Circles of Hell Read Online

Pity wrings my core.’

    And so he did once more begin: ‘Suppose

that freely, from a generous heart, someone

should do, imprisoned ghost, what your prayers seek,

    tell us, if you should care to, this: how souls

are bound in these hard knots. And, if you can:

will anyone be ever loosed from limbs like these?’

    At that (exhaling heavily) the trunk

converted wind to word and formed this speech:

‘The answer you require is quick to give:

    When any soul abandons savagely

its body, rending self by self away,

Minos consigns it to the seventh gulf.

    Falling, it finds this copse. Yet no one place

is chosen as its plot. Where fortune slings it,

there (as spelt grains might) it germinates.

    A sapling sprouts, grows ligneous, and then

the Harpies, grazing on its foliage,

fashion sharp pain and windows for that pain.

    We (as shall all), come Judgement Day, shall seek

our cast-off spoil, yet not put on this vestment.

Keeping what we tore off would not be fair.

    Our bodies we shall drag back here; and all

around this melancholy grove they’ll swing,

each on the thorn of shades that wrought them harm.’

    Attention trained entirely on that stock

(thinking, in truth, it might as yet say more),

we now were shocked by a sudden uproar,

    as if (to make comparison) you’d heard some hog

and all the boar hunt baying round its stand –

a sound composed of beasts and thrashing twigs.

    And look there, on the left-hand side, there came,

at speed, two fleeing, naked, scratched to bits,

who broke down every hurdle in that scrub.

    One was ahead: ‘Quick, quick! Come, death! Come now!’

The other (seeming, to himself, too slow)

was yelling: ‘Lano! Oh, your nimble heels

    weren’t half so sharp at the Toppo rumble!’

And then (it may be his breath was failing),

he sank to form a clump beside a shrub.

    Behind these two, the wood was teeming, full

of black bitches, ravenous and rapid,

as greyhounds are when slipping from their leads.

    These set their teeth on that sad, hunkered form.

They tore him all to pieces, chunk by chunk.

And then they carried off those suffering limbs.

    My guide then took me gently by the hand,

and led me to the bush, which wept (in vain)

through all of its blood-stained lacerations,

    saying: ‘O Jacopo da Santo Andrea!

What use was it to take me as your shield?

Am I to blame for your wild, wicked ways?’

    My teacher came and stood above that bush.

‘So who were you,’ he said, ‘who, pierced to bits,

breathes painful utterance in jets of blood?’

    ‘You souls,’ he said, ‘you come – but just in time –

to see the massacre, in all its shame,

that rends away from me my fresh green fronds.

    Place all these leaves beneath this grieving stump.

I too was from that city, once, which chose

Saint John as patron over Mars – its first –

    whose arts, since spurned, have always brought us harm.

And were there not, beneath the Arno bridge,

some traces visible of what he was,

    those citizens who built it all anew

on ashes that Attila left behind

would then have laboured with no end in view.

    Myself, I made a gallows of my house.’

Canto XVII

PASSAGE TO THE EIGHTH CIRCLE

    ‘Behold! The beast who soars with needle tail

through mountains, shattering shields and city walls!

Behold! The beast that stinks out all the world!’

    To me, my lord spoke thus, then beckoned up

the monster to approach the jutting prow

that marked the end of all our marble paths.

    It came, that filthy image of deceit.

Its head and trunk it grounded on the shore.

It did not draw its tailpiece to the bank.

    The face was that of any honest man,

the outer skin all generosity.

Its timber, though, was serpent through and through:

    two clawing grabs, and hairy to the armpits,

its back and breast and ribcage all tattooed

with knot designs and spinning little whorls.

    No Turk or Tartar has woven finer drapes,

more many-coloured in their pile or tuft.

Nor did Arachne thread such tapestries.

    Compare: on foreshores, sometimes, dinghies stand

in water partly, partly on the shingle –

as likewise, in the land of drunken Germans,

    beavers will do, advancing their attack.

So did this beast – the worst that there can be –

there on the rocky rim that locks the sand.

    Out into emptiness it swung its tail,

and twisted upwards its venomous fork.

The tip was armed like any scorpion’s.

    My leader said: ‘We need to bend our path

a little further down, towards that vile

monstrosity that’s lolling underneath.’

    So down we went, towards the right-hand pap.

Ten paces, and we’d reached the very edge,

stepping well clear of flames and burning shoals.

    And then, on getting to that spot, I saw,

a little further on along the sandbar,

a group just sitting near the gaping waste.

