filled rock,
-
35
I saw horned devils with their huge long whips
-
Cruelly
lashing those sinners from behind.
-
-
Ah how they
forced them to lift up their heels
-
At the first
strokes! There was nobody there
-
Who waited for
the second or the third!
-
-
40
While I moved on, my eye caught someone else’s,
-
And
immediately I said to myself,
-
"Surely I have
seen this one before."
-
-
So I held up
my steps to stare at him,
-
And my kindly
guide halted with me
-
45
And gave me leave to go a short way back.
-
-
That scourged
spirit thought that he could hide
-
By lowering
his head, but little it helped him,
-
For I said,
"You who gaze upon the ground,
-
-
"Unless the
features which you wear are false,
-
50
You are Venedico Caccianemico:
-
But what put
you in such a juicy pickle?"
-
-
And he
replied, "I tell it unwillingly,
-
But your plain
speech forces me to do it
-
By reminding
me of that world of old.
-
-
55
"I was the one who led Ghisolabella
-
To satisfy the
will of the Marquis,
-
Whatever way
the vile tale is reported.
-
-
"But I am not
the only Bolognese
-
Weeping here;
this place is so full of them
-
60
That not so many tongues have learned to say
-
-
"Sipa
between the Savena and Reno:
-
And if you
want a proof or witness for this,
-
Recall to mind
our sense of greediness."
-
-
While he was
talking a devil lashed at him
-
65
With his whip and cried out, "On your way, pimp!
-
There are no
women here for you to con."
-
-
I turned back
to be once more with my escort.
-
Then, a few
steps forward, we walked up
-
To where a
ridge out-jutted from the bank.
-
-
70
We climbed across it with no difficulty
-
And, turning
to the right along its crest,
-
We left behind
those everlasting circlings.
-
-
When we had
reached the spot where the ridgeline
-
Yawns open to
let the scourged pass below,
-
75
My guide said, "Stop and make sure that the sight
-
-
"Of these
other misbegotten souls strikes you:
-
Their faces
you have not observed before
-
As they were
moving the same direction we were."
-
-
From the old
bridge we gazed down at the troop
-
80
Coming toward us along the other tract,
-
And they were
likewise driven by the lash.
-
-
Even without
my asking, my good master
-
Spoke up,
"Look at that mighty one approaching
-
Who does not
seem to shed a tear for pain.
-
-
85
"What a kingly look he still retains!
-
That is Jason,
who with heart and brains
-
Robbed Colchis
of the gold fleece of their ram.
-
-
"He voyaged to
the island of Lemnos
-
After the
brash and merciless women
-
90
Had put all of their menfolk to the sword.
-
-
"There with
his love tokens and stylish words
-
He beguiled
the young Hypsipyle
-
Who had first
beguiled the other women.
-
-
"There he left
her, pregnant and forsaken:
-
95
Such sin condemns him to such punishment,
-
And for Medea,
too, is vengeance wreaked.
-
-
‘With him go
all the beguilers of others —
-
Let this now
be enough for you to know
-
Of the first
valley and sinners in its jaws."
-
-
100
We had already come where the narrow path
-
Crosses over
to the second bank
-
To form a new
support for another arch.
-
-
From there we
heard people in the next pocket
-
Whining and
snorting gruffly from their snouts
-
105
And whacking themselves with flat open palms.
-
-
The banks were
coated with a slimy mold
-
From
exhalations below; it stuck to them,
-
Attacking eyes
and nose with stinging must.
-
-
The bottom was
so deep we could not see it
-
110
Anywhere, except by climbing up the spine
-
Of the arch
where the ridge rises highest.
-
-
Here we
arrived, and down there in the ditch
-
I saw a people
plunged in excrement
-
As if it had
been dumped from men’s latrines.
-
-
115
And as I searched below there with my eyes
-
I saw one with
his head so smeared with shit
-
You could not
tell if he were lay or cleric.
-
-
He yelled up
at me, "Why are you more greedy
-
To stare at me
than at the other scum?"
-
120
And I: "Because, if I remember rightly,
-
-
"I have seen
you before with your hair dry:
-
And so I eye
you more than all the rest.
-
You are
Alessio Interminei of Lucca."
-
-
And he,
smacking his squash, replied to me,
-
125
"Down here I am sunk by the flatteries
-
That my tongue
never tired of repeating."
-
-
After this my
teacher said to me,
-
"Stretch your
head forward a little farther
-
So that your
eyes may clearly catch the face
-
-
130
"Of that slatternly and smutty slut
-
Who scratches
herself with shit-blackened nails,
-
Now squatting
and now staggering to her feet.
-
-
"She is Thais
the whore, who when her lover
-
Asked, ‘Are
you very grateful to me?' answered,
-
135
‘Very! Why, extravagantly so!’
-
-
"But now our
sight has had enough of this."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
O Simon Magus!
O miserable lot
-
Who take the
things of God that ought to be
-
Wedded to
goodness and in your greediness
-
-
Adulterate
them into gold and silver!
-
5
Now the trumpet blast must sound for you
-
Since you are
stashed here into the third pocket.
-
-
We had arrived
at the next graveyard
-
By climbing to
that section of the ridgetop
-
Which juts
right over the middle of the ditch.
-
-
10
O highest Wisdom, how great is the art
-
You show in
heaven, earth, and this bad world!
-
And how just
is the power of your judgment!
-
-
I saw along
the sides and on the bottom
-
The livid
rockface all pocked full of holes,
-
15
Each one alike in size and rounded shape.
-
-
No smaller or
no larger they seemed to me
-
Than are those
booths for the baptismal fonts
-
Built in my
beautiful San Giovanni —
-
-
And one of
those, not many years ago,
-
20
I broke up to save someone drowning in it:
-
And let my
word here disabuse men’s minds —
-
-
Up from the
mouth of each hole there stuck out
-
A sinner’s
feet and legs up to the calf,
-
The rest of
him remained stuffed down inside.
-
-
25
The soles of both feet blazed all on fire;
-
The leg-joints
wriggled uncontrollably:
-
They would
have snapped any rope or tether.
-
-
Just as a
flame on anything that’s oily
-
Spreads only
on the object’s outer surface,
-
30
So did this fire move from heel to toe.
-
-
"Who is that
sinner, master, who suffers so,
-
Writhing more
than any of his comrades,"
-
I asked, "the
one the redder flame licks dry?"
-
-
And he: "If
you want to be lifted down
-
35
Onto that sloping lower bank, then from him
-
You’ll learn
about himself and his wrongdoings."
-
-
And I: "My
pleasure is what pleases you.
-
You are my
lord, and you know I won’t swerve
-
From your
will: You know what is left unspoken."
-
-
40
Coming to the fourth causeway, we then turned
-
And, bearing
to the left, still descended
-
Down to the
strait and perforated bottom.
-
-
And my kind
master did not put me down
-
From his side
till he’d brought me to the hole
-
45
Of the sinner who shed tears with his shanks.
-
-
"O whatever
you are, sorrowful soul,
-
Planted like a
stake with your top downward,"
-
I started out,
"say something, if you can."
-
-
I stood there
like a friar hearing confession
-
50
From a foul assassin who, once fixed in place,
-
To delay
execution calls him back again.
-
-
And he cried,
"Are you already standing there,
-
Are you
already standing there, Boniface?
-
By several
years the record lied to me!
-
-
55
"Are you so quickly glutted with the wealth
-
Which did not
make you fear to take by guile
-
The lovely
lady and then lay her waste?"
-
-
I acted like a
person who’s left standing —
-
Not
comprehending what’s been said to him —
-
60
Half-mocked and at a loss to make an answer.
-
-
Then Virgil
spoke up, "Tell him right away,
-
‘I am not he,
I’m not the one you think!’ "
-
And I replied
as I had been instructed.
-
-
At this the
spirit twisted both feet wildly;
-
65
Then, sighing deeply, with a voice in tears,
-
He asked,
"What, then, do you demand of me?
-
-
"If to know
who I am has so compelled you
-
That you
continued down this bank, then know
-
Once I was
vested in the papal mantle,
-
-
70
"And truly I was a son of the she-bear,
-
So avid to
advance my cubs that up there
-
I pocketed the
money and here, myself.
-
-
"Under my head
have been dragged the others
-
Who went, by
way of simony, before me,
-
75
Squashed flat in the fissures of the stone.
-
-
"I shall
plunge down there, in my turn, when
-
The one I took
you for — while thrusting at you
-
That question
so abruptly — will arrive here.
-
-
"But a longer
time now have I baked my feet
-
80
And stood like this upside-down than he
-
Will stay
planted with his red-hot feet up!
-
-
"For after him
will come one fouler in deeds,
-
A lawless
shepherd from the westward land,
-
One fit to
cover up both him and me.
-
-
85
"He’ll be a new Jason, like him we read of
-
In Maccabees;
just as Jason’s king was kind,
-
So shall the
king of France be kind to him."
-
-
I do not know
if now I grew too brash,
-
But I replied
to him in the same measure,
-
90
"Well, then, tell me: how costly was the treasure
-
-
"That our Lord
demanded of Saint Peter
-
Before he gave
the keys into his keeping?
-
Surely he said
only ‘Follow me.’
-
-
"Nor did Peter
or the rest take gold
-
95
Or silver from Matthias when they chose him
-
By lot to take
the place the traitor lost.
-
-
"Stay put,
therefore, since you are justly punished,
-
And guard with
care the ill-acquired money
-
That made you
so high-handed against Charles.
-
-
100
"And were it not that I as yet feel bound
-
By my deep
reverence for the mighty keys
-
Which you once
held in the lighthearted life,
-
-
"I would here
utter words still far more bitter,
-
Because your
avarice afflicts the world,
-
105
Trampling good men and vaulting evildoers.
-
-
"You are the
shepherds the evangelist meant
-
When he saw
‘she who sits upon the waters’
-
Fornicating
with the kings of earth.
