The Divine Comedy

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The Divine Comedy Page 9

by Alighieri, Dante


  to rip the wretches and flay and mangle them.

  And they, too, howl like dogs in the freezing storm,

  turning and turning from it as if they thought

  one naked side could keep the other warm.

  When Cerberus discovered us in that swill

  his dragon-jaws yawed wide, his lips drew back

  in a grin of fangs. No limb of him was still.

  My Guide bent down and seized in either fist

  a clod of the stinking dirt that festered there

  and flung them down the gullet of the beast.

  As a hungry cur will set the echoes raving

  and then fall still when he is thrown a bone,

  all of his clamor being in his craving,

  so the three ugly heads of Cerberus,

  whose yowling at those wretches deafened them,

  choked on their putrid sops and stopped their fuss.

  We made our way across the sodden mess

  of souls the rain beat down, and when our steps

  fell on a body, they sank through emptiness.

  All those illusions of being seemed to lie

  drowned in the slush; until one wraith among them

  sat up abruptly and called as I passed by:

  “O you who are led this journey through the shade

  of Hell’s abyss, do you recall this face?

  You had been made before I was unmade.”

  And I: “Perhaps the pain you suffer here

  distorts your image from my recollection.

  I do not know you as you now appear.”

  And he to me: “Your own city, so rife

  with hatred that the bitter cup flows over

  was mine too in that other, clearer life.

  Your citizens nicknamed me Ciacco, The Hog:

  gluttony was my offense, and for it

  I lie here rotting like a swollen log.

  Nor am I lost in this alone; all these

  you see about you in this painful death

  have wallowed in the same indecencies.”

  I answered him: “Ciacco, your agony

  weighs on my heart and calls my soul to tears;

  but tell me, if you can, what is to be

  for the citizens of that divided state,

  and whether there are honest men among them,

  and for what reasons we are torn by hate.”

  And he then: “After many words given and taken

  it shall come to blood; White shall rise over Black

  and rout the dark lord’s force, battered and shaken.

  Then it shall come to pass within three suns

  that the fallen shall arise, and by the power

  of one now gripped by many hesitations

  Black shall ride on White for many years,

  loading it down with burdens and oppressions

  and humbling of proud names and helpless tears.

  Two are honest, but none will heed them. There,

  pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues

  men know and heed, a Babel of despair.”

  Here he broke off his mournful prophecy.

  And I to him: “Still let me urge you on

  to speak a little further and instruct me:

  Farinata and Tegghiaio, men of good blood,

  Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, Mosca,

  and the others who set their hearts on doing good—

  where are they now whose high deeds might be-gem

  the crown of kings? I long to know their fate.

  Does Heaven soothe or Hell envenom them?”

  And he: “They lie below in a blacker lair.

  A heavier guilt draws them to greater pain.

  If you descend so far you may see them there.

  But when you move again among the living,

  oh speak my name to the memory of men!

  Having answered all, I say no more.” And giving

  his head a shake, he looked up at my face

  cross-eyed, then bowed his head and fell away

  among the other blind souls of that place.

  And my Guide to me: “He will not wake again

  until the angel trumpet sounds the day

  on which the host shall come to judge all men.

  Then shall each soul before the seat of Mercy

  return to its sad grave and flesh and form

  to hear the edict of Eternity.”

  So we picked our slow way among the shades

  and the filthy rain, speaking of life to come.

  “Master,” I said, “when the great clarion fades

  into the voice of thundering Omniscience,

  what of these agonies? Will they be the same,

  or more, or less, after the final sentence?”

  And he to me: “Look to your science again

  where it is written: the more a thing is perfect

  the more it feels of pleasure and of pain.

  As for these souls, though they can never soar

  to true perfection, still in the new time

  they will be nearer it than they were before.”

  And so we walked the rim of the great ledge

  speaking of pain and joy, and of much more

  that I will not repeat, and reached the edge

  where the descent begins. There, suddenly,

  we came on Plutus, the great enemy.

  NOTES

  13. Cerberus: In classical mythology Cerberus appears as a three-headed dog. His master was Pluto, king of the Underworld. Cerberus was placed at the Gate of the Underworld to allow all to enter, but none to escape. His three heads and his ravenous disposition make him an apt symbol of gluttony.

  14. like a mad dog: Cerberus is a dog in classical mythology, but Dante seems clearly to have visualized him as a half-human monster. The beard (line 16) suggests that at least one of his three heads is human, and many illuminated manuscripts so represent him.

