The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Dante Alighieri

  This one appeared to me as lord and master, Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain For which the Pisans cannot Lucca see.

  With sleuth-hounds gaunt, and eager, and well trained, Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfranchi3 He had sent out before him to the front.

  After brief course seemed unto me forespentdn The father and the sons, and with sharp tushesdo It seemed to me I saw their flanks ripped open.

  When I before the morrow was awake, Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons Who with me were, and asking after bread.4

  Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not, Thinking of what my heart foreboded me, And weep‘st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at?5

  They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh At which our food used to be brought to us, And through his dream was each one apprehensive;

  And I heard locking up the under door Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word I gazed into the faces of my sons.

  I wept not, I within so turned to stone; They wept; and darling little Anselm mine6 Said: ‘Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?’

  Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made. All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter, Until another sun rose on the world.

  As now a little glimmer made its way Into the dolorousdp prison, and I saw Upon four faces my own very aspect,

  Both of my hands in agony I bit; And, thinking that I did it from desire Of eating, on a sudden they uprose,

  And said they: ‘Father, much less pain ’twill give us If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.‘

  I calmed me then, not to make them more sad. That day we all were silent, and the next. Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?

  When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo Threw himself down outstretched before my feet, Saying, ‘My father, why dost thou not help me?’7

  And there he died; and, as thou seest me, I saw the three fall one by one, between The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me,

  Already blind, to groping over each, And three days called them after they were dead; Then hunger did what sorrow could not do.“8

  When he had said this, with his eyes distorted, The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth, Which, as a dog‘s, upon the bone were strong.

  Ah! Pisa, 9 thou opprobriumdq of the people Of the fair land there where the Sì doth sound,10 Since slow to punish thee thy neighbors are,

  Let the Capraia and Gorgona11 move, And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno, That every person in thee it may drown!

  For if Count Ugolino had the fame Of having in thy castles thee betrayed, Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons.

  Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes!12 Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata,13 And the other two my song doth name above!

  We passed still farther onward, where the ice Another people ruggedly enswathes, Not downward turned, but all of them reversed.

  Weeping itself there does not let them weep, And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes Turns itself inward to increase the anguish;

  Because the earliest tears a cluster form, And, in the manner of a crystal visor, Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full.14

  And notwithstanding that, as in a callus, Because of cold all sensibility Its station had abandoned in my face,

  Still it appeared to me I felt some wind; Whence I: “My Master, who sets this in motion? Is not below here every vapor quenched?”

  Whence he to me: “Full soon shalt thou be where Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this, Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast.”15

  And one of the wretches of the frozen crust Cried out to us: “O souls so merciless That the last post is given unto you,

  Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart A little, e‘er the weeping recongeal.“

  Whence I to him: “If thou wouldst have me help thee, Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not, May I go to the bottom of the ice.”16

  Then he replied: “I am Friar Alberigo; He am I of the fruit of the bad garden, Who here a date am getting for my fig.”17

  “O,” said I to him, “Now art thou, too, dead?” And he to me: “How may my body fare Up in the world, no knowledge I possess.

  Such an advantage has this Ptolomæa, That oftentimes the soul descendeth here Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it.

  And, that thou mayest more willingly remove From off my countenance these glassy tears, Know that as soon as any soul betrays

  As I have done, his body by a demon Is taken from him,18 who thereafter rules it, Until his time has wholly been revolved.

  Itself down rushes into such a cistern; And still perchance above appears the body Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me.

  This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down; It is Ser Branca d‘Oria, and many years Have passed away since he was thus locked up.“

  “I think,” said I to him, “thou dost deceive me; For Branca d‘Oria is not dead as yet, And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes.”

  “In moat above,” said he, “of Malebranche, There where is boiling the tenacious pitch, As yet had Michael Zanche not arrived,

  When this one left a devil in his stead In his own body and one near of kin, Who made together with him the betrayal.19

  But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith, Open mine eyes“;—and open them I did not, And to be rude to him was courtesy.20

  Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance With every virtue, full of every vice! Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world?

  For with the vilest spirit of Romagna 21 I found of you one such, who for his deeds In soul already in Cocytus bathes,

  And still above in body seems alive!

  CANTO XXXIV

  VEXILLA Regis prodeunt Infemi1 Towards us; therefore look in front of thee,“ My Master said, ”If thou discernest him.“

  As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when Our hemisphere is darkening into night, Appears far off a mill the wind is turning,2

  Methought that such a building then I saw; And, for the wind, I drew myself behind My Guide, because there was no other shelter.3

  Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it, There where the shades were wholly covered up,4 And glimmered through like unto straws in glass.

  Some prone are lying, others stand erect, This with the head, and that one with the soles; Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts.

  When in advance so far we had proceeded, That it my Master pleased to show to me The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,5

  He from before me moved and made me stop, Saying: “Behold Dis,6 and behold the place Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself.”