-
-
"She is the
one born with the seven heads
-
110
Who from her ten horns begot all her strength
-
So long as
virtue was her bridegroom’s pleasure.
-
-
"A god of gold
and silver you have fashioned!
-
How do you
differ from idolators
-
Except they
worship one god — you a hundred?
-
-
115
"Ah, Constantine, how much foul harm was fostered,
-
Not by your
conversion but by the dowry
-
Which the
first wealthy father took from you?"
-
-
And while I
chanted him these notes — whether
-
Bitten by his
anger or his conscience —
-
120 He gave
a vicious kick with his two feet.
-
-
I honestly
believe my guide was pleased,
-
So contented
was his look while he kept listening
-
To the sound
of these true-spoken words.
-
-
At that he
took me within both his arms
-
125
And, when he held me wholly to his breast,
-
Climbed up the
path that he had once come down.
-
-
Nor did he
weary of clasping me to himself,
-
But carried me
to the crest of the arch
-
That crosses
from the fourth to the fifth causeway.
-
-
130
Here he gently set down his heavy load,
-
Gently because
of the steep and craggy ridge
-
Which even
goats would have found hard to pass.
-
-
From there
another valley opened before me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Now new
punishments I must fit to verse,
-
Shaping the
subject for my twentieth canto
-
Of the first
canticle on the buried damned.
-
-
Already I was
fully set to look
-
5
Far down into the depth that opened to me
-
To see its
bottom bathed with tears of anguish,
-
-
When through
the valley’s circling I descried
-
People coming
hushed and weeping, at the pace
-
Followed by
processions in this world.
-
-
10
As my fixed gaze descended lower to them,
-
Each seemed
bizarrely twisted at the neck
-
Between the
chin and top part of the chest,
-
-
Because their
faces turned round to their haunches
-
So that they
were compelled to walk backwards
-
15
Since they could not possibly see ahead.
-
-
Perhaps a
stroke of palsy once has twisted
-
Someone so
completely, but I doubt it
-
For I have
never seen a case like this.
-
-
May God so
grant you, reader, to find fruit
-
20
In your reading: now ponder for yourself
-
How I could
keep the eyes in my head dry
-
-
When I saw
close at hand our human image
-
Contorted so
the tears streaming from their eyes
-
Bathed their
buttocks and ran between the cleft.
-
-
25
I wept, surely, while I leaned back against
-
A rock there
on that rugged ridge; my escort
-
Said, "Still
like all the other fools, are you?
-
-
"Here pathos
lives when its false meaning dies,
-
Since who is
more pathetic than the person
-
30
Who agonizes over God’s just judgments?
-
-
"Lift up your
head, lift it, see him for whom
-
The earth
cracked open before the Thebans’ eyes
-
While they all
cried, ‘Where are you rushing off,
-
-
" 'Amphiaraus?
Why do you flee the battle?’
-
35 And he
didn’t once pause in his headlong flight
-
Down to Minos
who snatches every soul.
-
-
"Look how he’s
made a chest of his own shoulders:
-
Because he
wished to see too far ahead
-
He stares
behind and takes a backward path.
-
-
40
"See Tiresias, who changed his likeness:
-
Being a man he
then became a woman,
-
Transforming
all the members of his body,
-
-
"Until, a
second time, he had to strike
-
The two
lovemaking serpents with his staff
-
45
Before he donned again his manly down.
-
-
"And backing
against his belly is Aruns
-
Who, in the
hills of Luni where the folk
-
Of Carrara
cultivate the valley,
-
-
"Dwelt in a
cave among white marble cliffs,
-
50
And from that vantage with an unblocked view
-
He gazed out
at the stars and at the sea.
-
-
"And she who
with her wild disheveled hair
-
Covers up her
breasts so you can’t see them
-
And keeps all
of her hairy parts to that side
-
-
55
"Was Manto, who had searched through many lands
-
Before she
settled there where I was born:
-
On this I want
you to hear me for a while.
-
-
"After her
father Tiresias left this life
-
And the city
of Bacchus lay enslaved,
-
60
For long years she wandered through the world.
-
-
" High up in
lovely Italy, at the foot
-
Of those Alps
that wall in Germany
-
Above Tirol,
lies a lake called Benaco;
-
-
"A thousand
brooks and more, I believe,
-
65
Bathe Garda, Val Camonica, and Pennino
-
With the
waters flowing through that lake,
-
-
"And in its
center is a spot the three
-
Bishops of
Trent, Brescia, and Verona,
-
If ever they
should pass that way, would bless.
-
-
70
"Peschiera, a strong and handsome fortress
-
Built against
the Bergarnese and Brescians,
-
Sits at the
low point of the surrounding shore.
-
-
"There all the
waters which cannot be contained
-
Within the
bosom of Benaco tumble
-
75
To form a river down through greening fields;
-
-
"As soon as
this water starts to course,
-
It is known as
the Mincio — not Benaco —
-
To Governolo
where it falls into the Po;
-
-
"Not running
far, it finds a level ground
-
80
Where it spreads out and turns into a marsh
-
Which is in
summer sometimes low and foul.
-
-
"Passing that
way, the savage virgin saw
-
Land there in
the middle of the swamp,
-
Untilled and
barren of inhabitants.
-
-
85
"There, to flee all human fellowship,
-
With her
slaves she stopped to ply her arts,
-
And there she
lived and left her empty body.
-
-
"Later the
people who were dispersed about
-
Gathered to
that place, since it was protected
-
90
By the swamp that ringed it on all sides.
-
-
"Over her dead
bones they built a city
-
And, after her
who first picked out the site,
-
Without
casting lots, they named it Mantua.
-
-
"Once far more
people dwelt within it,
-
95
Before Casalodi through his foolishness
-
Was taken in
by Pinamonte’s tricks.
-
-
"I charge you,
therefore, if you ever hear
-
Another origin
claimed for my city,
-
Don’t let
false stories cheat you of the truth."
-
-
100
And I said, "Master, this account of yours
-
Makes me so
sure and so wins all my trust
-
That I think
other versions just dead coals.
-
-
"But tell me
if among the people passing
-
You notice
anyone worth mentioning,
-
105
For that alone keeps coming to my mind."
-
-
To this he
said to me, "That one whose beard
-
Streams down
from his cheeks to his brown shoulders
-
Was — when
Greece became so drained of males
-
-
"That scarcely
were there sons for the cradles —
-
110 An
augur, and he set the time with Calchas
-
To cut the
first ship-cables at Aulis.
-
-
"His name was
Eurypylus, and of him
-
My high
tragedy sings in one passage
-
Which you know
well who know the whole of it.
-
-
115
"That other one, so thinned-out in the shanks,
-
Was Michael
Scot, who certainly perceived
-
How to play
the game of magic fraud.
-
-
"See Guido
Bonatti; see Asdente,
-
Who wishes now
he had kept to his thread
-
120
And shoe-leather, but he repents too late.
-
-
"See those
wretched women who left needle,
-
Spool, and
spindle for their fortune-telling;
-
They cast
their spells with herbs and image-dolls.
-
-
"But come now;
already Cain with his thornbush
-
125
Stands at the border of both hemispheres
-
And touches
the waves below Seville,
-
-
"And last
night’s moon was already round and full.
-
Remember her
well, for through her in times past
-
No harm came
to you deep in the dark forest."
-
-
130
So he spoke to me as we journeyed on.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
So from bridge
to bridge, talking of matters
-
That my Comedy
here has no care to sing,
-
We traveled
on, and we had reached the summit
-
-
When we
stopped to look at yet another gap
-
5
Of Malebolge and another empty sorrow:
-
And I saw how
awesomely dark it was!
-
-
Just as at the
arsenal of the Venetians
-
In wintertime
the sticky pitch for caulking
-
The seams of
the leaky vessels boils —
-
-
10
Since they cannot then set sail — and instead,
-
Some rebuild
the keels, some plug up the ribs
-
Of hulls that
rode on many voyagings,
-
-
Some hammer at
the prow and some the stern,
-
Others cut
oars, still others twist new rope,
-
15
Another sews patches on the jib and mainsail:
-
-
So, not by the
fire but by the art of God,
-
Boiled, there
below, a thick and sticky pitch
-
Which
glue-coated the banks on every side.
-
-
I saw the
pitch, but in it I saw nothing
-
20
Except the rising of the boiling bubbles,
-
The whole
swelling up and sinking down.
-
-
While I stared
down intently into it,
-
My guide,
calling to me, "Watch out! Watch out!"
-
Drew me to his
side from where I stood.
-
-
25
At that I turned around like someone anxious
-
To see
whatever he is supposed to shun
-
While he
remains so dashed by sudden panic
-
-
That he won’t
stop his flight but will look back:
-
And I saw
behind us a blackened devil
-
30
Come running up along the ridge’s length.
-
-
Ah, what a
ferocious look he had!
-
And how fierce
his actions seemed to me,
-
With his wings
wide-open and his light feet!
-
-
Upon his
shoulders, which were high and pointed,
-
35
He had loaded a sinner by both legs,
-
Gripping him
in front by the ankles.
-
-
From our
bridge he called, "Oh, Malebranche,
-
Here is one of
Saint Zita’s elders!
-
Toss him below
while I go back for more
-
-
40
"To that city which is so well supplied:
-
All men there,
except Bonturo, are grafters!
-
In Lucca they
will change no to yes for cash!"
-
-
He plunged the
sinner down and turned about
-
Upon the rocky
ridge: no hound freed from
-
45
Its leash ever chased a thief so swiftly!
-
-
The sinner
sank and surfaced rear end-up,
-
But the demons
under cover of the bridge
-
Shouted, "The
Holy Face has no place here!
-
-
"Swimming here
is not like in the Serchio!
-
50
If you don’t want to feel our grappling-hooks,
-
Don’t raise
yourself up above that pitch!"
