by Dante
where people are in wrangles such as this.
148
For the wish to hear such things is base.’
OUTLINE: INFERNO XXXI
1–6
simile: Virgil’s tongue, Achilles’ lance
7–18
leaving Malebolge: the horn in the gloom (Roland)
19–21
Satan’s “walled city”: Dante’s misperception
22–33
Virgil: soon you will see the cause of your error; let me tell you now: those are giants, not towers
34–39
simile: lifting mist
40–45
simile: Monteriggione
46–48
the first giant (Nimrod)
49–57
digression: nature’s benevolent cessation
58–66
Nimrod’s bulk, face to belly
67–69
Nimrod’s words
70–75
Virgil’s response: blow your horn
76–81
Virgil: Nimrod and the confusion of tongues
82–90
Ephialtes in chains
91–96
Virgil: Ephialtes and the assault on Olympus
97–99
Dante: and where is Briareus?
100–105
Virgil: unbound Antaeus is next; Briareus further on
106–111
Ephialtes shakes with rage; Dante’s fear
112–114
arrival before Antaeus
115–129
Virgil’s captatio of Antaeus: his prowess; do not make us proceed to Tityus or Typhon
130–135
Antaeus holding Virgil holding Dante
136–140
simile: the Garisenda tower of Bologna
141–144
Dante, fearful but safe, arrives on floor of hell
145
comparison: Antaeus as raised mast of ship
INFERNO XXXI
The same tongue that had stung me →
so that both my cheeks turned red,
3
had also brought my cure,
just as the spear of Achilles and his father—
so I have heard it told—would be the cause
6
first of a painful, then a welcome, gift.
We turned our backs upon that dismal valley, →
first climbing up the bank that circles it,
9
then crossing over, while speaking not a word.
Here it was less than night and less than day—
I could not see too far ahead.
12
But I heard a horn-blast that would have made
the loudest thunderclap seem faint.
To find its source I turned my eyes
15
back to the place from which the din had come.
After the woeful rout when Charlemagne →
had lost his holy band of knights,
18
Roland did not sound so terrible a blast.
I had not looked that way for long →
when I saw what seemed a range of lofty towers,
21
and I said: ‘Master, tell me, what city is this?’
And he to me: ‘Because you try to pierce
the darkness from too far away,
24
it follows that you err in your perception.
‘When you are nearer, you will understand
how much your eyesight is deceived by distance.
27
Therefore, push yourself a little harder.’
Then with affection he took me by the hand →
and said: ‘Before we travel farther,
30
and so the fact may seem to you less strange,
‘you should be told: these are not towers,
but giants and, from the navel down,
33
each stands behind the bank that rings the pit.’
As, when the mist is lifting, →
little by little we discern things
36
hidden in the air made thick by fog,
so, when my eyes saw through the heavy dark
and I got nearer to the brink,
39
error left me and fear came in its place.
For, as all around her ring of walls →
Monteriggioni is crowned with towers,
42
so at the cliff-edge that surrounds the pit
loomed up like towers half the body bulk
of horrifying giants, those whom Jove
45
still threatens from the heavens when he thunders.
Now I could discern the face of one,
his chest and shoulders, a portion of his paunch,
48
and, hanging at his sides, his arms.
Surely nature did well when she renounced →
the craft of making creatures such as these,
51
depriving Mars of such practitioners.
If she does not repent her elephants
and whales, when one reviews the matter closely
54
she will be found more cautious and more just.
For when the power of thought
is coupled with ill will and naked force
57
there is no refuge from it for mankind.
His face appeared to me as long and broad →
as is, in Rome, the pine cone at St. Peter’s,
60
his other parts as large in like degree,
so that the bank, which hid him like an apron
from his middle downwards, still showed
63
so much of him above that quite in vain
three Frieslanders might boast of having reached
his hair. For I saw thirty spans of him
66
beneath the place where men make fast their cloaks.
