nor by Arachne at her flowering loom.
As a ferry sometimes lies along the strand,
part beached and part afloat; and as the beaver,
up yonder in the guzzling Germans’ land,
squats halfway up the bank when a fight is on—
just so lay that most ravenous of beasts
on the rim which bounds the burning sand with stone.
His tail twitched in the void beyond that lip,
thrashing, and twisting up the envenomed fork
which, like a scorpion’s stinger, armed the tip.
My Guide said: “It is time now we drew near
that monster.” And descending on the right
we moved ten paces outward to be clear
of sand and flames. And when we were beside him,
I saw upon the sand a bit beyond us
some people crouching close beside the brim.
The Master paused. “That you may take with you
the full experience of this round,” he said,
“go now and see the last state of that crew.
But let your talk be brief, and I will stay
and reason with this beast till you return,
that his strong back may serve us on our way.”
So further yet along the outer edge
of the seventh circle I moved on alone.
And came to the sad people of the ledge.
Their eyes burst with their grief; their smoking hands
jerked about their bodies, warding off
now the flames and now the burning sands.
Dogs in summer bit by fleas and gadflies,
jerking their snouts about, twitching their paws
now here, now there, behave no otherwise.
I examined several faces there among
that sooty throng, and I saw none I knew;
but I observed that from each neck there hung
an enormous purse, each marked with its own beast
and its own colors like a coat of arms.
On these their streaming eyes appeared to feast.
Looking about, I saw one purse display
azure on or, a kind of lion; another,
on a blood red field, a goose whiter than whey.
And one that bore a huge and swollen sow
azure on field argent said to me:
“What are you doing in this pit of sorrow?
Leave us alone! And since you have not yet died,
I’ll have you know my neighbor Vitaliano
has a place reserved for him here at my side.
A Paduan among Florentines, I sit here
while hour by hour they nearly deafen me
shouting: ‘Send us the sovereign cavalier
with the purse of the three goats!’ ” He half arose,
twisted his mouth, and darted out his tongue
for all the world like an ox licking its nose.
And I, afraid that any longer stay
would anger him who had warned me to be brief,
left those exhausted souls without delay.
Returned, I found my Guide already mounted
upon the rump of that monstrosity.
He said to me: “Now must you be undaunted:
this beast must be our stairway to the pit:
mount it in front, and I will ride between
you and the tail, lest you be poisoned by it.”
Like one so close to the quartanary chill
that his nails are already pale and his flesh trembles
at the very sight of shade or a cool rill—
so did I tremble at each frightful word.
But his scolding filled me with that shame that makes
the servant brave in the presence of his lord.
I mounted the great shoulders of that freak
and tried to say “Now help me to hold on!”
But my voice clicked in my throat and I could not speak.
But no sooner had I settled where he placed me
than he, my stay, my comfort, and my courage
in other perils, gathered and embraced me.
Then he called out: “Now, Geryon, we are ready:
bear well in mind that his is living weight
and make your circles wide and your flight steady.”
As a small ship slides from a beaching or its pier,
backward, backward—so that monster slipped
back from the rim. And when he had drawn clear
he swung about, and stretching out his tail
he worked it like an eel, and with his paws
he gathered in the air, while I turned pale.
I think there was no greater fear the day
Phaëthon let loose the reins and burned the sky
along the great scar of the Milky Way,
nor when Icarus, too close to the sun’s track
felt the wax melt, unfeathering his loins,
and heard his father cry, “Turn back! Turn back!”—
than I felt when I found myself in air,
afloat in space with nothing visible
but the enormous beast that bore me there.
Slowly, slowly, he swims on through space,
wheels and descends, but I can sense it only
by the way the wind blows upward past my face.
Already on the right I heard the swell
and thunder of the whirlpool. Looking down
I leaned my head out and stared into Hell.
I trembled again at the prospect of dismounting
and cowered in on myself, for I saw fires
on every hand, and I heard a long lamenting.
And then I saw—till then I had but felt it—
the course of our down-spiral to the horrors
that rose to us from all sides of the pit.
As a flight-worn falcon sinks down wearily
though neither bird nor lure has signalled it,
the falconer crying out: “What! spent already!”—
then turns and in a hundred spinning gyres
sulks from her master’s call, sullen and proud—
so to that bottom lit by endless fires
the monster Geryon circled and fell,
setting us down at the foot of the precipice
of ragged rock on the eighth shelf of Hell.
