The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

CANTO XXIV.

In season of the new year, when the sun
Beneath Aquarius[630] warms again his hair,
And somewhat on the nights the days have won;
When on the ground the hoar-frost painteth fair
A mimic image of her sister white—
But soon her brush of colour is all bare—
The clown, whose fodder is consumed outright,
Rises and looks abroad, and, all the plain
Beholding glisten, on his thigh doth smite.
Returned indoors, like wretch that seeks in vain10
What he should do, restless he mourns his case;
But hope revives when, looking forth again,
He sees the earth anew has changed its face.
Then with his crook he doth himself provide,
And straightway doth his sheep to pasture chase:
So at my Master was I terrified,
His brows beholding troubled; nor more slow
To where I ailed[631] the plaster was applied.
For when the broken bridge[632] we stood below
My Guide turned to me with the expression sweet20
Which I beneath the mountain learned to know.
His arms he opened, after counsel meet
Held with himself, and, scanning closely o’er
The fragments first, he raised me from my feet;
And like a man who, working, looks before,
With foresight still on that in front bestowed,
Me to the summit of a block he bore
And then to me another fragment showed,
Saying: ‘By this thou now must clamber on;
But try it first if it will bear thy load.’30
The heavy cowled[633] this way could ne’er have gone,
For hardly we, I holpen, he so light,
Could clamber up from shattered stone to stone.
And but that on the inner bank the height
Of wall is not so great, I say not he,
But for myself I had been vanquished quite.
But Malebolge[634] to the cavity
Of the deep central pit is planned to fall;
Hence every Bolgia in its turn must be
High on the out, low on the inner wall;40
So to the summit we attained at last,
Whence breaks away the topmost stone[635] of all.
My lungs were so with breathlessness harassed,
The summit won, I could no further go;
And, hardly there, me on the ground I cast
‘Well it befits that thou shouldst from thee throw
All sloth,’ the Master said; ‘for stretched in down
Or under awnings none can glory know.
And he who spends his life nor wins renown
Leaves in the world no more enduring trace50
Than smoke in air, or foam on water blown.
Therefore arise; o’ercome thy breathlessness
By force of will, victor in every fight
When not subservient to the body base.
Of stairs thou yet must climb a loftier flight:[636]
’Tis not enough to have ascended these.
Up then and profit if thou hear’st aright.’
Rising I feigned to breathe with greater ease
Than what I felt, and spake: ‘Now forward plod,
For with my courage now my strength agrees.’60
Up o’er the rocky rib we held our road;
And rough it was and difficult and strait,
And steeper far[637] than that we earlier trod.
Speaking I went, to hide my wearied state,
When from the neighbouring moat a voice we heard
Which seemed ill fitted to articulate.
Of what it said I knew not any word,
Though on the arch[638] that vaults the moat set high;
But he who spake appeared by anger stirred.
Though I bent downward yet my eager eye,70
So dim the depth, explored it all in vain;
I then: ‘O Master, to that bank draw nigh,
And let us by the wall descent obtain,
Because I hear and do not understand,
And looking down distinguish nothing plain.’
‘My sole reply to thee,’ he answered bland,
‘Is to perform; for it behoves,’ he said,
‘With silent act to answer just demand.’
Then we descended from the bridge’s head,[639]
Where with the eighth bank is its junction wrought;80
And full beneath me was the Bolgia spread.
And I perceived that hideously ’twas fraught
With serpents; and such monstrous forms they bore,
Even now my blood is curdled at the thought.
Henceforth let sandy Libya boast no more!
Though she breed hydra, snake that crawls or flies,
Twy-headed, or fine-speckled, no such store
Of plagues, nor near so cruel, she supplies,
Though joined to all the land of Ethiop,
A

[630] Aquarius: The sun is in the constellation of Aquarius from the end of January till the end of February; and already, say in the middle of February, the day is nearly as long as the night.

[631] Where I ailed, etc.: As the peasant is in despair at seeing the earth white with what he thinks is snow, so was Dante at the signs of trouble on Virgil’s face. He has mistaken anger at the cheat for perplexity as to how they are to escape from the Bolgia; and his Master’s smile is grateful and reassuring to him as the spectacle of the green earth to the despairing shepherd.

[632] The broken bridge: They are about to escape from the bottom of the Sixth Bolgia by climbing the wall between it and the Seventh, at the point where the confused fragments of the bridge Friar Catalano told them of (Inf. xxiii. 133) lie piled up against the wall, and yield something of a practicable way.