    And here my teacher said: ‘To carry back

experience of the ring that we’re now in,

go over there and look at their behaviour.

    But do not stay to talk at any length.

Till you return, I’ll parley with this thing,

for him to grant us use of his great thews.’

    So once again, along the outward brow

of Circle Seven I progressed alone

to where there sat these souls in misery.

    The pain they felt erupted from their eyes.

All up and down and round about, their hands

sought remedies for burning air and ground.

    Dogs in the heat of summer do the same,

stung by the bluebottle, gadfly and flea,

swatting at swarms with paw pads or with snout.

    On some of these – these faces under showers

of grievous, never-ceasing rain – I set my eyes.

I recognized no single one, but noticed

    round the neck of each a cash bag hung

(each with its own insignia and blaze),

on which their staring eyes appeared to graze.

    So I, too, gazing, passed among them all,

and saw, imprinted on a yellow purse,

a blue device, in face and pose a lion.

    Then, as my view went trundling further on,

I saw another, with a blood-red field –

the goose it bore was whiter, far, than butter.

    And then I heard (from one whose neat, white sack

was marked in azure with a pregnant sow):

‘What are you after in this awful hole?

    Do go away! Yet you – as Vitaliano is –

are still alive. Then understand me, please:

he’ll sit on my left flank, my one-time neighbour.

    I’m Paduan, among these Florentines,

and often they all thunder in my ears:

“Oh, let him come,” they’ll scream, “that sovereign knight,

    who’ll bring the bag that bears three rampant goats.” ’

At which, in throes, he wrenched his mouth awry

and curled his tongue, like any ox, to lick his nose.

    And I, who feared that, if I lingered long,

I’d irritate the one who’d said ‘Be brief’,

now turned my back upon these worn-out souls.

    My leader, I discovered there, had jumped

already on that fearsome creature’s rump.

‘Come on,’ he urged, ‘be stalwart and courageous.

    From now on we’ll descend by stairs like these.

Mount at the front so I can come between,

to see the tail won’t bring you any harm.’

    Like someone shivering as the grip of ’flu

spreads over him, pale to the fingernails,

who trembles merely at the sight of shade …

    well, that was me, as these words carried over.

The threat of shame, however, when one’s lord

is near, emboldens one to serve him well.

    I settled down between those gruesome shoulders.

I wished to say (my voice, though, would not come):

‘Yes. Please! Be sure you hold me very firm.’

    He, who in many an earlier ‘perhaps’

had aided me, as soon as I got on,

flinging his arms around me, hugged me tight,

    and said: ‘Go on, then, Geryon. Cast out!

Wheel wide about to make a smooth descent.

Think of the strange new burden on your back.’

    Slowly astern, astern, as ferries leave

the quay where they had docked, so he moved out.

Then, only when he felt himself ride free,

    he turned the tail where breast had been before,

and – stretching long, as eels might do – set sail,

paddling the air towards him with his paws.

    No greater fear (so, truly, I believe)

was felt as Phaeton let the reins go loose,

and scorched the sky as still it is today,

    nor yet by ill-starred Icarus – his loins

unfeathering as the wax grew warm – to whom

his father screamed aloud: ‘You’re going wrong!’

    And then with fear I saw, on every side,

that I was now in air, and every sight

extinguished, save my view of that great beast.

    So swimming slowly, it goes on its way.

It wheels. It descends. This I don’t notice –

except an upward breeze now fans my face.

    By then I heard, beneath us to the right,

the roar of some appalling cataract.

And so I leant my head out, looking down.

    More timorous of falling still, I saw

that there were fires down there and heard shrill screams.

Trembling, I huddled back and locked my thighs.

    And then I saw, as I had not before,

the going-down – the spirals of great harm –

on every side now coming ever nearer.

    A falcon, having long been on the wing,

and seeing neither lure nor bird to prey on,

compels the falconer to sigh: ‘You’re coming in,’

    then sinks down wearily to where it left so fast.

A hundred turns – and then, far from its lord,

it lands, disdainful, spiteful in its scorn.

    So, too, did Geryon, to place us on the floor,

the very foot of that sheer, towering cliff.

And then, unburdened of our persons now,

    vanished at speed like barbed bolt from a bow.

Canto XIX

SIMONISTS

    You! Magic Simon, and your sorry school!

Things that are God’s own – things that, truly, are

the brides of goodness – lusting cruelly

    after gold and silver, you turn them all to whores.

The trumpet now (and rightly!) sounds for you.

There you all are, well set in Pocket Three.

    Onwards towards this yawning tomb, mounting

the ridge, by now we’d reached its summit –

the point that plumbs the middle of the ditch.

