Dante’s The Divine Comedy – The Inferno

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2002

Copyright © 2000 by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a

division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally

published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.

Anchor Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:

Dante Aligheri, 1265–1321 [Inferno. English]

The Inferno / Dante Aligheri; translated by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander; introduction & notes by Robert Hollander.

p.  cm. ISBN 0-385-49697-4

Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Hollander, Robert. II. Hollander, Jean. III. Title.

PQ4315.2 .H65 2000 851’.1—dc21 00-034531

eISBN: 978-0-345-80310-8

Author photograph of Robert Hollander by Pryde Brown Cover painting: Hell and Fall of the Damned by Hieronymus Bosch

© Scala/Art Resource, NY Cover design by Mark Melnick

Book design by Pei Loi Koay Map design by Je�rey L. Ward

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Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Note on Using This eBook Note on the Translation Table of Abbreviations and List of Commentators Map of Dante’s Hell Introduction

The Inferno: English INFERNO I INFERNO II INFERNO III INFERNO IV INFERNO V INFERNO VI INFERNO VII INFERNO VIII INFERNO IX INFERNO X INFERNO XI INFERNO XII INFERNO XIII INFERNO XIV INFERNO XV INFERNO XVI INFERNO XVII INFERNO XVIII INFERNO XIX INFERNO XX

INFERNO XXI INFERNO XXII INFERNO XXIII INFERNO XXIV INFERNO XXV INFERNO XXVI INFERNO XXVII INFERNO XXVIII INFERNO XXIX INFERNO XXX INFERNO XXXI INFERNO XXXII INFERNO XXXIII INFERNO XXXIV

The Inferno: Italian INFERNO I INFERNO II INFERNO III INFERNO IV INFERNO V INFERNO VI INFERNO VII INFERNO VIII INFERNO IX INFERNO X INFERNO XI INFERNO XII INFERNO XIII INFERNO XIV INFERNO XV INFERNO XVI INFERNO XVII INFERNO XVIII INFERNO XIX

INFERNO XX INFERNO XXI INFERNO XXII INFERNO XXIII INFERNO XXIV INFERNO XXV INFERNO XXVI INFERNO XXVII INFERNO XXVIII INFERNO XXIX INFERNO XXX INFERNO XXXI INFERNO XXXII INFERNO XXXIII INFERNO XXXIV

Notes Index of Names and Places Index of Subjects Treated in the Notes List of Works Cited About the Translators Other Books by Robert and Jean Hollander Acclaim for This Book

A Note on Using This eBook

In this eBook edition of The Inferno, you will �nd two types of hyperlinks.

The �rst type is embedded in the line numbers to the left of the text: these links allow you to click back and forth between the English translation and the original Italian text while still holding your place.

The second type of link, which is indicated by an arrow (→) at the end of a line of poetry, will bring you to an explanatory note.

You can click on an arrow to navigate to the appropriate note; you can then use the links at the end of each note to return to your location in either the English translation or the original Italian text. You can also click on the note number to return to your location in the English translation.

NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

“Reader, this is an honest book.” Montaigne says this of his Essays. We would like to say the same of this translation. We have tried to bring Dante into our English without being led into the temptation of making the translation sound better than the original allows. The result may be judged by all who know him in his own idiom. This is not Dante, but an approximation of what he might authorize had he been looking over our shoulders, listening to our at times ferocious arguments. We could go on improving this e�ort as long as we live. We hope that as much as we have accomplished will �nd an understanding ear and heart among those who know the real thing. Every translation begins and ends in failure. To the degree that we have been able to preserve some of the beauty and power of the original, we have failed the less.

The accuracy of the translation from the Italian text established by Giorgio Petrocchi (1966–67) has been primarily my responsibility, its sound as English verse primarily that of the poet Jean Hollander, my wife and collaborator. As will be clear from various notes in the text, I am not always in accord with Petrocchi’s readings; however, I thought it imperative to use as the base of this entire project the current standard Italian text of the work, indicating my occasional desire to diverge from it only in its margins. My original intention was to reproduce the John D. Sinclair translation (1939) of Inferno, cleaning up its just barely post-Victorian “thee”s and “thou”s and other such, to a twenty-�rst- century ear, outdated usages. However, (a) di�erences between the Italian in the Società Dantesca Italiana (1921) edition, from which Sinclair translated, and Petrocchi’s edition, (b) later “corrections” of Sinclair’s version by a later translator, Charles Singleton, (c) further study of Dante’s lines themselves, (d) a sense of ways in which a

prose translation eventually fails to be “sayable”—all of these considerations led us to attempt a new verse translation of the �rst cantica, despite our original debt to Sinclair.

Those who come to our text familiar with the Singleton translation (1970) will perhaps think that it is its resonance that they occasionally hear; this is because a tremendous amount of Singleton’s translation conforms word-for-word to Sinclair’s, as anyone may see simply by opening the two volumes side by side. Thus, having decided to begin with Sinclair and to modify him, we found that Singleton had apparently done essentially the same thing. To his credit, his changes are usually for the better; to his blame is his failure to acknowledge the frequency of his exact coincidence with Sinclair. And thus, on his own advice, we have considered it “a mistake  …  not to let the e�orts of one’s predecessors contribute to one’s own” (page 372), and have on occasion included his divergences from Sinclair when we found them just. However, let there be no mistake: the reason our translation seems to re�ect Singleton’s, to the extent that it does, is that ours, on occasion, and Singleton’s, almost always, are both deeply indebted to Sinclair.

In February 1997, when my wife and I decided to commit ourselves to this e�ort, we were able to consult the draft of a verse translation of Inferno composed by Patrick Creagh and me (begun in 1984 and abandoned in 1988, with some 80 percent of the work Englished). Some of its phrases have found their way to our text, and we owe a considerable debt to Patrick Creagh (and to my earlier self), which we are glad to acknowledge. We also owe a debt to the prose paraphrases of di�cult Italian passages found in the still helpful English commentary by the Rev. Dr. H. F. Tozer (1901); and to glosses gleaned from various Italian commentaries (most particularly, in the early cantos, those of Francesco Mazzoni [1965– 85], but also to the interpretive paraphrases found in the Bosco/Reggio commentary [1979]). We decided early on that we would not consult contemporary verse translations until after we had �nished our work, so as to keep other voices out of our ears.

Several friends and colleagues have helped us in our task. Lauren Scancarelli Seem, administrative coordinator of the Princeton Dante Project, was our �rst reader, making a number of suggestions for changes. Margherita Frankel, a veteran Dantist as well as a good friend, gave us a close reading and made many valuable criticisms to which we have attended. The poet Frederick Tibbetts lent us his exacting ear and made dozens of helpful suggestions. Lino Pertile, the Dante scholar at Harvard University, also combed through our text and made a number of helpful suggestions. The paperback edition bene�tted from the eagle eye of Peter D’Epiro, who caught a number of slips that have been corrected in this printing. Our greatest debt is to Robert Fagles, who went through this translation verse by verse and made many hundreds of comments in our margins. To have had such attentive advice from the most favored translator of Homer of our day has been our extraordinary fortune and pleasure.

Our goal has been to o�er a clear translation, even of unclear passages. We have also tried to be as compact as possible—not an easy task, either. It is our hope that the reader will �nd this translation a helpful bridge to the untranslatable magni�cence of Dante’s poem.

February 1997 (Florence)–February 1998 (Tortola)

For this reprinting of the Anchor Books edition, we have made about one hundred and �fty changes in the translation, mainly a�ecting phrasing and punctuation. There are also some �ve or six changes in the notes.

November 2010 (Hopewell)

TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS & LIST OF COMMENTATORS

1.  Dante’s works:

Conv. Convivio

Dve De vulgari eloquentia

Egl. Egloghe

Epist. Epistole

Inf. Inferno

Mon. Monarchia

Par. Paradiso

Purg. Purgatorio

Quest. Questio de aqua et terra

Rime Rime

Rime dub. Rime dubbie

VN Vita nuova

Detto Il Detto d’Amore (“attributable to Dante”)

Fiore Il Fiore (“attributable to Dante”)

2.    Commentators on the Commedia (these texts are all either currently available or, in the case of Landino, Bennassuti, and Provenzal, should one day be available, in the database known as

the Dartmouth Dante Project; dates, particularly of the early commentators, are often approximate):

Jacopo Alighieri (1322) (Inferno only) L’anonimo lombardo (1322) (Latin) (Purgatorio only)

Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli (1324) (Latin) (Inferno only) Jacopo della Lana (1324) Guido da Pisa (1327) (Latin) (Inferno only) L’Ottimo (1333) L’anonimo selmiano (1337) (Inferno only) Pietro di Dante (1340) (Latin) [also Inferno of 2nd & 3rd redactions] Il codice cassinese (1350?) (Latin) Giovanni Boccaccio (1373) (Inferno I–XVII only) Benvenuto da Imola (1380) (Latin) Francesco da Buti (1385) L’anonimo �orentino (1400) Giovanni da Serravalle (1416) (Latin) Guiniforto Barzizza (1440) (Inferno only) *Cristoforo Landino (1481) Alessandro Vellutello (1544) Bernardino Daniello (1568) Lodovico Castelvetro (1570) (Inferno I–XXIX only) Pompeo Venturi (1732) Baldassare Lombardi (1791) Luigi Portirelli (1804) Paolo Costa (1819) Gabriele Rossetti (1826–40) (Inferno & Purgatorio only) Niccolò Tommaseo (1837) Ra�aello Andreoli (1856) *Luigi Bennassuti (1864) Henry W. Longfellow (1867) (English) Gregorio Di Siena (1867) (Inferno only) Brunone Bianchi (1868) G. A. Scartazzini (1874; but the 2nd ed. of 1900 is used) Giuseppe Campi (1888) Gioachino Berthier (1892)

Giacomo Poletto (1894) H. Oelsner (1899) (English) H. F. Tozer (1901) (English) John Ruskin (1903) (English; not in fact a “commentary”) John S. Carroll (1904) (English) Francesco Torraca (1905) C. H. Grandgent (1909) (English) Enrico Mestica (1921) Casini-Barbi (1921) Carlo Steiner (1921) Isidoro Del Lungo (1926) Scartazzini-Vandelli (1929) Carlo Grabher (1934) Ernesto Trucchi (1936) *Dino Provenzal (1938) Luigi Pietrobono (1946) Attilio Momigliano (1946) Manfredi Porena (1946) Natalino Sapegno (1955) Daniele Mattalia (1960) Siro A. Chimenz (1962) Giovanni Fallani (1965) Giorgio Padoan (1967) (Inferno I–VIII only) Giuseppe Giacalone (1968) Charles Singleton (1970) (English) Bosco-Reggio (1979) Pasquini-Quaglio (1982)

*Not yet available

NB: All references to other works (e.g., Mazz.1967.1) are keyed to the List of Works Cited at the back of this volume, with the exception of references to commentaries contained in the Dartmouth Dante Project database, accessible online (telnet library.dartmouth.edu; at the prompt type: connect dante). Informational notes derived from Paget Toynbee’s Concise Dante

Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914) are followed by the siglum (T). References to the Enciclopedia dantesca, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–78) are indicated by the abbreviation ED. Commentaries by Robert Hollander are (at times) shorter versions of materials found in the Princeton Dante Project, a multimedia edition of the Commedia currently including most materials relevant to Inferno (the last two cantiche are under development). Subscription (without charge to the user) is possible at www.princeton.edu/dante.

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INTRODUCTION

What is a “great book”? It is probably impossible to de�ne the concept analytically to anyone’s satisfaction, but it may be described pragmatically: a work that is loved, over time, by millions of more- or-less ordinary readers and by thousands of scholars. Dante, by the time he was writing the fourth canto of Inferno, had already decided he was writing such a book. He sets his name down as one of the six all-time great writers: only Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan have preceded him (he will later add Statius). Unspeakably self- assured as this poet may seem, many today would now shorten that list, perhaps even to two: Homer and Dante. His self-con�dence may seem overweening, but he was even more of a prophet than he realized.