  How frozen I became and powerless then, Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not, Because all language would be insufficient.

  I did not die, and I alive remained not;7 Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit, What I became, being of both deprived.

  The Emperor of the kingdom dolorousdr From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice; And better with a giant I compare8

  Than do the giants with those arms of his; Consider now how great must be that whole, Which unto such a part conforms itself.

  Were he as fair once, as he now is foul, And lifted up his brow against his Maker, Well may proceed from him all tribulation.

  O, what a marvel it appeared to me, When I beheld three faces on his head! The one in front, and that vermilion was;

  Two were the others, that were joined with this Above the middle part of either shoulder, And they were joined together at the crest;

  And the right-hand one seemed ‘twixt white and yellow; The left was such to look upon as those Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.9

  Underneath each came forth two mighty wings, Such as befitting were so great a bird; Sails of the sea I never saw so large.

  No feathers had they, but as of a bat Their fashion was; and he was waving them,
So that three winds proceeded forth there-from.10

  Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed. With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.

  At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching A sinner, in the manner of a brake, So that he three of them tormented thus.

  To him in front the biting was as naught Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine Utterly stripped of all the skin remained.

  “That soul up there which has the greatest pain,” The Master said, “is Judas Iscariot; With head inside, he plies his legs without.

  Canto XXXIV Lucifer, King of Hell

  Of the two others, who head downward are, The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus; See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.

  And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius.11I But night is reascending, and ‘tis time 12 That we depart, for we have seen the whole.“

  As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck, And he the vantage seized of time and place, And when the wings were opened wide apart,

  He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides; From fell to fell descended downward then Between the thick hair and the frozen crust.

  When we were come to where the thigh revolves Exactly on the thickness of the haunch, The Guide, with labor and with hard-drawn breath,

  Turned round his head where he had had his legs, 13 And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts, So that to Hell I thought we were returning.

  “Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,” The Master said, panting as one fatigued, “Must we perforce depart from so much evil.”

  Then through the opening of a rock he issued, And down upon the margin seated me; Then tow‘rds me he outstretched his wary step.

  I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see Lucifer in the same way I had left him; And I beheld him upward hold his legs.

  And if I then became disquieted, Let stolid people think who do not see What the point is beyond which I had passed.14

  “Rise up,” the Master said, “upon thy feet; The way is long, and difficult the road, And now the sun to middle-tierce returns.”15

  It was not any palace corridor There where we were, but dungeon natural, With floor uneven and unease of light.

  “Ere from the abyss I tear myself away, My Master,” said I when I had arisen, “To draw me from an error speak a little;

  Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed Thus upside down? and how in such short time From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?“16

  And he to me: “Thou still imaginest Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped The hair of the fellds worm,17 who mines the world.

  That side thou wast, so long as I descended; When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point To which things heavy draw from every side,

  And now beneath the hemisphere, art come Opposite that which overhangs the vast Dry-land, and ‘neath whose copedt was put to death

  The Mandu who without sin was born and lived. Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere Which makes the other face of the Judecca.18

  Here it is morn when it is evening there; And he who with his hair a stairway made us Still fixed remaineth as he was before.

  Upon this side he fell down out of heaven; And all the land, that whilomdv here emerged, For fear of him made of the sea a veil,

  And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure To flee from him, what on this side appears Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled.“19

  A place there is below, from Beelzebub20 As far receding as the tomb extends, Which not by sight is known, but by the sound

  Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed With course that winds about and slightly falls.

  The Guide and I into that hidden road Now entered,21 to return to the bright world; And without care of having any rest

  We mounted up, he first and I the second, Till I beheld through a round aperture Some of those beauteous things which Heaven doth bear;

  Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.22

  Endnotes

  CANTO I

  1 (p. 3) Midway: According to biblical tradition (Psalms 90:10), man’s lifespan covers “three score and ten,” or seventy years. Born in 1265, Dante would be midway in his life’s journey in 1300, also the year of a papal jubilee proclaimed by Dante’s nemesis, Pope Boniface VIII. There is general agreement that the actual day of Dante’s descent into Hell is Friday, March 25. In 1300, March 25 was Good Friday; March 25 was also considered the birth date of Adam, the day of Christ’s Incarnation, and therefore also the day of the Annunciation.

  2 (p. 3) the journey of our life: Medieval Christians saw life as a journey or a pilgrimage, the final goal of which was God. The fact that Dante the Poet refers to this journey as that of “our life” rather than “my life” invites the reader to consider Dante the Pilgrim as Everyman.

  3 (p. 3) I found myself: Dante’s discovery that his life is lost to sin comes as a sudden shock. By mixing first-person plural (“our life” in 1. 1) with a first-person singular (“I found myself‘), Dante the Poet links the personal journey of Dante the Pilgrim with that taken by all of humanity.

