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
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
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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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
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ISBN: 978-0-141-98023-2