In about 1306, having entered his forties, he set about work on his Comedy. By 1295 he had written a “little book” (the nomenclature is his own), The New Life, thirty-one of his lyric poems surrounded by a governing prose commentary that almost explains the eventual meaning of his love for a young woman of Florence named Beatrice, who had died in 1290 at the age of twenty-�ve. We know nothing absolutely certain about her, whether she was an actual woman (if so, probably a member of the Portinari family, and then almost certainly married) or whether she is a �ctitious lady of the sort that love-poets invented in order to have a subject to write about. The text, on the other hand, makes it clear that we are to treat her as historical, and also suggests that we are to understand that she means more than she seems, for she is ineluctably joined with the Trinity, and in particular with the life of Christ. Dante seems completely aware of the radical newness of a lady loaded with such lofty theological meaning in the tradition of vernacular poetry of love. That is, he knows that what he is proposing is out of

bounds. And this is why he is usually so very di�dent in his remarks, forcing us to draw some rather disquieting conclusions about the nature of the very special kind of love that eventually informs his praise of Beatrice.

Before he began work on his “theological epic,” the Comedy, he had also written major parts of two other works, one a presentation of his ideas about eloquence in the vernacular, De vulgari eloquentia, the second, Convivio, a lengthy study of moral philosophy (in the form of commentary to his own odes), of which he had completed four of the projected �fteen “treatises.” He had been actively involved in the often bitterly contested political life of Florence, at that time one of the most important European cities, swollen with new wealth and consequent political power. At a time when that city had only six of them, he served the customary two-month term as one of its priors, the highest political o�ce in the city. By 1302, having inherited the wrong political identity, he lost practically everything when his party, the White Guelph faction, was outfoxed by the Black Guelphs, supported by the allied forces of Pope Boniface VIII and the French king. He was exiled in 1302 and never returned home again. He then lived a mainly itinerant life in northern Italy, with two longish stays in Verona and a �nal one in Ravenna, where he died of malarial fever in September 1321 at the age of �fty-six.

The political situation of northern Italy during his lifetime was distinguished by factionalism and chaos. The emperors who were supposed to govern all of Europe had, for centuries, mainly avoided their Italian responsibilities. The last of them to rule in Italy was Frederick II (we hear of him in Inferno X and XIII), and he, while one of the greatest �gures in Europe, was not a leader to Dante’s liking. Dead in 1250, Frederick was the last emperor to govern from Italy. Dante hoped for an imperial restoration of the proper kind, and, to everyone’s amazement, including his own, had his hopes rewarded when the newly crowned Henry VII, a compromise candidate from Luxembourg, allowed to become emperor primarily because of the machinations of Pope Clement V, descended into the peninsula to rule Europe from Italy in 1310. When his military

expedition eventually failed because of his death in 1313, Dante’s imperial hopes were dealt a terrible blow, but not �nally dashed. To the end of his days (and in the text of Paradiso XXVII and XXX) he insisted on believing that a new “Augustus” would ful�ll God’s design for Italy and Europe.

On the local level, late-thirteenth-century northern Italy (Milano, to the north, and Rome, to the south, are barely on Dante’s personal political map; rather we hear, in addition to Florence, of such cities as Genoa, Pisa, Pistoia, Siena, etc.) was in constant turmoil. The two main “parties” were the Guelphs (those essentially allied with the papacy) and the Ghibellines (aligned with the emperor—when there was one to be aligned with—or at least with imperial hopes). But most politics, as they are in our own time, were local. And there, labels did not count so much as family. In Florence the Ghibellines had been defeated and banished in 1266, a year after Dante’s birth, leaving the city entirely Guelph. But that did not betoken an era of unity. The Guelphs themselves were already divided (as they were in many northern cities) in two factions, the “Blacks,” led by the Donati family (into a less powerful branch of which Dante married), and the “Whites,” led by the Cerchi. (It is probably correct to say that the Whites were more devoted to a republican notion of governance, while the Blacks were more authoritarian.) The �rst impetus toward political division had occurred early in the century, when a young man, member of a Ghibelline family, broke o� his engagement and married a Guelph Donati (in Pistoia, not entirely dissimilarly, the roots of division supposedly began in a snowball �ght). A member of a White Guelph family, and having married into the most important Black family, Dante was therefore tied to Guelph interests. How then, do we explain his patent allegiance, in the Comedy, to the imperial cause? In 1306 or so he seems to have, rereading the Latin classics, reformulated his own political vision (as is �rst evident in the fourth and �fth chapters of the last treatise of the Convivio, before which there is not a clear imperialist sentiment to be found in his writing). And so, nominally a Guelph, Dante was far more in accord with Ghibelline ideas, except that, in practice, he found Ghibellines lacking in the religious vision that he personally

saw as the foundation of any imperialist program. Politics are everywhere in the poem, which is far from being the purely religious text that some of its readers take it for.

In his exile, the Commedia (�rst called the Divina Commedia only in 1555 by a Venetian publisher) became his obsession. For about �fteen years, with few exceptions (a notable one being his treatise, Monarchia, concerning the divine prerogatives of the empire, perhaps composed in 1317), the poem absorbed almost all of his time and energy. Its “motivating idea” is a simple one, outrageously so. In the Easter period of 1300 a thirty-�ve-year-old Florentine, struggling with failure and apparently spiritual death, is rescued by the shade of the Roman poet Virgil. He, won to the project by the living soul of Beatrice, who descends to hell from her seat in heaven in order to enlist his aid, agrees to lead Dante on a journey through hell and purgatory. Beatrice herself will again descend from heaven to take Dante the rest of the way, through the nine heavenly spheres and into paradise, where angels and souls in bliss gaze, in endless rapture, on God. The entire journey takes nearly precisely one week, Thursday evening to Thursday evening. It begins in fear and trembling on this earth and ends with a joyous vision of the trinitarian God. It is perhaps di�cult to imagine how even a Dante could have managed to build so magni�cent an edi�ce out of so improbable a literary idea. The result was a book that began to be talked about, known from parts that seem to have circulated before the whole, even before it was �nished (�rst citations begin to be noted around 1315). By the time he had completed it, shortly before his death, people were eagerly awaiting the publication of Paradiso. And within months of his death (or even before) commentaries upon it began to be produced. It was, in short, an instant “great book,” probably the �rst of its kind since the last century of the pagan era, when Romans (no less of them than Augustus himself) awaited eagerly the �nished text of Virgil’s Aeneid.

One of the most striking things about the Comedy is the enormous apparatus that has attached itself to it. No secular work in the western tradition has so developed a heritage of line-by-line commentary, one that began in Latin and Italian and that has now

entered any number of languages, European, Slavic, and Asian. It is clear that Dante’s work convinced the scholars of his time that this was a poem worthy of the most serious attention, both as a purveyor of the most important ideas of Christianity (e.g., sin, grace, redemption, transcendence) and as a response to the greatest of the Latin poets (Virgil foremost, but also Ovid, Statius, Lucan, and others) and philosophers (Aristotle [in his Arabic/Latin form] and Cicero, primarily). Knowledge of Greek had essentially disappeared from the time of the establishment of Latin Christianity as the dominant religion and culture of the West in the �fth and sixth centuries. The study of the language would only gradually begin again some �fty years after Dante’s death. And thus while Dante knows about Greek philosophy, all he has experienced of it comes from the works (most of Aristotle) and bits and pieces (only one work of Plato’s, the Timaeus, and excerpts of some of the pre- Socratics) that had been translated into Latin. Strangely, for a modern reader, his �rst commentators pay little or no attention to his close and fairly extensive dealings with the poems of his vernacular predecessors and co-practitioners (Guido Guinizzelli, Arnaut Daniel, Brunetto Latini, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, and others). Perhaps the most impressive aspect of these commentaries (and we are speaking of line-by-line analyses, on the model of commentary to the Bible or to a handful of especially respected classical authors, a form essentially denied to modern writers before 1300) is the vast number of them. From the �rst twenty years after Dante’s death at least ten have survived; by our own time there are hundreds.

Along with conquering the allegiance of scholars, Dante won the hearts of less-erudite Italians (or, at �rst, Tuscans) who found in his vast poem the �rst use of Italian as a literary language in an indisputably major work. Italian poetry, beginning at the time of St. Francis in the early twelfth century, had performed wonders, but it had rarely found a subject that seemed serious enough. Here was a poem that tackled everything: theology, religion, philosophy, politics, the sciences of heaven (astronomy/astrology) and of earth (biology, geology), and, perhaps most of all, the study of human

behavior. And it did all these things in a language that everyone could understand, or at least thought he could. It is probably not true to suggest that Dante “invented modern Italian.” What he did do was to deploy Italian as a literary language on a major scale, incorporating the “serious” subjects that had hitherto been reserved to Latin. If the Italian language had been waiting for a voice, Dante gave it that voice. Before him it did not exist in a global form, a complete language �t for all subjects; after him it did. It is probably not because of him that Italian has changed no more between his time and today than English has since Shakespeare’s day. It is, nonetheless, a continuing surprise and reward for contemporary Italians to have so ancient and yet so approachable a father, speaking, at least most of the time, words that they themselves use (and sometimes that he had invented).

Is Dante an “easy” poet? That depends on what passages we happen to be reading. He can be as simple and straightforward as one’s country neighbor, or as convoluted as the most arcane professor. (Boccaccio, one of his greatest advocates, also shows both proclivities in the prose of the Decameron.) Yet he has always found a welcome from the least schooled of readers, and even from those who could not read at all, but learned the poem by rote. A living Tuscan farmer/poet, Mauro Punzecchi, years ago memorized the poem while he worked his �elds and is today able to recite all of it. Who does not envy him his gift?

Each of us reads his own Commedia, which makes perfect sense, most of the time. It is only when we try to explain “our” poem to someone else that the trouble starts.

The commentary that accompanies this new translation is, like every one that has preceded it, except the �rst few, indebted to earlier discussions of this text. And what of that text, as Dante left it? No one has ever seen his autograph version. As a result, the manuscript tradition of the poem is vast and complicated. Nonetheless, and despite all the di�culties presented by particular textual problems, the result of variant readings in various manuscripts, it must be acknowledged that in the Comedy we have a remarkably stable text, given the facts that we do not possess an

autograph and that the condition of the manuscripts is so unyieldingly problematic. However, we do know that Dante left us precisely 14,233 verses arranged in one hundred cantos, all of which contained precisely the number of verses we �nd in them today in every modern edition. And that is no small thing.

And so each reader comes to a text that o�ers some problems of the textual variety; these pale beside problems of interpretation. What we can all agree on is that the work is a wonder to behold. Reading Dante is like listening to Bach. It is unimaginable to think that a human being, so many years ago (or indeed ever), could make such superhuman magic. Yet there it is, beckoning, but also refusing to yield some of its secrets.

When I considered how I might present this poem in a brief introduction, after years of thinking about it and teaching it and writing about it, I thought of what I myself missed when I started reading Dante. The �rst was a sense of Dante’s intellectual biography; the second was a set of answers to a series of questions: how does allegory work (i.e., how does this poem “mean”)? What does Virgil represent and why is he the �rst guide in the poem? How am I supposed to react to the sinners of Inferno, especially those that seem so sympathetic to me? The �rst subject is too vast for treatment here. My own attempt at an intellectual biography of the poet is available in Italian (Dante Alighieri, Rome, Editalia, 2000; an English version was published by Yale University Press in 2001). The three questions I have tried to answer, both in the “Lectures” found currently in the Princeton Dante Project, and, in shorter form, in an essay I wrote a year ago (“Dante: A Party of One,” First Things 92 [April 1999]: 30–35; the essay on Virgil also has some points in common with my article, “Virgil,” in the Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing, New York, Garland, 2000). What follows is another attempt to deal with three important matters facing any �rst-time reader of the poem, or any reader at all.

