123
This insolence of theirs is nothing new; they used it once at a less secret gate, which is, and will forever be, unlocked;
126
you saw the deadly words inscribed above it; and now, already past it, and descending, across the circles, down the slope, alone,
129
comes one by whom the city will be opened. ”
CANTO IX
THE HELP FROM Heaven has not yet arrived; the Pilgrim is afraid and Virgil is obviously worried. He reassures his ward by telling him that, soon after his own death, he was forced by the Sorceress Erichtho to resume mortal shape and go to the very bottom of Hell in order to bring up the soul of a traitor; thus Virgil knows the way well. But no sooner is the Pilgrim comforted than the Three Furies appear before him, on top of the tower, shrieking and tearing their breasts with their nails. They call for Medusa, whose horrible face has the power of turning anyone who looks on her to stone. Virgil turns his ward around and covers his eyes. After an “address to the reader” calling attention to the coming allegory, a strident blast splits the air, and the poets perceive an Angel coming through the murky darkness to open the gates of the City for them. Then the angel returns on the path whence he had come, and the two travelers enter the gate. Within are great open burning sarcophagi, from which groans of torment issue. Virgil explains that these are Arch-Heretics and their lesser counterparts.
The color of the coward on my face, when I realized my guide was turning back, made him quickly change the color of his own.
3
He stood alert, like one who strains to hear; his eyes could not see far enough ahead to cut the heavy fog of that black air.
6
“But surely we were meant to win this fight, ” he said, “or else … but no, such help was promised! Oh, how much time it’s taking him to come!”
9
I saw too well how quickly he amended his opening words with what he added on! They were different from the ones he first pronounced;
12
but nonetheless his words made me afraid, perhaps because the phrase he left unfinished I finished with worse meaning than he meant.
15
“Has anyone before ever descended to this sad hollow’s depths from that first circle whose pain is all in having hope cut off?”
18
I put this question to him. He replied, “It is not usual for one of us to make the journey I am making now.
21
But it happens I was down here once before, conjured by that heartless witch, Erichtho (who could recall the spirit to its body).
24
Soon after I had left my flesh in death she sent me through these walls, and down as far as the pit of Judas to bring a spirit out;
27
and that place is the lowest and the darkest and the farthest from the sphere that circles all; I know the road, and well, you can be sure.
30
This swamp that breathes with a prodigious stink lies in a circle round the doleful city that now we cannot enter without strife. ”
33
And he said other things, but I forget them, for suddenly my eyes were drawn above, up to the fiery top of that high tower36 where in no time at all and all at once sprang up three hellish Furies stained with blood, their bodies and their gestures those of females;
39
their waists were bound in cords of wild green hydras, horned snakes and little serpents grew as hair, and twined themselves around the savage temples.
42
And he who had occasion to know well the handmaids of the queen of timeless woe cried out to me “Look there! The fierce Erinyes!
45
22–30. Having no literary or legendary source, the story of Virgil’s descent into Hell was probably Dante’s invention.
That is Megaera, the one there to the left, and that one raving on the right, Alecto, Tisiphone, in the middle. ” He said no more.
48
With flailing palms the three would beat their breasts, then tear them with their nails, shrieking so loud, I drew close to the poet, confused with fear.
51
“Medusa, come, we’ll turn him into stone, ” they shouted all together glaring down, “how wrong we were to let off Theseus lightly! ”
54
“Now turn your back and cover up your eyes, for if the Gorgon comes and you should see her, there would be no returning to the world! ”
57
These were my master’s words. He turned me round and did not trust my hands to hide my eyes but placed his own on mine and kept them covered.
60
O all of you whose intellects are sound, look now and see the meaning that is hidden beneath the veil that covers my strange verses:
63
and then, above the filthy swell, approaching, a blast of sound, shot through with fear, exploded, making both shores of Hell begin to tremble;
66
it sounded like one of those violent winds, born from the clash of counter-temperatures, that tear through forests; raging on unchecked,
69
52. Medusa, in classical mythology, is one of the three Gorgons. Minerva, furious at Medusa for giving birth to two children in one of the former’s temples, changed her beautiful hair into serpents, so that whoever gazed on her terrifying aspect was turned to stone.
54. Theseus, the greatest Athenian hero, descended to Hades with his friend Pirithous, king of the Lapithae, in order to kidnap Proserpina for him. Pluto slew Pirithous, however, and kept Theseus a prisoner in Hades by having him sit on the Chair of Forgetfulness, which made his mind blank and thereby kept him from moving. Dante chooses a less common version of the myth, which has Theseus set free by Hercules. (See note on lines 98-99.)
it splits and rips and carries off the branches and proudly whips the dust up in its path and makes the beasts and shepherds flee its course!
