by Dante
132
Now she squats and now she’s standing up.
‘She is Thaïs, the whore who, when her lover asked: →
“Have I found favor with you?”
answered, “Oh, beyond all measure!”
136
And let our eyes be satisfied with that.’
OUTLINE: INFERNO XIX
1–6
the poet’s apostrophe: Simon Magus and followers
7–9
the bolgia observed from the bridge
10–12
apostrophe: God’s wisdom (seen in His three realms)
13–15
holes of punishment
16–18
simile: baptismal fonts in San Giovanni
19–21
allusion to something done by Dante in the Baptistry
22–27
the sinners’ kicking, burning feet
28–30
simile: flame licking an oily surface
31–39
Dante’s question, Virgil’s offer, Dante’s consent
40–45
descent to the bottom of the third bolgia
46–51
Dante, as confessor, questions Pope Nicholas III
52–57
Nicholas takes Dante for Pope Boniface VIII
58–63
Dante’s hesitation, Virgil’s urging, Dante’s consent
64–78
Nicholas’s reaction and self-identification
79–87
Nicholas’s prediction of the perfidy and death of Pope Clement V
88–114
the poet’s invective against simoniac popes
115–117
his apostrophe of the emperor Constantine
118–120
Nicholas responds with his feet
121–124
Virgil responds with his face and arms
125–132
ascent of the bank to the rim; Virgil sets Dante down
133
view of the next “valley”
INFERNO XIX
O Simon Magus, o wretches of his band, →
greedy for gold and silver,
3
who prostitute the things of God
that should be brides of goodness!
Now must the trumpet sound for you,
6
because your place is there in that third ditch.
We had come to where the next tomb lay,
having climbed to the point upon the ridge
9
that overlooks the middle of the trench.
O Supreme Wisdom, what great art you show
in Heaven, on earth, and in the evil world,
12
and what true justice does your power dispense!
Along the sides and bottom I could see
the livid stone was pierced with holes,
15
all round and of a single size.
They seemed to me as wide and deep →
as those in my beautiful Saint John
18
made for the priests to baptize in,
one of which, not many years ago,
I broke to save one nearly drowned in it—
21
and let this be my seal, to undeceive all men.
From the mouth of each stuck out →
a sinner’s feet and legs up to the thighs
24
while all the rest stayed in the hole.
They all had both their soles on fire. →
It made their knee-joints writhe so hard
27
they would have severed twisted vines or ropes.
As flames move only on the surface →
of oily matter caught on fire,
30
so these flames flickered heel to toe.
‘Who is that, master, who in his torment
wriggles more than any of his fellows
33
and is licked by redder flames?’
And he: ‘If you like, I’ll take you down
along the lower bank and you will learn, →
36
from him, his life and his misdeeds.’
And I: ‘Whatever pleases you is my desire. →
You are my lord and know I do your will.
39
You know, too, what I leave unsaid.’
Then we came to the fourth embankment,
turned and descended on our left
42
into a narrow bottom pierced with holes.
The good master clasped me to his side
and did not set me down until we came
45
to the pit of one lamenting with his shanks.
‘Whatever you are, with your upper parts below, →
planted like a post, you wretched soul,’
48
said I, ‘come out with something, if you can.’
I stood there like a friar who confesses →
a treacherous assassin. Once fixed in place,
51
he calls the friar back to stay his death.
And he cried out: ‘Is that you already, →
are you here already, Boniface?
54
By several years the writing lied to me. →
‘Are you so swiftly sated with those profits
for which you did not fear to take by guile
57
the beautiful Lady and to do her outrage?’ →
I became like those who stand there mocked,
not comprehending what is said to them,
60
and thus not knowing what to say in turn.
Then Virgil said: ‘Tell him right away,
“I’m not the one, I’m not the one you think.” ’
63
I gave the answer I was told to give.
At that the spirit’s feet began to writhe.