(1)  Allegory. When I was young I was taught that Dante’s poem was the very essence of allegorical writing. What exactly is allegory? Simply put,

it is the interpretive strategy of understanding one thing as meaning not itself but something other. A lady, blindfolded, holding a pair of scales in one hand, is not to be understood as a being with a particular history, but as a timeless entity, an abstraction: justice. If we understand just this much, we are prepared to comprehend how we might read—and how many of his �rst readers did understand— Dante’s poem as an “allegory.” Virgil is not the Roman poet so much as he is human reason unenlightened by faith; when he acts or speaks in the poem he does so without the historical context supplied by his life or works. And what of the second guide in the poem, Beatrice? She, too, is removed from her historical role in Dante’s life, and is treated as an abstraction, in her case the truths discovered through faith, or perhaps revelation, or theology. And what of the protagonist, Dante himself? That he has a very personal history, of which we hear a good deal, matters not. He is a sort of “Everyman,” and represents the ordinarily appetitive human soul. Please let me explain that I myself think very little of such formulations, but they are found in almost all the early commentators. In a term derived from Cicero, these interpreters thought of allegory as a “continuous metaphor.” The most signi�cant actions performed in the poem, they thought, could best be understood as part of this single, developing metaphor, in which the �awed human soul called “Dante” is gradually educated, �rst by reason (referred to as “Virgil”), and then by theological certainty (code name “Beatrice”).

Since something like this does seem to occur in the course of the poem, we can sense why the formulation has its appeal. The problem is that it shortchanges the entire historical referentiality of the poem. Dante’s life disappears as a subject worthy of attention; Virgil’s texts need not be read or understood as ways to �nd out what the poem means when it refers to them; Beatrice’s earthly existence as a young woman becomes utterly super�uous, as does her “relationship” (a curiously and precisely wrong word, given its contemporary usage) with Dante. Fourteen centuries ago Isidore of Seville de�ned allegory as “otherspeech,” in which a speaker or writer said one thing but meant something else by it. Without

exploring the limitations that he himself imposed upon that formula, we can merely note that it is frequently used in modern days to explain allegory simply and quickly. If I say “Beatrice” I do not mean her, but what she means. We are back to the lady holding the scales. To use a medieval example, St. Thomas explains (Summa I.i.9) that when the Bible refers to the arm of God (Isaiah 51:9) it does not mean that God has an arm, but that He has operative power. That is, we can discard the literal for its signi�cance, or, in more modern terms, the signi�er for the signi�ed. Does this way of reading Dante utterly denature the text we have before us? Perhaps not utterly, but enough so that we should avoid it as much as we can.

The matter gets more interesting and more complicated because Dante himself wrote about the question of allegory. In his Convivio he distinguishes between allegory as it is understood and practiced by poets (along the lines we have been discussing) and as it is used by theologians in order to understand certain passages in the Bible (a very di�erent procedure that we will examine in a moment). And in Convivio (II.i) he says the “correct” thing: it is his intention, in the explication of his odes, to follow the allegorical procedures of the poets (“since it is my intention here to follow the method of the poets, I shall take the allegorical sense according to the usage of the poets”). There are those who put this remark to the service of the claim that the “allegory of the theologians” thus has nothing to do with Dante’s procedures in the Comedy, either. However, that is exactly what he claims in the letter he wrote to his patron, Cangrande della Scala of Verona. The authenticity of his Epistle to Cangrande, written sometime after Dante had begun writing the Paradiso, and thus probably no earlier than 1316, is one of the most debated of Dantean questions. It is di�cult for this writer to be fair to the negative argument, which is so obviously based in a desire to cancel what the epistle says. Whether or not Dante wrote it (and current scholarly opinion is, once again, decidedly in favor), this remarkable document puts forward the disturbing (to use a mild word) idea that Dante’s poem was written with the same keys to meaning as was the Bible. No one had ever said as much about his

own work before, and it must be made clear that it is anathema to any sensible person of Dante’s (or any) time. If this were the only occasion on which this most venturesome of writers had said something outrageous, one might want to pay more heed to those who try to remove the text from his canon on the ground that he had no business making such a claim.

The principal tenet of theological allegory is that it holds certain (but not all) historical events in the Bible as a privileged and limited class of texts. Some historical passages in the Bible possessed four senses. The four senses of the Bible are generally put forth, and especially in the wake of Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae I.i.10), as follows: (1) historical/literal, (2) allegorical, (3) moral or tropological, (4) anagogical. It is helpful to understand that these senses unfurl in a historical continuum. For instance, the historical Moses, leading the Israelites out of captivity, gains his allegorical meaning in Christ, leading humankind out of bondage to the freedom of salvation. His moral (or tropological—these words are used synonymously) sense is present now—whenever “now” occurs —in the soul of the believer who chooses to make his or her “exodus” from sin; while the anagogical sense is found only after the end of time, when those who are saved are understood as having arrived in the New Jerusalem, eternal joy in heaven. To o�er a second example, one favored by Dante’s early commentators: Jerusalem was the historical city of Old Testament time; it points to the allegorical Jerusalem in which Jesus was cruci�ed; it is the moral or tropological “city” (whether within a single believer or as the entity formed by the Church Militant now) at any present moment; it is, anagogically, the New Jerusalem, which will exist only at the end of time. As opposed to the literal sense of poet’s allegory, the literal sense of theological allegory is historically true, found only in events narrated in the Bible (e.g., the fall of Adam and Eve, Moses leading the Israelites in the Exodus, the birth of Jesus, the Cruci�xion). According to the Epistle to Cangrande and, more importantly, as found in the treatment of subjects in his poem itself (most of which was written before he wrote the epistle, it is important to remember), Dante has adapted the techniques of

theological allegory to the making of his poem. Characters and events in it are portrayed in a historical mode and as part of a historical continuum. Adam, Moses, Icarus, Aeneas, Paul, Augustus, Virgil, and Dante are all portrayed as having said things or accomplished deeds that are seen in a historical and meaningful pattern that gives shape to this poem. Their actual historical status does not matter. Dante surely did not believe that Icarus had enjoyed a life on earth beyond that conferred by poets and mythographers. But he treats him, in Inferno XVII, as a possible precursor to himself, should Dante, a latter-day �yer through space, have had a bad end and fallen from the back of Geryon.

If we have been able to rid ourselves of the interpretive problems engendered by the “allegory of the poets,” here we have a still larger problem. How can Dante have written the Comedy in the same way that God wrote the Bible through his inspired human agents? Obviously he could not have. Then why does he make so outrageous a claim? Because what he is most concerned with is establishing the “right” of poetry to truth. This is a complex argument, and needs to be undertaken with a sense of the standing of poetry in a theological age. Let us say that it was not propitious. St. Thomas Aquinas had been clear about the issue. Poetry was the least of the human sciences, was basically devoid of cognitive value, and its practitioners were liars. In an intellectual climate of that kind, Dante was forced into making a choice. Either he did what all others who defended poetry had done (and as he himself had done in Convivio), admit that poets are literally liars who nonetheless tell moral and philosophical truths through (poets’) allegory, or he had to �nd a new answer to the attacks on poetry by friars like Thomas. Typically, he went his own way. If religious detractors of poetry say it lacks truth, he will give them truth. The Comedy is presented, from end to end (no reader can possibly miss this fact), as a record of an actual experience. Let us be honest with one another. You do not believe, and I do not believe, that Dante took a seven-day trip to the otherworld. But we can agree that his claims for total veracity are in the poem. Why? Because Dante took Thomas seriously. It is a wonderful game that he plays, daring and at times very funny, and

surely he enjoyed playing it. Let me o�er a single example, drawn from a pretty “serious” setting, the Earthly Paradise. Describing the six wings adorning each of the four biblical beasts that represent the authors of the Gospels in Purgatorio XXIX, Dante assures us that their wings were six in number (Ezechiel’s cherubic creatures had only four), that is, as many as are found in John’s description of the same cherubs (Revelation 4:8). The text puts this in an arresting way: “John sides with me, departing from him [Ezechiel].” No one but Dante would have said this in this way. “Here I follow John” would have been the proper way for a poet to guarantee the truthfulness of his narrative. Not for Dante. Since the pretext of the poem is that he indeed saw all that he recounts as having seen, his own experience, in completely Thomistic spirit, comes �rst—he knows this by his senses. And so John is his witness, and not he John’s.

The whole question of exactly how and how much the “allegory of the theologians” permeates the Comedy is not to be rehashed here. It is the subject of a number of books, including two by this writer. It is important to grasp that, by breaking out of the lockstep of other poets, who give us narratives that are utterly and only fabulous, i.e., patently untrue in their literal sense, Dante wanted to take poetry somewhere new. The greatest French medieval poem, the Romance of the Rose, is built around the presentation of a series of abstractions speaking to one another in a garden. Marianne Moore, borrowing from another writer, once referred to poems as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” The Romance of the Rose is an imaginary garden �lled with imaginary toads; the Comedy presents itself as a real garden containing real toads. If the student (or teacher) who is wrestling with this di�cult matter for the �rst time takes only this much away from this discussion, it should be of considerable aid. The reader is not asked by the poem to see Virgil as Reason, Beatrice as Faith (or Theology or Revelation), Francesca as Lust, Farinata as Heresy, etc. We may banish such abstractions from mind, unless Dante himself insists on them. On occasion he does—e.g., the Lady Poverty, beloved of St. Francis [Paradiso XI.74], who is not to be confused with any historical earthly woman, but is

to be regarded as the ideal of Christ’s and the Apostles’ renunciation of the things of this world. It is a useful and pleasing freedom that, in consequence, we may enjoy: “The allegory of the Comedy is not allegory as the commentators urge me to apply it. I may read this poem as history, and understand it better.” That, at least provisionally, is a good way to begin reading this poem.

(2)  Virgil. We should be aware that Virgil was not always Dante’s guide in poetry. The Vita nuova is essentially without major reference to him; De vulgari and the �rst three treatises of Convivio are similar in this respect. It is only in the fourth and last treatise of the latter that we can begin to see how the Comedy could make Virgil so essential a presence, for there Virgil’s texts are present in important ways, as Dante begins to think of moral philosophy, Roman polity, and the jettisoning of allegorical procedures in the same breath. As the world of political reality, of human choices made in time and with real consequence, for the �rst time becomes a stage for Dante’s thought, Virgil becomes his most important resource. As is widely understood, Dante’s recovery of Virgilian text is the most noteworthy example of this phenomenon that we �nd in the Middle Ages. We have not yet entered the world of the Renaissance, but we are getting close.

There are few surprises awaiting the reader of the Comedy as unsettling as to �nd a pagan poet serving as guide in a Christian poem. We have perhaps gotten so used to the idea of Dante’s Virgil that we forget to be surprised by it. For reasons that we �nd it di�cult to fathom, Dante needed Virgil in order to make this poem; and he wanted him to serve as a central character in it. Lesser minds would have made a less provocative choice: an anonymous friar, a learned Christian theologian, anyone less troubling than Virgil. One tradition of Christian reception of Virgil, which is at least as old as the emperor Constantine, held that his much-discussed fourth Eclogue actually foretold the coming of Christ. Had Dante so believed, his choice of guide might have been less burdensome. However, we may be certain from Monarchia (I.xi.1) that Dante

knew that Virgil’s “virgin” was not the blessèd Mary but Astraea, or “justice.” Any number of passages within the Comedy make it plain that Dante did not consider the Roman poet a Christian avant-la- lettre. We must conclude that he willfully chose a pagan as his guide, leaving us to fathom his reasons for doing so.

In recent years a growing number of Dante’s interpreters have been arguing for the view that Dante deliberately undercuts the Latin poet, showing that both in some of his decisions as guide and in some of his own actual texts he is, from Dante’s later and Christian vantage point, prone to error. If this is the case, we must not forget that Dante at the same time is intent upon glorifying Virgil. And then we might consider the proposition that Dante’s love for him, genuine and heartfelt, needed to be held at arm’s length and chastised, perhaps revealing to a pagan-hating reader that Dante knew full well the limitations of his Virgil. Yet he could not do without him. Virgil is the guide in Dante’s poem because he served in that role in Dante’s life. It was Virgil’s Aeneid and not the works of Aristotle or of Aquinas which served as model for the poem; it was Virgil who, more than any other author, helped to make Dante Dante.