72
He freed my eyes and said, “Now turn around and set your sight along the ancient scum, there where the marsh’s mist is hovering thickest. ”
75
As frogs before their enemy, the snake, all scatter through the pond and then dive down until each one is squatting on the bottom,
78
so I saw more than a thousand fear-shocked souls in flight, clearing the path of one who came walking the Styx, his feet dry on the water.
81
From time to time with his left hand he fanned his face to push the putrid air away, and this was all that seemed to weary him.
84
I was certain now that he was sent from Heaven. I turned to my guide, but he made me a sign to keep my silence and bow low to this one.
87
Ah, the scorn that filled his holy presence! He reached the gate and touched it with a wand; it opened without resistance from inside.
90
“O Heaven’s outcasts, despicable souls, ” he started, standing on the dreadful threshold, “what insolence is this that breeds in you?
93
Why do you stubbornly resist that will whose end can never be denied and which, more than one time, increased your suffering?
96
What do you gain by locking horns with fate? If you remember well, your Cerberus still bears his chin and throat peeled clean for that! ”
99
94. The will of God.
98-99. When Hercules descended into Hell to rescue Theseus, he chained the three-headed dog Cerberus and dragged him around and outside Hell so that the skin around his neck was ripped away.
He turned then and retraced the squalid path without one word to us, and on his face the look of one concerned and spurred by things
102
that were not those he found surrounding him. And then we started moving toward the city in the safety of the holy words pronounced.
105
We entered there, and with no opposition. And I, so anxious to investigate the state of souls locked
up in such a fortress,
108
once in the place, allowed my eyes to wander, and saw, in all directions spreading out, a countryside of pain and ugly anguish.
111
As at Arles where the Rhône turns to stagnant waters or as at Pola near Quarnero’s Gulf that closes Italy and bathes her confines,
114
the sepulchers make all the land uneven, so they did here, strewn in all directions, except the graves here served a crueler purpose:
117
for scattered everywhere among the tombs were flames that kept them glowing far more hot than any iron an artisan might use.
120
Each tomb had its lid loose, pushed to one side, and from within came forth such fierce laments that I was sure inside were tortured souls.
123
I asked, “Master, what kind of shades are these lying down here, buried in the graves of stone, speaking their presence in such dolorous sighs? ”
126
And he replied: “There lie arch-heretics of every sect, with all of their disciples; more than you think are packed within these tombs.
129
127-131. The Heretics are in a circle in Hell that is outside of the three main divisions of Incontinence, Violence, and Fraud. Heresy is not due to weaknesses of the flesh or mind (Incontinence), nor is it a form of violence.
Like heretics lie buried with their like and the graves burn more, or less, accordingly. ” Then turning to the right, we moved ahead
132
between the torments there and those high walls.
CANTO X
THEY COME to the tombs containing the Epicurean heretics, and as they are walking by them, a shade suddenly rises to full height in one tomb, having recognized the Pilgrim’s Tuscan dialect. It is the proud Farinata, who, in life, opposed Dante’s party; while he and the Pilgrim are conversing, another figure suddenly rises out of the same tomb. It is the shade of Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, who interrupts the conversation with questions about his son Guido. Misinterpreting the Pilgrim’s confused silence as evidence of his son’s death, Cavalcante falls back into his sepulcher and Farinata resumes the conversation exactly where it had been broken off. He defends his political actions in regard to Florence and prophesies that Dante, like himself, will soon know the pain of exile. But the Pilgrim is also interested to know how it is that the damned can see the future but not the present. When his curiosity is satisfied, he asks Farinata to tell Cavalcante that his son is still alive, and that his silence was caused only by his confusion about the shade’s inability to know the present.
Now onward down a narrow path, between the city’s ramparts and the suffering, my master walks, I following close behind.
3
“O lofty power who through these impious gyres lead me around as you see fit, ” I said, “I want to know, I want to understand:
6
the people buried there in sepulchers, can they be seen? I mean, since all the lids are off the tombs and no one stands on guard. ”
9
And he: “They will forever be locked up, when they return here from Jehoshaphat with the bodies that they left up in the world.
12
The private cemetery on this side serves Epicurus and his followers, who make the soul die when the body dies.
15
As for the question you just put to me, it will be answered soon, while we are here; and the wish you are keeping from me will be granted. ”
18
And I: “O my good guide, I do not hide my heart; I’m trying not to talk too much, as you have told me more than once to do. ”
21
“O Tuscan walking through our flaming city, alive, and speaking with such elegance, be kind enough to stop here for a while.