  4 (p. 3) of the good: In spite of the fear that struck Dante the Pilgrim upon entering the dark wood and the bitterness of remembering this experience, Dante the Poet feels compelled to describe the good he found there—God’s mercy in allowing him to experience the vision of salvation through his journey.

  5 (p. 3) in my heart’s lake: In Dante’s time, the ”lake“ of the heart, where blood gathered, was also considered to be the seat of the emotion of fear in the body.

  6 (p. 3) as he: This is the first of the hundreds of celebrated epic similes in The Divine Comedy. It is based on lines in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book I, where the Poet describes an exhausted Aeneas landing on the coast of Carthage after a shipwreck. In canto II: 32, Dante will protest to his guide Virgil that he is neither Aeneas nor Saint Paul (both of whom supposedly visited the other world), but, in fact, Dante the Poet presents Dante the Pilgrim as following in the tracks of both the classical hero and the Christian apostle.

  7 (p. 4) the firm foot: Literally, Dante refers to the left, or bottom, foot being employed to anchor the Pilgrim on the hill as he advances with the right foot. According to Christian tradition, the left foot was identified with the will and the right foot with the intellect. Man was defined as homo claudus (limping man), his wounds being the result of Adam’s original sin.

  8 (p. 4) A panther: Dante calls this first of three threatening beasts a lonza in Italian, which Longfellow translates as ”panther“ but which most recent translators render as ”leopard.“ According to medieval lore, the lonza was the fruit of crossbreeding between a lion and a leopard. No more vexing textual problem appears in the Inferno than the identification of the three beasts that confront Dante the Pilgrim. Early Dante commentators interpreted the three animals that appear—the spotted panther/leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf—as representing three of the seven deadly sins (respectively lust, pride, and avarice). Others link the beasts to envy, pride, and avarice. Still others associate the three beasts with qualities that Virgil, when outlining the system of Hell’s punishment of sins, describes in canto XI: 81—82: Incontinence, Malice, and insane Bestiality. What is clear in all discussions of these puzzling animals is that the three beasts represent three different categories of human sin, and that they all threaten to terminate the journey of Dante the Pilgrim.

  9 (p. 4) those beauteous things: It was thought that when God (described as ”the Love Divine“ in 1. 39) created the universe and the heavenly bodies (”those beauteous things“), the sun was in conjunction with the constellation of Aries. This supposedly happened on March 25, the same day Dante and his contemporaries believed the Annunciation, the Incarnation, and the Crucifixion occurred.

  10 (p. 5) E’en such made me that beast withouten peace: Dante’s second simile compares his stomach-wrenching fear upon seeing the beasts to
the feeling experienced by a merchant or gambler who risks a profit or a bet and in an instant realizes that he has lost his chance of gain.

  11 (p.5 ”Have pity on me“. In the original Italian, Dante the Pilgrim’s first spoken words are in Latin, Miserere di me.

  12 (p. 5) ”Not man; man once I was“ :The shade is of Virgil, the Roman epic poet. He was born in 70 B.C. in the era of Julius Caesar (referred to as ”Sub Julio“ in 1. 70) and died in 19 B.C during the reign of Augustus Caesar. In Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid, the Poet describes the foundation of the Roman Empire by refugees from Troy, and the work contains a famous journey to the underworld of the classical Hell by its protagonist, Aeneas. While many commentators have interpreted Virgil as the symbol, or the allegory, of human reason, Dante presents his guide as the shade of a specific historic individual and not an abstraction. He is a real person born near the northern Italian town of Mantua.

  13 (p.5)”art thou that Virgilius“: Dante chooses Virgil (or, in Latin, Publius Vergilius Maro) as his guide through Hell for a variety of important reasons. As author of the Aeneid, he too created a literary figure who visits Hell. Virgil thus knows the way. Secondly, he was both a poet and an Italian poet: Dante is not above considerations of Italian patriotism, and he certainly believed that a great poet (particularly a classical poet) represented one of humanity’s highest repositories of learning. Christians interpreted Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue incorrectly as predicting the birth of Christ, and because of this, Virgil represents for Dante the perfect mediator between the classical world before the arrival of Christ and the postclassical, Christian era in which he lived. Finally, in the Middle Ages, Virgil was also considered something of a necromancer, or magician, and while he guides Dante the Pilgrim through Hell, Virgil will need all of the superhuman powers he can summon up. No stranger to the sin of pride, Dante the Poet could imagine no other individual but the greatest epic poet of Roman antiquity as the man he deserved as the guide for his alter ego, Dante the Pilgrim.

  14 (p. 5) The beautiful style: While some of Dante’s more serious poems composed before The Divine Comedy may well reflect the high-tragic style of Virgil’s epic poetry, in general Dante’s poetic style is diametrically opposed to the constant drive in Virgil’s work to maintain a ”high“ style. Dante’s epic style is original precisely because he mixes levels of style, both the noble and tragic, as well as the humble and comic.