It may take readers years of rereading before they discover an extraordinary fact about Dante’s Virgil. For all the excitement, even exhilaration, brought forth by Virgil’s mere presence in this poem (a text that would seem to need to exclude him on theological grounds), sooner or later the fact that he is treated, on occasion, rather shabbily begins to impress us. This is so obvious, once it is pointed out, that one can begin to understand how thoroughly trained we have all been to look with pleased eyes upon a Dantean love for Virgil that heralds Renaissance humanism. To take only a few examples from the goodly supply presented in the text of Inferno (and Purgatorio will add many another), we witness Virgil embarrassed by the recalcitrant fallen angels who deny him entrance to the City of Dis (Inf. VIII and IX); later teased by his pupil for that momentary failure (XIV); being careful to get Dante out of observing distance lest Geryon prove as di�cult as the rebel angels had been and thus embarrass him again (XVI); completely fooled by

the demons of the pitch, who cause him acute discomfort over three cantos (XXI–XXIII). If such scenes make it seem more than unlikely that Virgil could possibly represent Reason (and commentators who think so grow silent at the margins of these scenes, only occasionally being honest enough even to say, “here the allegory is intermittent”), they also make us wonder about Dante’s motives in treating his “master and author” so disrespectfully. It is perhaps only because he loved Virgil so deeply that he feels the need to remind himself and his reader that the pagan was, in the end, a failure, capable of causing another Roman poet, Statius, to convert to Christianity, but not of taking that step himself. All of that seems wrong to us. There is perhaps no doctrine in the entire Comedy so hateful to modern readers as that which makes pagans—and others outside the Christian dispensation—responsible for knowing Christ. When we consider Dante’s situation, however, his motives may seem more understandable to us. Having fought o� the temptation to make Virgil a Christian, Dante must now show himself and his reader that he has not gone overboard in his a�ections.

There is another disturbing element to Dante’s Virgilianism. Not only is Virgil the character forced to undergo some seriously humiliating moments, but his texts are also on the receiving end of Dante’s playful mockery. Perhaps the most evident moment of this occurs in the twentieth canto, where Virgil is made to revise an episode in the tenth book of the Aeneid so that it accords better with Christian ideas about divination. It is a richly woven scene, and is extremely funny (Dante is a much funnier poet than we like to acknowledge), once we begin to understand the literary game that is being played under our eyes. And this is not the only time that Virgil’s texts receive such treatment. We will even �nd the Aeneid remembered in the very last canto of Paradiso, with its reminder of what the Sibyl told of Christian truth to an ear that could understand her utterance—if not Virgil’s.

It is simply impossible to imagine the Comedy without Virgil. And no one before Dante, and perhaps very few after, ever loved Virgil as he did. At the same time there is a hard-edged sense of Virgil’s crucial failure as poet of Rome, the city Dante celebrates for its two

suns, church and empire, but which Virgil saw only in the light of the one. For Dante, that is his great failure. As unfair as it seems to us, so much so that we frequently fail to note how often Virgil is criticized by the later poet who so loved him, it is the price that Dante forces him to pay when he enters this Christian precinct. And it may have been the price that he exerted from himself, lest he seem too available to the beautiful voices from the pagan past, seem less �rm as the poet of both Romes. The Virgilian voice of the poem is the voice that brings us, more often and more touchingly than any other, the sense of tragedy that lies beneath the text of the Comedy.

(3)  The Moral Situation of the Reader. How are we meant to respond to the sinners in hell? That seems an easy question to resolve. In the Inferno we see the justice of God proclaimed in the inscription over the gate of hell (III.4): “Justice moved my maker on high.” If God is just, it follows logically that there can be no question concerning the justness of His judgments. All who are condemned to hell are justly condemned. Thus, when we observe that the protagonist feels pity for some of the damned, we are probably meant to realize that he is at fault for doing so. Dante, not without risk, decided to entrust to us, his readers, the responsibility for seizing upon the details in the narratives told by sinners, no matter how appealing their words might be, in order to condemn them on the evidence that issues from their own mouths. It was indeed, as we can see from the many readers who fail to take note of this evidence, a perilous decision for him to have made. Yet we are given at least two clear indicators of the attitude that should be ours. Twice in Inferno �gures from heaven descend to hell to further God’s purpose in sending Dante on his mission. Virgil relates the coming of Beatrice to Limbo. She tells him, in no uncertain terms, that she feels nothing for the tribulations of the damned and cannot be harmed in any way by them or by the destructive agents of the place that contains them (Inf. II.88-93). All she longs to do is to return to her seat in Paradise (Inf. II.71). And when the angelic intercessor arrives to open the gates of Dis, slammed shut against Virgil, we are told that this benign presence has absolutely no

interest in the situation of the damned or even of the living Dante. All he desires is to complete his mission and be done with such things (Inf. IX.88; 100-103), reminding us of Beatrice’s similar lack of interest in the damned.

The complex mechanism that Dante has developed to establish what we today, after Henry James, call “point of view” has perhaps not been examined as closely as it should be. If we consider it, we realize how “modern” it is. The essential staging of any scene in Inferno involving a confrontation with a sinner potentially contains some or all of the following voices: (1) the all-knowing narrator, who has been through the known universe (and beyond!) and knows and understands everything a mortal being can understand; (2) Virgil, the wise guide who understands (most of the time) all that an extremely intelligent pagan can understand (which is considerable, if at some times more limited than at others); (3) the gradually more-and-more-informed protagonist, who moves from alarming cowardice and ignorance to relatively sound moral competence and judgment before the Inferno ends; (4) a sinner (sometimes more than one) who may or may not be trying to tell his or her story in a distorted, self-serving way, seeking a better reputation, whether in Dante’s eyes or in the view of posterity. That is a brief morphology of the possible combination of speakers in any given scene. We all should be able to agree that such an arrangement is, if nothing else, complex. If the only speaker were Dante the narrator, we would always know where he (and we) stood. When we re�ect that he hardly ever intervenes with moral glosses within scenes, we learn something important about this poem: it will not do our work for us. Most of the speakers are, thus, at best usually reliable, at worst completely unreliable. The gradations of their quali�cations may change with every scene. And we are left with the problem of evaluating the result. Let us examine only a single scene to see how this grid of potential understanding functions.

In one of the most celebrated passages in all of literature, Francesca da Rimini tells the protagonist her story (Inf. V.72–142). As is usual, the omniscient narrator tells us nothing but the facts. From him we learn that the protagonist was overcome by pity (72—

is this a good or bad thing?); that the sinners look like doves (82–84 —what is the “iconography” of these doves, birds of Venus or signs of the Holy Spirit [the two most usual medieval associations for these birds]?); that Francesca and Paolo come from a line of sinners that includes Dido (85—Dido has a pretty rocky medieval reputation as adulteress; does Francesca su�er from guilt by association?); that the protagonist’s summoning call was full of a�ection and was e�ective (87—is this to be applauded?). Later, he will tell us that Dante was greatly stirred by Francesca’s �rst speech (109–111— again, what moral view should we take of his behavior?). And he concludes the canto with the information that Paolo was weeping all through Francesca’s second speech (139–140—what do we make of these tears?) and that the protagonist, �lled with pity, collapsed in a faint (141–142—what moral view should we take of that?). The omniscient narrator could have given us answers to all these questions; he is content to raise them (intrinsically, he rarely asks questions outright) and leave them in our minds. Often, and surely in the Romantic era, many readers have thought that we are meant to identify with the protagonist’s view of the scene. And that view, at least, is unambiguous. He is intrigued by the sight of these two handsome shades (73–75), cries out to them with courteous regard for their prerogatives (80–81), bursts into a passionately-felt sense of identi�cation with them (112–114), tells Francesca as much (116–117), and then asks her to spell out exactly how she was overcome by love (118–120). And that is all he says. Of course the narrator tells us that, at the conclusion of Francesca’s words, he faints from pity, perhaps his single most eloquent response. We at least know where he stands.

What of Virgil, Dante’s guide? He only speaks twice, �rst to assure Dante that these lovers will come if he but summon them in the name of love (77–78—his laconic remark may be read either as a mere statement of fact or as the world-weary remark of the poet who knows all too much about what my friend John Fleming calls “Carthaginian love,” i.e., the passion that undermines reason, exempli�ed in Dido, as Virgil himself has told the tale in Aeneid IV). And then he has only one more two-word utterance (in Italian it is

the laconic “che pense”): “What are your thoughts?” (111—is he merely asking, seeing Dante so deep in reverie about the lovers, or is he delicately reminding Dante that he should be thinking, rather than feeling, since we have already been told by the narrator [at verse 39] both that the sin of lust makes “reason subject to desire” and that the protagonist has understood this?). Virgil has fewer than three verses of the seventy-one dedicated to the scene. What would he have said if the poet had allotted him more? It is interesting to speculate.

What about Francesca herself, the most loquacious of the four? She has thirty-eight verses to tell her story, well over half of the scene (88–107; 121–138). What she tells is moving and beautiful, like the woman herself, we imagine. In this reader’s view, one common element in both her speeches is that someone or something else is always being blamed for her unhappiness: the God who will not hear her prayers, the god of Love who made Paolo fall in love with her beautiful physical being and made her respond similarly to his, her husband for killing them, the book that, describing an adulterous kiss, encouraged them to engage in an adulterous embrace, and the man who wrote that book. I admit that I am here taking a dour view. Are we meant to read the scene this way? Most people do not. (A. B. Giamatti, with whom I used to converse endlessly about Dante, loved the Romantic reading of this canto. He once cursed me, complaining, “Are you going to try to ruin this scene for me too, Hollander?”) I hope it is clear that we all need to watch more carefully the actual exchanges among the various characters that might help establish a point of view from which we can study the events brought forward in the poem. Whatever else we can say, we should all be ready to admit that this is complicated business. Dante is beautiful, yes, but he is complicated.

It is important to acknowledge that Romantic readers have a point. Had Dante thought that all those in hell deserved as little attention as the saved a�ord them, in other words, if he felt about them as do Beatrice and the descended angel, he could have begun the poem in purgatory, o�ering a brief notice of the pains of the damned, of which it is better, he might have had the guardian of

purgatory say, not to speak. But he was interested in them, and not only as negative exemplars for those Christians who need to rea�rm their faith and will. The saints may have no interest in the damned, but neither we nor Dante are saints. And thus, one might argue, Inferno, the most e�ective part of the poem, in human terms, deals with the problem (sin) and not its solution (faith and good works). Do we have sympathy for the damned, at least those of them that reveal traits that we admire (e�ective rhetoric, strong feeling, a sense of their personal wrongness, even, at times, courtesy)? Of course we do. Yet we should be aware that there is a trap for us if we go too far. We need to learn to read ironically (a word that is only used once in all Dante’s works, in the incomplete thought that ends what we have of De vulgari eloquentia [II.xiv]), �nding an angle of vision that corresponds to the author’s, who expresses thoughts through his characters that need to be examined with care. That is a di�cult goal.

Nonetheless, it is noteworthy (though rarely, if ever, noted) that the “best” people in hell are not necessarily those whom we tend to admire most. They include those who were involved in Florentine public a�airs, always championing the cause of good governance: Ciacco (Inf. VI), Farinata degli Uberti (X), Brunetto Latini (XV), Jacopo Rusticucci and his mates (XVI), even Mosca dei Lamberti (XXVIII). All of these are unusual among the denizens of hell in that they either own up to their sins (not making an e�ort to persuade Dante of their innocence or simply to avoid his questions about their guilt) or want to be remembered for their good deeds on earth. That the “standard list” of sympathetic sinners only mentions two of them (Farinata and Brunetto) is informative: Francesca da Rimini (canto V), Farinata, Pier delle Vigne (XIII), Brunetto, Ulysses (XXVI), and Ugolino della Gherardesca (XXXIII). Francesca, Pier, Ulysses, and Ugolino all try to convince Dante of their worthiness, avoiding the subject of their sins. Their behavior in this regard might serve as a clue to an attentive reader. On this score, Ciacco is a good deal more reliable a witness than is Francesca.

