The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  winds twenty-two miles round. The moon already

  is under our feet; the time we have is short,

  and there is much that you have yet to see.”

  “Had you known what I was seeking,” I replied,

  “you might perhaps have given me permission

  to stay on longer.” (As I spoke, my Guide

  had started off already, and I in turn

  had moved along behind him; thus, I answered

  as we moved along the cliff.) “Within that cavern

  upon whose brim I stood so long to stare,

  I think a spirit of my own blood mourns

  the guilt that sinners find so costly there.”

  And the Master then: “Hereafter let your mind

  turn its attention to more worthy matters

  and leave him to his fate among the blind;

  for by the bridge and among that shapeless crew

  I saw him point to you with threatening gestures,

  and I heard him called Geri del Bello. You

  were occupied at the time with that headless one

  who in his life was master of Altaforte,

  and did not look that way; so he moved on.”

  “O my sweet Guide,” I answered, “his death came

  by violence and is not yet avenged

  by those who share his blood, and, thus, his shame.

  For this he surely hates his kin, and, therefore,

  as I suppose, he would not speak to me;

  and in that he makes me pity him the more.”

  We spoke of this until we reached the edge

  from which, had there been light, we could have seen

  the floor of the next pit. Out from that ledge

  Malebolge’s final cloister lay outspread,

  and all of its lay brethren might have been

  in sight but for the murk; and from those dead

  such shrieks and strangled agonies shrilled through me

  like shafts, but barbed with pity, that my hands

  flew to my ears. If all the misery

  that crams the hospitals of pestilence

  in Maremma, Valdichiano, and Sardinia

  in the summer months when death sits like a presence

  on the marsh air, were dumped into one trench—

  that might suggest their pain. And through the screams,

  putrid flesh spread up its sickening stench.

  Still bearing left we passed from the long sill

  to the last bridge of Malebolge. There

  the reeking bottom was more visible.

  There, High Justice, sacred ministress

  of the First Father, reigns eternally

  over the falsifiers in their distress.

  I doubt it could have been such pain to bear

  the sight of the Aeginian people dying

  that time when such malignance rode the air

  that every beast down to the smallest worm

  shriveled and died (it was after that great plague

  that the Ancient People, as the poets affirm,

  were reborn from the ants)—as it was to see

  the spirits lying heaped on one another

  in the dank bottom of that fetid valley.

  One lay gasping on another’s shoulder,

  one on another’s belly; and some were crawling

  on hands and knees among the broken boulders.

  Silent, slow step by step, we moved ahead

  looking at and listening to those souls

  too weak to raise themselves from their stone bed.

  I saw two there like two pans that are put

  one against the other to hold their warmth.

  They were covered with great scabs from head to foot.

  No stable boy in a hurry to go home,

  or for whom his master waits impatiently,

  ever scrubbed harder with his currycomb

  than those two spirits of the stinking ditch

  scrubbed at themselves with their own bloody claws

  to ease the furious burning of the itch.

  And as they scrubbed and clawed themselves, their nails

  drew down the scabs the way a knife scrapes bream

  or some other fish with even larger scales.

  “O you,” my Guide called out to one, “you there

  who rip your scabby mail as if your fingers

  were claws and pincers; tell us if this lair

  counts any Italians among those who lurk

  in its dark depths; so may your busy nails

  eternally suffice you for your work.”

  “We both are Italian whose unending loss

  you see before you,” he replied in tears.

  “But who are you who come to question us?”

  “I am a shade,” my Guide and Master said,

  “who leads this living man from pit to pit

  to show him Hell as I have been commanded.”

  The sinners broke apart as he replied

  and turned convulsively to look at me,

  as others did who overheard my Guide.

  My Master, then, ever concerned for me,

  turned and said: “Ask them whatever you wish.”

  And I said to those two wraiths of misery:

  “So may the memory of your names and actions

  not die forever from the minds of men

  in that first world, but live for many suns,

  tell me who you are and of what city;

  do not be shamed by your nauseous punishment

  into concealing your identity.”

  “I was a man of Arezzo,” one replied,

  “and Albert of Siena had me burned;

  but I am not here for the deed for which I died.

  It is true that jokingly I said to him once:

  ‘I know how to raise myself and fly through air’;

  and he—with all the eagerness of a dunce—

  wanted to learn. Because I could not make

  a Daedalus of him—for no other reason—

  he had his father burn me at the stake.

  But Minos, the infallible, had me hurled

  here to the final bolgia of the ten

  for the alchemy I practiced in the world.”