24
Your mode of speech identifies you clearly as one whose birthplace is that noble city with which in my time, perhaps, I was too harsh. ”
27
One of the vaults resounded suddenly with these clear words, and I, intimidated, drew up a little closer to my guide,
30
who said, “What are you doing? Turn around and look at Farinata, who has risen, you will see him from the waist up standing straight. ”
33
I already had my eyes fixed on his face, and there he stood out tall, with his chest and brow proclaiming his disdain for all this Hell.
36
14-15. The philosophy of the Epicureans taught that the highest good is temporal happiness, which is to be achieved by the practice of the virtues. In Dante’s time Epicureans were considered heretics because they exalted temporal happiness and therefore denied the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. Epicurus is among the heretics even though he was a pagan, because he denied the immortality of the soul, a truth known even to the ancients.
My guide, with a gentle push, encouraged me to move among the sepulchers toward him: “Be sure you choose your words with care, ” he said.
39
And when I reached the margin of his tomb he looked at me, and half-contemptuously he asked, “And who would your ancestors be? ”
42
And I who wanted only to oblige him held nothing back but told him everything. At this he lifted up his brows a little,
45
then said, “Bitter enemies of mine they were and of my ancestors and of my party; I had to scatter them not once but twice. ”
48
“They were expelled, but only to return from everywhere, ” I said, “not once but twice— an art your men, however, never mastered!”
51
Just then along that same tomb’s open ledge a shade appeared, but just down to his chin, beside this other; I think he got up kneeling.
54
He looked around as though he hoped to see if someone else, perhaps, had come with me and, when his expectation was deceived,
57
he started weeping: “If it be great genius that carries you along through this blind jail, where is my son? Why is he not with you?”
60
“I do not come alone, ” I said to him, “that one waiting over there guides me through here, the one, perhaps, your Guido held in scorn. ”
63
(The place of pain assigned him, and what he asked, already had revealed his name to me and made my pointed answer possible.)
66
53. The shade is Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, a member of an important Florentine family. His son Guido, born about 1255, was one of the major poets of the day and was Dante’s “first friend, ” as he says in the Vita nuova.
Instantly, he sprang to his full height and cried, “What did you say? He held ? Is he not living? The day’s sweet light no longer strikes his eyes? ”
69
And when he heard the silence of my delay responding to his question, he collapsed into his tomb, not to be seen again.
72
That other stately shade, at whose request I had first stopped to talk, showed no concern nor moved his head nor turned to see what happened;
75
he merely picked up where we had left off: “If that art they did not master, ” he went on, “that gives me greater pain than does this bed.
78
But the face of the queen who reigns down here will glow not more than fifty times before you learn how hard it is to master such an art;
81
and as I hope that you may once more know the sweet world, tell me, why should your party be so harsh to my clan in every law they make?”
84
I answered: “The massacre and butchery that stained the waters of the Arbia red now cause such laws to issue from our councils. ”
87
He sighed, shaking his head. “It was not I alone took part, ” he said, “nor certainly would I have joined the rest without good cause.
90
But I alone stood up when all of them were ready to have Florence razed. It was
I who openly stood up in her defense. ”
93
“And now, as I would have your seed find peace, ” I said, “I beg you to resolve a problem that has kept my reason tangled in a knot:
96
79-81. The face is that of Hecate or Proserpina, the moon goddess, queen of the Underworld (cf. Canto IX, 44). Farinata makes the prophecy that Dante will know how difficult the art of returning from exile is before fifty months have passed.
if I have heard correctly, all of you can see ahead to what the future holds but your knowledge of the present is not clear. ”
99
“Down here we see like those with faulty vision who only see, ” he said, “what’s at a distance; this much the sovereign lord grants us here.
102
When events are close to us, or when they happen, our mind is blank, and were it not for others we would know nothing of your living state.
105
Thus you can understand how all our knowledge will be completely dead at that time when the door to future things is closed forever. ”
108
Then I, moved by regret for what I’d done said, “Now, will you please tell the fallen one his son is still on earth among the living;
111
and if, when he asked, silence was my answer, tell him: while he was speaking, all my thoughts were struggling with that point you solved for me. ”
114
My teacher had begun to call me back, so I quickly asked that spirit to reveal the names of those who shared the tomb with him.
117
He said, “More than a thousand lie with me, the Second Frederick is here and the Cardinal is with us. And the rest I shall not mention. ”
120
His figure disappeared. I made my way to the ancient poet, reflecting on those words, those words which were prophetic enemies.
123
He moved, and as we went along he said, “What troubles you? Why are you so distraught?” And I told him all the thoughts that filled my mind.
126
“Be sure your mind retains, ” the sage commanded, “those words you heard pronounced against yourself, and listen carefully now. ” He raised a finger:
129
“When at last you stand in the glow of her sweet ray, the one whose splendid eyes see everything, from her you’ll learn your life’s itinerary. ”