There is more to say about many things. The text of the poem awaits, with annotations that will address many of these. Your

translators wish you an invigorated journey through hell (not a bad place once you get used to it) and your commentator hopes that you will �nd his remarks helpful.

Robert Hollander Tortola, 23 February 2000

The Inferno: English

1–9    10–21    22–27    28–36    37–43    44–54    55–60    61–66    67–75    76–78    79–90    91–100    101–111    112–120    121–129

130–135    136

OUTLINE: INFERNO I

Dante, having lost his way, in a dark wood hint of dawn: the sun on a mountaintop simile: survivor of shipwreck looking back at sea journey resumed; ascending the slope; a leopard dawn and reassurance a lion renews his fear; a she-wolf drives him back simile: merchant (or gambler?) losing everything apparition (of Virgil) and Dante’s �rst words Virgil identi�es himself his pointed question to Dante Dante’s recognition, praise of Virgil; plea for aid Virgil’s warning: power of the she-wolf Virgil’s prophecy of the hound that will defeat her Virgil will guide Dante through two realms to a third Virgil: a second guide will take him to those in bliss, since he is not allowed into that realm Dante agrees to be led through the �rst two realms the two set out

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INFERNO I

Midway in the journey of our life   → I came to myself in a dark wood,   → for the straight way was lost.   →

Ah, how hard it is to tell the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh— the very thought of it renews my fear!

It is so bitter death is hardly more so.   → But to set forth the good I found   → I will recount the other things I saw.

How I came there I cannot really tell, I was so full of sleep   → when I forsook the one true way.

But when I reached the foot of a hill,   → there where the valley ended   → that had pierced my heart with fear,   →

looking up, I saw its shoulders arrayed in the �rst light of the planet   → that leads men straight, no matter what their road.   →

Then the fear that had endured in the lake of my heart, all the night   → I spent in such distress, was calmed.

And as one who, with laboring breath,   → has escaped from the deep to the shore turns and looks back at the perilous waters,

so my mind, still in �ight,

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turned back to look once more upon the pass   → no mortal being ever left alive.

After I rested my wearied �esh a while, I took my way again along the desert slope, my �rm foot always lower than the other.   →

But now, near the beginning of the steep, a leopard light and swift   → and covered with a spotted pelt   →

refused to back away from me but so impeded, barred the way, that many times I turned to go back down.

It was the hour of morning, when the sun mounts with those stars   → that shone with it when God’s own love

�rst set in motion those fair things, so that, despite that beast with gaudy fur, I still could hope for good, encouraged

by the hour of the day and the sweet season, only to be struck by fear when I beheld a lion in my way.

He seemed about to pounce— his head held high and furious with hunger— so that the air appeared to tremble at him.

And then a she-wolf who, all hide and bones, seemed charged with all the appetites that have made many live in wretchedness

so weighed my spirits down with terror, which welled up at the sight of her,

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that I lost hope of making the ascent.

And like one who rejoices in his gains   → but when the time comes and he loses, turns all his thought to sadness and lament,

such did the restless beast make me— coming against me, step by step, it drove me down to where the sun is silent.

While I was �eeing to a lower place,   → before my eyes a �gure showed,   → faint, in the wide silence.   →

When I saw him in that vast desert,   → ‘Have mercy on me, whatever you are,’   → I cried, ‘whether shade or living man!’

He answered: ’Not a man, though once I was.   → My parents were from Lombardy— Mantua was their homeland.

‘I was born sub Julio, though late in his time,   → and lived at Rome, under good Augustus in an age of false and lying gods.

‘I was a poet and I sang   → the just son of Anchises come from Troy   → after proud Ilium was put to �ame.   →

‘But you, why are you turning back to misery? Why do you not climb the peak that gives delight,   → origin and cause of every joy?’

‘Are you then Virgil, the fountainhead   → that pours so full a stream of speech?’ I answered him, my head bent low in shame.   →

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‘O glory and light of all other poets, let my long study and great love avail that made me delve so deep into your volume.   →

‘You are my teacher and my author. You are the one from whom alone I took   → the noble style that has brought me honor.

‘See the beast that forced me to turn back. Save me from her, famous sage— she makes my veins and pulses tremble.’

‘It is another path that you must follow,’ he answered, when he saw me weeping, ‘if you would �ee this wild and savage place.

‘For the beast that moves you to cry out lets no man pass her way, but so besets him that she slays him.

‘Her nature is so vicious and malign her greedy appetite is never sated— after she feeds she is hungrier than ever.

‘Many are the creatures that she mates with,   → and there will yet be more, until the hound shall come who’ll make her die in pain.

‘He shall not feed on lands or lucre but on wisdom, love, and power. Between felt and felt shall be his birth.

‘He shall be the salvation of low-lying Italy,   → for which maiden Camilla, Euryalus,   → Turnus, and Nisus died of their wounds.

‘He shall hunt the beast through every town   →

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till he has sent her back to Hell whence primal envy set her loose.

‘Therefore, for your sake, I think it wise you follow me: I will be your guide, leading you, from here, through an eternal place

‘where you shall hear despairing cries and see those ancient souls in pain as they bewail their second death.   →

‘Then you shall see the ones who are content to burn because they hope to come, whenever it may be, among the blessed.

‘Should you desire to ascend to these, you’ll �nd a soul more �t to lead than I:   → I’ll leave you in her care when I depart.

‘For the Emperor who has His seat on high wills not, because I was a rebel to His law,   → that I should make my way into His city.

‘In every part He reigns and there He rules. There is His city and His lofty seat. Happy the one whom He elects to be there!’

And I answered: ‘Poet, I entreat you by the God you did not know, so that I may escape this harm and worse,   →

‘lead me to the realms you’ve just described that I may see Saint Peter’s gate   → and those you tell me are so sorrowful.’ Then he set out and I came on behind him.

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OUTLINE: INFERNO II

Dante, “alone” with Virgil, prepares for the journey invocation (Muses, “lofty genius”); his worthy memory Dante’s uncertainty as to his quali�cations simile: a man unwilling to do what he has resolved Virgil: Dante is a coward Virgil tells of his encounter with Beatrice in Limbo Virgil will lead Dante; why is Beatrice not fearful? Beatrice’s response: the saved are proof against hell a lady in heaven (Mary), Lucy, and Beatrice all help tears of Beatrice induce Virgil to begin at once Virgil chides Dante for his cowardice simile: �owers raised and opened by sun Dante’s renewed vigor; debt to Beatrice and to Virgil Dante has again embraced his �rst resolve the two again set out

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INFERNO II

Day was departing and the darkened air   → released the creatures of the earth from their labor, and I, alone,   →

prepared to face the struggle—   → of the way and of the pity of it— which memory, unerring, shall retrace.   →

O Muses, O lofty genius, aid me now!   → O memory, that set down what I saw, here shall your worth be shown.

I began: ‘Poet, you who guide me,   → consider if my powers will su�ce before you trust me to this arduous passage.   →

‘You tell of the father of Sylvius;   → that he, still subject to corruption, went to the eternal world while in the �esh.   →

‘But that the adversary of all evil showed;   → such favor to him, considering who and what he was, and the high sequel that would spring from him,

‘seems not un�tting to a man who understands.   → For in the Empyrean he was chosen to father holy Rome and her dominion,

‘both of these established—if we would speak;   → the truth—to be the sacred precinct where successors of great Peter have their throne.

‘On this journey, for which you grant him glory,

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he heard the words that prompted him;   → to victory and prepared the Papal mantle.   →

‘Later, the Chosen Vessel went there;   → to bring back con�rmation of our faith, the �rst step in our journey to salvation.

‘But why should I go there? who allows it? I am not Aeneas, nor am I Paul.   → Neither I nor any think me �t for this.   →

‘And so, if I commit myself to come, I fear it may be madness. You are wise, you understand what I cannot express.’

And as one who unwills what he has willed,   → changing his intent on second thought so that he quite gives over what he has begun,

such a man was I on that dark slope. With too much thinking I had undone;   → the enterprise so quick in its inception.

‘If I have rightly understood your words,’   → replied the shade of that great soul, ‘your spirit is assailed by cowardice,

‘which many a time so weighs upon a man it turns him back from noble enterprise, the way a beast shies from a shadow.   →

‘To free you from this fear I’ll tell you why I came and what I heard when �rst I felt compassion for you.

‘I was among the ones who are suspended;   → when a lady called me, so blessèd and so fair;   →

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that I implored her to command me.

‘Her eyes shone brighter than the stars. Gentle and clear, the words she spoke to me—   → an angel’s voice was in her speech:

‘ “O courteous Mantuan spirit,   → whose fame continues in the world and shall continue while the world endures,

‘ “my friend, who is no friend of Fortune,   → is so hindered on his way upon the desert slope;   → that, in his terror, he has turned back,

‘ “and, from what I hear of him in Heaven, I fear he has gone so far astray that I arose too late to help him.

‘ “Set out, and with your polished words;   → and whatever else is needed for his safety, go to his aid, that I may be consoled.

‘ “I who bid you go am Beatrice. I come from where I most desire to return. The love that moved me makes me speak.

‘ “And when I am before my Lord often will I o�er praise of you to Him.”   → Then she fell silent. And I began:

‘ “O lady of such virtue that by it alone;   → the human race surpasses all that lies within the smallest compass of the heavens,

‘ “so pleased am I at your command that my consent, were it already given, would be given late. You have but to make your desire known.

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‘ “But tell me why you do not hesitate to descend into the center of the earth;   → from the unbounded space you long for.”

‘ “Since you are so eager to know more,”   → she answered, “I shall be brief in telling you why I am not afraid to enter here.

‘ “We should fear those things alone that have the power to harm. Nothing else is frightening.

‘ “I am made such by God’s grace that your a�iction does not touch, nor can these �res assail me.

‘ “There is a gracious lady in Heaven so moved;   → by pity at his peril, she breaks stern judgment there above and lets me send you to him.

‘ “She summoned Lucy and made this request:   → «Your faithful one is now in need of you and I commend him to your care.»

‘ “Lucy, the enemy of every cruelty, arose and came to where I sat at venerable Rachel’s side,   →

‘ “and said: «Beatrice, true praise of God, why do you not help the one who loved you so that for your sake he left the vulgar herd?;   →

‘ “«Do you not hear the anguish in his tears? Do you not see the death besetting him;   → on the swollen river where the sea cannot prevail?»

‘ “Never were men on earth so swift to seek;   →

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their good or to escape their harm as I, after these words were spoken,

‘ “to descend here from my blessèd seat, trusting to the noble speech that honors you and those who have paid it heed.”

‘After she had said these things to me, she turned away her eyes, now bright with tears,   → making me more eager to set out.

‘And so I came to you just as she wished.   → I saved you from the beast denying you the short way to the mountain of delight.

‘What then? Why, why do you delay? Why do you let such cowardice rule your heart? Why are you not more spirited and sure,

‘when three such blessèd ladies care for you in Heaven’s court and my words promise so much good?’

As little �owers, bent and closed with chill of night, when the sun lights them, stand all open on their stems,

such, in my failing strength, did I become. And so much courage poured into my heart that I began, as one made resolute:

‘O how compassionate was she to help me,   → how courteous were you, so ready to obey the truthful words she spoke to you!

‘Your words have made my heart so eager for the journey

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that I’ve returned to my �rst intent.