  And I to the Poet: “Was there ever a race

  more vain than the Sienese? Even the French,

  compared to them, seem full of modest grace.”

  And the other leper answered mockingly:

  “Excepting Stricca, who by careful planning

  managed to live and spend so moderately;

  and Niccolò, who in his time above

  was first of all the shoots in that rank garden

  to discover the costly uses of the clove;

  and excepting the brilliant company of talents

  in which Caccia squandered his vineyards and his woods,

  and Abbagliato displayed his intelligence.

  But if you wish to know who joins your cry

  against the Sienese, study my face

  with care and let it make its own reply.

  So you will see I am the suffering shadow

  of Capocchio, who, by practicing alchemy,

  falsified the metals, and you must know,

  unless my mortal recollection strays

  how good an ape I was of Nature’s ways.”

  NOTES

  10. twenty-two miles: Another instance of “poetic” rather than “literal” detail. Dante’s measurements cannot be made to fit together on any scale map.

  10-11. the moon . . . is under our feet: If the moon, nearly at full, is under their feet, the sun must be overhead. It is therefore approximately noon of Holy Saturday.

  18. cavern: Dante’s use of this word is not literally accurate, but its intent and its poetic force are obvious.

  27. Geri del Bello (DJEH-ree): A cousin of Dante’s father. He became embroiled in a quarrel with the Sacchetti of Florence and was murdered. At the time of the wr
iting he had not been avenged by his kinsmen in accord with the clan code of a life for a life.

  29. Altaforte (Ahl-tah-FAWR-teh): Bertrand de Born was Lord of Hautefort. 40-41. cloister . . . lay brethren: A Dantean irony. This is the first suggestion of a sardonic mood reminiscent of the Gargoyle Cantos that will grow and swell in this Canto until even Virgil resorts to mocking irony.

  47. Maremma, Valdichiano, and Sardinia: Malarial plague areas. Valdichiano and Maremma were swamp areas of eastern and western Tuscany.

  59. the Aeginian people dying: Juno, incensed that the nymph Aegina let Jove possess her, set a plague upon the island that bore her name. Every animal and every human died until only Aeacus, the son born to Aegina of Jove, was left. He prayed to his father for aid and Jove repopulated the island by transforming the ants at his son’s feet into men. The Aeginians have since been called Myrmidons, from the Greek word for ant. Ovid (Metamorphoses, VII, 523-660).

  76. in a hurry to go home: The literal text would be confusing here. I have translated one possible interpretation of it as offered by Giuseppe Vandelli. The original line is “ne da colui che mal volentier vegghia” (“nor by one who unwillingly stays awake,” or less literally, but with better force: “nor by one who fights off sleep”).

  85. my Guide called out to one: The sinner spoken to is Griffolino d’arezzo (Ah-RAY-tsoe), an alchemist who extracted large sums of money from Alberto da Siena on the promise of teaching him to fly like Daedalus. When the Sienese oaf finally discovered he had been tricked, he had his “uncle,” the Bishop of Siena, burn Griffolino as a sorcerer. Griffolino, however, is not punished for sorcery, but for falsification of silver and gold through alchemy.

  125-132. Stricca . . . Niccolò . . . Caccia . . . Abbagliato (STREE-kah, Nee-koe-LAW, KAH-tchah, Ahb-ah-LYAH-toe): All of these Sienese noblemen were members of the Spendthrift Brigade and wasted their substance in competitions of riotous living. Lano (Canto XIII) was also of this company. Niccolò dei Salimbeni discovered some recipe (details unknown) prepared with fabulously expensive spices. “Excepting” is ironical. (Cf. the similar usage in XXI, 41.)

  137. Capocchio (Kah-PAW-kyoe): Reputedly a Florentine friend of Dante’s student days. For practicing alchemy he was burned at the stake at Siena in 1293.

  Canto XXX

  CIRCLE EIGHT: BOLGIA TEN

  The Falsifiers

  (The Remaining Three Classes:

  Evil Impersonators,

  Counterfeiters,

  False Witnesses)

  Just as Capocchio finishes speaking, two ravenous spirits come racing through the pit; and one of them, sinking his tusks into Capocchio’s neck, drags him away like prey. Capocchio’s companion, Griffolino, identifies the two as GIANNI SCHICCHI and MYRRHA, who run ravening through the pit through all eternity, snatching at other souls and rending them. These are the EVIL IMPERSONATORS, Falsifiers of Persons. In life they seized upon the appearance of others, and in death they must run with never a pause, seizing upon the infernal apparition of these souls, while they in turn are preyed upon by their own furies.

