The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

CANTO XIV.

Me of my native place the dear constraint[433]
Led to restore the leaves which round were strewn,
To him whose voice by this time was grown faint.
Thence came we where the second round joins on
Unto the third, wherein how terrible
The art of justice can be, is well shown.
But, clearly of these wondrous things to tell,
I say we entered on a plain of sand
Which from its bed doth every plant repel.
The dolorous wood lies round it like a band,10
As that by the drear fosse is circled round.
Upon its very edge we came to a stand.
And there was nothing within all that bound
But burnt and heavy sand; like that once trod
Beneath the feet of Cato[434] was the ground.
Ah, what a terror, O revenge of God!
Shouldst thou awake in any that may read
Of what before mine eyes was spread abroad.
I of great herds of naked souls took heed.
Most piteously was weeping every one;20
And different fortunes seemed to them decreed.
For some of them[435] upon the ground lay prone,
And some were sitting huddled up and bent,
While others, restless, wandered up and down.
More numerous were they that roaming went
Than they that were tormented lying low;
But these had tongues more loosened to lament.
O’er all the sand, deliberate and slow,
Broad open flakes of fire were downward rained,
As ’mong the Alps[436] in calm descends the snow.30
Such Alexander[437] saw when he attained
The hottest India; on his host they fell
And all unbroken on the earth remained;
Wherefore he bade his phalanxes tread well
The ground, because when taken one by one
The burning flakes they could the better quell.
So here eternal fire[438] was pouring down;
As tinder ’neath the steel, so here the sands
Kindled, whence pain more vehement was known.
And, dancing up and down, the wretched hands[439]40
Beat here and there for ever without rest;
Brushing away from them the falling brands.
And I: ‘O Master, by all things confessed
Victor, except by obdurate evil powers
Who at the gate[440] to stop our passage pressed,
Who is the enormous one who noway cowers
Beneath the fire; with fierce disdainful air
Lying as if untortured by the showers?’
And that same shade, because he was aware
That touching him I of my Guide was fain50
To learn, cried: ‘As in life, myself I bear
In death. Though Jupiter should tire again
His smith, from whom he snatched in angry bout
The bolt by which I at the last was slain;[441]
Though one by one he tire the others out
At the black forge in Mongibello[442] placed,
While “Ho, good Vulcan, help me!” he shall shout—
The cry he once at Phlegra’s[443] battle raised;
Though hurled with all his might at me shall fly
His bolts, yet sweet revenge he shall not taste.’60
Then spake my Guide, and in a voice so high
Never till then heard I from him such tone:
‘O Capaneus, because unquenchably
Thy pride doth burn, worse pain by thee is known.
Into no torture save thy madness wild
Fit for thy fury couldest thou be thrown.’
Then, to me turning with a face more mild,
He said: ‘Of the Seven Kings was he of old,
Who leaguered Thebes, and as he God reviled
Him in small reverence still he seems to hold;70
But for his bosom his own insolence
Supplies fit ornament,[444] as now I told.
Now follow; but take heed lest passing hence
Thy feet upon the burning sand should tread;
But keep them firm where runs the forest fence.’[445]
We reached a place—nor any word we said—
Where issues from the wood a streamlet small;
I shake but to recall its colour red.
Like that which does from BulicamË[446] fall,
And losel women later ’mong them share;80
So through the sand this brooklet’s waters crawl.
Its botto

[433] Dear constraint: The mention of Florence has awakened Dante to pity, and he willingly complies with the request of the unnamed suicide (Inf. xiii. 142). As a rule, the only service he consents to yield the souls with whom he converses in Inferno is to restore their memory upon earth; a favour he does not feign to be asked for in this case, out of consideration, it may be, for the family of the sinner.

[434] Cato: Cato of Utica, who, after the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia, led his broken army across the Libyan desert to join King Juba.

[435] Some of them, etc.: In this the third round of the Seventh Circle are punished those guilty of sins of violence against God, against nature, and against the arts by which alone a livelihood can honestly be won. Those guilty as against God, the blasphemers, lie prone like Capaneus (line 46), and are subject to the fiercest pain. Those guilty of unnatural vice are stimulated into ceaseless motion, as described in Cantos XV. and XVI. The usurers, those who despise honest industry and the humanising arts of life, are found crouching on the ground (Inf. xvii. 43).

[436] The Alps: Used here for mountains in general.

[437] Such Alexander, etc.: The reference is to a pretended letter of Alexander to Aristotle, in which he tells of the various hindrances met with by his army from snow and rain and showers of fire. But in that narrative it is the snow that is trampled down, while the flakes of fire are caught by the soldiers upon their outspread cloaks. The story of the shower of fire may have been suggested by Plutarch’s mention of the mineral oil in the province of Babylon, a strange thing to the Greeks; and of how they were entertained by seeing the ground, which had been sprinkled with it, burst into flame.