‘Set out then, for one will prompts us both. You are my leader, you my lord and master,’   → I said to him, and when he moved ahead I entered on the deep and savage way.   →

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OUTLINE: INFERNO III

words inscribed above the gate of hell having read them, Dante is afraid Virgil admonishes, then encourages, Dante tumultuous sound made by mouths and hands Dante asks who these shades (in Circle “zero”) are Virgil: the neutrals and the neutral angels Dante wants to know the reason for their lamentation Virgil: they would rather be anyone but themselves Dante watches shades following a wavering banner he knows some, and one who “made the great refusal” they are stung by insects that make their faces bleed looking ahead, Dante sees a crowd at a riverbank Virgil says his questions will be answered later Dante’s shame at this implicit criticism appearance of Charon; his refusal to ferry Dante Virgil’s rejoinder stills Charon shades, cursing, enter his ski�; he strikes laggards similes: leaves in fall, falcon returning to falconer Virgil: the damned want the justice of their penalty Virgil explains Charon’s desire not to include Dante the earthquake and Dante’s fainting �t

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INFERNO III

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE CITY OF WOE,   → THROUGH ME THE WAY TO EVERLASTING PAIN,

THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST.   →

JUSTICE MOVED MY MAKER ON HIGH.   → DIVINE POWER MADE ME,   → WISDOM SUPREME, AND PRIMAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME NOTHING WAS BUT THINGS ETERNAL,   → AND ETERNAL, I ENDURE. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE.

These words, dark in hue, I saw inscribed   → over an archway. And then I said: ‘Master, for me their meaning is hard.’   →

And he, as one who understood:   → ‘Here you must banish all distrust, here must all cowardice be slain.

‘We have come to where I said you would see the miserable sinners who have lost the good of the intellect.’   →

And after he had put his hand on mine with a reassuring look that gave me comfort, he led me toward things unknown to man.   →

Now sighs, loud wailing, lamentation   → resounded through the starless air, so that I too began to weep.   →

Unfamiliar tongues, horrendous accents,   →

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words of su�ering, cries of rage, voices loud and faint, the sound of slapping hands—   →

all these made a tumult, always whirling in that black and timeless air, as sand is swirled in a whirlwind.

And I, my head encircled by error, said: ‘Master, what is this I hear, and what people are these so overcome by pain?’

And he to me: ‘This miserable state is borne   → by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace yet without praise.

‘They intermingle with that wicked band   → of angels, not rebellious and not faithful to God, who held themselves apart.

‘Loath to impair its beauty, Heaven casts them out,   → and depth of Hell does not receive them lest on their account the evil angels gloat.’

And I: ‘Master, what is so grievous to them, that they lament so bitterly?’ He replied: ‘I can tell you in few words.

‘They have no hope of death,   → and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other lot.

‘The world does not permit report of them. Mercy and justice hold them in contempt.   → Let us not speak of them—look and pass by.’

And I, all eyes, saw a whirling banner   → that ran so fast it seemed as though

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it never could �nd rest.

Behind it came so long a �le of people that I could not believe death had undone so many.

After I recognized a few of these,   → I saw and knew the shade of him who, through cowardice, made the great refusal.

At once with certainty I understood this was that worthless crew hateful alike to God and to His foes.

These wretches, who never were alive,   → were naked and beset by stinging �ies and wasps

that made their faces stream with blood, which, mingled with their tears, was gathered at their feet by loathsome worms.

And then, �xing my gaze farther on,   → I saw souls standing on the shore of a wide river, and so I said: ‘Master, permit me �rst

‘to know who they are and then what inner law makes them so eager for the crossing, or so they seem in this dim light.’   →

And he to me: ‘You shall know these things,   → but not before we stay our steps on the mournful shore of Acheron.’

Then, my eyes cast down with shame, fearing my words displeased him, I did not speak until we reached that stream.

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And now, coming toward us in a boat, an old man, his hair white with age, cried out: ‘Woe unto you, you wicked souls,

‘give up all hope of ever seeing Heaven. I come to take you to the other shore, into eternal darkness, into heat and chill.

‘And you there, you living soul,   → move aside from these now dead.’ But when he saw I did not move,

he said: ‘By another way, another port,   → not here, you’ll come to shore and cross. A lighter ship must carry you.’

And my leader: ‘Charon, do not torment yourself.   → It is so willed where will and power are one,   → and ask no more.’

That stilled the shaggy jowls of the pilot of the livid marsh, about whose eyes burned wheels of �ame.

But those souls, naked and desolate, lost their color. With chattering teeth they heard his brutal words.

They blasphemed God, their parents, the human race, the place, the time, the seed   → of their begetting and their birth.

Then, weeping bitterly, they drew together to the accursèd shore that waits for everyone who fears not God.

Charon the demon, with eyes of glowing coals,   →

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beckons to them, herds them all aboard, striking anyone who slackens with his oar.   →

Just as in autumn the leaves fall away,   → one, and then another, until the bough sees all its spoil upon the ground,

so the wicked seed of Adam �ing themselves one by one from shore, at his signal, as does a falcon at its summons.

Thus they depart over dark water, and before they have landed on the other side another crowd has gathered on this shore.

‘My son,’ said the courteous master, ‘all those who die in the wrath of God assemble here from every land.

‘And they are eager to cross the river, for the justice of God so spurs them on   → their very fear is turned to longing.

‘No good soul ever crosses at this place. Thus, if Charon complains on your account, now you can grasp the meaning of his words.’

When he had ended, the gloomy plain shook   → with such force, the memory of my terror makes me again break out in sweat.

From the weeping ground there sprang a wind, �aming with vermilion light, which overmastered all my senses, and I dropped like a man pulled down by sleep.   →

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OUTLINE: INFERNO IV

Dante awakened by “thunder” (after “lightning”) once again Dante cannot see in the darkness Virgil’s pallor entering the �rst Circle Virgil says his face is pale from pity, not fear to Dante the lament here seems less mournful (sighs) Virgil is eager for Dante’s questions about those who dwell in Limbo, sinless, but without faith Dante grieves, realizing many good people are here Dante: has anyone gone from Limbo to heaven? Virgil describes the harrowing of hell, which he saw the lightest place in hell: honorable souls Dante: why are these set apart in the light? Virgil: their fame on earth has this result in heaven Dante hears a voice welcome Virgil on his return the poets (Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan) approach the “school” greets Dante and includes him among them unreported discourse of the six poets the “noble castle” and its inner meadow Greeks, Romans, and Saladin: active life (14 named) Greeks, Romans, Arabs: contemplative life (21 named) the poet insists on his inability to give a full account Virgil and Dante move on to less peaceful precincts

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INFERNO IV

A heavy thunderclap broke my deep sleep   → so that I started up like one shaken awake by force.

With rested eyes, I stood and looked about me, then �xed my gaze to make out where I was.

I found myself upon the brink of an abyss of su�ering �lled with the roar of endless woe.

It was full of vapor, dark and deep. Straining my eyes toward the bottom, I could see nothing.

‘Now let us descend into the blind world   → down there,’ began the poet, gone pale. ‘I will be �rst and you come after.’

And I, noting his pallor, said:   → ‘How shall I come if you’re afraid, you, who give me comfort when I falter?’   →

And he to me: ‘The anguish of the souls   → below us paints my face with pity you mistake for fear.

‘Let us go, for the long road calls us.’ Thus he went �rst and had me enter the �rst circle girding the abyss.

Here, as far as I could tell by listening,   →

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was no lamentation other than the sighs that kept the air forever trembling.

These came from grief without torment borne by vast crowds of men, and women, and little children.   →

My master began: ‘You do not ask about the souls you see? I want you to know, before you venture farther,

‘they did not sin. Though they have merit, that is not enough, for they were unbaptized, denied the gateway to the faith that you profess.

‘And if they lived before the Christians lived, they did not worship God aright. And among these I am one.

‘For such defects, and for no other fault, we are lost, and a�icted but in this, that without hope we live in longing.’   →

When I understood, great sadness seized my heart, for then I knew that beings of great worth   → were here suspended in this Limbo.   →

‘Tell me, master, tell me, sir,’ I began,   → seeking assurance in the faith that conquers every doubt,

‘did ever anyone, either by his own or by another’s merit, go forth from here and rise to blessedness?’

And he, who understood my covert speech:   → ‘I was new to this condition when I saw

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a mighty one descend, crowned, with the sign of victory.

‘Out of our midst he plucked the shade   → of our �rst parent, of Abel his son, of Noah, and of Moses, obedient in giving laws,

‘the patriarch Abraham, David the King, Israel with his father and his sons, and with Rachel, for whom he served so long,

‘as well as many others, and he made them blessed. And, I would have you know, before these   → no human souls were saved.’

We did not halt our movement as he spoke, but all the while were passing through a wood— I mean a wood of thronging spirits.

We had not yet gone far from where I’d slept when I beheld a blaze of light that overcame a hemisphere of darkness,

though still a good way from it, yet not so far but I discerned an honorable company was gathered there.   →

‘O you who honor art and knowledge,   → why are these so honored they are set apart from the condition of the rest?’

And he answered: ‘Their honorable fame, which echoes in your life above, gains favor in Heaven, which thus advances them.’   →

Just then I heard a voice that said:   → ‘Honor the loftiest of poets!   → His shade returns that had gone forth.’

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When the voice had paused and there was silence, I saw four worthy shades approach, their countenances neither sad nor joyful.

The good master spoke: ‘Take note of him who holds that sword in hand   → and comes as lord before the three:

‘He is Homer, sovereign poet.   →   → Next comes Horace the satirist,   → Ovid is third, the last is Lucan.   →

‘Since each is joined to me in the name the one voice uttered, they do me honor and, doing so, do well.’   →

There I saw assembled the fair school of the lord of loftiest song,   → soaring like an eagle far above the rest.

After they conversed a while, they turned to me with signs of greeting, and my master smiled at this.   →

And then they showed me greater honor still, for they made me one of their company,   → so that I became the sixth amidst such wisdom.   →

Thus we went onward to the light, speaking of things that here are best unsaid,   → just as there it was �tting to express them.

We came to the foot of a noble castle,   → encircled seven times by towering walls, defended round about by a fair stream.

Over this stream we moved as on dry land.

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Through seven gates I entered with these sages until we came to a fresh, green meadow.

People were there with grave, slow-moving eyes and visages of great authority. They seldom spoke, and then in gentle tones.

When we withdrew over to one side   → into an open space, high in the light, we could observe them all.

There before me on the enameled green the great spirits were revealed. In my heart I exult at what I saw.

I saw Electra with many of her line,   → of whom I recognized Hector, Aeneas, and Caesar, in arms, with his falcon eyes.   →

I saw Camilla and Penthesilea.   → Seated apart I saw King Latinus, and next to him Lavinia, his daughter.

I saw that Brutus who drove out Tarquinius,   → Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia. And Saladin I saw, alone, apart.   →

When I raised my eyes a little higher, I saw the master of those who know,   → sitting among his philosophic kindred.

Eyes trained on him, all show him honor. In front of all the rest and nearest him   → I saw Socrates and Plato.

I saw Democritus, who ascribes the world to chance, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales,

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Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Zeno.

I saw the skilled collector of the qualities   → of things—I mean Dioscorides—and I saw Orpheus, Cicero, Linus, and moral Seneca,

Euclid the geometer, and Ptolemy,   → Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen, and Averroes, who wrote the weighty glosses.

I cannot give account of all of them,   → for the length of my theme so drives me on that often the telling comes short of the fact.

The company of six falls o� to two and my wise leader brings me by another way out of the still, into the trembling, air. And I come to a place where nothing shines.