Then, sighing, with a plaintive voice, he said:
66
‘What is it then you want from me?
‘If you are so keen to learn my name
that you descended from the bank for it,
69
know that I was cloaked in the great mantle. →
‘But in truth I was a son of the she-bear
and so avid was I to advance my cubs
72
I filled my purse as now I fill this hole.
‘Beneath my head are crushed the others
who practiced simony before me,
75
now flattened into fissures in the rock.
‘In turn I, too, shall be thrust lower down
as soon as he arrives whom I mistook you for
78
when I called out my hasty question.
‘But the time that I turned upside down, →
have roasted my feet even now exceeds
81
the time that he’ll be planted with his feet on fire.
‘For after him shall come a lawless shepherd
from the west, one even fouler in his deeds,
84
fit to be the cover over him and me.
‘A new Jason shall he be, the one of whom
we read in Maccabees, and even as the king indulged
87
Jason, so the king of France shall deal with him.’
I do not know if then I was too bold →
when I answered him in just this strain:
90
‘Please tell me, how much treasure →
‘did our Lord insist on from Saint Peter
before He gave the keys into his keeping?
93
Surely He asked no more than “Follow me,”
‘nor did Peter, or the others, take gold or silver
from Matthias when he was picked by lot
96
to fill the place lost by the guilty soul.
‘Stay there then, for you are justly punished,
guarding
well those gains, ill-gotten,
99
that made you boldly take your stand against King Charles.
‘And were it not that I am still restrained
by the reverence I owe the keys supreme,
102
which once you held in the happy life above,
‘I would resort to even harsher words
because your avarice afflicts the world,
105
trampling down the good and raising up the wicked.
‘Shepherds like you the Evangelist had in mind
when he saw the one that sits upon the waters
108
committing fornication with the kings,
‘she that was born with seven heads
and from ten horns derived her strength
111
so long as virtue pleased her bridegroom.
‘You have wrought yourselves a god of gold and silver.
How then do you differ from those who worship idols
114
except they worship one and you a hundred?
‘Ah, Constantine, to what evil you gave birth, →
not by your conversion, but by the dowry
117
that the first rich Father had from you!’
And while I sang such notes to him,
whether gnawed by anger or by conscience,
120
he kicked out hard with both his feet.
Truly I believe this pleased my leader,
he listened with a look of such contentment
123
to the sound of the truthful words I spoke.
Therefore, he caught me in his arms →
and, when he had me all upon his breast,
126
remounted by the path he had descended,
nor did he tire of holding me so close
but bore me to the summit of the arch →
129
that crosses from the fourth dike to the fifth.
Here gently he set down his burden,
gently on account of the steep, rough ridge
that would have made hard going for a goat.
133
And there, before me, another valley opened.
OUTLINE: INFERNO XX
Introduction:
1–3
proem to a twentieth canto
4–9
first view of diviners: silent weeping
10–18
second view: faces turned backwards on twisted necks
19–24
address to reader (fourth in Inferno)
25–30
Dante’s tears and Virgil’s rebuke
The diviners:
31–39
1. Amphiaraus (Statius, Thebaid VII–VIII)
40–45
2. Tiresias (Ovid, Metamorphoses III)
46–51
3. Aruns (Lucan, Pharsalia I)
52–56
4. Manto (Virgil, Aeneid X)
57–93
Virgil’s digression on Manto and Mantua
94–99
second digression: modern-day Mantua
100–105
Dante’s responses
106–114
5. Eurypylus (Virgil, Aeneid II)
115–117
6. Michael Scot (astrologer of Frederick II)
118
7. Guido Bonati (astrologer of G. da Montefeltro)
118–120
8. Asdente (astrologer in Parma)
121–123
9. crowd of female soothsayers
Coda:
124–129
Virgil urges Dante to resume the journey
130
they depart
INFERNO XX
Of strange new pain I now must make my verse, →
giving matter to the canto numbered twenty
3
of this first canzone, which tells of those submerged.
