The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

CANTO IV.

Resounding thunder broke the slumber deep
That drowsed my senses, and myself I shook
Like one by force awakened out of sleep.
Then rising up I cast a steady look,
With eyes refreshed, on all that lay around,
And cognisance of where I found me took.
In sooth, me on the valley’s brink I found
Of the dolorous abyss, where infinite
Despairing cries converge with thundering sound.[220]
Cloudy it was, and deep, and dark as night;10
So dark that, peering eagerly to find
What its depths held, no object met my sight.
‘Descend we now into this region blind,’
Began the Poet with a face all pale;
‘I will go first, and do thou come behind.’
Marking the wanness on his cheek prevail,
I asked, ‘How can I, seeing thou hast dread,
My wonted comforter when doubts assail?’
‘The anguish of the people,’ then he said,
‘Who are below, has painted on my face20
Pity,[221] by thee for fear interpreted.
Come! The long journey bids us move apace.’
Then entered he and made me enter too
The topmost circle girding the abyss.
Therein, as far as I by listening knew,
There was no lamentation save of sighs,
Whence throbbed the air eternal through and through.
This, sorrow without suffering made arise
From infants and from women and from men,
Gathered in great and many companies.30
And the good Master: ‘Wouldst thou[222] nothing then
Of who those spirits are have me relate?
Yet know, ere passing further, although when
On earth they sinned not, worth however great
Availed them not, they being unbaptized—
Part[223] of the faith thou holdest. If their fate
Was to be born ere man was Christianised,
God, as behoved, they never could adore:
And I myself am with this folk comprised.
For such defects—our guilt is nothing more—40
We are thus lost, suffering from this alone
That, hopeless, we our want of bliss deplore.’
Greatly I sorrowed when he made this known,
Because I knew that some who did excel
In worthiness were to that limbo[224] gone.
‘Tell me, O Sir,’ I prayed him, ‘Master,[225] tell,’
—That I of the belief might surety win,
Victorious every error to dispel—
‘Did ever any hence to bliss attain
By merit of another or his own?’50
And he, to whom my hidden drift[226] was plain:
‘I to this place but lately[227] had come down,
When I beheld one hither make descent;
A Potentate[228] who wore a victor’s crown.
The shade of our first sire forth with him went,
And his son Abel’s, Noah’s forth he drew,
Moses’ who gave the laws, the obedient
Patriarch Abram’s, and King David’s too;
And, with his sire and children, Israel,
And Rachel, winning whom such toils he knew;60
And many more, in blessedness to dwell.
And I would have thee know, earlier than these
No human soul was ever saved from Hell.’
While thus he spake our progress did not cease,
But we continued through the wood to stray;
The wood, I mean, with crowded ghosts for trees.
Ere from the summit far upon our way
We yet had gone, I saw a flame which glowed,
Holding a hemisphere[229] of dark at bay.
’Twas still a little further on our road,70
Yet not so far but that in part I guessed
That honourable people there abode.
‘Of art and science Ornament confessed!
Who are these honoured in such high degree,
And in their lot distinguished from the rest?’
He said: ‘For them their glorious memory,
Still in thy world the subject of renown,
Wins grace[230] by Heaven distinguished thus to be.’
Meanwhile I heard a voice: ‘Be honour shown
To the illustrious poet,[231] for his shade80
Is now returning which a while was gone.’
When the voice paused nor further utterance made,
Four mighty shades drew near with one accord,
In aspect neither sorrowful nor glad.
‘Consider that one, armÈd with a sword,’[220] Thundering sound: In a state of unconsciousness, Dante, he knows not how, has been conveyed across Acheron, and is awakened by what seems like the thunder-peal following the lightning-flash which made him insensible. He now stands on the brink of Inferno, where the sounds peculiar to each region of it converge and are reverberated from its rim. These sounds are not again to be heard by him except in their proper localities. No sooner does he actually pass into the First Circle than he hears only sighs.—As regards the topography of Inferno, it is enough, as yet, to note that it consists of a cavity extending from the surface to the centre of the earth; narrowing to its base, and with many circular ledges or terraces, of great width in the case of the upper ones, running round its wall—that is, round the sides of the pit. Each terrace or circle is thus less in circumference than the one above it. From one circle to the next there slopes a bank of more or less height and steepness. Down the bank which falls to the comparatively flat ground of the First Circle they are now about to pass.—To put it otherwise, the Inferno is an inverted hollow cone.

[221] Pity: The pity felt by Virgil has reference only to those in the circle they are about to enter, which is his own. See also Purg. iii. 43.

[222] Wouldst thou, etc.: He will not have Dante form a false opinion of the character of those condemned to the circle which is his own.

[223] Part: parte, altered by some editors into porta; but though baptism is technically described as the gate of the sacraments, it never is as the gate of the faith. A tenet of Dante’s faith was that all the unbaptized are lost. He had no choice in the matter.

