The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

CANTO V.

From the First Circle thus I downward went
Into the Second,[248] which girds narrower space,
But greater woe compelling loud lament.
Minos[249] waits awful there and snarls, the case
Examining of all who enter in;
And, as he girds him, dooms them to their place.
I say, each ill-starred spirit must begin
On reaching him its guilt in full to tell;
And he, omniscient as concerning sin,
Sees to what circle it belongs in Hell;10
Then round him is his tail as often curled
As he would have it stages deep to dwell.
And evermore before him stand a world
Of shades; and all in turn to judgment come,
Confess and hear, and then are downward hurled.[250]
‘O thou who comest to the very home
Of woe,’ when he beheld me Minos cried,
Ceasing a while from utterance of doom,
‘Enter not rashly nor in all confide;
By ease of entering be not led astray.’20
‘Why also[251] growling?’ answered him my Guide;
‘Seek not his course predestinate to stay;
For thus ’tis willed[252] where nothing ever fails
Of what is willed. No further speech essay.’
And now by me are agonising wails
Distinguished plain; now am I come outright
Where grievous lamentation me assails.
Now had I reached a place devoid of light,
Raging as in a tempest howls the sea
When with it winds, blown thwart each other, fight.30
The infernal storm is raging ceaselessly,
Sweeping the shades along with it, and them
It smites and whirls, nor lets them ever be.
Arrived at the precipitous extreme,[253]
In shrieks and lamentations they complain,
And even the Power Divine itself blaspheme.
I understood[254] that to this mode of pain
Are doomed the sinners of the carnal kind,
Who o’er their reason let their impulse reign.
As starlings in the winter-time combined40
Float on the wing in crowded phalanx wide,
So these bad spirits, driven by that wind,
Float up and down and veer from side to side;
Nor for their comfort any hope they spy
Of rest, or even of suffering mollified.
And as the cranes[255] in long-drawn company
Pursue their flight while uttering their song,
So I beheld approach with wailing cry
Shades lifted onward by that whirlwind strong.
‘Master, what folk are these,’[256] I therefore said,50
‘Who by the murky air are whipped along?’
‘She, first of them,’ his answer thus was made,
‘Of whom thou wouldst a wider knowledge win,
O’er many tongues and peoples, empire swayed.
So ruined was she by licentious sin
That she decreed lust should be uncontrolled,
To ease the shame that she herself was in.
She is Semiramis, of whom ’tis told
She followed Ninus, and his wife had been.
Hers were the realms now by the Sultan ruled.60
The next[257] is she who, amorous and self-slain,
Unto SichÆus’ dust did faithless show:
Then lustful Cleopatra.’ Next was seen
Helen, for whom so many years in woe
Ran out; and I the great Achilles knew,
Who at the last[258] encountered love for foe.
Paris I saw and Tristram.[259] In review
A thousand shades and more, he one by one
Pointed and named, whom love from life withdrew.
And after I had heard my Teacher run70
O’er many a dame of yore and many a knight,
I, lost in pity, was wellnigh undone.
Then I: ‘O Poet, if I only might
Speak with the two that as companions hie,
And on the wind appear to be so light!’[260]
And he to me: ‘When they shall come more nigh
Them shalt thou mark, and by the love shalt pray
Which leads them onward, and they will comply.’
Soon as the wind bends them to where we stay
I lift my voice: ‘O wearied souls and worn!80
Come speak with us if none[261] the boon gainsay.’
Then even as doves,[248] The Second: The Second Circle of the Inferno, and the first of punishment. The lower the circle, the more rigorous the penalty endured in it. Here is punished carnal sin.

[249] Minos: Son of Jupiter and King of Crete, so severely just as to be made after death one of the judges of the under world. He is degraded by Dante, as many other noble persons of the old mythology are by him, into a demon. Unlike the fallen angels of Milton, Dante’s devils have no interest of their own. Their only function is to help in working out human destinies.

[250] Downward hurled: Each falls to his proper place without lingering by the way. All through Inferno there is an absence of direct Divine interposition. It is ruled, as it were, by a course of nature. The sinners, compelled by a fatal impulse, advance to hear their doom, just as they fall inevitably one by one into Charon’s boat. Minos by a sort of devilish instinct sentences each sinner to his appropriate punishment. In Inf. xxvii. 127 we find the words in which Minos utters his judgment. In Inf. xxi. 29 a devil bears the sinner to his own place.

[251] Why also, etc.: Like Charon. If Minos represents conscience, as some would have it, Dante is here again assailed by misgivings as to his enterprise, and is quieted by reason in the person of Virgil.

[252] Thus ’tis willed, etc.: These two lines are the same as those to Charon, Inf. iii. 95, 96.

[253] Precipitous extreme: Opinions vary as to what is meant by ruina. As Dante is certainly still on the outer edge of the Second Circle or terrace, and while standing there hears distinctly the words the spirits say when they reach the ruina, it most likely denotes the steep slope falling from the First to the Second Circle. The spirits, driven against the wall which hems them in, burst into sharp lamentations against their irremediable fate.

[254] I understood, etc.: From the nature of the punishment, which, like all the others invented by Dante, bears some relation to the sin to which it is assigned. They who on earth failed to exercise self-restraint are beaten hither and thither by every wind that blows; and, as once they were blinded by passion, so now they see nothing plainly in that dim and obscure place. That Dante should assign the least grievous punishment of all to this sin throws light upon his views of life. In his eyes it had more than any other the excuse of natural bent, and had least of malice. Here, it must be remarked, are no seducers. For them a lower depth is reserved (Inf. xviii. See also Purg. xxvii. 15).

