The Portable Dante by Dante Alighieri
142. Euclid was a Greek mathematician (ca. 300 B.C.) who wrote a treatise on geometry that was the first codification and exposition of mathematical principles. Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. The universe, according to the Ptolemaic system (which was accepted by the Middle Ages), so named although he did not invent it, had the earth as its fixed center encircled by nine spheres.
143. Hippocrates was a Greek physician (ca. 460-377 B.C.) who founded the medical profession and introduced the scientific art of healing. Galen was a celebrated physician (ca. A.D. 130-ca. 200) who practiced his art in Greece, Egypt, and Rome. Avicenna (or Ibn-Sina) was an Arabian philosopher and physician (A.D. 980-1037) who was a prolific writer.
144. Ibn-Rushd, called Averroës (ca. A.D. 1126-ca. 1198), was a celebrated Arabian scholar born in Spain. He was widely known in the Middle Ages for his commentary on Aristotle, which served as the basis for the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.
CANTO V
FROM LIMBO Virgil leads his ward down to the threshold of the Second Circle of Hell, where for the first time he will see the damned in Hell being punished for their sins. There, barring their way, is the hideous figure of Minòs, the bestial judge of Dante’s underworld; but after strong words from Virgil, the poets are allowed to pass into the dark space of this circle, where can be heard the wailing voices of the Lustful, whose punishment consists in being forever whirled about in a dark, stormy wind. After seeing a thousand or more famous lovers — including Semiramis, Dido, Helen, Achilles, and Paris — the Pilgrim asks to speak to two figures he sees together. They are Francesca da Rimini and her lover, Paolo, and the scene in which they appear is probably the most famous episode of the Inferno. At the end of the scene, the Pilgrim, who has been overcome by pity for the lovers, faints to the ground.
This way I went, descending from the first into the second round, that holds less space but much more pain—stinging the soul to wailing.
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There stands Minòs grotesquely, and he snarls, examining the guilty at the entrance; he judges and dispatches, tail in coils.
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By this I mean that when the evil soul appears before him, it confesses all, and he, who is the expert judge of sins,
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knows to what place in Hell the soul belongs; the times he wraps his tail around himself tell just how far the sinner must go down.
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4. Minòs was the son of Zeus and Europa. As king of Crete he was revered for his wisdom and judicial gifts. For these qualities he became chief magistrate of the underworld in classical literature. (See Virgil, Aeneid VI, 432-433.) Although Dante did not alter Minòs’ official function, he transformed him into a demonic figure, both in his physical characteristics and in his bestial activity.
The damned keep crowding up in front of him: they pass along to judgment one by one; they speak, they hear, and then are hurled below.
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“O you who come to the place where pain is host, ” Minos spoke out when he caught sight of me, putting aside the duties of his office,
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“be careful how you enter and whom you trust it’s easy to get in, but don’t be fooled!” And my guide said to him: “Why keep on shouting?
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Do not attempt to stop his fated journey; it is so willed there where the power is for what is willed; that’s all you need to know. ”
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And now the notes of anguish start to play upon my ears; and now I find myself where sounds on sounds of weeping pound at me.
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I came to a place where no light shone at all, bellowing like the sea racked by a tempest, when warring winds attack it from both sides.
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The infernal storm, eternal in its rage, sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast: it whirls them, lashing them with punishment.
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When they are swept back past their place of judgment, then come the shrieks, laments, and anguished cries; there they blaspheme God’s almighty power.
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I learned that to this place of punishment all those who sin in lust have been condemned, those who make reason slave to appetite;
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31-32. The contrapasso or punishment suggests that lust (the “infernal storm” is pursued without the light of reason (in the darkness).
and as the wings of starlings in the winter bear them along in wide-spread, crowded flocks, so does that wind propel the evil spirits:
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now here, then there, and up and down, it drives them with never any hope to comfort them— hope not of rest but even of suffering less.
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And just like cranes in flight, chanting their lays, stretching an endless line in their formation, I saw approaching, crying their laments,
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spirits carried along by the battling winds. And so I asked, “Teacher, tell me, what souls are these punished in the sweep of the black wind?”
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“The first of those whose story you should know, ” my master wasted no time answering, “was empress over lands of many tongues;
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her vicious tastes had so corrupted her she licensed every form of lust with laws to cleanse the stain of scandal she had spread;
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she is Semiramis, who, legend says, was Ninus’ wife as well as his successor; she governed all the land the Sultan rules.
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The next is she who killed herself for love and broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus; and there is Cleopatra, who loved men’s lusting.
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See Helen there, the root of evil woe lasting long years, and see the great Achilles, who lost his life to love, in final combat;
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64. Helen of Troy.