  Next the Poets encounter MASTER ADAM, a sinner of the third class, a Falsifier of Money, i.e., a COUNTERFEITER. Like the alchemists, he is punished by a loathsome disease and he cannot move from where he lies, but his disease is compounded by other afflictions, including an eternity of unbearable thirst. Master Adam identifies two spirits lying beside him as POTIPHAR’S WIFE and SINON THE GREEK, sinners of the fourth class, THE FALSE WITNESS, i.e., Falsifiers of Words.

  Sinon, angered by Master Adam’s identification of him, strikes him across the belly with the one arm he is able to move. Master Adam replies in kind, and Dante, fascinated by their continuing exchange of abuse, stands staring at them until Virgil turns on him in great anger, for “The wish to hear such baseness is degrading.” Dante burns with shame, and Virgil immediately forgives him because of his great and genuine repentance.

  At the time when Juno took her furious

  revenge for Semele, striking in rage

  again and again at the Theban royal house,

  King Athamas, by her contrivance, grew

  so mad, that seeing his wife out for an airing

  with his two sons, he cried to his retinue:

  “Out with the nets there! Nets across the pass!

  for I will take this lioness and her cubs!”

  And spread his talons, mad and merciless,

  and seizing his son Learchus, whirled him round

  and brained him on a rock; at which the mother

  leaped into the sea with her other son and drowned.

  And when the Wheel of Fortune spun about

  to humble the all-daring Trojan’s pride

  so that both king and kingdom were wiped out;

  Hecuba—mourning, wretched, and a slave—

  having seen Polyxena sacrificed,

  and Polydorus dead without a grave;

  lost and alone, beside an alien sea,

  began to bark and growl like a dog

  in the mad seizure of her misery.

  But never in Thebes nor Troy were Furies seen

  to strike at man or beast in such mad rage

  as two I saw, pale, naked, and unclean,

  who suddenly came running toward us then,

  snapping their teeth as they ran, like hungry swine

  let out to feed after a night in the pen.

  One of them sank his tusks so savagely

  into Capocchio’s neck, that when he dragged him,

  the ditch’s rocky bottom tore his belly.

  And the Aretine, left trembling by me, said:

  “That incubus, in life, was Gianni Schicchi;

  here he runs rabid, mangling the other dead.”

  “So!” I answered, “and so may the other one

  not sink its teeth in you, be pleased to tell us

  what shade it is before it races on.”

  And he: “That ancient shade in time above

  was Myrrha, vicious daughter of Cinyras

  who loved her father with more than rightful love.

  She falsified another’s form and came

  disguised to sin with him just as that other

  who runs with her, in order that he might claim

  the fabulous lead-mare, lay under disguise

  on Buoso Donati’s death bed and dictated

  a spurious testament to the notaries.”

  And when the rabid pair had passed from sight,

  I turned to observe the other misbegotten

  spirits that lay about to left and right.

  And there I saw another husk of sin,

  who, had his legs been trimmed away at the groin,

  would have looked for all the world like a mandolin.

  The dropsy’s heavy humors, which so bunch

  and spread the limbs, had disproportioned him

  till his face seemed much too small for his swollen paunch.

  He strained his lips apart and thrust them forward

  the way a sick man, feverish with thirst,

  curls one lip toward the chin and the other upward.

  “O you exempt from every punishment

  of this grim world (I know not why),” he cried,

  “look well upon the misery and debasement

  of him who was Master Adam. In my first

  life’s time, I had enough to please me: here,

  I lack a drop of water for my thirst.

  The rivulets that run from the green flanks

  of Casentino to the Arno’s flood,

  spreading their cool sweet moisture through their banks,

  run constantly before me, and their plash

  and ripple in imagination dries me

  more than the disease that eats my flesh.

  Inflexible Justice that has forked and spread

  my soul like hay, to search it the more closely,

  finds in the country where my guilt was bred

  this increase of my grief; fo
r there I learned,

  there in Romena, to stamp the Baptist’s image

  on alloyed gold—till I was bound and burned.

  But could I see the soul of Guido here,

  or of Alessandro, or of their filthy brother,

  I would not trade that sight for all the clear

  cool flow of Branda’s fountain. One of the three—

  if those wild wraiths who run here are not lying—

  is here already. But small good it does me

  when my legs are useless! Were I light enough