And once freed of our weight, he shot from there
into the dark like an arrow into air.
NOTES
1. GERYON. A mythical king of Spain represented as a giant with three heads and three bodies. He was killed by Hercules, who coveted the king’s cattle. A later tradition represents him as killing and robbing strangers whom he lured into his realm. It is probably on this account that Dante chose him as the prototype of fraud, though in a radically altered bodily form. Some of the details of Dante’s Geryon may be drawn from Revelations, ix, 9-20, but most of them are almost certainly his own invention: a monster with the general shape of a dragon but with the tail of a scorpion, hairy arms, a gaudily-marked reptilian body, and the face of a just and honest man. The careful reader will note that the gaudily-spotted body suggests the Leopard; the hairy paws, the Lion; and that the human face represents the essentially human nature of Fraud, which thus embodies corruption of the Appetite, of the Will, and of the Intellect.
17. Tartar . . . Turk: These were the most skilled weavers of Dante’s time.
18. Arachne: She was so famous as a spinner and weaver that she challenged Minerva to a weaving contest. There are various accounts of what happened in the contest, but all of them end with the goddess so moved to anger that she changed Arachne into a spider.
20. the beaver: Dante’s description of the beaver is probably drawn from some old bestiary or natural history. It may be based on the medieval belief that the beaver fished by crouching on the bank, scooping the fish out with its tail.
21. the guzzling Germans: The heavy drinking of the Germans was proverbial in the Middle Ages and
far back into antiquity.
29. descending on the right: The Poets had crossed on the right bank of the rill. In the course of Geryon’s flight they will be carried to the other side of the falls, thus continuing their course to the left. It should be noted that inside the walls of Dis, approaching the second great division of Hell (as here the third) they also moved to the right. No satisfactory reason can be given for these exceptions.
33. some people: The Usurers. Virgil explains in Canto XI why they sin against Art, which is the Grandchild of God. They are the third and final category of the Violent against God and His works.
56. azure on or, a kind of lion: The arms of the Gianfigliazzi (Djahn-fee-LYAH-tsee) of Florence were a lion azure on a field of gold. The sinner bearing this purse must be Catello di Rosso Gianfigliazzi, who set up as a usurer in France and was made a knight on his return to Florence.
57. on a blood red field, a goose whiter than whey: A white goose on a red field was the arms of the noble Ghibelline family of the Ubriachi, or Ebriachi, of Florence. The wearer is probably Ciappo Ubriachi (CHAH-poe Oob-ree-AH-kee), a notorious usurer.
58-59. sow azure on field argent: These are the arms of the Scrovegni (Skroe-VAY-NYEE) of Padua. The bearer is probably Reginaldo Scrovegni.
62. Vitaliano: Vitaliano di Iacopo Vitaliani, another Paduan.
66-67. the sovereign cavalier: Giovanni di Buiamonte (Djoe-VAHN-ee dee Booyah-MON-teh) was esteemed in Florence as “the sovereign cavalier” and was chosen for many high offices. He was a usurer and a gambler who lost great sums at play. Dante’s intent is clearly to bewail the decay of standards which permits Florence to honor so highly a man for whom Hell is waiting so dismally. Buiamonte was of the Becchi (BEH-kee) family whose arms were three black goats on a gold field. “Becchi” in Italian is the plural form of the word for “goat.”
79. quartanary chill: Quartan fever is an ague that runs a four-day cycle with symptoms roughly like those of malaria. At the approach of the chill, Dante intends his figure to say, any thought of coolness strikes terror into the shivering victim.
101. Phaëthon: Son of Apollo who drove the chariot of the sun. Phaëthon begged his father for a chance to drive the chariot himself but he lost control of the horses and Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt for fear the whole earth would catch fire. The scar left in the sky by the runaway horses is marked by the Milky Way.
103. Icarus: Daedalus, the father of Icarus, made wings for himself and his son and they flew into the sky, but Icarus, ignoring his father’s commands, flew too close to the sun. The heat melted the wax with which the wings were fastened and Icarus fell into the Aegean and was drowned.