65-66. Enticed by the beauty of Polyxena, a daughter of the Trojan king, Achilles desired her to be his wife, but Hecuba, Polyxena’s mother, arranged a counterplot with Paris so that when Achilles entered the temple for his presumed marriage, he was treacherously slain by Paris.
see Paris, Tristan”—then, more than a thousand he pointed out to me, and named them all, those shades whom love cut off from life on earth.
69
After I heard my teacher call the names of all these knights and ladies of ancient times, pity confused my senses, and I was dazed.
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I began: “Poet, I would like, with all my heart, to speak to those two there who move together and seem to be so light upon the winds. ”
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And he: “You’ll see when they are closer to us; if you entreat them by that love of theirs that carries them along, they’ll come to you. ”
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When the winds bent their course in our direction I raised my voice to them, “O wearied souls, come speak with us if it be not forbidden. ”
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As doves, called by desire to return to their sweet nest, with wings raised high and poised, float downward through the air, guided by will,
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so these two left the flock where Dido is and came toward us through the malignant air, such was the tender power of my call.
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67. Paris was the son of Priam, king of Troy, whose abduction of Helen ignited the Trojan War. Tristan was the central figure of numerous medieval French, German, and Italian romances. Sent as a messenger by his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, to obtain Isolt for him in marriage, Tristan became enamored of her, and she of him. After Isolt’s marriage to Mark, the lovers continued their love affair, and in order to maintain its secrecy they necessarily employed many deceits and ruses. According to one version, Mark, increasingly suspicious of their attachment, finally discovered them together and ended the incestuous relationship by mortally wounding Tristan with a lance.
74. The two are Francesca, daughter of Guido Vecchio da Polenta, lord of Ravenna; and Paolo Malatesta, third son of Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini. Around 1275 the aristocratic Francesca was
“O living creature, gracious and so kind, who makes your way here through this dingy air to visit us who stained the world with blood,
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if we could claim as friend the King of Kings, we would beseech him that he grant you peace, you who show pity for our atrocious plight.
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Whatever pleases you to hear or speak we will hear and we will speak about with you as long as the wind, here where we are, is silent.
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The place where I was born lies on the shore where the river Po with its attendant streams descends to seek its final resting place.
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Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart, seized this one for the beauty of my body, torn from me. (How it happened still offends me!)
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Love, that excuses no one loved from loving, seized me so strongly with delight in him that, as you see, he never leaves my side.
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Love led us straight to sudden death together. Caïna awaits the one who quenched our lives. ” These were the words that came from them to us.
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When those offended souls had told their story, I bowed my head and kept it bowed until the poet said, “What are you thinking of?”
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When finally I spoke, I sighed, “Alas, all those sweet thoughts, and oh, how much desiring brought these two down into this agony. ”
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And then I turned to them and tried to speak; I said, “Francesca, the torment that you suffer brings painful tears of pity to my eyes.
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107. Caïna was one of the four divisions of Cocytus, the lower part of Hell, wherein those souls who treacherously betrayed their kin are tormented.
But tell me, in that time of your sweet sighing how, and by what signs, did love allow you to recognize your dubious desires?”
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And she to me: “There is no greater pain than to remember, in our present grief,. past happiness (as well your teacher knows)!
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But if your great desire is to learn the very root of such a love as ours, I shall tell you, but in words of flowing tears.
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One day we read, to pass the time away, of Lancelot, of how he fell in love; we were alone, innocent of suspicion.
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Time and again our eyes were brought together by the book we read; our faces flushed and paled. To the moment of one line alone we yielded:
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it was when we read about those longed-for lips now being kissed by such a famous lover, that this one (who shall never leave my side)
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then kissed my mouth, and trembled as he did. Our Galehot was that book and he who wrote it. That day we read no further. ” And all the while
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the one of the two spirits spoke these words, the other wept, in such a way that pity blurred my senses; I swooned as though to die,
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and fell to Hell’s floor as a body, dead, falls.
CANTO VI
ON RECOVERING consciousness the Pilgrim finds himself with Virgil in the Third Circle, where the Gluttons are punished. These shades are mired in filthy muck and are eternally battered by cold and dirty hail, rain, and snow. Soon the travelers come upon Cerberus, the three-headed, doglike beast who guards the Gluttons, but Virgil pacifies him with fistfuls of slime and the two poets pass on. One of the shades recognizes Dante the Pilgrim and hails him. It is Ciacco, a Florentine who, before they leave, makes a prophecy concerning the political future of Florence. As the poets move away, the Pilgrim questions Virgil about the Last Judgment and other matters until the two arrive at the next circle.
