Circles of Hell

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Circles of Hell Page 5

by Dante


  And I am more a giant (to compare)

  than any giant measured to his arm.

  So now you’ll see how huge the whole must be,

  when viewed in fit proportion to that limb.

  If, once, he was as lovely as now vile,

  when first he raised his brow against his maker,

  then truly grief must all proceed from him.

  How great a wonder it now seemed to me

  to see three faces on a single head!

  The forward face was brilliant vermilion.

  The other two attached themselves to that

  along each shoulder on the central point,

  and joined together at the crest of hair.

  The rightward face was whitish, dirty yellow.

  The left in colour had the tint of those

  beyond the source from which the Nile first swells.

  Behind each face there issued two great vanes,

  all six proportioned to a fowl like this.

  I never saw such size in ocean sails.

  Not feathered as a bird’s wings are, bat-like

  and leathery, each fanned away the air,

  so three unchanging winds moved out from him,

  Cocytus being frozen hard by these.

  He wept from all six eyes. And down each chin

  both tears and bloody slobber slowly ran.

  In every mouth he mangled with his teeth

  (as flax combs do) a single sinning soul,

  but brought this agony to three at once.

  Such biting, though, affects the soul in front

  as nothing to the scratching he received.

  His spine at times showed starkly, bare of skin.

  ‘That one up there, condemned to greater pain,

  is Judas Iscariot,’ my teacher said,

  ‘his head inside, his feet out, wriggling hard.

  The other two, their heads hung down below,

  are Brutus, dangling from the jet black snout

  (look how he writhes there, uttering not a word!),

  the other Cassius with his burly look.

  But night ascends once more. And now it’s time

  for us to quit this hole. We’ve seen it all.’

  As he desired, I clung around his neck.

  With purpose, he selected time and place

  and, when the wings had opened to the full,

  he took a handhold on the furry sides,

  and then, from tuft to tuft, he travelled down

  between the shaggy pelt and frozen crust.

  But then, arriving where the thigh bone turns

  (the hips extended to their widest there),

  my leader, with the utmost stress and strain,

  swivelled his head to where his shanks had been

  and clutched the pelt like someone on a climb,

  so now I thought: ‘We’re heading back to Hell.’

  ‘Take care,’ my teacher said. ‘By steps like these,’

  breathless and panting, seemingly all-in,

  ‘we need to take our leave of so much ill.’

  Then through a fissure in that rock he passed

  and set me down to perch there on its rim.

  After, he stretched his careful stride towards me.

  Raising my eyes, I thought that I should see

  Lucifer where I, just now, had left him,

  but saw instead his legs held upwards there.

  If I was struggling then to understand,

  let other dimwits think how they’d have failed

  to see what point it was that I now passed.

  ‘Up on your feet!’ my teacher ordered me.

  ‘The way is long, the road is cruelly hard.

  The sun is at the morning bell already.’

  This was no stroll, where now we had arrived,

  through any palace but a natural cave.

  The ground beneath was rough, the light was weak.

  ‘Before my roots are torn from this abyss,

  sir,’ I said, upright, ‘to untangle me

  from error, say a little more of this.

  Where is the ice? And why is that one there

  fixed upside down? How is it that the sun

  progressed so rapidly from evening on to day?’

  And he in answer: ‘You suppose you’re still

  on that side of the centre where I gripped

  that wormrot’s coat that pierces all the world.

  While I was still descending, you were there.

  But once I turned, you crossed, with me, the point

  to which from every part all weight drags down.

  So you stand here beneath the hemisphere

  that now is covered wholly with dry land,

  under the highest point at which there died

  the one man sinless in his birth and life.

  Your feet are set upon a little sphere

  that forms the other aspect of Giudecca.

  It’s morning here. It’s evening over there.

  The thing that made a ladder of his hair

  is still as fixed as he has always been.

  Falling from Heaven, when he reached this side,

  the lands that then spread out to southern parts

  in fear of him took on a veil of sea.

  These reached our hemisphere. Whatever now

  is visible to us – in flight perhaps from him –

  took refuge here and left an empty space.’

  There is a place (as distant from Beelzebub

  as his own tomb extends in breadth)

  known not by sight but rather by the sound

  of waters falling in a rivulet

  eroding, by the winding course it takes (which is

  not very steep), an opening in that rock.