  38. until one wraith among them: As the Poets pass, one of the damned sits up and asks if Dante recognizes him. Dante replies that he does not, and the wraith identifies himself as a Florentine nicknamed Ciacco, i.e., The Hog.

  Little is known about Ciacco (TCHA-koe). Boccaccio refers to a Florentine named Ciacco (Decameron, IX, 8), and several conflicting accounts of him have been offered by various commentators. All that need be known about him, however, is the nature of his sin and the fact that he is a Florentine. Whatever else he may have been does not function in the poem.

  42. You had been made before I was unmade: That is, “you were born before I died.” The further implication is that they must have seen one another in Florence, a city one can still walk across in twenty minutes, and around in a very few hours. Dante certainly would have known everyone in Florence.

  61. CIACCO’S PROPHECY. This is the first of the political prophecies that are to become a recurring theme of the Inferno. (It is the second if we include the political symbolism of the Greyhound in Canto I.) Dante is, of course, writing after these events have all taken place. At Easter time of 1300, however, the events were in the future.

  The Whites and the Blacks of Ciacco’s prophecy should not be confused with the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The internal strife between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines ended with the total defeat of the Ghibellines. By the end of the 13th century that strife had passed. But very shortly a new feud began in Florence between White Guelphs and Black Guelphs. A rather gruesome murder perpetrated by Focaccio de’ Cancellieri (Foe-KAH-tchoe day Khan-tchell-YAIR-ee) became the cause of new strife between two branches of the Cancellieri family. On May 1 of 1300 the White Guelphs (Dante’s party) drove the Black Guelphs from Florence in bloody fighting. Two years later, however (“within three suns”), the Blacks, aided by Dante’s detested Boniface VIII, returned and expelled most of the prominent Whites, among them Dante; for he had been a member of the Priorate (City Council) that issued a decree banishing the leaders of both sides. This was the beginning of Dante’s lon
g exile from Florence.

  70. two are honest: In the nature of prophecies this remains vague. The two are not identified.

  76-77. FARINATA will appear in Canto X among the Heretics: TEGGHIAIO and JACOPO RUSTICUCCI, in Canto XVI with the homosexuals, MOSCA in Canto XXVIII with the sowers of discord. ARRIGO does not appear again and he has not been positively identified. Dante probably refers here to Arrigo (or Oderigo) dei Fifanti, one of those who took part in the murder of Buondelmonte (Canto XXVIII, line 106, note).

  86. speak my name: Excepting those shades in the lowest depths of Hell whose sins are so shameful that they wish only to be forgotten, all of the damned are eager to be remembered on earth. The concept of the family name and of its survival in the memories of men were matters of first importance among Italians of Dante’s time, and expressions of essentially the same attitude are common in Italy today.

  103. your science: “Science” to the man of Dante’s time meant specifically “the writings of Aristotle and the commentaries upon them.”

  Canto VII

  CIRCLE FOUR

  CIRCLE FIVE

  The Hoarders and the Wasters

  The Wrathful and the Sullen

  PLUTUS menaces the Poets, but once more Virgil shows himself more powerful than the rages of Hell’s monsters. The Poets enter the FOURTH CIRCLE and find what seems to be a war in progress.

  The sinners are divided into two raging mobs, each soul among them straining madly at a great boulder-like weight. The two mobs meet, clashing their weights against one another, after which they separate, pushing the great weights apart, and begin over again.

  One mob is made up of the HOARDERS, the other of the WASTERS. In life, they lacked all moderation in regulating their expenses; they destroyed the light of God within themselves by thinking of nothing but money. Thus in death, their souls are encumbered by dead weights (mundanity) and one excess serves to punish the other. Their souls, moreover, have become so dimmed and awry in their fruitless rages that there is no hope of recognizing any among them.

  The Poets pass on while Virgil explains the function of DAME FORTUNE in the Divine Scheme. As he finishes (it is past midnight now of Good Friday) they reach the inner edge of the ledge and come to a Black Spring which bubbles murkily over the rocks to form the MARSH OF STYX, which is the FIFTH CIRCLE, the last station of the UPPER HELL.