-
-
They chewed
him with a hundred prongs or more,
-
Screaming,
"Here you frolic under cover!
-
See if you can
snitch the chance to surface!"
-
-
55
In just this way might cooks make their helpers
-
Plunge the
meat down deep into the pot
-
With their
forks, to keep it from floating up.
-
-
My gracious
master said, "We don’t want them
-
To know that
you are here, so crouch down low
-
60
Behind a crag to give yourself some cover.
-
-
"No matter
what affronts they offer me,
-
Don’t be
afraid: I know how things run here,
-
And I had a
skirmish like this once before."
-
-
With this he
passed beyond the top of the bridge
-
65
And, arriving upon the sixth embankment,
-
Had need to
prove his show of self-reliance.
-
-
With just the
same rage and roaring of dogs
-
When they rush
out on some poor passing beggar
-
Who stops dead
in his tracks and starts to beg,
-
-
70
So these devils, from beneath the bridge
-
Shot out with
all their prongs aimed at my guide,
-
But he
shouted, "Stop being savages!
-
-
"Before you
would impale me with your forks,
-
One of you
step forward to hear me out
-
75
And then resolve to grapple me or not."
-
-
They all
shouted, "Malacoda should go!"
-
Then one of
them moved up — the rest stood still —
-
And,
approaching, asked, "How will that help him?"
-
-
"Do you think,
Malacoda, I have come
-
80
So far, as you can see," my master said,
-
"Safe from all
these counterblows of yours,
-
-
"Without the
grace of God and a friendly fate?
-
Let us pass,
since it is willed in heaven
-
That I show
another along this savage path."
-
-
85
At this his pride became so crestfallen
-
That he let
his hook drop right at his feet
-
And told the
others, "Now, don’t any strike him!"
-
-
And my guide
said to me, "You, crouching there
-
Among the
shattered rockpiles of the bridge,
-
90
Now you can feel safe returning to me."
-
-
At that I
moved and quickly came to him,
-
And the devils
pressed forward all together;
-
I panicked
that they might not keep their pact.
-
-
Just so, I
once saw soldiers fill with panic,
-
95
As they filed from Caprona with safe conduct,
-
Seeing
themselves surrounded by their foes.
-
-
With my whole
body I pressed against my guide
-
And not for a
moment would I take my eyes
-
From their
looks that boded me no good.
-
-
100
They put out pitchforks, and "Shall I prick him,"
-
One said to
the other, "on his bottom?"
-
And he
answered, "Sure, let him have a nick!"
-
-
But Malacoda,
who all the while was talking
-
To my master,
whirled around suddenly
-
105
And yelled, "Stop, Scarmiglione, stop!"
-
-
Then he told
us, "It’s impossible to go
-
Farther along
this ridge since the sixth arch
-
Lies smashed
into pieces at the bottom.
-
-
"But if you
still are pleased to stroll ahead,
-
110
Then follow along the bluff until you come
-
To another
ridge, nearby, that offers crossing.
-
-
"Yesterday,
five hours from now, marked
-
One thousand
two hundred and sixty-six years
-
Since this
bridgeway crashed in ruins here.
-
-
115
"I am dispatching some of my troop there
-
To watch if
anyone pops up for air —
-
Go along with
them; they won’t hurt you.
-
-
"Front and
center, Alichino and Calcabrina,"
-
He started
off, "and you too, Cagnazzo!
-
120
And Barbariccia, lead the squad of ten.
-
-
"Take Libicocco
and Draghignazzo,
-
And tusked
Ciriatto and Graffiacane,
-
And Farfarello
and mad Rubicante.
-
-
"Reconnoiter
around the bubbling gluepot,
-
125
And see them safe as far as the next ridge
-
That spans all
unbroken from den to den."
-
-
"O master," I
said, "what am I looking at?
-
Ah, let us
walk alone without an escort:
-
You know the
way? I want no part of them!
-
-
130
"If you remain alert as usual,
-
Do you not
notice how they grind their teeth
-
And how they
threaten harm with their fierce looks?"
-
-
And he: "I
have no wish to see you panic.
-
Let them grind
away all that they want to:
-
135
They do it to impress the boiling wretches."
-
-
They turned
around upon the left-face bank,
-
But first each
pressed a tongue between his teeth
-
To sound a
signal to their commandant,
-
-
And with his
ass he blew a bugle-blast.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
I have seen
horsemen in the past break camp,
-
Muster their
army and open assault,
-
And at times
even beat a quick retreat;
-
-
I have seen
outriders roam your countryside,
-
5
O Aretines, and seen raiding-parties charge,
-
Tournaments
clash and jousters galloping,
-
-
Some called by
trumpets and some by bells,
-
By drumrolls
and by flares from castle-walls,
-
By homemade
and imported instruments;
-
-
10
But never before have I seen horsemen,
-
Footsoldiers,
or ships that sail by sighting
-
Of land or
stars move to a stranger bugle.
-
-
We walked
together along with the ten demons —
-
Ah, what
fierce company, and yet: with saints
-
15
In church, with rioters in the tavern!
-
-
My whole
attention was fixed on the pitch
-
To study every
aspect of this pocket
-
And of the
people who, within it, burned.
-
-
Just as
dolphins do, when with arching backs
-
20
They signal a storm-warning to the sailors
-
To make all
hands ready to save the ship,
-
-
So here at
times to soothe the suffering
-
Some sinner
showed his back above the top
-
And hid again
as fast as lightning flashes.
-
-
25
And just as on the water’s edge of ditches
-
Frogs squat
with only their muzzles showing,
-
To hide their
legs and the rest of their fat flesh,
-
-
So here on all
sides these sinners squatted,
-
But the
instant Barbariccia stepped forward,
-
30
They dived back underneath the boiling pitch.
-
-
I saw, and
still my heart shudders with it,
-
One lag behind
— just as sometimes one frog
-
Will stay back
while another leaps below —
-
-
And
Graffiacane, the closest to him,
-
35
Hooked him up by his pitch-knotted hair
-
And hauled him
out — he looked just like an otter!
-
-
I knew all of
the devils now by name,
-
For I had
watched them when they were selected,
-
And when they
called each other, I had listened.
-
-
40
"Oh Rubicante, see that you get your claws
-
Into his back
so you can skin and flay him!"
-
The whole
damned squad shouted all together.
-
-
And I: "My
master, if you can, please do
-
Find out the
name of the unfortunate soul
-
45
Who’s fallen in the clutches of his foes."
-
-
My guide,
drawing closer to his side,
-
Asked him
where he came from; he replied,
-
"I was born in
the kingdom of Navarre.
-
-
"My mother
placed me in service to a lord,
-
50
For she had had me by some fly-by-night,
-
A destroyer of
his goods and suicide.
-
-
"Then I served
in kind King Thibault’s household
-
Where I set
myself up by accepting graft:
-
And in this
heat I render my account."
-
-
55
And Ciriatto, with two tusks stuck out
-
From both
sides of his mouth, just like a boar’s,
-
Let him feel
how one tusk could rip him open.
-
-
The mouse had
fallen prey to wicked cats.
-
But
Barbariccia grabbed him with his arms,
-
60
Yelling, "Stay back there while I’ve got a grip!"
-
-
Then he turned
his face to my guide and said,
-
"Ask once
again, if you want to learn more
-
From him,
before the rest tear him apart."
-
-
So my guide:
"Tell me then, among the other
-
65
Sinners, do you know of any Italians sunk
-
Under the
pitch?" And he: "I just now left
-
-
"One soul from
near there — would that I were still
-
With him
beneath the shelter of that pitch!
-
These claws
and hooks would not then frighten me!"
-
-
70
And Libicocco snarled, "We’ve stood enough!"
-
And with his
grapple caught him by the arm
-
And, tearing
at it, hacked out the skin and muscle.
-
-
But
Draghignazzo also hoped to lay
-
Hooks to his
legs; at that the captain whipped
-
75
About and rounded them with ill-boding looks.
-
-
When they’d
become a little more subdued,
-
Without
waiting, my guide questioned the sinner
-
Who stood
there still, studying his wound,
-
-
"Who was the
soul you said you had to leave
-
80
Behind you there when you came to the shore?"
-
He answered,
"That was Friar Gomita
-
-
"From Gallura,
a purse for every fraud!
-
He had his
master’s enemies in his hands
-
And treated
them so that they sang his praises.
-
-
85
"He took their cash and let them off scot free,
-
As he admits,
and in his other dealings
-
He was no
petty thief but a royal one.
-
-
"With him is
his cohort Michel Zanche
-
Of Logodoro,
and their tongues never tire
-
90
With constant chatter about Sardinia.
-
-
"Oh oh, look!
there’s another grinding his teeth!
-
I’d tell you
more but I feel terrified
-
That that
fiend is all set to scratch my scabs!"
-
-
Then their
field marshal, facing Farfarello,
-
95
His eyes rolling with readiness to strike,
-
Shouted, "Get
back from there, you filthy bird!"
-
-
"If it remains
your wish to see or hear
-
Tuscans or
Lombards," the frightened soul resumed,
-
"I will call
up still more to come to you.
-
-
100
"But let the Malebranche there stand aside
-
So that the
souls may not fear their vengeance,
-
And I, staying
seated in this same spot,
-
-
"All by
myself, shall make seven surface
-
By whistling,
a practice that we follow
-
105
Whenever one of us escapes the pitch."
-
-
At this news
Cagnazzo raised his muzzle;
-
Shaking his
head, he sneered, "Listen to that —
-
A trick he has
thought up to jump back down!"
-
-
With that, he
who had a store of stratagems
-
110
Answered, "I am a tricky soul indeed
-
When I gain
deeper pain for my own partners!"
-
-
Alichino could
not restrain himself
-
And, counter
to the rest, said, "If you jump,
-
I wouldn’t
come galloping after you;
-
-
115
"Instead, I’ll flap my wings above the pitch-pot!
