by Dante
became the member that a man conceals,
117
and from his own the wretch had grown two paws.
While the smoke veils one and now the other
with new color and grows hair here
120
and elsewhere strips it off,
one of them rose to his feet, the other fell,
but neither turned aside his baleful glare
123
under which each muzzle changed its shape.
In the one erect it shrank in to the temples,
and, from the excess flesh absorbed,
126
two ears extruded from smooth cheeks.
That which did not recede, the remnant
of that excess, made a nose for the face
129
and gave the lips a proper thickness.
The one prone on the ground shoves out his snout
and draws his ears into his head
132
as a snail draws in its horns,
and his tongue, till now a single thing
and fit for speech, divides, and the other’s
135
forked tongue joins, and the smoke stops.
The soul just now become a brute takes flight,
hissing through the hollow, and the other,
138
by way of speaking, spits after him.
Then he turned his new-made shoulders and he said →
to the third: ‘I want Buoso to run, as I have done,
141
down on all fours along this road.’
Thus I saw the seventh rabble change
and change again, and let the newness of it
144
be my excuse if my pen has gone astray. →
And though my eyes were dazed
and my mind somewhat bewildered,
147
these sinners could not flee so stealthily
but I with ease discerned that Puccio Lameshanks, →
and he alone, of the three companions
in that group, remained unchanged.
151
The other, Gaville, was the one whom you lament. →
OUTLINE: INFERNO XXVI
1–12
ironic apostrophe of Florence
13–18
narrative rejoined: climbing out of the seventh bolgia
19–24
Dante’s reaction to the denizens of the next bolgia
25–33
simile (1): peasant and fireflies
34–42
simile (2): Elisha/Elijah’s chariot: Dante/flames
43–45
narrative: Dante’s intense reaction
46–48
Virgil: the relation between flame and sinner
49–54
Dante: but what about that double flame?
55–63
Virgil: the causes of the damnation of these two
64–69
Dante’s eagerness to speak with them
70–75
Virgil’s approval, but only he will speak
76–84
Virgil addresses Ulysses and Diomedes
85–89
the greater flame prepares to speak:
90–99
leaving Circe but not going home
100–111
setting forth and the places left behind
112–123
Ulysses’ oration to his men and their reaction
124–129
the beginning of the last voyage
130–135
the destination, after five months: the mountain
136–142
storm and death
INFERNO XXVI
Take joy, oh Florence, for you are so great →
your wings beat over land and sea,
3
your fame resounds through Hell!
Among the thieves, I found five citizens of yours
who make me feel ashamed, and you
6
are raised by them to no great praise.
But if as morning nears we dream the truth, →
it won’t be long before you feel the pain →
9
that Prato, to name but one, desires for you.
Were it already come, it would not be too soon.
But let it come, since come indeed it must,
12
and it will weigh the more on me the more I age.
We left that place and, on those stairs
that turned us pale when we came down, →
15
my leader now climbed back and drew me up.
And as we took our solitary way
among the juts and crags of the escarpment,
18
our feet could not advance without our hands.
I grieved then and now I grieve again →
as my thoughts turn to what I saw,
21
and more than is my way, I curb my powers
lest they run on where virtue fail to guide them,
so that, if friendly star or something better still
24
has granted me its boon, I don’t misuse the gift.
As when a peasant, resting on a hillside— →
in the season when he who lights the world
27
least hides his face from us,
at the hour when the fly gives way to the mosquito—
sees fireflies that glimmer in the valley
30
where perhaps he harvests grapes and ploughs his fields,
with just so many flames the eighth crevasse →
was everywhere aglow, as I became aware
33
once I arrived where I could see the bottom.
And as the one who was avenged by bears →
could see Elijah’s chariot taking flight,
36
when the horses reared and rose to Heaven,
but made out nothing with his eyes
except the flame alone
39
ascending like a cloud into the sky,
so each flame moves along the gullet
of the trench and—though none reveals the theft—
42
each flame conceals a sinner.
Rising to my feet to look, I stood up →
on the bridge. Had I not grasped a jutting crag,
45
I would have fallen in without a shove.
My leader, when he saw me so intent, said:
‘These spirits stand within the flames.
48
Each one is wrapped in that in which he burns.’ →
‘Master,’ I replied, ’I am the more convinced
to hear you say it. That is what I thought,
51
and had it in my mind to ask you this:
‘Who is in the flame so riven at the tip →
it could be rising from the pyre
54
on which Etèocles was laid out with his brother?’
He replied: ‘Within this flame find torment →
Ulysses and Diomed. They are paired
57
in God’s revenge as once they earned his wrath.
’In their flame they mourn the stratagem →
of the horse that made a gateway
60
through which the noble seed of Rome came forth.
‘There they lament the wiles for which, in death,
Deidamìa mourns Achilles still,
63
and there they make amends for the Palladium.’
‘If they can speak within those flames,’ →
I said, ’I pray you, master, and I pray again—
66
and may my prayer be a thousand strong—
‘do not forbid my lingering awhile
until the twin-forked flame arrives.
69
You see how eagerly I lean in its direction.’
And he to me: ‘Your prayer deserves →
much praise. Therefore, I grant it,
72
but on condition that you hold your tongue.
‘Leave speech to me, for I have understood
just what you want. And, since they were Greeks,
75
they might disdain your words.’
Once the flame had neared, when he thought
the time and moment right,
78
I heard my leader speaking in this way:
‘O you who are twinned within a single fire, →
if I have earned your favor while I lived,
81
if I have earned your favor—in whatever measure—
‘when, in the world, I wrote my lofty verses,
then do not move away. Let one of you relate
84
just where, having lost his way, he went to die.’
