The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri Part 19

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 p.r.o.ne, 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; Brus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage 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 fain 50 To learn, cried: 'As in life, myself I bear In death. Though Jupiter should tire again His smith, from whom he s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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 Bulicame[446] fall, And losel women later 'mong them share; 80 So through the sand this brooklet's waters crawl.

Its bottom and its banks I was aware Were stone, and stone the rims on either side.

From this I knew the pa.s.sage[447] must be there.

'Of all that I have shown thee as thy guide Since when we by the gateway[448] entered in, Whose threshold unto no one is denied, Nothing by thee has yet encountered been So worthy as this brook to cause surprise, O'er which the falling fire-flakes quenched are seen.' 90 These were my Leader's words. For full supplies I prayed him of the food of which to taste Keen appet.i.te he made within me rise.

'In middle sea there lies a country waste, Known by the name of Crete,' I then was told, 'Under whose king[449] the world of yore was chaste.

There stands a mountain, once the joyous hold Of woods and streams; as Ida 'twas renowned, Now 'tis deserted like a thing grown old.

For a safe cradle 'twas by Rhea found. 100 To nurse her child[450] in; and his infant cry, Lest it betrayed him, she with clamours drowned.

Within the mount an old man towereth high.

Towards Damietta are his shoulders thrown; On Rome, as on his mirror, rests his eye.

His head is fas.h.i.+oned of pure gold alone; Of purest silver are his arms and chest; 'Tis bra.s.s to where his legs divide; then down From that is all of iron of the best, Save the right foot, which is of baken clay; 110 And upon this foot doth he chiefly rest.

Save what is gold, doth every part display A fissure dripping tears; these, gathering all Together, through the grotto pierce a way.

From rock to rock into this deep they fall, Feed Acheron[451] and Styx and Phlegethon, Then downward travelling by this strait ca.n.a.l, Far as the place where further slope is none, Cocytus form; and what that pool may be I say not now. Thou'lt see it further on.' 120 'If this brook rises,' he was asked by me, 'Within our world, how comes it that no trace We saw of it till on this boundary?'

And he replied: 'Thou knowest that the place Is round, and far as thou hast moved thy feet, Still to the left hand[452] sinking to the base, Nath'less thy circuit is not yet complete.

Therefore if something new we chance to spy, Amazement needs not on thy face have seat.'

I then: 'But, Master, where doth Lethe lie, 130 And Phlegethon? Of that thou sayest nought; Of this thou say'st, those tears its flood supply.'

'It likes me well to be by thee besought; But by the boiling red wave,' I was told, 'To half thy question was an answer brought.

Lethe,[453] not in this pit, shalt thou behold.

Thither to wash themselves the spirits go, When penitence has made them spotless souled.'

Then said he: 'From the wood 'tis fitting now That we depart; behind me press thou nigh. 140 Keep we the margins, for they do not glow, And over them, ere fallen, the fire-flakes die.'

FOOTNOTES:

[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 G.o.d, against nature, and against the arts by which alone a livelihood can honestly be won. Those guilty as against G.o.d, the blasphemers, lie p.r.o.ne 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds.

[444] _Fit ornament, etc._: Even if untouched by the pain he affects to despise, he would yet suffer enough from the mad hatred of G.o.d 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 G.o.d, he now condemns the wicked heathen to this circle for despising false G.o.ds. Jupiter here stands for, as need scarcely be said, the Supreme Ruler; and in that sense he is termed G.o.d (line 69). But it remains remarkable that the one instance of blasphemous defiance of G.o.d should be taken from cla.s.sical 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] _Bulicame_: 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 pa.s.sage_: On each edge of the ca.n.a.l there is a flat pathway of solid stone; and Dante sees that only by following one of these can a pa.s.sage 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 ca.n.a.l 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.

CANTO XV.

Now lies[454] our way along one of the margins hard; Steam rising from the rivulet forms a cloud, Which 'gainst the fire doth brook and borders guard.

Like walls the Flemings, timorous of the flood Which towards them pours betwixt Bruges and Cadsand,[455]

Have made, that ocean's charge may be withstood; Or what the Paduans on the Brenta's strand To guard their castles and their homesteads rear, Ere Chiarentana[456] feel the spring-tide bland; Of the same fas.h.i.+on did those dikes appear, 10 Though not so high[457] he made them, nor so vast, Whoe'er the builder was that piled them here.

We, from the wood when we so far had pa.s.sed I should not have distinguished where it lay Though I to see it backward glance had cast, A group of souls encountered on the way, Whose line of march was to the margin nigh.

Each looked at us--as by the new moon's ray Men peer at others 'neath the darkening sky-- Sharpening his brows on us and only us, 20 Like an old tailor on his needle's eye.

And while that crowd was staring at me thus, One of them knew me, caught me by the gown, And cried aloud: 'Lo, this is marvellous!'[458]

And straightway, while he thus to me held on, I fixed mine eyes upon his fire-baked face, And, spite of scorching, seemed his features known, And whose they were my memory well could trace; And I, with hand[459] stretched toward his face below, Asked: 'Ser Brunetto![460] and is this your place?' 30 'O son,' he answered, 'no displeasure show, If now Brunetto Latini shall some way Step back with thee, and leave his troop to go.'

I said: 'With all my heart for this I pray, And, if you choose, I by your side will sit; If he, for I go with him, grant delay.'

'Son,' said he, 'who of us shall intermit Motion a moment, for an age must lie Nor fan himself when flames are round him lit.

On, therefore! At thy skirts I follow nigh, 40 Then shall I overtake my band again, Who mourn a loss large as eternity.'

I dared not from the path step to the plain To walk with him, but low I bent my head,[461]

Like one whose steps are all with reverence ta'en.

'What fortune or what destiny,' he said, 'Hath brought thee here or e'er thou death hast seen; And who is this by whom thou'rt onward led?'

'Up yonder,' said I, 'in the life serene, I in a valley wandered all forlorn 50 Before my years had full accomplished been.