Regaining now my senses, which had fainted at the sight of these two who were kinsmen lovers, a piteous sight confusing me to tears,
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new suffering and new sinners suffering appeared to me, no matter where I moved or turned my eyes, no matter where I gazed.
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I am in the third circle, in the round of rain eternal, cursed, cold, and falling heavy, unchanging beat, unchanging quality.
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Thick hail and dirty water mixed with snow come down in torrents through the murky air, and the earth is stinking from this soaking rain.
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Cerberus, a ruthless and fantastic beast, with all three throats howls out his doglike sounds above the drowning sinners of this place.
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His eyes are red, his beard is slobbered black, his belly swollen, and he has claws for hands; he rips the spirits, flays and mangles them.
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Under the rain they howl like dogs, lying now on one side with the other as a screen, now on the other turning, these wretched sinners.
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13-22. In classical mythology Cerberus is a fierce three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the Underworld, permitting admittance to all and escape to none. He is the prototype of the Gluttons, with his three howling, voracious throats that gulp down huge handfuls of muck. He has become Appetite and as such he flays and mangles the spirits who reduced their lives to a satisfaction of appetite. With his three heads, he appears to be a prefiguration of Lucifer and thus another infernal distortion of the Trinity.
When the slimy Cerberus caught sight of us, he opened up his mouths and showed his fangs; his body was one mass of twitching muscles.
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My master stooped and, spreading wide his fingers, he grabbed up heaping fistfuls of the mud and flung it down into those greedy gullets.
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As a howling cur, hungering to get fed, quiets down with the first mouthful of his food, busy with eating, wrestling with that alone,
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so it was with all three filthy heads of the demon Cerberus, used to barking thunder on these dead souls, who wished that they were deaf.
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We walked across this marsh of shades beaten down by the heavy rain, our feet pressing on their emptiness that looked like human form.
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Each sinner there was stretched out on the ground except for one who quickly sat up straight, the moment that he saw us pass him by.
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“O you there being led through this inferno, ” he said, “try to remember who I am, for you had life before I gave up mine. ”
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I said: “The pain you suffer here perhaps disfigures you beyond all recognition: I can’t remember seeing you before.
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But tell me who you are, assigned to grieve in this sad place, afflicted by such torture that—worse there well may be, but none more foul. ”
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“Your own city, ” he said, “so filled with envy its cup already overflows the brim, once held me in the brighter life above.
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36. The shades in Hell bear only the appearance of their corporeal forms, although they can be ripped and torn and otherwise suffer physical torture—just as here they are able to bear the Pilgrim’s weight. Yet they themselves evidently are airy shapes without weight (cf. Canto VIII, 27), which will, after the Day of Judgment, be possessed of their actual bodies once more (see Canto XIII, 103).
You citizens gave me the name of Ciacco; and for my sin of gluttony I am damned, as you can see, to rain that beats me weak.
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And my sad sunken soul is not alone, for all these sinners here share in my pain and in my sin. ” And that was his last word.
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“Ciacco, ” I said to him, “your grievous state weighs down on me, it makes me want to weep; but tell me what will happen, if you know,
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to the citizens of that divided state? And are there any honest men among them? And tell me,
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And he replied: “After much contention they will come to bloodshed; the rustic party will drive the other out by brutal means.
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Then it will come to pass, this side will fall within three suns, and the other rise to power with the help of one now listing toward both sides.
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52. The only Glutton whom the Pilgrim actually talks to is Ciacco, one of his Florentine contemporaries, whose true identity has never been determined. Several commentators believe him to be Ciacco dell’Anguillaia, a minor poet of the time and presumably the Ciacco of one of Boccaccio’s stories (Decameron IX, 8). However, more than a proper name, ciacco is a derogatory Italian word for “pig, ” or “hog, ” and is also an adjective, “filthy, ” or “of a swinish nature. ”
65-75. Ciacco’s political prophecy reveals the fact that the shades in Hell are able to see the future; they also know the past, but they know nothing of the present (see Canto X, 100-108). The Guelph party, having gained complete control over Florence by defeating the Ghibellines (1289), was divided into factions: the Whites (the “rustic party, ” 65), headed by the Cerchi family; and the Blacks (the “other, ” 66), led by the Donatis. These two groups finally came into direct conflict on May 1, 1300, which resulted in the expulsion of the Blacks from the city (1301). However, they returned in 1302 (“within three suns, ” 68, i. e., within three years), and with the help of Pope Boniface VIII, sent the Whites (including Dante) into exile. Boniface VIII, the “one now listing toward both sides” (69), for a time did not reveal his designs on Florence, but rather steered a wavering course between the two factions, planning to aid the ultimate victor.
For a long time they will keep their heads raised high, holding the others down with crushing weight, no matter how these weep or squirm for shame.