By now I was all eagerness to see →
what sights the chasm, bathed in tears
6
of anguish, would disclose.
I saw people come along that curving canyon
in silence, weeping, their pace the pace of slow
9
processions chanting litanies in the world.
As my gaze moved down along their shapes, →
I saw into what strange contortions
12
their chins and chests were twisted.
Their faces were reversed upon their shoulders →
so that they came on walking backward,
15
since seeing forward was denied them.
Perhaps some time by stroke of palsy
a person could be twisted in that way,
18
but I’ve not seen it nor do I think it likely.
Reader, so may God let you gather fruit →
from reading this, imagine, if you can,
21
how I could have kept from weeping
when I saw, up close, our human likeness
so contorted that tears from their eyes
24
ran down their buttocks, down into the cleft.
Yes, I wept, leaning against a spur →
of the rough crag, so that my escort said:
27
‘Are you still as witless as the rest?
’Here piety lives when pity is quite dead. →
Who is more impious than one who thinks
30
that God shows passion in His judgment?
‘Raise your head! Raise it and look on him →
under whose feet the earth gaped open
33
in sight of all the shouting Thebans:
‘ “Where are you rushing, Amphiaraus? Why
do you leave the war?” Nor did he stop his plunge
36
until he fell to Minos, who lays hold on all.
‘See how his shoulder-blades are now his chest.
Because he aspired to see too far ahead
39
he looks behind and treads a backward path.
‘See Tiresias, who changed his likeness →
when he was turned from male to female,
42
transformed in every member.
‘Later on he had to touch once more
the two twined serpents with his rod
45
before he could regain his manly plumes.
‘He who puts his back to that one’s belly is Aruns. →
In the hills of Luni—where the Carraresi,
48
who shelter in the valley, work the earth—
‘he lived inside a cave in that white marble,
from which he could observe the sea and stars
51
in a wide and boundless prospect.
‘And that female whose backward-flowing tresses →
fall upon her breasts so they are hidden,
54
and has her hairy parts on that same side,
‘was Manto, who searched through many lands
before she settled in the place where I was born—
57
for just a moment hear me out on this. →
’After her father had parted from this life
and the city of Bacchus was enslaved,
60
she wandered for a time about the world.
‘High in fair Italy, at the foot of the alps →
that form a border with Germany near Tyrol,
63
lies a lake they call Benàco.
‘By a thousand springs and more, I think, →
the region between Garda, Val Camonica, and Pennino
66
is bathed by waters settling in that lake.
‘There is an island in its middle
that the pastors of Trent, Brescia, and Verona,
69
should they pass that way, would bless.
‘Peschiera, a strong and splendid fortress →
against the Brescians and the Bergamese,
72
sits on the lowest point of land around.
‘There all the water Benàco’s bosom cannot hold →
flows over and descends into a river
75
running through green pastures.
‘This river, as it leaves the lake
and all the way to Govérnolo, is called
78
Mincio until it falls into the Po.
‘Before that, after but the briefest run, →
it levels off and spreads to make a swamp
81
sometimes scarce of water in the summer.
‘When she passed that way, the cruel virgin
saw dry land in the middle of the marsh
84
where no one lived and no one tilled the soil.
‘There, to avoid all company, she stopped, →
with only servants, to ply her magic arts.
87
There she lived and left her empty body.
’Later on, the people scattered round about
collected there because it was protected
90
by the marsh on every side.
‘They built the city over those dead bones
and, after her who first had claimed the spot,
93
named it Mantua, with no spells or incantations.
‘Once, its population was more plentiful, →
before the foolishness of Casalodi
96
bore the brunt of Pinamonte’s guile.
‘I charge you, therefore, should you ever hear →
my city’s origin described another way,
99
allow no lie to falsify the truth.’
And I: ‘Master, to me your explanation
is so convincing and so takes my trust