‘Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi,’ →
the savage mouth, for which no sweeter
69
psalms were fit, began to shout. →
And, in response, my leader: ‘You muddled soul, →
stick to your horn! Vent yourself with that
72
when rage or other passion takes you.
‘Search at your neck, you creature of confusion,
and you will find the rope that holds the horn
75
aslant your mammoth chest.’
Then he to me: ‘He is his own accuser.
This is Nimrod, because of whose vile plan
78
the world no longer speaks a single tongue.
‘Let us leave him and not waste our speech,
for every language is to him as his
81
to others, and his is understood by none.’
Then, turning to our left, we continued
with our journey. A bowshot farther on
84
we found the next one, bigger and more savage. →
Now who had plied his craft to bind him so
I cannot say, but his right arm
87
was bound behind him, the other one in front,
by chains that from the neck down held him fixed.
They wound five times around his bulk
90
on the part of him that we could see.
‘This prideful spirit chose to test his strength →
against almighty Jove,’ my leader said,
93
‘and this is his reward.
‘He is Ephialtes. He joined the great assault
when giants put the gods in fear.
96
Those arms he brandished he can move no more.’
And I to him: ‘If it is allowed, →
I’d like to see with my own eyes
99
Briareus and his immeasurabl
e bulk.’
He replied: ‘It is Antaeus you shall see.
He is close by, he speaks, he is not fettered.
102
And he shall set us down into the very depth of sin.
‘The one you want to see is farther on,
in fetters also, shaped like this one here,
105
except that from his looks he seems more fierce.’
Never did mighty earthquake shake a tower
with such great speed and force
108
as Ephialtes shook himself at that. →
Then more than ever I was afraid of dying:
my fear alone would have sufficed to bring it on,
111
had I not noted how tightly he was bound.
Going farther on, we came upon Antaeus.
Without the added measure of his head, →
114
he stood a full five ells above the pit.
‘O you, who—in the fateful valley →
that made Scipio an heir to glory,
117
when Hannibal with all his men displayed their backs—
‘you, who took as prey a thousand lions,
and by whose strength, it seems some do believe,
120
had you been at the war on Heaven with your brethren,
‘the sons of earth would have prevailed—
pray set us down, do not disdain to do so,
123
upon Cocytus, shackled by the cold.
‘Don’t make us go to Tityus or Typhon.
This man can give what everyone here longs for. →
126
Therefore bend down and do not curl your lip.
‘He still can make you famous in the world,
because he lives, and hopes for years of living,
129
if Grace does not recall him sooner than his time.’
Thus spoke the master. The other was quick
to reach out with his hands—the mighty grip
132
once felt by Hercules—and seized my guide.
Virgil, when he felt himself secured, said:
‘Here, let me take hold of you!’
135
Then he made a single bundle of himself and me.
As when one sees the tower called Garisenda →
from underneath its leaning side, and then a cloud
138
passes over and it seems to lean the more,
thus did Antaeus seem to my fixed gaze
as I watched him bend—that was indeed a time
141
I wished that I had gone another road.
Even so, he set us gently on the bottom →
that swallows Lucifer with Judas.
Nor in stooping did he linger →
145
but, like a ship’s mast rising, so he rose.