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OUTLINE: INFERNO V

descent to the second Circle: the lustful proem: Minos judge of the damned Minos attempts to discourage Dante Virgil repeats his magical phrase (III.95–96) again, impressions of sound are the �rst Dante has the “hellscape”: weeping, darkness, storm two similes: starlings and cranes Dante wants to know who are punished here; Virgil: Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra Helen, Achilles, Paris, Tristan, and many others Dante’s piteous reaction and desire to speak he calls out to the pair of lovers simile: doves returning to nest Francesca’s �rst speech:

her kind words for Dante’s kindness she is from Ravenna Love … Love … Love…: her litany of joy, woe

Dante’s reaction and Virgil’s laconic question Dante’s rumination and question to Francesca Francesca’s second response:

despite the pain it will cause, she will speak she and Paolo were reading of Lancelot in love en�amed by the reading, they embraced

coda: Francesca concludes, Paolo weeps, Dante faints

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INFERNO V

Thus I descended from the �rst circle   → down into the second, which girds a smaller space but greater agony to goad lament.

There stands Minos, snarling, terrible.   → He examines each o�ender at the entrance, judges and dispatches as he encoils himself.   →

I mean that when the ill-begotten soul   → stands there before him it confesses all,   → and that accomplished judge of sins   →

decides what place in Hell is �t for it, then coils his tail around himself to count how many circles down the soul must go.

Always before him stands a crowd of them, going to judgment each in turn. They tell, they hear, and then are hurled down.

‘O you who come to this abode of pain,’ said Minos when he saw me, pausing   → in the exercise of his high o�ce,   →

‘beware how you come in and whom you trust. Don’t let the easy entrance fool you.   → And my leader to him: ‘Why all this shouting?

‘Hinder not his destined journey.   → It is so willed where will and power are one, and ask no more.’

Now I can hear the screams   →

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of agony. Now I have come   → where a great wailing beats upon me.

I reached a place mute of all light, which bellows as the sea in tempest tossed by con�icting winds.

The hellish squall, which never rests, sweeps spirits in its headlong rush, tormenting, whirls and strikes them.

Caught in that path of violence,   → they shriek, weep, and lament. Then how they curse the power of God!

I understood that to such torment the carnal sinners are condemned, they who make reason subject to desire.

As, in cold weather, the wings of starlings   →   → bear them up in wide, dense �ocks, so does that blast propel the wicked spirits.

Here and there, down and up, it drives them. Never are they comforted by hope of rest or even lesser punishment.

Just as cranes chant their mournful songs,   → making a long line in the air, thus I saw approach, heaving plaintive sighs,

shades lifted on that turbulence, so that I said: ‘Master, who are these whom the black air lashes?’

‘The �rst of them about whom you would hear,’ he then replied,

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‘was empress over many tongues.

‘She was so given to the vice of lechery she made lust licit in her law to take away the blame she had incurred.

‘She is Semiramis, of whom we read   →   → that she, once Ninus’ wife, succeeded him. She held sway in the land the Sultan rules.

‘Here is she who broke faith with the ashes   →   → of Sichaeus and slew herself for love.   → The next is wanton Cleopatra.   →

‘See Helen, for whose sake so many years of ill rolled past. And see the great Achilles,   → who battled, at the last, with love.

‘See Paris, Tristan,’ and he showed me more than a thousand shades, naming as he pointed, whom love had parted from our life.   →

When I heard my teacher name the ladies and the knights of old, pity overcame me   → and I almost lost my senses.

I began: ‘Poet, gladly would I speak with these two that move together   → and seem to be so light upon the wind.’

And he: ‘Once they are nearer, you will see:   → if you entreat them by the love that leads them, they will come.’

As soon as the wind had bent them to us, I raised my voice: ‘O wearied souls,   → if it is not forbidden, come speak with us.’

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As doves, summoned by desire, their wings   → outstretched and motionless, move on the air, borne by their will to the sweet nest,

so did these leave the troop where Dido is, coming to us through the malignant air, such force had my a�ectionate call.

‘O living creature, gracious and kind,   → that come through somber air to visit us who stained the world with blood,

‘if the King of the universe were our friend   →   → we would pray that He might give you peace, since you show pity for our grievous plight.

‘We long to hear and speak of that which you desire to speak and know, here, while the wind has calmed.

‘On that shore where the river Po with all its tributaries slows to peaceful �ow, there I was born.

‘Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart,   → seized this man with the fair form taken from me. The way of it a�icts me still.   →

‘Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving,   → seized me so strongly with his charm that, as you see, it has not left me yet.

‘Love brought us to one death. Caïna waits for him who quenched our lives.   → These words were borne from them to us.

And when I’d heard those two a�icted souls   →

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I bowed my head and held it low until at last the poet said: ‘What are your thoughts?’

In answer I replied: ‘Oh, how many sweet thoughts, what great desire, have brought them to this woeful pass!’

Then I turned to them again to speak and I began: ‘Francesca, your torments make me weep for grief and pity,

‘but tell me, in that season of sweet sighs,   → how and by what signs did Love acquaint you with your hesitant desires?’

And she to me: ‘There is no greater sorrow   → than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness—and this your teacher knows.   →

‘But if you feel such longing to know the �rst root of our love, I shall tell as one who weeps in telling.

‘One day, to pass the time in pleasure,   → we read of Lancelot, how love enthralled him. We were alone, without the least misgiving.

‘More than once that reading made our eyes meet and drained the color from our faces. Still, it was a single instant overcame us:   →

‘When we read how the longed-for smile was kissed by so renowned a lover, this man, who never shall be parted from me,

‘all trembling, kissed me on my mouth. A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.   →

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That day we read in it no further.’   →

While the one spirit said this the other wept, so that for pity   → I swooned as if in death.   → And down I fell as a dead body falls.   →

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OUTLINE: INFERNO VI

Dante recovers from his syncope to �nd a new place the third Circle: cold downpour on stinking ground Cerberus presides, barking; he �ays the sinners Cerberus’s opposition and Virgil’s “sop” for him simile: dog ravenously gulping food Dante and Virgil pass over the prone shades Florence: Ciacco recognizes Dante and presents self Dante does not recognize him, trans�gured by pain Ciacco identi�es himself and his sin: gluttony Dante asks his views on the likely future of the city Ciacco: �rst the Whites, then the Blacks, will win the just are few, the sinners many Dante wants to know the afterlife of �ve townsmen Ciacco: all are in hell, as Dante will perhaps see Ciacco would like to be remembered to those above he returns to his hebetude Virgil: he will wake no more until the last trumpet Virgil on the increase of eternal pain for the damned they talk until they are ready to descend: Plutus

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INFERNO VI

With my returning senses that had failed   → at the piteous state of those two kindred,   → which had confounded me with grief,

new torments and new souls in torment I see about me, wherever I may move, or turn, or set my gaze.

I am in the third circle, of eternal,   → hateful rain, cold and leaden, changeless in its monotony.

Heavy hailstones, �lthy water, and snow pour down through gloomy air. The ground it falls on reeks.

Cerberus, �erce and monstrous beast,   → barks from three gullets like a dog over the people underneath that muck.

His eyes are red, his beard a greasy black, his belly swollen. With his taloned hands he claws the spirits, �ays and quarters them.

The rain makes them howl like dogs. The unholy wretches often turn their bodies, making of one side a shield for the other.

When Cerberus—that huge worm—noticed us, he opened up his jaws and showed his fangs. There was no part of him he held in check.

But then my leader spread his hands,   →

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picked up some earth, and with full �sts tossed soil into the ravenous gullets.

As the dog that yelps with craving   → grows quiet while it chews its food, absorbed in trying to devour it,

the foul heads of that demon Cerberus were stilled, who otherwise so thunders on the souls they would as soon be deaf.

We were passing over shades sprawled   → under heavy rain, setting our feet upon their emptiness, which seems real bodies.

All of them were lying on the ground,   → except for one who sat bolt upright when he saw us pass before him.

‘O you who come escorted through this Hell,’ he said, ‘if you can, bring me back to mind. You were made before I was undone.’

And I to him: ‘The punishment you su�er   → may be blotting you from memory: it doesn’t seem to me I’ve ever seen you.

‘But tell me who you are to have been put into this misery with such a penalty that none, though harsher, is more loathsome.’

And he to me: ‘Your city, so full of envy   → that now the sack spills over, held me in its con�nes in the sunlit life.

‘You and my townsmen called me Ciacco.   → For the pernicious fault of gluttony,

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as you can see, I’m prostrate in this rain.

‘And in my misery I am not alone. All those here share a single penalty for the same fault.’ He said no more.

I answered him: ‘Ciacco, your distress so weighs on me it bids me weep. But tell me, if you can, what shall be the fate

‘of the citizens within the riven city? Are any in it just? And tell me why such discord has assailed it.’

And he to me: ‘After long feuding   → they shall come to blood. The rustic faction, having done great harm, shall drive the others out.

‘But it in turn must fall to them,   → within three years, by power of him who now just bides his time.

‘These in their arrogance will long subject the other faction to their heavy yoke, despite its weeping and its shame.

‘Two men are just and are not heeded there.   → Pride, envy, and avarice are the sparks   → that have set the hearts of all on �re.’

With that he ended his distressing words. And I to him: ‘I wish you would instruct me more, granting me the gift of further speech.

‘Farinata and Tegghiaio, who were so worthy,   → Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, and Mosca, and the rest whose minds were bent on doing good,

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‘tell me where they are and how they fare. For great desire presses me to learn whether Heaven sweetens or Hell embitters them.’

And he: ‘They are among the blacker souls. Di�erent vices weigh them toward the bottom, as you shall see if you descend that far.

‘But when you have returned to the sweet world   → I pray you bring me to men’s memory. I say no more nor answer you again.’   →

With that his clear eyes lost their focus.   → He gazed at me until his head drooped down. Then he fell back among his blind companions.

And my leader said: ‘He wakes no more until angelic trumpets sound the advent of the hostile Power.

‘Then each shall �nd again his miserable tomb, shall take again his �esh and form, and hear the judgment that eternally resounds.’   →

So we passed on through the foul mix of shades and rain with lagging steps, touching a little on the life to come.   →

‘Master,’ I asked, ‘after the great Judgment will these torments be greater, less, or will they stay as harsh as they are now?’

And he replied: ‘Return to your science,   → which has it that, in measure of a thing’s perfection, it feels both more of pleasure and of pain.

‘Although these accursèd people   →

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will never come to true perfection, they will be nearer it than they are now.’

We went along that curving road, with much more talk than I repeat, and reached the point of our descent. And there we came on Plutus, our great foe.

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OUTLINE: INFERNO VII

proem: Plutus speaks; Virgil answers; Plutus collapses the fourth Circle and Dante’s apostrophe of Justice simile: waves meeting between Charybdis and Scylla the avaricious and prodigal at their “jousts” three exchanges between Dante & Virgil:

Dante: are the tonsured ones all clerics? Virgil’s response is a�rmative Dante expects to recognize the sinners here Virgil: no, their sin makes them indistinguishable Dante: what is the “Fortune” of which you speak? Virgil’s pronouncements on the role of Fortune

Virgil prepares Dante for descent to the �fth Circle their descent, following its source, to Styx the bog, with the wrathful in con�ict with one another and those below the water, sighing and gurgling coda: retrospect over Styx, prospect of tower

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INFERNO VII

‘Pape Satàn, Pape Satàn, aleppe!’   → burst out Plutus in his raucous voice. And the courteous, all-discerning sage,

to comfort me, said: ‘Do not be overcome by fear. However powerful he may be, he’ll not prevent our climbing down this cli�.’

Then he turned to that bloated face and said: ‘Silence, accursèd wolf!   → Let your fury feed itself inside you.

‘Not without sanction is this journey down the pit.   → It is willed on high, where Michael did avenge the proud rebellion.’

As sails, swollen by the wind,   → fall in a tangle when the mainmast snaps, so fell that cruel beast to the ground.

Into the fourth hollow we made our way, descending the dismal slope that crams in all the evil of the universe.

Ah, Justice of God, who heaps up   → such strange punishment and pain as I saw there? And why do our sins so waste us?

Just as the waves clash above Charybdis,   → one breaking on the other when they meet, so here the souls move in their necessary dance.   →

Here the sinners were more numerous than elsewhere,   →

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and they, with great shouts, from opposite sides were shoving burdens forward with their chests.