And the larger horn of that ancient flame
began to murmur and to tremble,
87
like a flame that is worried by the wind.
Then, brandishing its tip this way and that,
as if it were the tongue of fire that spoke,
90
it brought forth a voice and said: ‘When I →
‘took leave of Circe, who for a year and more
beguiled me there, not far from Gaëta,
93
before Aeneas gave that name to it,
‘not tenderness for a son, nor filial duty →
toward my agèd father, nor the love I owed
96
Penelope that would have made her glad,
‘could overcome the fervor that was mine
to gain experience of the world
99
and learn about man’s vices, and his worth.
‘And so I set forth upon the open deep →
with but a single ship and that small band
102
of shipmates who had not deserted me.
‘One shore and the other I saw as far as Spain,
Morocco, the island of Sardegna,
105
and other islands set into that sea.
‘I and my shipmates had grown old and slow
before we reached the narrow strait
108
where Hercules marked off the limits,
‘warning all men to go no farther.
On the right-hand side I left Seville behind,
111
on the other I had left Ceüta.
‘ “O brothers,” I said, “who, in the course →
of a hundred thousand perils, at last
114
have reached the west, to such brief wakefulness
‘ “of our senses as remains to us,
do not deny yourselves the chance to know—
117
following the sun—the world where no one lives.
’ “Consider how your souls were sown: →
you were not made to live like brutes or beasts,
120
but to pursue virtue and knowledge.”
‘With this brief speech I had my companions →
so ardent for the journey
123
I could scarce have held them back.
‘And, having set our stern to sunrise, →
in our mad flight we turned our oars to wings,
126
always gaining on the left.
‘Now night was gazing on the stars that light →
the other pole, the stars of our own so low
129
they did not rise above the ocean floor.
‘Five times the light beneath the moon
had been rekindled and as often been put out
132
since we began our voyage on the deep,
‘when we could see a mountain, distant,
dark and dim. In my sight it seemed
135
higher than any I had ever seen.
‘We rejoiced, but joy soon turned to grief: →
for from that unknown land there came →
138
a whirlwind that struck the ship head-on.
‘Three times it turned her and all the waters →
with her. At the fourth our stern reared up,
the prow went down—as pleased Another—
142
until the sea closed over us.’ →
OUTLINE: INFERNO XXVII
1–6
one flame departs, another comes
7–15
simile: the new flame as brazen Sicilian bull
16–18
Guido da Montefeltro: his difficulty producing words
19–30
Guido questions Virgil about Romagna
31–33
Virgil directs Dante to speak to his fellow Italian
34–54
Dante reports on Romagna’s troubled present
55–57
Dante offers fame in exchange for Guido’s identity
58–66
Guido agrees because he believes Dante is damned
67–129
Guido’s autobiography:
67–72
soldier, friar, dupe of Boniface
73–78
the covert ways of “the fox” are renowned
79–84
old age and his failure to furl his sails
85–111
Boniface’s stratagem, Guido’s evil advice
112–123
his death; Francis and the fallen Cherub
124–129
Guido’s descent to the underworld
130–132
the departure of Guido’s flame-covered shade
133–136
the poets move to the bridge over the ninth bolgia
INFERNO XXVII
The flame now stood erect and still, →
meaning to speak no more, and was departing
3
with the gentle poet’s leave, →
when another flame, coming close behind, →
caused our eyes to fix upon its tip,
6
drawn by the gibberish that came from it.
As the Sicilian bull that bellowed first →
with the cries of him whose instrument
9
had fashioned it—and that was only just—
used to bellow with the victim’s voice
so that, although the bull was made of brass,
12
it seemed transfixed by pain,
thus, having first no course or outlet
through the flame, the mournful words
15
were changed into a language all their own.
But once the words had made their way →
up to the tip, making it flicker
18
as the voice had done when it had formed them,
we heard it say: ‘O you at whom I aim my voice →
and who, just now, said in the Lombard tongue:
21
“Now go your way, I ask you nothing more,”
‘though I’ve arrived, perhaps, a little late,
let it not trouble you to stay and speak with me.
24
Though I am in the flame, as you can see, it irks me not.
‘If you are only a short while fallen →
into this blind world from that sweet land
27
of Italy, from which I bring down all my sins,
‘tell me if Romagna lives in peace or war. →
I came from where the mountains stand between
30
Urbino and the ridge from which the Tiber springs.’
I still stood bending down to hear,
when my leader nudged my side and said:
33
‘It’s up to you to speak—this one is Italian.’ →
And I, who had my answer ready,
<
br /> without delay began to speak:
36
‘O soul that is hidden from my sight down there,
‘your Romagna is not, and never was, →
free of warfare in her rulers’ hearts.
39
Still, no open warfare have I left behind.
‘Ravenna remains as it has been for years. →
The eagle of Polenta broods over it
42
so that he covers Cervia with his wings.
‘The town that once withstood the lengthy siege,
making of the French a bloody heap,
45
is now again beneath the green claws of the lion.
‘The elder mastiff of Verrucchio and the younger,
who between them had harsh dealing with Montagna,
48
sharpen their teeth to augers in the customary place.
‘The young lion on a field of white,
who rules Lamone’s and Santerno’s cities,
51
changes sides between the summer and the snows.
‘And the city whose flank the Savio bathes:
as she lives between tyranny and freedom,
54
so she lies between the mountain and the plain.
‘But now, I beg you, tell us who you are. →
Be no more grudging than another’s been to you,
57
so may your name continue in the world.’
When the fire had done its roaring for a while,
after its fashion, the point began to quiver
60
this way and that, and then gave breath to this:
‘If I but thought that my response were made →
to one perhaps returning to the world,
63
this tongue of flame would cease to flicker.
‘But since, up from these depths, no one has yet