    O wisdom in the height, how great the art

that you display in Heaven, on earth and even

in that evil world! How justly you deal power!

    I saw how all the livid rock was drilled

with holes – along its flanks, across its floor –

all circular, and all of equal measure.

    To me they seemed, in radius, no more nor less

than fonts that, in my own beloved Saint John’s,

allow the priest at baptisms a place to stand.

    (Not long ago, I shattered one of those.

Someone was drowning there. I got them out.

This, sealed and sworn, is nothing but the truth.)

    Out of the mouth of every single hole

there floated up a pair of sinner feet,

legs to the ham on show, the rest concealed.

    The soles of all these feet were set alight,

and each pair wriggled at the joint so hard

they’d easily have ripped a rope or lanyard.

    As flames go flickering round some greasy thing

and hover just above its outer rind,

so these flames also, toe tip to heel end.

    ‘Who, sir,’ I said, ‘is that one there? That one

who jerks in pain greater than his confrères,

sucked at by flames far more fiercely vermilion.’

    ‘I’ll lift you down,’ he answered me, ‘if you

insist. We’ll take that bank the easier.

He’ll talk to you himself about his twists.’

    ‘Whatever pleases you,’ I said, ‘to me is good.

Lord, you remain: I’ll not depart – you know –

from what you will. You read my silent thoughts.’

    So on we went to the fourth embankment.

We turned around, descended on our left,

arriving at that pitted, straitened floor.

    My teacher, kindly, did not set me down –

nor loose me from his hip hold – till we had reached

that fissure where (all tears) shanks shuddered.

    ‘Whatever you might be there, upside down,

staked, you unhappy spirit, like a pole,

if you,’ I said, ‘are able, then speak out.’

    So there I stood like any friar who shrives

the hired assassin – head down in the earth –

who calls him back to put off stifling death.

    And he yelled out: ‘Is that you standing there?

Are you there, on your feet still, Boniface?

The writings lied to me by quite some years.

    Are you so sick of owning things already?

Till now, you’ve hardly been afraid to cheat

our lovely woman, tearing her to shreds.’

    Well, I just stood there (you will know just how)

simply not getting what I’d heard come out,

feeling a fool, uncertain what to say.

    Then Virgil entered: ‘Say this – and make speed:

“No, that’s not me. I am not who you think.” ’

And so I answered as he’d said I should.

    At which – all feet – the spirit thrashed about,

then, sighing loudly in a tearful voice:

‘So what is it you want of me?’ he said.

    ‘If you’re so keen to know who I might be,

and ran all down that slope to find me out,

you’d better know I wore the papal cope.

    A true Orsini, son of Ursa Bear,

I showed such greed in favouring her brats

that – up there well in pocket – I’m in pocket here.

    Below me, in great stacks beneath my head,

packed tight in every cranny of the rock,

are all my antecedents in the Simon line.

    Down there I’ll sink, in that same way, when he

arrives whom I supposed that you might be,

and uttered, therefore, my abrupt inquiry.

    But I already – feet up on the grill, tossed

upside down – have passed more time

than Boniface will, stuck here with red hot toes.

    For after him from westwards there’ll appear

that lawless shepherd, uglier in deed,

who then, for both of us, will form a lid.

    He shall be known as a “Jason-Once-Again”.

We read in Maccabees: “Priest Bribes a King.”

This other will score well with one French prince.’

    I may have been plain mad. I do not know.

But now, in measured verse, I sang these words:

‘Tell me, I pray: what riches did Our Lord

    demand, as first instalment, from Saint Peter

before He placed the keys in his command?

He asked (be sure) no more than: “Come behind me.”

    Nor did Saint Peter, or the rest of them,

receive from Matthias a gold or silver piece,

allotting him the place that Judas lost.

    So you stay put. You merit punishment.

But keep your eye on that ill-gotten coin

that made you bold with Charles the Angevin.

    And, were I not forbidden, as I am,

by reverence for those keys, supreme and holy,

that you hung on to in the happy life,

    I now would bring still weightier words to bear.

You and your greed bring misery to the world,

trampling the good and raising up the wicked.

    Saint John took heed of shepherds such as you.

He saw revealed that She-above-the-Waves,

whoring it up with Rulers of the earth,

    she who in truth was born with seven heads

and fed herself, in truth, from ten pure horns,

as long as she in virtue pleased her man.

    Silver and gold you have made your god. And what’s

the odds – you and some idol-worshipper?

He prays to one, you to a gilded hundred.