121-25. flight-worn falcon: Falcons, when sent aloft, were trained to circle until sighting a bird, or until signaled back by the lure (a stuffed bird). Flight-weary, Dante’s metaphoric falcon sinks bit by bit, rebelling against his training and sulking away from his master in wide slow circles. The weighed, slow, downward flight of Geryon is powerfully contrasted with his escaping bound into the air once he has deposited his burden.
Canto XVIII
CIRCLE EIGHT (MALEBOLGE)
BOLGIA ONE
BOLGIA TWO
The Fraudulent and Malicious
The Panderers and Seducers
The Flatterers
Dismounted from Geryon, the Poets find themselves in the EIGHTH CIRCLE, called MALEBOLGE (The Evil Ditches). This is the upper half of the HELL OF THE FRAUDULENT AND MALICIOUS. Malebolge is a great circle of stone that slopes like an amphitheater. The slopes are divided into ten concentric ditches; and within these ditches, each with his own kind, are punished those guilty of SIMPLE FRAUD.
A series of stone dikes runs like spokes from the edge of the great cliff face to the center of the place, and these serve as bridges.
The Poets bear left toward the first ditch, and Dante observes below him and to his right the sinners of the first bolgia, The PANDERERS and SEDUCERS. These make two files, one along either bank of the ditch, and are driven at an endless fast walk by horned demons who hurry them along with great lashes. In life these sinners goaded others on to serve their own foul purposes; so in Hell are they driven in their turn. The horned demons who drive them symbolize the sinners’ own vicious natures, embodiments of their own guilty consciences. Dante may or may not have intended the horns of the demons to symbolize cuckoldry and adultery.
The Poets see VENEDICO CACCIANEMICO and JASON in the first pit, and pass on to the second, where they find the souls of the FLATTERERS sunk in excrement, the true equivalent of their false flatteries on earth. They observe ALESSIO INTERMINELLI and THAIS, and pass on.
There is in Hell a vast and sloping ground
called Malebolge, a lost place of stone
as black as the great cliff that seals it round.
Precisely in the center of that space
there yawns a well extremely wide and deep.
I shall discuss it in its proper place.
The border that remains between the well-pit
and the great cliff forms an enormous circle,
and ten descending troughs are cut in it,
offering a general prospect like the ground
that lies around one of those ancient castles
whose walls are girded many times around
by concentric moats. And just as, from the portal,
the castle’s bridges run from moat to moat
to the last bank; so from the great rock wall
across the embankments and the ditches, high
and narrow cliffs run to the central well,
which cuts and gathers them like radii.
Here, shaken from the back of Geryon,
we found ourselves. My Guide kept to the left
and I walked after him. So we moved on.
Below, on my right, and filling the first ditch
along both banks, new souls in pain appeared,
new torments, and new devils black as pitch.
All of these sinners were naked; on our side
of the middle they walked toward us; on the other,
in our direction, but with swifter stride.
Just so the Romans, because of the great throng
in the year of the Jubilee, divide the bridge
in order that the crowds may pass along,
so that all face the Castle as they go
on one side toward St. Peter’s, while on the other,
all move along facing toward Mount Giordano.
And everywhere along that hideous track
I saw horned demons with enormous lashes
move through those souls, scourging them on the back.
Ah, how the stragglers of that long rout stirred
their legs quick-march at the first crack of the lash!
Certainly no one waited a second, or third!
As we went on, one face in that procession
caught my eye and I said: “That sinner there:
It is certainly not the first time I’ve seen that one.”
I stopped, therefore, to study him, and my Guide
out of his kindness waited, and even allowed me
to walk back a few steps at the sinner’s side.
And that flayed spirit, seeing me turn around,
thought to hide his face, but I called to him:
“You there, that walk along with your eyes on the ground—
if those are not false features, then I know you
as Venedico Caccianemico of Bologna:
what brings you here among this pretty crew?”
And he replied: “I speak unwillingly,
but something in your living voice, in which
I hear the world again, stirs and compels me.
It was I who brought the fair Ghisola ’round
to serve the will and lust of the Marquis,
however sordid that old tale may sound.
There are many more from Bologna who weep away
eternity in this
ditch; we fill it so
there are not as many tongues that are taught to say
‘sipa’ in all the land that lies between
the Reno and the Saveno, as you must know
from the many tales of our avarice and spleen.”
And as he spoke, one of those lashes fell
The Divine Comedy Page 18