[633] The heavy cowled: He finds his illustration on the spot, his mind being still full of the grievously burdened hypocrites.

[634] But Malebolge, etc.: Each Bolgia in turn lies at a lower level than the one before it, and consequently the inner side of each dividing ridge or wall is higher than the outer; or, to put it otherwise, in each Bolgia the wall they come to last—that nearest the centre of the Inferno, is lower than that they first reach—the one enclosing the Bolgia.

[635] The topmost stone: The stone that had formed the beginning of the arch at this end of it.

[636] A loftier flight: When he ascends the Mount of Purgatory.

[637] Steeper far, etc.: Rougher and steeper than the rib of rock they followed till they had crossed the Fifth Bolgia. They are now travelling along a different spoke of the wheel.

[638] The arch, etc.: He has gone on hiding his weariness till he is on the top of the arch that overhangs the Seventh Bolgia—that in which thieves are punished.

[639] Front the bridge’s head: Further on they climb up again (Inf. xxvi. 13) by the projecting stones which now supply them with the means of descent. It is a disputed point how far they do descend. Clearly it is further than merely from the bridge to the lower level of the wall dividing the Seventh from the Eighth Bolgia; but not so far as to the ground of the moat. Most likely the stones jut forth at the angle formed by the junction of the bridge and the rocky wall. On one of the lowest of these they find a standing-place whence they can see clearly what is in the Bolgia.

[640] Heliotrope: A stone supposed to make the bearer of it invisible.

[641] Their hands, etc.: The sinners in this Bolgia are the thieves, not the violent robbers and highwaymen but those crime involves a betrayal of trust. After all their cunning thefts they are naked now; and, though here is nothing to steal, hands are firmly bound behind them.

[642] The ashes, etc.: The sufferings of the thieves, if looked closely into, will be found appropriate to their sins. They would fain but cannot steal themselves away, and in addition to the constant terror of being found out they are subject to pains the essence of which consists in the deprivation—the theft from them—of their unsubstantial bodies, which are all that they now have to lose. In the case of this victim the deprivation is only temporary.

[643] The Phoenix: Dante here borrows very directly from Ovid (Metam. xv.).

[644] Vanni Fucci: Natural son of a Pistoiese noble and a poet of some merit, who bore a leading part in the ruthless feuds of Blacks and Whites which distracted Pistoia towards the close of the thirteenth century.

[645] And ask, etc.: Dante wishes to find out why Fucci is placed among the thieves, and not in the circle of the violent. The question is framed so as to compel confession of a crime for which the sinner had not been condemned in life; and he flushes with rage at being found among the cowardly thieves.

[646] I’m plunged, etc.: Fucci was concerned in the theft of treasure from the Cathedral Church of St. James at Pistoia. Accounts vary as to the circumstances under which the crime was committed, and as to who suffered for it. Neither is it certainly known when Fucci died, though his recent arrival in the Bolgia agrees with the view that he was still active on the side of the Blacks in the last year of the century. In the fierceness of his retort to Dante we have evidence of their old acquaintance and old enmity.

[647] Lest thou shouldst joy: Vanni, a Nero or Black, takes his revenge for being found here by Dante, who was, as he knew, associated with the Bianchi or Whites, by prophesying an event full of disaster to these.

[648] Every Bianco, etc.: The Blacks, according to Villani (viii. 45), were driven from Pistoia in May 1301. They took refuge in Florence, where their party, in the following November under the protection of Charles of Valois, finally gained the upper hand, and began to persecute and expel the Whites, among whom was Dante. Mars, the god of war, or, more probably, the planet of war, draws a vapour from the valley of the Magra, a small stream which flows into the Mediterranean on the northern confine of Tuscany. This vapour is said to signify Moroello Malaspina, a noble of that district and an active leader of the Blacks, who here figure as murky clouds. The Campo Piceno is the country west of Pistoia. There Moroello bursts on his foes like a lightning-flash out of its cloud. This seems to refer to a pitched battle that should have happened soon after the Blacks recovered their strength; but the chroniclers tell of none such, though some of the commentators do. The fortress of Seravalle was taken from the Pistoiese, it is true, in 1302, and Moroello is said to have been the leader of the force which starved it into submission. He was certainly present at the great siege of Pistoia in 1305, when the citizens suffered the last rigours of famine.—This prophecy by Fucci recalls those by Farinata and Ciacco.

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