-
We’ll leave
this ridge and make the bank a shield
-
To see if all
alone you can outsmart us!"
-
-
O reader,
listen to the latest sport!
-
Each turned
his eyes toward the other shore —
-
120
The first one was the fiend who most resisted!
-
-
The Navarrese
picked his time perfectly,
-
Fixed both
feet on the ground and in a flash
-
Leaped out and
broke free of the fiend-in-charge!
-
-
Each one felt
guilt-stricken at being gulled,
-
125
But chief the one who brought about the blunder,
-
So he took
straight off and cried, "You’re caught!"
-
-
But it did
little good, for wings cannot
-
Fly faster
than can fear: the one dives under
-
While the
other thrusts up his chest in flight.
-
-
130
No different is the duck that plunges downward
-
With a rush
when the falcon closes in
-
And then,
beaten and bitter, soars back again.
-
-
Calcabrina,
fuming at the ruse,
-
Flew after
Alichino; he was hoping
-
135
The sinner would escape so he could tussle.
-
-
And as soon as
the grafter disappeared,
-
He turned his
claws on his air-borne comrade
-
And grappled
with him high above the ditch.
-
-
But the other
was a fullfledged sparrowhawk
-
140
And clawed at him until they both tumbled
-
Right in the
middle of the boiling pond.
-
-
Instantly the
heat blew them asunder,
-
But then they
had no way of lifting off
-
Since they had
clogged their wings with gluey pitch.
-
-
145
Barbariccia, fretting with the rest,
-
Sent four
fiends to fly to the other side
-
With all their
pitchforks, and swiftly enough,
-
-
From here and
there they then took up their posts
-
And stretched
their hooks out to the bird-limed pair
-
150
Who were already cooked inside the crust.
-
-
And so we left
them embroiled in that mess.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Silent,
solitary, without escort,
-
We walked
along, one behind the other,
-
Like minor
friars traveling the road.
-
-
Because of the
scuffle we had just seen,
-
5
My thoughts turned to one of Aesop’s fables
-
In which he
tells about the frog and mouse.
-
-
For "soon" and
"shortly" are not more similar
-
Than fiction
is like fact, if carefully
-
You compare
the beginning and end of both.
-
-
10
And just as one thought rises from another,
-
So this gave
birth to still another thought
-
That doubled
the first fear that I had felt.
-
-
I thought like
this: These devils have been mocked
-
By us with so
much damage and derision
-
15
That I believe they feel deeply offended.
-
-
If anger
should be added to bad-will,
-
They will
chase us even more viciously
-
Than the hound
that snatches up the hare.
-
-
Already I felt
my hair start to stand up
-
20
With fear that gripped me as I stared behind.
-
"Master," I
said, "if you don’t find a spot
-
-
"To hide us —
quick — I dread the Malebranche —
-
They’re after
us right now — I imagine that
-
They’re there
— so close that I can hear them now!"
-
-
25
And he replied, "Were I a leaded mirror
-
I couldn’t
catch your outward look more quickly
-
Than your
inner thoughts occur to me.
-
-
"Just now, in
fact, they mingled with my own,
-
So similar in
act and coloration
-
30
That I will put them both to one resolve:
-
-
"Should the
right bank slope in such a way
-
That we may
descend to the next pocket,
-
We could
escape the chase we both have pictured."
-
-
He’d hardly
finished setting forth his plan
-
35
When I saw them approaching with spread wings
-
Not too far
off, intent on taking us.
-
-
All of a
sudden my guide snatched me up,
-
Just as a
mother waking to a roar
-
And seeing
flames bursting next to her
-
-
40
Snatches her son and runs and will not stop —
-
She cares much
more for him than for herself —
-
She does not
even pause to put a robe on!
-
-
And so down
from the height of the hard bank
-
Upon his back
he slid on the sloping rock
-
45
Which blocks off one side of the next pocket.
-
-
Never water
ran along a sluice
-
So fast to
turn the wheel of a land-mill
-
When it
courses closest to the paddles,
-
-
As my master
hastened down that bank,
-
50
Carrying me held fast upon his breast
-
As if I were
his son, not a companion.
-
-
Hardly had his
feet hit down on bedrock
-
On the ground
below when the fiends were high
-
On the ridge
right over us — no need to panic:
-
-
55
For the divine Providence that willed them
-
To be placed
as servants of the fifth ditch
-
Deprived them
of all power for leaving it.
-
-
Below that
point we found a painted people
-
Who walked in
circles with the slowest steps,
-
60
Weeping and worn in looks and overwhelmed.
-
-
The cloaks
they wore had cowls drawn down low
-
Over their
eyes, made in a similar style
-
As those that
are made for monks in Cluny.
-
-
These are so
gilded outside that they dazzle,
-
65
But inside, solid lead, and so heavy that,
-
Compared to
them, Frederick’s capes were straw.
-
-
O mantle of
unending weariness!
-
Once again we
turned to the left hand,
-
Along with
those souls rapt in their sad tears.
-
-
70
But with their weights the tired people trod
-
So slowly that
we had fresh company
-
With every
step we took along the way.
-
-
At this sight
I asked my guide, "Please find
-
Someone I
should know by deed or name:
-
75
Let your eyes roam around while we walk on."
-
-
And one who
had picked up my Tuscan accent
-
Shouted out
behind us, "Halt your steps,
-
You, racing so
fast through this murky air!
-
-
"Perhaps
you’ll get from me what you ask for!"
-
80
So my guide turned to me, proposing, "Wait,
-
Then move
ahead according to this pace."
-
-
I stopped, and
saw two showing in their faces
-
Their minds’
restless haste to be with me,
-
But their
loads and the narrow road delayed them.
-
-
85
When they caught up, they viewed me with their eyes
-
Askance,
staring and not uttering a word;
-
Then they
turned to one another and observed,
-
-
"This one
seems alive, since his throat moves,
-
But if they
both are dead, what privilege
-
90
Lets them go unclad by the heavy mantles?"
-
-
Then they said
to me, "O Tuscan, you come
-
To this
chapter of the sorry hypocrites:
-
Do not scorn
to tell us who you are."
-
-
And I told
them, "I was born and grew up
-
95
In the great city by the Arno’s lovely stream,
-
And I am in
the flesh I’ve always had.
-
-
"But who are
you whose grief distills such tears
-
As I perceive
now coursing down your cheeks?
-
What is this
penance glittering upon you?"
-
-
100
And one of them replied, "The yellow cloaks
-
Are thick with
lead of so much weight it makes us
-
Who are the
scales in the balance creak.
-
-
"We both were
Jovial Friars, and Bolognese:
-
My name was
Catalano, his Loderingo;
-
105
Together we were chosen by your city
-
-
"To do what
one man usually is assigned,
-
Keep the
peace, and how much we succeeded
-
Still can be
seen around the Gardingo."
-
-
I began, "O
friars, your wicked ..." — but said
-
110
No more: my eyes caught the sight of one
-
Crucified with
three stakes on the ground.
-
-
When he saw
me, he twisted all around,
-
Breathing hard
into his beard with sighs,
-
And brother
Catalano, who observed this,
-
-
115
Said to me, "That one you see nailed down
-
Advised the
Pharisees it was expedient
-
To sacrifice
one man for the people.
-
-
"Stretched out
naked he lies, across the way,
-
As you
yourself see, and is made to feel
-
120
The full weight of every passer-by.
-
-
"In the same
way is his father-in-law racked
-
In this same
ditch, and the rest of that council
-
Which has
sowed so much evil for the Jews."
-
-
Then I saw
Virgil struck with wonder over
-
125
The one who lay stretched there on the cross
-
So
ignominiously in unending exile.
-
-
He afterwards
spoke these words to the friar,
-
"Would you
please, if it’s allowed, tell us
-
If on the
right side there lies any passage
-
-
130
"By which we two can go away from here
-
Without
compelling some of those black angels
-
To come down
to this depth to get us out."
-
-
He answered
then, "Closer than you hope
-
There is a
rocky ridge that reaches out from
-
135
The huge round wall and spans all the wild valleys
-
-
"Except this
broken bridge which does not cross.
-
You can climb
back up by way of the ruins
-
That lie along
the slope, heaped at the bottom."
-
-
My guide stood
awhile, head bowed, then said,
-
140
"That one who grapples sinners over there
-
Gave us a
false account about this business."
-
-
And the friar:
"Once in Bologna I heard
-
Described the
devil’s many vices, among them
-
That he’s a
liar and the father of lies."
-
-
145
With giant strides my guide then hurried off,
-
Somewhat
perturbed, by the anger in his look.
-
At this I left
those heavy-burdened souls,
-
-
Following the
prints of his dear feet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
When in that
season of the youthful year
-
The sun warms
his rays beneath Aquarius,
-
And soon the
nights shall meet the days halfway,
-
-
When the
hoarfrost paints upon the ground
-
5
The perfect picture of his pure white sister
-
(But pigment
from his brush soon vanishes),
-
-
The peasant,
short on fodder for his sheep,
-
Wakes up and
looks out and sees the fields
-
All blanketed
in white: he smacks his thigh,
-
-
10
Turns back indoors and walking up and down,
-
Frets like a
wretch not knowing what to do;
-
Out he comes
once more, and hope revives
-
-
When he sees
the world has changed its face
-
In so brief a
time, and he takes up his staff
-
15
To drive his sheep outside to the green pasture:
-
-
Just so I felt
such deep dismay to see
-
My master’s
brow grown pale with some new trouble
-
And as quickly
came the gauze to heal the hurt.
-
-
For as soon as
we approached the shattered bridge
-
20
My escort turned to me that same sweet look
-
Which I’d
first seen at the foot of the mountain.
-
-
He opened wide
his arms — once he had closely
-
Studied the
wreckage and come to some resolve
-
Within himself
— then he took hold of me.