OUTLINE: INFERNO XXXII
1–9
the poet’s disclaimer
10–12
second invocation of the poem
13–15
apostrophe of the denizens of all Cocytus
i. Caïna (kindred)
16–21
beneath the giants’ feet: a mysterious voice
22–24
Dante turns to gaze at frozen “lake”
25–30
simile: neither Danube nor Don ices so thickly
31–35
simile: frogs’ snouts out of water
36–39
the sinners’ teeth chatter, their heads tilted down
40–51
two intertwined sinners, glued together by tears
52–69
another (Camicione de’ Pazzi) informs Dante: the two are Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti; also here: Mordred, Focaccia, Sassol Mascheroni; Sassol’s relative (Carlino de’ Pazzi) coming soon
ii. Antenora (country or party)
70–78
moving toward the center, Dante kicks a head
79–84
Bocca’s complaint; Dante wants to converse
85–102
the nasty exchange between Dante and Bocca
103–108
Dante pulls his hair, Bocca still resists, only to be betrayed by Buoso da Duera
109–111
Dante: now I can name you above
112–123
Bocca informs on others for Dante to reveal
124–126
two in one hole, the one gnawing the other’s nape
127–132
similes: eating bread; Tydeus chewing head
133–139
Dante offers one of the sinners (Ugolino) a deal
INFERNO XXXII
If I had verses harsh enough and rasping →
as would befit this dismal hole
3
upon which all the other rocks weigh down,
more fully would I press out the juice
of my conception. But, since I lack them,
6
with misgiving do I bring myself to speak.
It is no enterprise undertaken lightly—
to describe the very bottom of the universe—
9
nor for a tongue that still cries ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy.’
But may those ladies who aided Amphion →
to build the walls of Thebes now aid my verse,
12
that the telling be no different from the fact.
O you misgotten rabble, worse than all the rest, →
who fill that place so hard to speak of,
15
better had you here been sheep or goats!
When we were down in that ditch’s darkness, →
well below the giant’s feet,
18
my gaze still drawn by the wall above us,
I heard a voice say: ‘Watch where you walk. →
Step so as not to tread upon our heads,
21
the heads of wretched, weary brothers.’
At that I turned to look about. →
Under my feet I saw a lake
24
so frozen that it seemed more glass than water.
Never in winter did the Austrian Danube →
nor the far-off Don, under its frigid sky,
27
cover their currents with so thick a veil
as I saw there. For had Tambernic fallen on it,
or Pietrapana, the ice would not
30
have creaked, not even at the edge.
And as frogs squat and croak, →
their snouts out of the water, in the season
33
when peasant women often dream of gleaning,
so shades, ashen with cold, were grieving, trapped
in ice up to the place the hue of shame appears,
36
their teeth a-clatter like the bills of storks.
Downturned were all their faces, their mouths →
gave witness to the cold, while from their eyes
39
came testimony of their woeful hearts.
I gazed around a while; then I looked down
and saw two shades so shackled to each other
42
their two heads’ hair made but a single skein.
‘Tell me, you with chests pressed close,’ I said,
‘who are you?’ They strained their necks,
45
and, when they had raised their faces,
their eyes, till then moist only to the rims, →
dripped tears down to their lips, and icy air
48
then froze those tears—and them to one another.
Clamp never gripped together board to board
so tight, at which such anger overcame them
51
they butted at each other like two rams.
And one of the others, who’d lost both ears
to the cold,
and kept his face averted, said:
54
‘Why do you reflect yourself so long in us? →
‘If you would like to know who these two are,
the valley out of which Bisenzio flows
57
belonged once to their father, Albert, and to them.
‘From a single womb they sprang, and though you seek
throughout Caïna, you will find no shade
60
more fit to be fixed in aspic,
‘not him whose breast and shadow were pierced
by a single blow from Arthur’s hand,
63
nor Focaccia, nor the one whose head so blocks
‘my view that I cannot see past him
and whose name was Sassol Mascheroni—
66
if you are Tuscan you know well who he was.
‘And, so you coax no further words from me,
know that I was Camiscion de’ Pazzi,
69
and I await Carlino for my exculpation.’
After that I saw a thousand faces purple →
with the cold, so that I shudder still—
72
and always will—when I come to a frozen ford.
Then, while we made our way toward the center, →
where all things that have weight converge,
75
and I was shivering in the eternal chill,
if it was will or fate or chance
I do not know, but, walking among the heads,
78
I struck my foot hard in the face of one.
Wailing, he cried out: ‘Why trample me? →
Unless you come to add to the revenge
81
for Montaperti, why pick on me?’
And I: ‘Master, would you wait for just a moment →
so that I may resolve a doubt about this person.
84