  Across the marsh they see countless souls attacking one another in the foul slime. These are the WRATHFUL and the symbolism of their punishment is obvious. Virgil also points out to Dante certain bubbles rising from the slime and informs him that below that mud lie entombed the souls of the SULLEN. In life they refused to welcome the sweet light of the Sun (Divine Illumination) and in death they are buried forever below the stinking waters of the Styx, gargling the words of an endless chant in a grotesque parody of singing a hymn.

  “Papa Satán, Papa Satán, aleppy,”

  Plutus clucked and stuttered in his rage;

  and my all-knowing Guide, to comfort me:

  “Do not be startled, for no power of his,

  however he may lord it over the damned,

  may hinder your descent through this abyss.”

  And turning to that carnival of bloat

  cried: “Peace, you Wolf of Hell. Choke back your bile

  and let its venom blister your own throat.

  Our passage through this pit is willed on high

  by that same Throne that loosed the angel wrath

  of Michael on ambition and mutiny.”

  As puffed out sails fall when the mast gives way

  and flutter to a self-convulsing heap—

  so collapsed Plutus into that dead clay.

  Thus we descended the dark scarp of Hell

  to which all the evil of the Universe

  comes home at last, into the Fourth Great Circle

  and ledge of the abyss. O Holy Justice,

  who could relate the agonies I saw!

  What guilt is man that he can come to this?

  Just as the surge Charybdis hurls to sea

  crashes and breaks upon its countersurge,

  so these shades dance and crash eternally.

  Here, too, I saw a nation of lost souls,

  far more than were above: they strained their chests

  against enormous weights, and with mad howls

  rolled them at one another. Then in haste

  they rolled them back, one party shouting out:

  “Why do you hoard?” and the other: “Why do you waste?”

  So back around that ring they puff and blow,

  each faction to its course, until they reach

  opposite sides, and screaming as they go

  the madmen turn and start their weights again

  to crash against the maniacs. And I,

  watching, felt my heart contract with pain.

  “Master,” I said, “what people can these be?

  And all those tonsured ones there on our left—

  is it possible they all were of the clergy?”

  And he: “In the first life beneath the sun

  they were so skewed and squint-eyed in their minds

  their misering or extravagance mocked all reason.

  The voice of each clamors its own excess

  when lust meets lust at the two points of the circle

  where opposite guilts meet in their wretchedness.

  These tonsured wraiths of greed were priests indeed,

  and popes and cardinals, for it is in these

  the weed of avarice sows its rankest seed.”

  And I to him: “Master, among this crew

  surely I should be able to make out

  the fallen image of some soul I knew.”

  And he to me: “This is a lost ambition.

  In their sordid lives they labored to be blind,

  and now their souls have dimmed past recognition.

  All their eternity is to butt and bray:

  one crew will stand tight-fisted, the other stripped

  of its very hair at the bar of Judgment Day.

  Hoarding and squandering wasted all their light

  and brought them screaming to this brawl of wraiths.

  You need no words of mine to grasp their plight.

  Now may you see the fleeting vanity

  of the goods of Fortune for which men tear down

  all that they are, to build a mockery.

  Not all the gold that is or ever was

  under the sky could buy for one of these

  exhausted souls the fraction of a pause.”

  “Master,” I said, “tell me—now that you touch

  on this Dame Fortune—what is she, that she holds

  the good things of the world within her clutch?”

  And he to me: “O credulous mankind,

  is there one error that has wooed and lost you?

  Now listen, and strike error from your mind:

  That king whose perfect wisdom transcends all,

  made the heavens and posted angels on them

  to guide the eternal light that it might fall

  from every sphere to every sphere the same.

  He made earth’s splendors by a like decree

  and posted as their minister this high Dame,

  the Lady of Permutations. All earth’s gear

  she changes from nation to nation, from house to house,

  in changeless change through every turning year.

  No mortal power may stay her spinning wheel.

  The nations rise and fall by her decree.

  None may foresee where she will set her heel:

  she passes, and things pass. Man’s mortal reason

  cannot encompass her. She rules her sphere

  as the other gods rule theirs. Season by season

  her changes change her changes endlessly,

  and those whose turn has come press on her so,

  she must be swift by hard necessity.

  A
nd this is she so railed at and reviled

  that even her debtors in the joys of time

  blaspheme her name. Their oaths are bitter and wild,

  but she in her beatitude does not hear.

  Among the Primal Beings of God’s joy

  she breathes her blessedness and wheels her sphere.

  But the stars that marked our starting fall away.

  We must go deeper into greater pain,

 

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