  So now we entered on that hidden path,

  my lord and I, to move once more towards

  a shining world. We did not care to rest.

  We climbed, he going first and I behind,

  until through some small aperture I saw

  the lovely things the skies above us bear.

  Now we came out, and once more saw the stars.

  BOCCACCIO · Mrs Rosie and the Priest

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS · As kingfishers catch fire

  The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue

  THOMAS DE QUINCEY · On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE · Aphorisms on Love and Hate

  JOHN RUSKIN · Traffic

  PU SONGLING · Wailing Ghosts

  JONATHAN SWIFT · A Modest Proposal

  Three Tang Dynasty Poets

  WALT WHITMAN · On the Beach at Night Alone

  KENKŌ · A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees

  BALTASAR GRACIÁN · How to Use Your Enemies

  JOHN KEATS · The Eve of St Agnes

  THOMAS HARDY · Woman much missed

  GUY DE MAUPASSANT · Femme Fatale

  MARCO POLO · Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls

  SUETONIUS · Caligula

  APOLLONIUS OF RHODES · Jason and Medea

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON · Olalla

  KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS · The Communist Manifesto

  PETRONIUS · Trimalchio’s Feast

  JOHANN PETER HEBEL · How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher’s Dog

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN · The Tinder Box

  RUDYARD KIPLING · The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows

  DANTE · Circles of Hell

  HENRY MAYHEW · Of Street Piemen

  HAFEZ · The nightingales are drunk

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER · The Wife of Bath

  MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE · How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing

  THOMAS NASHE · The Terrors of the Night

  EDGAR ALLAN POE · The Tell-Tale Heart

  MARY KINGSLEY · A Hippo Banquet

  JANE AUSTEN · The Beautifull Cassandra

  ANTON CHEKHOV · Gooseberries
r />   SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE · Well, they are gone, and here must I remain

  JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE · Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings

  CHARLES DICKENS · The Great Winglebury Duel

  HERMAN MELVILLE · The Maldive Shark

  ELIZABETH GASKELL · The Old Nurse’s Story

  NIKOLAY LESKOV · The Steel Flea

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC · The Atheist’s Mass

  CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN · The Yellow Wall-Paper

  C.P. CAVAFY · Remember, Body …

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY · The Meek One

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT · A Simple Heart

  NIKOLAI GOGOL · The Nose

  SAMUEL PEPYS · The Great Fire of London

  EDITH WHARTON · The Reckoning

  HENRY JAMES · The Figure in the Carpet

  WILFRED OWEN · Anthem For Doomed Youth

  WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART · My Dearest Father

  PLATO · Socrates’ Defence

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI · Goblin Market

  Sindbad the Sailor

  SOPHOCLES · Antigone

  RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA · The Life of a Stupid Man

  LEO TOLSTOY · How Much Land Does A Man Need?

  GIORGIO VASARI · Leonardo da Vinci

  OSCAR WILDE · Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime

  SHEN FU · The Old Man of the Moon

  AESOP · The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon

  MATSUO BASHŌ · Lips too Chilled

  EMILY BRONTË · The Night is Darkening Round Me

  JOSEPH CONRAD · To-morrow

  RICHARD HAKLUYT · The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe

  KATE CHOPIN · A Pair of Silk Stockings

  CHARLES DARWIN · It was snowing butterflies

  BROTHERS GRIMM · The Robber Bridegroom

  CATULLUS · I Hate and I Love

  HOMER · Circe and the Cyclops

  D. H. LAWRENCE · Il Duro

  KATHERINE MANSFIELD · Miss Brill

  OVID · The Fall of Icarus

  SAPPHO · Come Close

  IVAN TURGENEV · Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands

  VIRGIL · O Cruel Alexis

  H. G. WELLS · A Slip under the Microscope

  HERODOTUS · The Madness of Cambyses

  Speaking of Siva

  The Dhammapada

  LITTLEBLACKCLASSICS.COM

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  This selection published in Penguin Classics 2015

  Translation copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2006

  The moral right of the translator has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-141-98023-2

 

 

 


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