[224] Limbo: Border, or borderland. Dante makes the First Circle consist of the two limbos of Thomas Aquinas: that of unbaptized infants, limbus puerorum, and that of the fathers of the old covenant, limbus sanctorum patrum. But the second he finds is now inhabited only by the virtuous heathen.

[225] Sir—Master: As a delicate means of expressing sympathy, Dante redoubles his courtesy to Virgil.

[226] Hidden drift: to find out, at first hand as it were, if the article in the creed is true which relates to the Descent into Hell; and, perhaps, to learn if when Christ descended He delivered none of the virtuous heathen.

[227] Lately: Virgil died about half a century before the crucifixion.

[228] A Potentate: The name of Christ is not mentioned in the Inferno.

[229] A hemisphere, etc.: An elaborate way of saying that part of the limbo was clearly lit. The flame is symbolical of the light of genius, or of virtue; both in Dante’s eyes being modes of worth.

[230] Wins grace, etc.: The thirst for fame was one keenly felt and openly confessed by Dante. See, e.g. De Monarchia, i. 1. In this he anticipated the humanists of the following century. Here we find that to be famous on earth helps the case of disembodied souls.

[231] Poet: Throughout the Comedy, with the exception of Parad. i. 29, and xxv. 8, the term ‘poet’ is confined to those who wrote in Greek and Latin. In Purg. xxi. 85 the name of poet is said to be that ‘which is most enduring and honourable.’

[232] A sword: Because Homer sings of battles. Dante’s acquaintance with his works can have been but slight, as they were not then translated into Latin, and Dante knew little or no Greek.

[233] To their honour: ‘And in that they do well:’ perhaps as showing themselves free from jealousy. But the remark of Benvenuto of Imola is: ‘Poets love and honour one another, and are never envious and quarrelsome like those who cultivate the other arts and sciences.’—I quote with misgiving from Tamburini’s untrustworthy Italian translation. Benvenuto lectured on the Comedy in Bologna for some years about 1370. It is greatly to be wished that his commentary, lively and full of side-lights as it is, should be printed in full from the original Latin.

[234] The lords, etc.: Not the company of him—Homer or Virgil—who is lord of the great song, and soars above all others; but the company of the great masters, whose verse, etc.

[235] Did my Master smile: To see Dante made free of the guild of great poets; or, it may be, to think they are about to discover in him a fellow poet.

[236] A noble castle: Where the light burns, and in which, as their peculiar seat, the shades of the heathen distinguished for virtue and genius reside. The seven walls are in their number symbolical of the perfect strength of the castle; or, to take it more pedantically, may mean the four moral virtues and the three speculative. The gates will then stand for the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, etc. The moat may be eloquence, set outside the castle to signify that only as reflected in the eloquent words of inspired men can the outside world get to know wisdom. Over the stream Dante passes easily, as being an adept in learned speech. The castle encloses a spacious mead enamelled with eternal green.

[237] CÆsar in arms, etc.: Suetonius says of CÆsar that he was of fair complexion, but had black and piercing eyes. Brunetto Latini, Dante’s teacher, says in his Tesoro (v. 11), of the hawk here mentioned—the grifagno—that its eyes ‘flame like fire.’

[238] Brutus: Introduced here that he may not be confounded with the later Brutus, for whom is reserved the lowest place of all in Inferno.

[239] Marcia: Wife of Cato; mentioned also in Purg. i. Julia: daughter of CÆsar and wife of Pompey.

[240] Saladin: Died 1193. To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries he supplied the ideal of a just Mohammedan ruler. Here are no other such. ‘He sits apart, because not of gentle birth,’ says Boccaccio; which shows what even a man of genius risks when he becomes a commentator.

[241] The Master: Aristotle, often spoken of by Dante as the Philosopher, and reverenced by him as the genius to whom the secrets of nature lay most open.

[242] Democritus, etc.: According to whom the world owes its form to a chance arrangement of atoms.

[243] Linus: Not Livy, into which some have changed it. Linus is mentioned by Virgil along with Orpheus, Egl. iv.

[244] Ptolemy: Greek geographer of the beginning of the second century, and author of the system of the world believed in by Dante, and freely used by him throughout the poem.

[245] Avicenna: A physician, born in Bokhara, and died at Ispahan, 1037. His Medical Canon was for centuries used as a text-book in Europe.

[246] Averroes: A Mohammedan philosopher of Cordova, died 1198. In his great Commentary on Aristotle he gives and explains every sentence of that philosopher’s works. He was himself ignorant of Greek, and made use of Arabic versions. Out of his Arabic the Commentary was translated into Hebrew, and thence into Latin. The presence of the three Mohammedans in this honourable place greatly puzzles the early commentators.

[247] A part, etc.: He passes into the darkness of the Limbo out of the brightly-lit, fortified enclosure. It is worth remarking, as one reads, how vividly he describes his first impression of a new scene, while when he comes to leave it a word is all he speaks.

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