    What harm you mothered, Emperor Constantine!

Not your conversion but the dowry he –

that first rich Papa – thus obtained from you!’

    And all the time I chanted out these notes,

he, in his wrath or bitten by remorse,

flapped, with great force, the flat of both his feet.

    My leader, I believe, was very pleased.

In listening to these sounding words of truth,

he stood there satisfied, his lips compressed.

    So, too, he took me up in his embrace.

Then, bodily, he clasped me to his breast

and climbed again the path where he’d come down.

    Nor did he tire of holding me so tight.

He bore me to the summit of that arch

spanning the banks of Pockets Four and Five.

    And there he gently put his burden down,

gently on rocks so craggy and so steep

they might have seemed to goats too hard to cross.

    From there, another valley was disclosed.

Canto XXIV

THIEVES

    In that still baby-boyish time of year,

when sunlight chills its curls beneath Aquarius,

when nights grow shorter equalling the day,

    and hoar frost writes fair copies on the ground

to mimic in design its snowy sister

(its pen, though, not chill-tempered to endure),

    the peasant in this season, when supplies

run short, rolls from his bed, looks out and sees

the fields are glistening white, so slaps his thigh,

    goes in, then grumbles up and down, as though

(poor sod) he couldn’t find a thing to do,

till, out once more, he fills his wicker trug,

    with hope, at least. No time at all! The features

of the world transform. He grabs his goad.

Outdoors, he prods his lambs to open pasture.

    In some such way, I too was first dismayed

to see distress so written on my leader’s brow.

But he, as quickly, plastered up the hurt.

    And so, arriving at the ruined bridge,

my leader turned that sour-sweet look on me

that first he’d shown me at the mountain foot.

    He spread his arms, then, having in his thought

surveyed the landslip, and (a man of sense)

assessed it well, he took me in his grip.

    Then, always with adjustments in his moves

(so that, it seemed, he foresaw everything),

in hauling me towards the pinnacle

    of one moraine, he’d see a spur beyond

and say: ‘Next, take your hold on that niche there.

But test it first to see how well it bears.’

    This was no route for someone warmly dressed.

Even for us – he, weightless, shoving me –

we hardly could progress from ledge to ledge.

    Had not the gradient been less severe

than that which faced it on the other side,

I’d have been beat. I cannot speak for him.

    But Rottenpockets slopes towards the flap

that opens on the lowest sump of all,

and so, in contour, every ditch is shaped

    with one rim proud, the other dipping down.

So, in the end, we came upon the point

where one last building block had sheared away.

    My lungs by now had so been milked of breath

that, come so far, I couldn’t make it further.

I flopped, in fact, when we arrived, just there.

    ‘Now you must needs,’ my teacher said, ‘shake off

your wonted indolence. No fame is won

beneath the quilt or sunk in feather cushions.

    Whoever, fameless, wastes his life away,

leaves of himself no greater mark on earth

than smoke in air or froth upon the wave.

    So upwards! On! And vanquish laboured breath!

In any battle mind power will prevail,

unless the weight of body loads it down.

    There’s yet a longer ladder you must scale.

You can’t just turn and leave all these behind.

You understand? Well, make my words avail.’

    So up I got, pretending to more puff

than, really, I could feel I’d got within.

‘Let’s go,’ I answered, ‘I’m all strength and dash.’

    Upwards we made our way, along the cliff –

poor, narrow-going where the rocks jut out,

far steeper than the slope had been before.

    Talking (to seem less feeble) on I went,

when, issuing from the ditch beyond, there came

a voice – though one unfit for human words.

    I made no sense of it. But now I neared

the arch that forms a span across that pocket.

The speaker seemed much moved by raging ire.

    Downwards I bent. But in such dark as that,

no eye alive could penetrate the depths.

But, ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘make for the other edge,

    and let us then descend the pocket wall.

From here I hear but do not understand.

So, too, I see, yet focus not at all.’

    ‘I offer you,’ he said to me, ‘no answer

save “just do it”. Noble demands, by right,

deserve the consequence of silent deeds.’

    So where the bridgehead meets Embankment Eight

we then went down, pursuing our descent,

so all that pocket was displayed to me.

    And there I came to see a dreadful brood

of writhing reptiles of such diverse kinds

the memory drains the very blood from me.

    Let Libya boast – for all her sand – no more!

Engender as she may chelydri, pharae,

chenchres and amphisbaenae, jaculi,

    never – and, yes, add Ethiopia, too,

with all, beyond the Red Sea, dry and waste –

has she displayed so many vicious pests.