-
-
25
And just like one who works and thinks things out,
-
Who is always
ready for what lies ahead,
-
So he, lifting
me toward the dome of one
-
-
Huge boulder,
spied another crag above
-
And said, "Now
clamber onto that: but first
-
30
Try it out to see if it will hold you."
-
-
It was no path
for those clothed in their cloaks!
-
For we could
hardly — he, light, and I, with help —
-
Handhold by
handhold, scale the jutting rocks.
-
-
And had it not
been that, down from that rampart,
-
35
The slope of one bank was lower than the other,
-
I cannot speak
for him, but I’d be beaten.
-
-
But because
Malebolge all falls away
-
Toward the
open mouth of the lowest well,
-
The layout of
each valley predetermined
-
-
40
That as one bank rises, the next tapers off.
-
And so we
reached, at last, the point on top
-
Where the last
stone of the bridge fell broken.
-
-
The breath was
so pumped out of my lungs
-
When I climbed
aloft, I could not go onward,
-
45
And as soon as I’d come up there I sat down.
-
-
"Now you must
shake off all your laziness,"
-
My master
said, "for loungers and slugabeds
-
Will never
reach the heights of lasting fame:
-
-
"Without fame
a man wears away his life,
-
50
Leaving such traces of himself on earth
-
As smoke on
air or foam upon the water.
-
-
"Straighten
up! Conquer your fatigue
-
With the
spirit that wins every battle
-
Unless it sink
under the body’s weight.
-
-
55
"Longer stairs than these wait to be climbed!
-
It is not
enough to leave these souls behind:
-
If you have
understood my words, act on them!"
-
-
I stood up
then, showing that I was better
-
Supplied with
wind than I had been before,
-
60
And said, "Go on, for I am strong and ready."
-
-
We picked our
way along the curving ridge
-
Which was more
jagged, narrower and harder,
-
And so much
steeper than the ridge before.
-
-
Not to seem
weak, I talked as I pushed on;
-
65
Then, from the next ditch there arose a voice
-
That seemed
incapable of forming words.
-
-
I don’t know
what he said, though now I stood
-
On the crown
of the arch that crosses there,
-
But whoever
spoke appeared to be running.
-
-
70
I had bent over, yet my living eyes
-
Could not
pierce through the darkness to the bottom;
-
So I said,
"Master, kindly manage to reach
-
-
"The next
ring, and let us climb down the wall:
-
From here I
cannot grasp what I am hearing,
-
75
And I see down but I can make out nothing."
-
-
"No other
answer," he said, "shall I give you
-
Than doing it,
because a fit request
-
Should in
silence be followed by the deed."
-
We climbed
down where the bridgehead ended
-
80
And where it merged with the eighth embankment,
-
And then its
pocket opened up to me:
-
-
And there
within I saw a repulsive mass
-
Of serpents in
such a horrifying state
-
That still my
blood runs cold when I recall them.
-
-
85
No more need Libya boast about the sands
-
Where
chelydri, jaculi, phareae,
-
And cenchres
with amphisbaena breed:
-
-
She could not
show — with all Ethiopia
-
Nor the lands
that lie surrounding the Red Sea —
-
90
So rampant and pestiferous a plague.
-
-
Among this
cruel and miserable swarm
-
Were people
running stripped and terrified,
-
With no hope
of hiding-hole or heliotrope.
-
-
They had hands
tied behind their backs by snakes
-
95
That thrust out head and tail through their loins
-
And that
coiled then in knots around the front.
-
-
And look! A
serpent sprang up at one sinner
-
Upon our
strand and it transfixed him there
-
Where neck and
shoulders knotted at the nape.
-
-
100
No o or i was ever written faster
-
Than that
sinner flared up and burst in flames
-
And, falling
down, completely turned to ashes.
-
-
And then, as
he lay scattered on the ground,
-
The ashy dust
collected by itself
-
105
And suddenly returned to its first shape.
-
-
Just so, men
of high learning have avowed
-
That the
phoenix dies and is then reborn
-
When it
approaches its five-hundredth year;
-
-
In life it
does not feed on grass or grain,
-
110
But only on the tears of balm and incense,
-
And its last
winding-sheet is nard and myrrh.
-
-
As one who
falls in a fit, not knowing how —
-
By devilish
force that drags him to the ground
-
Or by some
other blockage that binds a man —
-
-
115
When he lifts himself up, and looks around,
-
All out of
focus with the heavy anguish
-
He has
suffered, sighing as he stares:
-
-
Such was this
sinner after he arose.
-
O power of
God, what great severity
-
120
To have poured down such blows in its vengeance!
-
-
My guide then
asked the sinner who he was,
-
And he replied
to this, "Not long ago
-
I rained from
Tuscany down to this hellmouth.
-
-
"Bestial life
and not the human pleased me,
-
125
Like the mule I was; I am Vanni Fucci,
-
Beast, and
Pistoia was a fit den for me."
-
-
I said to my
guide, "Tell him not to slink
-
Away, and ask
him what crime cast him here,
-
For I knew him
as a man of blood and tantrums."
-
-
130
The sinner, who understood, made no evasions
-
But turned his
mind and face straight toward me
-
And reddened
with distressful shame, then said,
-
-
"It grieves me
more that you have found me out
-
Amid the
wretchedness in which you see me
-
135
Than when I was taken from the other life.
-
-
"I am not able
to refuse your asking.
-
I am set down
so far because I robbed
-
The sacristy
of its splendid treasure,
-
-
"And later
someone else was falsely blamed.
-
140
But, that you may not revel in this sight,
-
If ever you
escape from these dark regions,
-
-
"Open your
ears and listen to my tidings:
-
Pistoia first
divests herself of Blacks;
-
Then Florence
changes over men and laws.
-
-
145
"From Valdimagra Mars draws a fiery vapor
-
Which is
enwrapped in dark and smoky clouds,
-
And with a
raging and relentless storm
-
-
"There shall
be battling on Campo Piceno
-
Until it will
abruptly smash the scud
-
150
And every White will be struck by the lightning.
-
-
"And I have
told you this to make you suffer."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
At the end of
this harangue of his the thief
-
Raised high
his fists forked into figs and cried,
-
"Take that,
God, I screwed them against you!"
-
-
From then on
the serpents were my friends
-
5
Because one of them coiled around his neck
-
As though to
say, "I’ll not have you say more!"
-
-
And another
whipped about his arms and tied him,
-
Wrapping
itself so tightly in front of him
-
That with the
knot he couldn’t jerk a muscle.
-
-
10
Pistoia, ah Pistoia! why not decree
-
To turn
yourself to ashes and end it all
-
Since you
outstrip your offspring in evil-doing?
-
-
Throughout all
the darkened circles of deep hell
-
I saw no soul
so insolent toward God,
-
15
Not even he who fell from the walls at Thebes.
-
-
Without
speaking another word, he fled,
-
And then I saw
a centaur, full of fury,
-
Come shouting,
"Where, where is that bitter beast?"
-
-
I do not think
Maremma has as many
-
20
Snakes as the centaur carried on his croup
-
Right up to
where our human shape begins.
-
-
Upon his
shoulders, just behind the scruff,
-
With its wings
outstretched, there sat a dragon
-
That set on
fire all that cross its path.
-
-
25
My master stated, "That centaur is Cacus:
-
In a rock-cave
beneath Mount Aventine
-
Many the time
he spilled a lake of blood.
-
-
"He does not
go the same road with his brothers
-
Because he
fraudulently committed theft
-
30
Of his neighbor’s mighty herd of cattle.
-
-
"The club of
Hercules, who must have hit him
-
A hundred
blows, ended his crooked deals:
-
But after the
tenth clout he felt nothing."
-
-
While he was
saying this, Cacus ran past,
-
35
And three spirits came along below us,
-
But neither I
nor my guide observed them
-
-
Until they
shouted up, "Who are you?"
-
That put an
end to our discussion, and
-
Then we turned
our attention fully to them.
-
-
40
I did not recognize them, but it happened,
-
As it so often
happens by some chance,
-
That one had
to call out the other's name,
-
-
Questioning,
"Where has Cianfa gone off to?"
-
At this, I —
to keep my guide listening —
-
45
Placed my finger between chin and nose.
-
-
If you are
now, reader, slow to believe
-
What I shall
tell, that would be no wonder,
-
For I who saw
it can scarcely accept it.
-
-
While I was
staring down at the three sinners
-
50
I saw a serpent with six feet, from in front
-
Leap up on one
and entirely grip him.
-
-
It wrapped his
stomach with its middle feet
-
And with its
forefeet pinned him by the arms;
-
Then sank its
teeth in one cheek, then the other.
-
-
55
It spread its hind feet down about his thighs
-
And thrust the
tail out between his legs
-
And at his
back pulled it up straight again.
-
-
Never did ivy
cling to any tree
-
So tightly as
that horrendous beast
-
60
Twined its limbs around and through the sinner’s.
-
-
Then the two
stuck together as if made
-
Of hot wax and
mixed their colors so
-
Neither one
nor other seemed what once they were:
-
-
Just as, in
front of the flame, a brown color
-
65
Advances on the burning paper, so that
-
It is not yet
black but the white dies away.
-
-
The other two
glared at one another, each
-
Crying out, "O
Agnello, how you change!
-
Look! already
you are neither two nor one."
-
-
70
The two heads by now had become one
-
When we saw
the two features fuse together
-
Into one face
in which they both were lost.
-
-
Two arms took
shape out of the four remnants;
-
The thighs
with the legs, belly, and chest,
-
75
Changed into members never before seen.
-
-
Then every
former likeness was blotted out:
-
That perverse
image seemed both two and neither,
-
And, such, at
a slow pace, it moved away.
-
-
Just as the
lizard, that under the giant lash
-
80
Of the dog days darts from hedge to hedge,
-
Looks like a
lightning flash as it crosses the path,
-
-
So seemed,
heading straight out toward the gut
-
Of the other
two, a small blazing serpent,
-
Black and
livid like a peppercorn.