They crashed into each other, turned and beat retreat, shoving their loads and shouting: ‘Why do you hoard?’ or ‘Why do you squander?’

Thus they proceeded in their dismal round   → on both sides toward the opposite point, taunting each other with the same refrain.

Once at that point, each group turned back along its semi-circle to the next encounter. And I, my heart pierced almost through,   →

said: ‘Master, now explain to me who these people are. Were those with tonsured heads,   → the ones there to our left, all clerics?’

‘All of them had such squinting minds in their �rst lives,’ he said, ‘they kept no measure in their spending.

‘Their voices howl this clear enough just as they reach the twin points on the circle where opposing sins divide them.

‘These were clerics who have no lid of hair   → upon their heads, and popes and cardinals, in whom avarice achieves its excess.’

And I: ‘Master, in such a crew as this I ought to recognize at least a few who were befouled with these o�enses.’

And he to me: ‘You muster an empty thought. The undiscerning life that made them foul

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now makes them hard to recognize.

‘The two groups will collide forever. These will rise from the grave with �sts tight, these with hair cropped.   →

‘Ill-giving and ill-keeping have stolen the fair world from them and set them to this scu�e. As for that, I prettify no words for it.

‘Now you see, my son, what brief mockery Fortune makes of goods we trust her with,   → for which the race of men embroil themselves.

‘All the gold that lies beneath the moon, or ever did, could never give a moment’s rest to any of these wearied souls.’

‘Master,’ I said, ‘tell me more: this Fortune whom you mention, who is she that holds the world’s possessions tightly in her clutches?’

And he to me: ‘O foolish creatures,   → what great ignorance besets you! I’ll have you feed upon my judgment of her:

‘He whose wisdom transcends all made the heavens and gave them guides, so that all parts re�ect on every part

‘in equal distribution of the light. Just so, He ordained for worldly splendors a general minister and guide

‘who shifts those worthless goods, from time to time, from race to race, from one blood to another beyond the intervention of human wit.

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‘One people comes to rule, another languishes, in keeping with her judgment, as secret as a serpent hidden in the grass.   →

‘Your wisdom cannot stand against her. She foresees, she judges, she maintains her reign, as do the other heavenly powers.   →

‘Her mutability admits no rest. Necessity compels her to be swift, and frequent are the changes in men’s state.   →

‘She is reviled by the very ones who most should praise her, blaming and defaming her unjustly.

‘But she is blessed and does not hear them. Happy with the other primal creatures, she turns her sphere, rejoicing in her bliss.

‘Now we must descend to greater anguish. For every star that rose when I set out   → is sinking now—we must not linger here.’

We crossed the circle to the other bank, beside a spring that bubbles up and �ows into a channel it makes for itself.

The water was darker than the deepest purple. Accompanied by its murky waves we began our strange descent.

This dreary stream, once it has reached   → these malignant, ashen slopes, drains out into the swamp called Styx.

And I, my gaze trans�xed, could see   →

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people with angry faces in that bog, naked, their bodies smeared with mud.

They struck each other with their hands, their heads, their chests and feet, and tore each other with their teeth.

The good master said: ‘Son, now you see the souls of those whom anger overcame. And I would have you know for certain

‘that plunged beneath these waters,   → as your eyes will tell you, are souls whose sighs with bubbles make the water’s surface seethe.

‘Fixed in the slime they say: “We were sullen in the sweet air that in the sun rejoices, �lled as we were with slothful fumes.

‘ “Now we are sullen in black mire.” This hymn they gurgle in their gullets, for they cannot get a word out whole.’

Thus we made our circle round that �lthy bog, keeping between the bank and swamp, �xing our gaze on those who swallow mud. And we came to the foot of a tower at last.

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OUTLINE: INFERNO VIII

WRATH  (�fth Circle continues, vv. 1–81 an interpolation) signal lights and an answering light Dante’s questions and Virgil’s reply simile: swiftly �ying arrow Phlegyas, his ski�; his wrath at Virgil’s rebuke Dante’s weight displaces water beneath the ski� Filippo Argenti: hostile exchange with Dante Filippo Argenti: Dante’s reaction and Virgil’s assent Virgil’s musing on the wealth of kings Filippo Argenti: Dante’s wish and its ful�llment

CITY OF DIS  (sixth Circle begins) approach to Dis and arrival in Phlegyas’s ski� rebel angels decry the approach of living Dante they will parley, but with Virgil alone �rst address to reader in the poem Dante’s concerns and Virgil’s comforting Virgil leaves Dante alone for the �rst time the rebel angels rebel once again; Virgil’s chagrin Virgil’s promise of aid from above

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INFERNO VIII

To continue, let me say that long before   → we reached the foot of that high tower our eyes had noted at its top

two �aming lights displayed up there   → to which another, so far o� the eye could hardly make it out, sent back a signal.

And turning to that sea of wisdom, I asked:   → ‘What does this mean? And that other �re, what does it answer? And who are they that made it?’

And he to me: ‘Over the �lthy waves you may already glimpse what is to come, if the marsh-fumes do not hide it from you.’

Never did a bowstring loose an arrow that whipped away more swiftly through the air than, even as I watched, a ski� came skimming   →

straight toward us on the water, under the guidance of a single helmsman, crying: ‘Now you are caught, damned spirit!’   →

‘Phlegyas, Phlegyas, this time you shout in vain,’   → replied my lord: ‘You’ll not have us any longer   → than it takes to cross this bog.’

Like one who learns of a deceitful plot   → that has been hatched against him and begins to fret, such was Phlegyas in his sti�ed wrath.

My leader stepped into the boat,   →

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and had me follow after. And only then did it seem laden.

As soon as he and I were in the bark the ancient prow moves o�, cutting deeper through the water than when it carries souls.

While we crossed the stagnant swamp   → one cloaked in mud rose up to say:   → ‘Who are you that you come before your time?’

And I to him: ‘If I come, I do not stay. But you, who are you, now become so foul?’ He answered: ‘As you can see, I am one who weeps.’

And I to him: ‘In weeping and in misery,   → accursèd spirit, may you stay. I know you, for all your �lth.’

When he stretched both his hands toward the boat,   → the wary master thrust him o�, saying: ‘Away there with the other dogs!’

Then my master put his arms around my neck, kissed my face and said: ‘Indignant soul, blessed is she that bore you in her womb!

‘In the world this man was full of arrogance.   → Not one good deed adorns his memory. That is why his shade is so enraged.

‘How many now above who think themselves great kings will lie here in the mud, like swine, leaving behind nothing but ill repute!’

And I: ‘Master, I would be most eager to see him pushed deep down into this soup

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before we leave the lake.’

And he to me: ‘Before the shore comes into view you’ll have your satisfaction. Your wish deserves to be ful�lled.’

Soon I watched him get so torn to pieces by the muddy crew, I still give praise and thanks to God for it.

All cried: ‘Get Filippo Argenti!’   → And that spiteful Florentine spirit   → gnawed at himself with his own teeth.   →

Of him I say no more. Then we moved on, when such a sound of mourning struck my ears I opened my eyes wide to look ahead.

The good master said: ‘Now, my son, we approach the city known as Dis,   → with its vast army and its burdened citizens.’

And I: ‘Master, I can clearly see its mosques   → within the ramparts, glowing red as if they’d just been taken from the �re.’

And he to me: ‘The eternal �re that burns inside them here in nether Hell makes them show red, as you can see.’

At last we reached the moats dug deep around the dismal city. Its walls seemed made of iron.   →

Not until we’d made a wide approach did we come to a place where the boatman bellowed: ‘Out with you here, this is the entrance.’   →

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At the threshold I saw more than a thousand angels   → fallen from Heaven. Angrily they shouted: ‘Who is this, who is not dead,

‘yet passes through the kingdom of the dead?’ At this my prudent master made a sign that he would speak with them apart.

Then they reined in their great disdain enough to say: ‘You come—alone. Let him be gone, who has so boldly made his way into this kingdom.

‘Let him retrace his reckless path alone— let him see if he can, for you shall stay, you who have led him through this gloomy realm.’

Reader, how could I not lose heart   → at the sound of these accursèd words? I thought I would never make it back.

‘O my dear leader, who seven times and more   → have braced my con�dence and rescued me from the grave dangers that assailed me,

‘do not leave me,’ I cried, ‘helpless now! If going farther is denied us, let us at once retrace our steps.’

But the mentor who had brought me there replied: ‘Have no fear. None can prevent our passage,   → so great a power granted it to us.

‘Wait for me here. Comfort your weary spirit   → and feed it with good hope. I will not forsake you in the nether world.’

He goes away and leaves me there,

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my gentle father, and I remain in doubt, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at war within my mind.

I could not hear what he proposed, but it was not long he stayed with them before they pushed and scrambled back inside.

Then our adversaries slammed shut the gates   → against my master, who, left outside, came back to me with halting steps.

He had his eyes upon the ground, his brows shorn of all con�dence. Sighing, he muttered: ‘Who dares deny me access to the realm of pain?’

To me he said: ‘Be not dismayed   → at my vexation. In this contest I’ll prevail, whatever they contrive to keep us out.

‘This insolence of theirs is nothing new: they showed it once before, at another gate. It still stands open without lock or bolt.

‘Over it you saw the deadly writing.   → Even now, making his unescorted way   → down through the circles, one descends by whom the city shall be opened.’

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OUTLINE: INFERNO IX

Dante’s pallor, Virgil’s reaction, Dante’s response Dante’s pointed question and Virgil’s general response a precision: his previous journey to the pit of hell Virgil: a need now for assistance in entering the city the Furies and their threat: Medusa Virgil’s ministrations to threatened Dante address to reader (second in poem) simile: sound of advancing storm Virgil uncovers Dante’s eyes as the “storm” approaches simile: frogs leaving pond at the advent of a snake Dante obeisant before the messenger’s angelic disdain his speech to the fallen angels and abrupt departure the poets’ entrance into Dis, force no longer needed the sixth Circle: a plain of torment simile: cemeteries at Arles and Pola the tombs of the heretics, glowing red with heat Dante’s question and Virgil’s answer: heresy coda: the rightward turn

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The pallor cowardice painted on my face   → when I saw my leader turning back made him hasten to compose his features.

He stopped, like a man intent on listening, for the eye could not probe far through that dim air and murky fog.

‘Yet we must win this �ght,’ he began,   → ‘or else.… Such help was promised us. How long it seems to me till someone comes!’

I clearly saw that he had covered up   → his �rst words with the others that came after, words so di�erent in meaning.

Still, I was �lled with fear by what he said. Perhaps I understood his broken phrase to hold worse meaning than it did.

‘Does ever anyone from the �rst circle, where the only penalty is hope cut o�,   → descend so deep into this dismal pit?’

I put this question and he answered:   → ‘It seldom happens that a soul from Limbo undertakes the journey I am on.

‘It is true I came here once before, conjured by pitiless Erichtho, who could call shades back into their bodies.

‘I had not long been naked of my �esh

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when she compelled me to go inside this wall to fetch a spirit from the circle of Judas.   →

‘That is the lowest place, the darkest,   → and farthest from the heaven that encircles all. Well do I know the way—so have no fear.

‘This swamp, which belches forth such noxious stench, hems in the woeful city, circling it. Now we cannot enter without wrath.’   →

And he said more, but I do not remember, for my eyes and thoughts were drawn to the high tower’s blazing peak

where all at once, erect, had risen three hellish, blood-stained Furies:   → they had the limbs and shape of women,

their waists encircled by green hydras. Thin serpents and horned snakes entwined, in place of hair, their savage brows.

And he, who knew full well the handmaids of the queen of endless lamentation, said to me: ‘See the �erce Furies!

‘That is Megaera on the left. On the right Alecto wails. In the middle is Tisiphone.’ And with that he fell silent.

Each rent her breast with her own nails. And with their palms they struck themselves, shrieking. In fear I pressed close to the poet.

‘Let Medusa come and we’ll turn him to stone,’   → they cried, looking down. ‘To our cost,

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