    And through all this abundance, bitter and grim,

in panic naked humans ran – no holes

to hide in here or heliotropic charms.

    Behind their backs, the sinners’ hands were bound

by snakes. These sent both tail and neck between

the buttocks, then formed the ends in knots up front.

    And near our point, at one of them (just look!)

a serpent headlong hurled itself and pierced

exactly at the knit of spine and nape.

    Then, faster than you scribble ‘i’ or ‘o’,

that shape caught fire, flash-flared and then (needs must)

descended in cascading showers of ash.

    There, lying in destruction on the ground,

the dead dust gathered of its own accord,

becoming instantly the self it was.

    Compare: the phoenix (as the sages say)

will come to its five-hundredth year, then die,

but then, on its own pyre, be born anew.

    Its lifelong food is neither grass nor grain,

but nurture drawn from weeping balm and incense.

Its shroud, at last, is fume of nard and myrrh.

    The sinner, first, drops down as someone might

when grappled down, not knowing how, by demons

(or else some other epileptic turn),

    who then, on rising, gazes all around,

bewildered by the overwhelming ill

that came just now upon him, sighing, staring.

    So, too, this sinner, getting to his feet.

What power and might in God! How harsh it is!

How great the torrent of its vengeful blows!

    My leader then demanded who he was.

‘I pelted down’ – the sinner, in reply –

‘to this wild gorge, right now, from Tuscany.

    Beast living suited me, not human life,

the mule that once I was. I’m Johnny Fucci,

animal. Pistoia is my proper hole.’

    I to my leader: ‘Tell him, “Don’t rush off!”

and make him say what guilt has thrust him down.

I’ve seen him. He’s a man of blood and wrath.’

    The sinner, hearing this, made no pretence.

He fixed on me a concentrated eye,

and coloured up in brash embarrassment.

    ‘It pisses me right off,’ he then declared,

‘far more than being ripped away from life,

that you have got to see me in this misery.

    I can’t say “no” to what you ask of me.

I’m stuck down here so deep ’cos it was me,

the thief who nicked the silver from the sanctuary.

    Then I just lied – to grass up someone else.

You won’t, however, laugh at seeing this.

If ever you return from these dark dives,

    prick up your ears and hear my prophecy:

Pistoia first will slim and lose its Blacks.

Then Florence, too, renews its laws and ranks.

    Mars draws up fireballs from the Val di Magra,

wrapped all around in clouds and turbulence.

And these, in acrid, ever-driven storms,

    will battle high above the Picene acre.

A rapid bolt will rend the clouds apart,

and every single White be seared by wounds.

    I tell you this. I want it all to hurt.’

Canto XXXIII

TRAITORS TO NATION AND TRAITORS TO GUESTS

    Jaws lifted now from that horrible dish,

the sinner – wiping clean each lip on hair that fringed

the mess he’d left the head in, at its rear –

    began: ‘You ask that I should tell anew

the pain that hopelessly, in thought alone,

before I voice it, presses at my heart.

    Yet if I may, by speaking, sow the fruit

of hate to slur this traitor, caught between my teeth,

then words and tears, you’ll see, will flow as one.

    Who you might be, I do not know, nor how

you’ve come to be down here. But when you speak,

you seem (there’s little doubt) a Florentine.

    You need to see: I was Count Ugolino.

This is Ruggieri, the archbishop, there.

I’ll tell you now why we two are so close.

    That I, in consequence of his vile thoughts,

was captured – though I trusted in this man –

and after died, I do not need to say.

    But this cannot have carried to your ears:

that is, how savagely I met my death.

You’ll hear it now, and know if he has injured me.

    One scant slit in the walls of Eaglehouse

(because of me, they call it now the Hunger Tower.

Be sure, though: others will be locked up there)

    had shown me, in the shaft that pierces it,

many new moons by now, when this bad dream

tore wide the veil of what my future was.

    This thing here then appeared to me as Master

of the Hounds, who tracked the wolf – his cubs as well –

out on the hill where Lucca hides from Pisa.

    In front, as leaders of the pack, he placed

the clans Gualandi, Sismond and Lanfranchi,

their bitches hunting eager, lean and smart.

    The chase was brief. Father and sons, it seemed,

were wearying; and soon – or so it seemed –

I saw those sharp fangs raking down their flanks.

    I woke before the day ahead had come,

and heard my sons (my little ones were there)

cry in their sleep and call out for some food.

    How hard you are if, thinking what my heart

foretold, you do not feel the pain of it.

Whatever will you weep for, if not that?

    By now they all had woken up.