-
-
85
And in one sinner it bit right through that part
-
From which we
first take suck and nourishment;
-
And down it
fell full length in front of him.
-
-
The bitten
sinner stared but uttered nothing.
-
Instead, he
just stood rooted there and yawned
-
90
Exactly as though sleep or fever struck him.
-
-
The serpent
looked at him, he looked at it:
-
One through
the mouth, the other through his wound
-
Billowed dense
smoke and so the two smokes mingled.
-
-
95
Let Lucan now be silent, where he tells
-
Of hapless
Sabellus and Nasidius,
-
And let him
listen to what I now project.
-
-
Let Ovid too
be silent about Cadmus
-
And Arethusa,
where in verse he makes one
-
A snake and
one a fount: I do not envy him,
-
-
100
Since he never so transmuted two natures
-
Face to face
that their spiritual forms
-
Were ready to
exchange their bodily substance.
-
-
Together they
responded to such laws
-
That the snake
slit its tail into a fork
-
105
While the wounded sinner drew his feet together.
-
-
The legs with
the thighs locked so firmly,
-
One to the
other, that shortly one could find
-
No sign
whatever where the seam had joined.
-
-
The slit tail
then assumed the very shape
-
110
That had been lost there; and the hide of one
-
Softened as
the skin of the other hardened.
-
-
I saw his arms
returning to the armpits
-
And the two
feet of the reptile — they were short —
-
Lengthen out
while the two arms shortened.
-
-
115
Afterward, the hind feet, twisted up
-
Together,
became the member that men hide,
-
While from his
member the wretch grew two paws.
-
-
While smoke
veiled both the one and the other
-
With new color
and made the hair grow matted
-
120
On the one skin, and the other it made bald,
-
-
The one rose
upright and the other fell,
-
Neither
averting the lamps of evil eyes
-
As, staring,
they exchanged a nose and snout.
-
-
The one
standing drew back the face toward
-
125
The temples, and from the surplus stuff massed there
-
Ears emerged
above the once-smooth cheeks;
-
-
The surplus
not pulled back but still remaining
-
In front, then
formed a nose for the face
-
And filled the
lips out to their proper size.
-
-
130
The one lying down sprouted forth a muzzle
-
And withdrew
the ears back into the head
-
In the same
way a snail pulls in its horns.
-
-
And the
tongue, once single, whole, and suited
-
For speech,
split, while the other’s forked tongue
-
135
Sealed back up, and the smoke also stopped.
-
-
The soul that
had been turned into a beast,
-
Hissing, filed
off along the gully, fast,
-
And the other,
speaking, spat after its tracks.
-
-
He turned his
new-made shoulders then and told
-
140
The third soul left there, "I want Buoso to run,
-
The way I did,
on all fours down the road!"
-
-
And so I saw
the cargo shift and reshift
-
In the seventh
hold — and let me be forgiven
-
Strangeness
that may have led my pen astray.
-
-
145
And although my eyes were somewhat out of focus
-
And my mind
out of joint, the three sinners
-
Could not have
fled so furtively that I
-
-
Did not
observe Puccio Sciancato,
-
The only one,
of the three comrades that
-
150
Came at first, who then had not been changed;
-
-
The other was
he who made you, Gaville, grieve.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Be glad,
Florence, for you are so great
-
That over sea
and land you flap your wings
-
And
throughout all of hell they spread your name.
-
-
Among the
thieves I found five citizens
-
5
Of yours — I am ashamed of who they were —
-
And you are
not raised to any heights of honor.
-
-
But if near
dawn the dreams we have are true,
-
Then you
shall feel, a little while from now,
-
What Prato
and the others crave for you.
-
-
10
If it already happened it should not be
-
Too soon; I
would it had, since it must be so!
-
The longer my
wait, the heavier my burden.
-
-
We left
there, and up by the jutting rocks
-
That served
as stairs for our descent
-
15
My guide climbed once more and pulled me after.
-
-
And we
followed along our solitary way
-
Among the
crags and rockpiles of the ridge;
-
Without our
hands our footing would have failed.
-
-
It grieved me
then and now again it grieves me
-
20
When I direct my mind to what I saw
-
And more than
usually I curb my talent
-
-
Lest it rush
in where virtue fails to guide;
-
So, if a
friendly star or something better
-
Has given me
the gift, I don’t gainsay it.
-
-
25
As many fireflies as the peasant — who
-
Rests on a
hillside in the season when
-
The one that
lights the world hides his face least
-
-
And when the
flies make way for the mosquitos —
-
Sees
glittering below him in the valley
-
30
Where perhaps he harvests grapes and plows,
-
-
So many
flames everywhere enkindled
-
The eighth
pocket, as I myself perceived
-
As soon as I
was there where one sees bottom.
-
-
And just as
he who avenged himself with bears
-
35
Beheld Elijah’s chariot departing
-
With the
rearing horses rising up to heaven,
-
-
But never
could have followed it with his eyes
-
Except for
the one flame that he kept watching
-
Just like a
little cloud sailing skyward:
-
-
40
In this way each flame moved through the throat
-
Of that deep
ditch, none showing what it stole,
-
Though every
flame secreted its own sinner.
-
-
I stood
straight, then leaned out on the bridge
-
To look — had
I not grabbed a jutting rock
-
45
I would have toppled off without a push!
-
-
And my guide,
seeing me so attentive,
-
Said, "Within
those fires there are souls,
-
Each one
swathed in its self-scorching torment."
-
-
"My master,"
I replied, "by hearing you
-
50
I’m even surer, but already I’d concluded
-
It was so,
and wanted to ask you this:
-
-
"Who’s inside
that approaching flame so split
-
On top that
it seems to rise out of the pyre
-
Where
Eteocles lay beside his brother?"
-
-
55
"Within that flame Ulysses and Diomede
-
Suffer
tortures," he told me; "they go together
-
In punishment
as once they went in wrath;
-
-
"And there
inside their flame they grieve the ruse
-
By which the
horse became the gate through which
-
60
The Roman’s noble seed has issued forth.
-
-
"There they
mourn the trick that makes the slain
-
Deidamia
still weep for Achilles,
-
And there
they pay for the Palladium."
-
-
"If it is
possible for them to talk
-
65
From within these flames," I said, "master, I pray
-
And pray
again (may my prayer count a thousand!)
-
-
"That you
will not deny my waiting here
-
Until the
flame with two horns comes this way:
-
You see how I
bend toward it with a passion!"
-
-
70
And he said to me, "Your request deserves
-
High praise,
and for that reason, it is granted.
-
But you be
certain to restrain your tongue.
-
-
"Allow me to
talk to them: I comprehended
-
What is your
wish, but they may show disdain,
-
75
Since they were Greeks, for your speaking to them."
-
-
After the
flame had come to us, my guide,
-
Judging the
time and place now to be ripe,
-
Spoke, and
these are the words I heard him say:
-
-
"O you who
here are two within one fire,
-
80
If I merited from you while I was living,
-
If I merited
from you much praise or little
-
-
"When in the
world I wrote my lofty lines,
-
Do not leave,
but let one of you tell where,
-
By his own
doing, he lost his way and died."
-
-
85
The greater of the horns of ancient flame
-
Started so to
tremble, murmuring,
-
That it
seemed like a flame breasting the wind.
-
-
And then,
shaking the tip this way and that,
-
As if it were
a tongue about to talk,
-
90
It launched outward a voice that uttered, "When
-
-
"I set sail
from Circe who had ensnared me
-
For more than
a year there near Gaлta —
-
Before Aeneas
had given it that name —
-
-
"Not fondness
for my son nor sense of duty
-
95
To my aged father nor the love I owed
-
Penelope to
bring her happiness
-
-
"Could
overmaster in me the deep longing
-
Which I had
to gain knowledge of the world
-
And of the
vices and virtues of mankind.
-
-
100
"I embarked on the vast and open sea
-
With but one
boat and that same scanty crew
-
Of my men who
had not deserted me.
-
-
"On one shore
and the other I saw as far
-
As Spain, far
as Morocco, Sardinia,
-
105
And the other islands the sea bathes about.
-
-
"I and my
shipmates by then were old and slow
-
When we came
at long last to the close narrows
-
Where
Hercules had set up his stone markers
-
-
"That men
should not put out beyond that point.
-
110
On the starboard I now had passed Seville
-
And on the
port I already passed Ceuta.
-
-
" ‘Brothers,’
I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand
-
Dangers have
reached the channel to the west,
-
To the short
evening watch which your own senses
-
-
115
" ‘Still must keep, do not choose to deny
-
The
experience of what lies past the sun
-
And of the
world yet uninhabited.
-
-
" ‘Consider
the seed of your generation:
-
You were not
born to live like animals
-
120
But to pursue virtue and possess knowledge.’
-
-
"I rallied my
shipmates for the voyage
-
So sharply
with this brief exhortation
-
That then I
could have hardly held them back.
-
-
"And turning
our stern toward the morning,
-
125
Of oars we made wings for that madcap flight,
-
Always
gaining on the larboard side.
-
-
"Night by now
gazed out on all the stars
-
At the other
pole, and our stars sank so low
-
That none
rose up above the ocean floor.
-
-
130
"Five times the light that spread beneath the moon
-
Again shone
down and five times more it waned
-
Since we had
entered that deep passageway
-
-
"When a lone
mountain loomed ahead, dark
-
In the dim
distance, and it looked to me
-
135
The highest peak that I had ever seen.
-
-
"We leaped
for joy — it quickly turned to grief,
-
For from the
new land a whirlwind surging up
-
Struck the
foredeck of our ship head on.