[438] Eternal fire: As always, the character of the place and of the punishment bears a relation to the crimes of the inhabitants. They sinned against nature in a special sense, and now they are confined to the sterile sand where the only showers that fall are showers of fire.

[439] The wretched hands: The dance, named in the original the tresca, was one in which the performers followed a leader and imitated him in all his gestures, waving their hands as he did, up and down, and from side to side. The simile is caught straight from common life.

[440] At the gate: Of the city of Dis (Inf. viii. 82).

[441] Was slain, etc.: Capaneus, one of the Seven Kings, as told below, when storming the walls of Thebes, taunted the other gods with impunity, but his blasphemy against Jupiter was answered by a fatal bolt.

[442] Mongibello: A popular name of Etna, under which mountain was situated the smithy of Vulcan and the Cyclopes.

[443] Phlegra: Where the giants fought with the gods.

[444] Fit ornament, etc.: Even if untouched by the pain he affects to despise, he would yet suffer enough from the mad hatred of God that rages in his breast. Capaneus is the nearest approach to the Satan of Milton found in the Inferno. From the need of getting law enough by which to try the heathen Dante is led into some inconsistency. After condemning the virtuous heathen to Limbo for their ignorance of the one true God, he now condemns the wicked heathen to this circle for despising false gods. Jupiter here stands for, as need scarcely be said, the Supreme Ruler; and in that sense he is termed God (line 69). But it remains remarkable that the one instance of blasphemous defiance of God should be taken from classical fable.

[445] The forest fence: They do not trust themselves so much as to step upon the sand, but look out on it from the verge of the forest which encircles it, and which as they travel they have on the left hand.

[446] BulicamË: A hot sulphur spring a couple of miles from Viterbo, greatly frequented for baths in the Middle Ages; and, it is said, especially by light women. The water boils up into a large pool, whence it flows by narrow channels; sometimes by one and sometimes by another, as the purposes of the neighbouring peasants require. Sulphurous fumes rise from the water as it runs. The incrustation of the bottom, sides, and edges of those channels gives them the air of being solidly built.

[447] The passage: On each edge of the canal there is a flat pathway of solid stone; and Dante sees that only by following one of these can a passage be gained across the desert, for to set foot on the sand is impossible for him owing to the falling flakes of fire. There may be found in his description of the solid and flawless masonry of the canal a trace of the pleasure taken in good building by the contemporaries of Arnolfo. Nor is it without meaning that the sterile sands, the abode of such as despised honest labour, is crossed by a perfect work of art which they are forbidden ever to set foot upon.

[448] The gateway: At the entrance to Inferno.

[449] Whose king: Saturn, who ruled the world in the Golden Age. He, as the devourer of his own offspring, is the symbol of Time; and the image of Time is therefore set by Dante in the island where he reigned.

[450] Her child: Jupiter, hidden in the mountain from his father Saturn.

[451] Feed Acheron, etc.: The idea of this image is taken from the figure in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel ii. But here, instead of the Four Empires, the materials of the statue represent the Four Ages of the world; the foot of clay on which it stands being the present time, which is so bad that even iron were too good to represent it. Time turns his back to the outworn civilisations of the East, and his face to Rome, which, as the seat of the Empire and the Church, holds the secret of the future. The tears of time shed by every Age save that of Gold feed the four infernal streams and pools of Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus. Line 117 indicates that these are all fed by the same water; are in fact different names for the same flood of tears. The reason why Dante has not hitherto observed the connection between them is that he has not made a complete circuit of each or indeed of any circle, as Virgil reminds him at line 124, etc. The rivulet by which they stand drains the boiling Phlegethon—where the water is all changed to blood, because in it the murderers are punished—and flowing through the forest of the suicides and the desert of the blasphemers, etc., tumbles into the Eighth Circle as described in Canto xvi. 103. Cocytus they are afterward to reach. An objection to this account of the infernal rivers as being all fed by the same waters may be found in the difference of volume of the great river of Acheron (Inf. iii. 71) and of this brooklet. But this difference is perhaps to be explained by the evaporation from the boiling waters of Phlegethon and of this stream which drains it. Dante is almost the only poet applied to whom such criticism would not be trifling. Another difficult point is how Cocytus should not in time have filled, and more than filled, the Ninth Circle.

[452] To the left hand: Twice only as they descend they turn their course to the right hand (Inf. ix. 132, and xvii. 31). The circuit of the Inferno they do not complete till they reach the very base.

[453] Lethe: Found in the Earthly Paradise, as described in Purgatorio xxviii. 130.

Clyx.com