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,
The Divine Comedy Page 9