-
-
"Three times
it spun us round in swirling waters;
-
140
The fourth round it raised the stern straight up
-
And plunged
the prow down deep, as Another pleased,
-
-
"Until the
sea once more closed over us."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- By this time the flame
stood straight and still
-
With no more
words and by now took its leave
-
With the
permission of the gentle poet
-
-
When another,
coming right behind it,
-
5
Forced us to turn our eyes toward its tip
-
Because of the
scrambled sound it sputtered out.
-
-
As the
Sicilian bull — that bellowed first
-
With cries of
the man (it served him right!)
-
Who with his
file had tuned the beast for torture —
-
-
10
Would bellow so loudly with its victim’s voice
-
Within it
that, though the whole was brass
-
The thing
seemed penetrated by the pain:
-
-
So, without a
way out or through the soul
-
Burning inside
the flame, the words of woe
-
15
Then became the language of the fire.
-
-
But after the
voices found their own way up
-
Through the
tip, giving it the tremble which
-
The tongue had
given to the fiery passage,
-
-
We heard the
flame: "O you to whom I turn
-
20
My voice and who, speaking in Lombard, said,
-
‘Now you may
leave, I ask no more of you,’
-
-
"Although,
perhaps, I come a little late,
-
Take the
trouble to stop and speak to me:
-
See, it shan't
trouble me, and I am burning.
-
-
25
"If you just now fell down to this blind world
-
Out of that
sweet country of Italy
-
From which I
carry all my guilt, tell me,
-
-
"Do the
Romagnoles have peace or war?
-
For I came
from the mountains between Urbino
-
30
And the range where the Tiber fountains forth."
-
-
I still leaned
out, bent and listening,
-
When my guide
nudged me on my side and said,
-
"You talk to
him: this one is Italian."
-
-
And I, already
eager to respond,
-
35
Began to speak up without hesitation:
-
"O soul,
hidden below there in that fire,
-
-
"Your Romagna
is not now and never was
-
Free of war in
the hearts of her tyrants,
-
But no war was
waging when I left her.
-
-
40
"Ravenna, now many years, remains the same:
-
The eagle of
Polenta broods over her
-
And also
covers Cervia with his wings.
-
-
"Forlм, the
city which once withstood the siege
-
And reduced
the French to a bloody rubble,
-
45
Finds herself again beneath green talons.
-
-
"Both
mastiffs, old and young, from Verrucchio,
-
Who kept such
a poor watchout for Montagna,
-
Sink their
teeth where they usually do.
-
-
"The cities on
Lamone and Santerno
-
50
Are ruled by the lion-cub on the white lair
-
Who summer to
winter shifts from side to side.
-
-
"Cesena, whose
shore the Savio bathes,
-
Just as it
lies between the plain and mountain,
-
Lives
in-between tyranny and freedom.
-
-
55
"Now I beg you to tell us who you are:
-
Don’t be more
stubborn than I’ve been with you
-
If in the
world you’d like your name to last."
-
-
After the
flame had roared on for some time
-
In its unique
way, the pointed tip swayed
-
60
Back and forth and then released this breath:
-
-
"If I thought
that my answer was to someone
-
Who might one
day return up to the world,
-
This flame
would never cease its flickering.
-
-
"However,
since no one ever turned back, alive,
-
65
From this abyss — should what I hear be true —
-
Undaunted by
infamy, I answer you.
-
-
"I was a man
of arms and then a friar,
-
Thinking to
atone, girt with the cincture,
-
And surely my
thought would have proven right
-
-
70
"Had not that high priest (evil overtake him!)
-
Caused me to
backslide into earlier crimes:
-
And how and
why, I would you heard from me.
-
-
"While I was
still bound by the bones and flesh
-
My mother gave
me, the things I accomplished
-
75
Were not those of the lion but the fox.
-
-
"Its wiles and
covert ways, I knew them all,
-
And I
conducted their art so cunningly
-
My repute
resounded to the ends of earth.
-
-
"But when I
saw that I had reached the point
-
80
In my life when each man takes on the duty
-
To lower the
sails and pull in the tackle,
-
-
"Things that
once brought pleasure now gave pain.
-
Repentant and
confessed, I joined the friars:
-
What a pity!
And it would have worked!
-
-
85
"The crowned prince of the new Pharisees —
-
Going to war
close to the Lateran
-
And not
against the Saracens or Jews
-
-
"(Since every
enemy of his was Christian
-
And not one of
them had gone to conquer Acre
-
90
Or been a trader in the Sultan’s country) —
-
-
"Ignored the
high office and holy orders
-
Belonging to
him and ignored the cincture
-
Which once
made men — like me — who wore it leaner:
-
-
"But just as
Constantine sought out Sylvester
-
95
On Mount Soracte to heal his leprosy,
-
So he sought
me to act as his physician
-
-
"To help heal
him of the fever of his pride.
-
He asked me
for my counsel — I kept quiet
-
Because his
words seemed from a drunken stupor.
-
-
100
"Then he said, ‘Your heart need not mistrust:
-
I absolve you
in advance and you instruct me
-
How to knock
Penestrino to the ground.
-
-
" ‘I have the
power to lock and unlock heaven,
-
You know that,
because I keep the two keys
-
105
For which my predecessor took no care.’
-
-
"His weighty
arguments so pressured me then
-
That silence
seemed the worse course, and I said,
-
‘Father, since
you cleanse me of that sin
-
-
" ‘Into which
I now must fall — remember:
-
110
An ample promise with a small repayment
-
Shall bring
you triumph on the lofty throne.’
-
-
"Francis — the
moment that I died — came then
-
For me, but
one of the black cherubim
-
Called to him,
‘Don’t take him! don’t cheat me!
-
-
115
" ‘He must come down to join my hirelings
-
Because he
offered counsel full of fraud,
-
And ever since
I’ve been after his scalp!
-
-
" ‘For you
can’t pardon one who won’t repent,
-
And one cannot
repent what one wills also:
-
120
The contradiction cannot be allowed.’
-
-
"O miserable
me! how shaken I was
-
When he
grabbed hold of me and cried, ‘Perhaps
-
You didn’t
realize I was a logician!’
-
-
"He carried me
off to Minos who twisted
-
125
His tail eight times around his hardened back,
-
Then bit it in
gigantic rage and blared,
-
-
" ‘This is a
sinner for the fire of thieves!’
-
So I am lost
here where you see me go
-
Walking in
this robe and in my rancor."
-
-
130
When he had finished speaking in this fashion,
-
The lamenting
flame went away in sorrow,
-
Turning and
tossing its sharp-pointed horn.
-
-
We traveled on
ahead, my guide and I,
-
Along the
ridge as far as the next bridgeway
-
135
Arching the ditch where they must pay the price
-
-
Who earned
such loads by sowing constant discord.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
Who could
ever, even in straight prose
-
And after much
retelling, tell in full
-
The
bloodletting and wounds that I now saw?
-
-
Each tongue
that tried would certainly trip up
-
5
Because our speaking and remembering
-
Cannot
comprehend the scope of pain.
-
-
Were all those
men gathered again together
-
Who once in
the fateful land of Apulia
-
Mourned the
lifeblood spilled by the Trojans,
-
-
10
And those who shed their blood in the long war
-
In which the
spoils were a mound of golden rings,
-
As Livy has
unerringly informed us,
-
-
And those also
who felt the painful gashes
-
In the
onslaught against Robert Guiscard,
-
15
And those others whose bones are still stacked up
-
-
At Ceperano
where all the Apulians
-
Turned
traitors, and those too from Tagliacozzo
-
Where old
Alardo conquered without weapons,
-
-
And those who
show their limbs run through and those
-
20
With limbs hacked off — they all could not have
matched
-
The ninth
pocket’s degraded state of grief.
-
-
Even a cask
with bottom or sides knocked out
-
Never cracked
so wide as one soul I saw
-
Burst open
from the chin to where one farts.
-
-
25
His guts were hanging out between his legs;
-
His pluck
gaped forth and that disgusting sack
-
Which turns to
shit what throats have gobbled down.
-
-
While I was
all agog with gazing at him,
-
He stared at
me and, as his two hands pulled
-
30
His chest apart, cried, "Look how I rip myself!
-
-
"Look at how
mangled is Mohammed here!
-
In front of
me, Ali treks onward, weeping,
-
His face cleft
from his chin to his forelock.
-
-
"And all the
others whom you see down here
-
35
Were sowers of scandal and schism while
-
They lived,
and for this they are rent in two.
-
-
"A devil goes
in back here who dresses us
-
So cruelly by
trimming each one of the pack
-
With the fine
cutting edge of his sharp sword
-
-
40
"Whenever we come round this forlorn road:
-
Because by
then our old wounds have closed up
-
Before we pass
once more for the next blow.
-
-
"But who are
you, moping upon that ridge
-
Perhaps to put
off facing the penalty
-
45
Pronounced on you by your own accusations?"
-
-
"Death has not
yet reached him, nor guilt led him
-
To the torture
here," — my master answered,
-
"But, to offer
him the full experience,
-
-
"I who am dead
am destined to guide him
-
50
From circle to circle down here into hell,
-
And, as surely
as I speak to you, it’s true."
-
-
More than a
hundred, when they heard him, halted
-
Inside the
ditch to peer at me in wonder,
-
Forgetting
their torments for the moment.
-
-
55
"Tell Brother Dolcino then, you who perhaps
-
Shortly shall
see the sun, to arm himself
-
With food —
unless he wants to follow me
-
-
"Here promptly
— so that the weight of snow
-
Does not bring
victory to the Novarese
-
60
Who otherwise would not find winning easy."
-
-
With one foot
lifted in the air to go,
-
Mohammed
addressed these words to me,
-
Then set the
foot back on the ground and left.