[255] The cranes: ‘The cranes are a kind of bird that go in a troop, as cavaliers go to battle, following one another in single file. And one of them goes always in front as their gonfalonier, guiding and leading them with its voice’ (Brunetto Latini, Tesoro, v. 27).

[256] What folk are these: The general crowd of sinners guilty of unlawful love are described as being close packed like starlings. The other troop, who go in single file like cranes, are those regarding whom Dante specially inquires; and they prove to be the nobler sort of sinners—lovers with something tragic or pathetic in their fate.

[257] The next: Dido, perhaps not named by Virgil because to him she owed her fame. For love of Æneas she broke the vow of perpetual chastity made on the tomb of her husband.

[258] At the last, etc.: Achilles, when about to espouse Polyxena, and when off his guard, was slain.

[259] Paris ... and Tristram: Paris of Troy, and the Tristram of King Arthur’s Table.

[260] So light: Denoting the violence of the passion to which they had succumbed.

[261] If none: If no Superior Power.

[262] Doves: The motion of the tempest-driven shades is compared to the flight of birds—starlings, cranes, and doves. This last simile prepares us for the tenderness of Francesca’s tale.

[263] Dido: Has been already indicated, and is now named. This association of the two lovers with Virgil’s Dido is a further delicate touch to engage our sympathy; for her love, though illicit, was the infirmity of a noble heart.

[264] Living creature: ‘Animal.’ No shade, but an animated body.

[265] Thy peace: Peace from all the doubts that assail him, and which have compelled him to the journey: peace, it may be, from temptation to sin cognate to her own. Even in the gloom of Inferno her great goodheartedness is left her—a consolation, if not a grace.

[266] Your demand: By a refinement of courtesy, Francesca, though addressing only Dante, includes Virgil in her profession of willingness to tell all they care to hear. But as almost always, he remains silent. It is not for his good the journey is being made.

[267] Native city: Ravenna. The speaker is Francesca, daughter of Guido of Polenta, lord of Ravenna. About the year 1275 she was married to Gianciotto (Deformed John) Malatesta, son of the lord of Rimini; the marriage, like most of that time in the class to which she belonged, being one of political convenience. She allowed her affections to settle on Paolo, her husband’s handsome brother; and Gianciotto’s suspicions having been aroused, he surprised the lovers and slew them on the spot. This happened at Pesaro. The association of Francesca’s name with Rimini is merely accidental. The date of her death is not known. Dante can never have set eyes on Francesca; but at the battle of Campaldino in 1289, where he was present, a troop of cavaliers from Pistoia fought on the Florentine side under the command of her brother Bernardino; and in the following year, Dante being then twenty-five years of age, her father, Guido, was Podesta in Florence. The Guido of Polenta, lord of Ravenna, whom Dante had for his last and most generous patron, was grandson of that elder Guido, and nephew of Francesca.

[268] To have lost it so: A husband’s right and duty were too well defined in the prevalent social code for her to complain that Gianciotto avenged himself. What she does resent is that she was left no breathing-space for repentance and farewells.

[269] Which absolves, etc.: Which compels whoever is beloved to love in return. Here is the key to Dante’s comparatively lenient estimate of the guilt of Francesca’s sin. See line 39, and Inf. xi. 83. The Church allowed no distinctions with regard to the lost. Dante, for his own purposes, invents a scale of guilt; and in settling the degrees of it he is greatly influenced by human feeling—sometimes by private likes and dislikes. The vestibule of the caitiffs, e.g., is his own creation.

[270] CaÏna: The Division of the Ninth and lowest Circle, assigned to those treacherous to their kindred (Inf. xxxii. 58). Her husband was still living in 1300.—May not the words of this line be spoken by Paolo? It is as a fratricide even more than as the slayer of his wife that Gianciotto is to find his place in CaÏna. The words are more in keeping with the masculine than the feminine character. They certainly jar somewhat with the gentler censure of line 102. And, immediately after, Dante speaks of what the ‘souls’ have said.

[271] Thy teacher: Boethius, one of Dante’s favourite authors (Convito ii. 13), says in his De Consol. Phil., ‘The greatest misery in adverse fortune is once to have been happy.’ But, granting that Dante found the idea in Boethius, it is clearly Virgil that Francesca means. She sees that Dante’s guide is a shade, and gathers from his grave passionless aspect that he is one condemned for ever to look back with futile regret upon his happier past.

[272] Lancelot: King Arthur’s famous knight, who was too bashful to make his love for Queen Guinivere known to her. Galahad, holding the secret of both, persuaded the Queen to make the first declaration of love at a meeting he arranged for between them. Her smile, or laugh, as she ‘took Lancelot by the chin and kissed him,’ assured her lover of his conquest. The Arthurian Romances were the favourite reading of the Italian nobles of Dante’s time.

[273] Galahad: From the part played by Galahad, or Galeotto, in the tale of Lancelot, his name grew to be Italian for Pander. The book, says Francesca, was that which tells of Galahad; and the author of it proved a very Galahad to us. The early editions of the Decameron bear the second title of ‘The Prince Galeotto.’

Clyx.com