-
-
Another sinner
with his throat lanced through
-
65
And with his nose carved off up to the eyebrows
-
And with only
a single ear remaining
-
-
Stopped with
the rest to stare in amazement,
-
And, before
they could, he opened wide his windpipe,
-
Which on the
outside looked bright red, and said,
-
-
70
"O you whom guilt does not condemn and whom
-
I have seen in
the land of Italy,
-
Unless a
strong resemblance now deceives me,
-
-
"Remember Pier
da Medicina should you
-
Ever return to
view the gentle plain
-
75
Which slopes from Vercelli to Marcabт,
-
-
"And make
known to the two best men of Fano,
-
To Messers
Guido and Angiolello,
-
That, unless
our foresight here be worthless,
-
-
"They shall be
thrown overboard from their ship
-
80
And sunk with stones near La Cattolica
-
Through the
treachery of a felon tyrant.
-
-
"Between the
islands of Cyprus and Majorca
-
Neptune never
saw a crime more heinous
-
By raiding
pirates or the ancient Argives.
-
-
85
"That one-eyed traitor — who rules over the city
-
On which
someone here with me would prefer
-
That he had
never fed his single sight —
-
-
"Shall first
arrange for them a parley with him,
-
Then act to
make sure that they will not need
-
90
Vows or prayers against Focara’s headwinds."
-
-
And I told
him, "If you want me to carry
-
News of you
above, point out and tell me
-
Who is the one
who rues sighting the city?"
-
-
At that he
gripped a hand upon the jaw
-
95
Of his companion and forced his mouth agape,
-
Shouting,
"Here’s the one, but he doesn’t talk!
-
-
"This chap in
exile submerged all the doubts
-
Of Caesar,
boasting that one well prepared
-
Can only
suffer loss by hesitation."
-
-
100
Oh how flabbergasted he appeared to me,
-
With his
tongue slashed in his throat — Curio,
-
Who once had
been so resolute in speaking!
-
-
And one who
had both of his hands chopped off,
-
Raising up his
stumps in the smut-filled air
-
105
So that the blood besmeared and soiled his face,
-
-
Cried out,
"You will also remember Mosca
-
Who said,
alas, ‘What’s done is dead and gone!’
-
That sowed the
seed of trouble for the Tuscans!"
-
-
And I added,
"— and for your kinsfolk, death!"
-
110
With that the sinner, sorrow heaped on sorrow,
-
Scurried away
like one gone mad with grief.
-
-
But I stayed
there to inspect that muster
-
And spied
something that I should be afraid
-
To tell of on
my own without more proof,
-
-
115
Had I not the assurance of my conscience,
-
The good
companion heartening a man
-
Beneath the
breastplate of its pure intention.
-
-
I saw for sure
— and still I seem to see it —
-
A body without
a head that walked along
-
120
Just as the others in that sad herd were walking,
-
-
But it held
the severed head by the hair,
-
Swinging it
like a lantern in its hand,
-
And the head
stared at us and said, "Ah me!"
-
-
Itself had
made a lamp of its own self,
-
125
And they were two in one and one in two:
-
How can that
be? He knows who so ordains it.
-
-
When it was
right at the base of the bridge,
-
It raised up
full length the arm with the head
-
To carry
closer to us words, which were:
-
-
130
"Now you see the galling punishment,
-
You there,
breathing, come visiting the dead:
-
See if you
find pain heavier than this!
-
-
"And so that
you may bring back news of me,
-
Know that I am
Bertran de Born, the one
-
135
Who offered the young king corrupt advice.
-
-
"I made the
son and father rebel foes.
-
Achitophel
with his pernicious promptings
-
Did no worse
harm to Absalom and David.
-
-
"Because I
severed persons bound so closely,
-
140
I carry my brain separate (what grief!)
-
From its
life-source which is within this trunk.
-
-
"So see in me
the counterstroke of justice."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- The swarms of people and
the sweep of wounds
-
Had left my
eyes so blind drunk with their tears
-
That still
they ached to linger on and weep.
-
-
But Virgil
said to me, "Why do you stare?
-
5
Why does your vision wallow down there yet
-
Among those
dismal, mutilated shadows?
-
-
"At the other
pockets you did not do so:
-
Consider, if
you could count all of them,
-
Twenty-two
miles the valley loops around.
-
-
10
"The moon already is beneath our feet:
-
The time that’s now
allotted us is short
-
And you have more to see
than you see here."
-
-
"Had you
observed," I right away replied,
-
"The reason
why I have been staring so,
-
15
Perhaps you would have let me stay here longer."
-
-
Meantime my
guide had started off, and I
-
Walked on
behind him, answering as I went,
-
And adding,
"Deep within that cavern there
-
-
"On which just
now I held my eyes so fixed,
-
20
I think the spirit of my own blood relation
-
Weeps for the
guilt that down here costs so dear."
-
-
At this my
master said, "Do not distract
-
Yourself with
thoughts about him in the future;
-
Attend to
other things and leave him there:
-
-
25
"For I saw him at the foot of the small bridge
-
Pointing a
menacing finger at you, boldly,
-
And heard his
name called out, Geri del Bello.
-
-
"You at the
time were so all taken up
-
With the
headless one who once held Hautefort,
-
30
You did not look down there, and he departed."
-
-
"Oh my leader,
it was his violent death
-
Which has yet
to be avenged," I answered,
-
"By anyone of
us who share his shame
-
-
"That stirred
his indignation, for this he left
-
35
Without a word — such is my own opinion —
-
And for this
he made me pity him the more."
-
-
So we
conversed, up to the first spot on
-
The ridge with
open view to the next valley
-
And, had there
been more light, right to the bottom.
-
-
40
When we had come above the final cloister
-
Of Malebolge
so that we could observe
-
Before our
eyes the congregated brethren,
-
-
I was
assaulted by weird volleying cries,
-
Their shafts
tipped with pathos, and at the noise
-
45
I covered both my ears with my two hands.
-
-
What the
suffering would be if all the sick
-
In hospitals
at Valdichiana, Maremma,
-
And Sardinia,
from July to September,
-
-
Were thrown
down altogether in one ditch,
-
50
Such was it there and such a stench surged up
-
As usually
comes from putrefying limbs.
-
-
We climbed on
downward to the final bank
-
Of the long
ridge by always keeping left,
-
And then my
eyes descried a clearer vista
-
-
55
Toward the bottom, where the emissary
-
Of the high
Lord, unerring justice, chastens
-
The falsifiers
registered on earth.
-
-
I do not think
the grief could have been greater
-
To see the
people in Aegina all diseased —
-
60 When
the air was so infested with the plague
-
-
That every
animal, down to the smallest worm,
-
Sickened and
died, and later the ancient peoples
-
(Poets record
it as a certainty)
-
-
Were born
again from the progeny of ants —
-
65 Than
was my grief to see, through that dark valley,
-
The spirits
languishing in scattered stacks.
-
-
Some lay on
their stomachs, some on the shoulders
-
Of another
sinner, some hauled themselves
-
On hands and
knees along the careworn roadway.
-
-
70
Step by step we tread on without talking,
-
Watching and
listening to the infirm souls
-
Too weak to
raise their bodies from the ground.
-
-
I saw two
seated, propped against each other,
-
As pan on pan
is propped to keep them hot,
-
75
And pocked, each one, from head to foot with scabs.
-
-
And I have
never seen a stableboy
-
Comb a horse
more quickly when his master
-
Awaits him or
he reluctantly stays up
-
-
Than I saw
these two scratch themselves with nails
-
80
Over and over because of the burning rage
-
Of the fierce
itching which nothing could relieve.
-
-
The way their
nails scraped down upon the scabs
-
Was like a
knife scraping off scales from carp
-
Or some other
sort of fish with larger scales.
-
-
85
"O you there tearing at your mail of scabs
-
And even
turning your fingers into pincers,"
-
My guide began
addressing one of them,
-
-
"Tell us are
there Italians among the souls
-
Down in this
hole and I’ll pray that your nails
-
90
Will last you in this task eternally."
-
-
"We are both
Italians whom you see
-
So disfigured
here," one replied in tears,
-
"But who are
you who ask this question of us?"
-
-
And my guide
said, "I am one climbing down
-
95
From ledge to ledge with this living man
-
Whom I intend
to show the whole of hell."
-
-
At this the
support they gave one another
-
Broke and,
shaking, each turned himself to me,
-
And others who
had overheard turned also.
-
-
100
My kindly master drew all close to me,
-
Saying, "Now
tell them what you want to know."
-
And just as he
wished, I began to speak:
-
-
"So that your
memory may not fade away
-
In the first
world from among the minds of men
-
105
But that it may live on under countless suns,
-
-
"Tell me who
you are and who your people are:
-
Don’t let your
ugly and loathsome torture
-
Frighten you
from baring your souls to me."
-
-
"I was from
Arezzo," one of them answered,
-
110
"And Albero of Siena had me burned;
-
But what I
died for does not bring me here.
-
-
"It’s true I
told him — I said it as a joke —
-
‘I’m smart
enough to fly up through the air,’
-
And he, all
hankering and little sense,
-
-
115
"Begged me to show the art to him and, just
-
Because I
didn’t make him Daedalus,
-
Had his
church-father put me to the stake.
-
-
"But here to
the tenth and final pocket
-
For the
alchemy I practiced in the world
-
120
Minos who can never err condemned me."
-
-
And I said to
the poet, "Now were there ever
-
People so
flighty as the Sienese?
-
Certainly the
French cannot come close!"
-
-
At this the
other leper, who had heard me,
-
125
Jibed in reply, "There are, of course, exceptions:
-
Stricca, who
knew so much of frugal spending,
-
-
"And Niccolт,
the one who first discovered
-
Costly uses
for the clove in those gardens
-
Wherein such
seeds can rapidly take root,
-
-
130
"And Caccia d’Asciano’s associates,
-
With whom he
squandered vineyards and vast lands,
-
While
Abbagliato flashed his brilliant wit!
-
-
"But should
you want to know who seconds you
-
Against the
Sienese, direct your eyes to me
-
135
So that my face can give you a clear answer:
-
-
"See, I am the
shade of Capocchio
-
Who falsified
base metals through alchemy
-
And, if I read
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