The time
was due when, as routine, our food was brought.
Yet each was doubtful, thinking of their dream.
Listening, I heard the door below locked shut,
then nailed in place against that dreadful tower.
I looked in their dear faces, spoke no word.
I did not weep. Inward, I turned to stone.
They wept. And then my boy Anselmo spoke:
“What are you staring at? Father, what’s wrong?”
And so I held my tears in check and gave
no answer all that day, nor all the night
that followed on, until another sun came up.
A little light had forced a ray into
our prison, so full of pain. I now could see
on all four faces my own expression.
Out of sheer grief, I gnawed on both my hands.
And they – who thought I did so from an urge
to eat – all, on the instant, rose and said:
“Father, for us the pain would be far less
if you would chose to eat us. You, having dressed us
in this wretched flesh, ought now to strip it off.”
So I kept still, to not increase their miseries.
And that day and the day beyond, we all were mute.
Hard, cruel earth, why did you not gape wide?
As then we reached the fourth of all those days,
Gaddo pitched forward, stretching at my feet.
“Help me,” he said. “Why don’t you help me, Dad!”
And there he died. You see me here. So I saw them,
the three remaining, falling one by one
between the next days – five and six – then let
myself, now blind, feel over them, calling
on each, now all were dead, for two days more.
Then hunger proved a greater power than grief.’
His words were done. Now, eyes askew, he grabbed
once more that miserable skull – his teeth,
like any dog’s teeth, strong against the bone.
Pisa, you scandal of the lovely land
where ‘yes’ is uttered in the form of sì,
your neighbours may be slow to punish you,
but let those reefs, Capraia and Gorgogna,
drift, as a barrage, to the Arno’s mouth,
so that your people – every one – are drowned.
So what if – as the rumour goes – the great Count
Ugolino did cheat fortresses from you.
You had no right to crucify his children.
Pisa, you are a newborn Thebes! Those boys
were young. That made them innocent. I’ve named
just two. I now name Uguiccione and Brigata.
We now moved on, and came to where the ice
so roughly swaddled yet another brood.
And these – not hunched – bend back for all to view.
They weep. Yet weeping does not let them weep.
Their anguish meets a blockage at the eye.
Turned in, this only makes their heartache more.
Their tears first cluster into frozen buds,
and then – as though a crystal visor – fill
the socket of the eye beneath each brow.
My own face now – a callus in the chill –
had ceased to be a throne to any kind
of sentiment. And yet, in spite of all,
it seemed I felt a wind still stirring here.
‘Who moves these currents, sir?’ I now inquired.
‘At depths like these, aren’t vapours wholly spent?’
He in reply: ‘Come on, come on! You soon
will stand where your own probing eye shall see
what brings this drizzling exhalation on.’
A case of icy-eye-scab now yelled out:
‘You must be souls of such malignancy
you merit placement in the lowest hole.
Prise off this rigid veil, to clear my eyes.
Let me awhile express the grief that swells
in my heart’s womb before my tears next freeze.’
I answered: ‘Are you asking help from me?
Tell me who you are. Then I’ll free your gaze,
or travel – promise! – to the deepest ice.’
‘I,’ he replied, ‘am Brother Alberigo,
I of the Evil Orchard, Fruiterer.
Here I receive exquisite dates for figs.’
‘Oh,’ I now said, ‘so you’re already dead?’
‘Well, how my body fares above,’ he said,
‘still in the world, my knowledge is not sure.
There is, in Ptolomea, this advantage,
that souls will frequently come falling down
before Fate Atropos has granted them discharge.
I very willingly will tell you more,
but only scrape this tear glaze from my face.
The instant any soul commits, like me,
some act of treachery, a demon takes
possession of that body-form and rules
its deeds until its time is done. Swirling,
the soul runs downwards to this sink. And so
the body of that shade behind – a-twitter
all this winter through – still seems up there, perhaps.
You’re bound to know, arriving only now,
that this is Signor Branca (“Hookhand”) d’Oria.
Years have gone by since he was ice-packed here.’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that this must be a con.
For how can Branca d’Oria be dead?
He eats and drinks and sleeps and puts his clothes on.’
‘Recall that ditch,’ he said, ‘named Rotklorsville,
where, higher up, they brew adhesive pitch?
Well, long before Mike Zanche got to that,
Hookhand was history. He, as proxy, left
a devil in his skin (his kinsman’s here as well,
the one who planned with him the double-cross).
But please, now reach your hand to me down here.
Open my eyes for me.’ I did not open them.
To be a swine in this case was pure courtesy.
You Genovese, deviant, deranged
and stuffed with every sort of vicious canker!
Why have you not been wiped yet from the earth?
Among the worst of all the Romagnuoli
I found there one of yours, whose works were such
his soul already bathes in Cocytus.
His body, seemingly, lives on above.
Canto XXXIV
TRAITORS TO BENEFACTORS
‘Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni,
marching towards us. Fix your eyes ahead,’
my teacher said, ‘and see if you can see it.’
As though a windmill when a thick fog breathes –
or else when dark night grips our hemisphere –
seen from a distance, turning in the wind,
so there a great contraption had appeared.
And I now shrank, against the wind, behind
my guide. There were no glades to shelter in.
I was by now (I write this verse in fear)
where all the shades in ice were covered up,
transparent as are straws preserved in glass.
Some lay there flat, and some were vertical,
one with head raised, another soles aloft,
another like a bow, bent face to feet.
And then when we had got still further on,
where now my master chose to show to me
that creature who had once appeared so fair,
he drew away from me and made me stop,
saying: ‘Now see! Great Dis! Now see the place
where you will need to put on all your strength.’
How weak I now became, how faded, dry –
reader, don’t ask, I shall not write it down –
for anything I said would fall far short.
I neither died nor wholly stayed alive.
Just think yourselves, if your minds are in flower,
what I became, bereft of life and death.
The emperor of all these realms of gloom
stuck from the ice at mid-point on his breast.
And I am more a giant (to compare)
than any giant measured to his arm.
So now you’ll see how huge the whole must be,
when viewed in fit proportion to that limb.
If, once, he was as lovely as now vile,
when first he raised his brow against his maker,
then truly grief must all proceed from him.
How great a wonder it now seemed to me
to see three faces on a single head!
The forward face was brilliant vermilion.
The other two attached themselves to that
along each shoulder on the central point,
and joined together at the crest of hair.
The rightward face was whitish, dirty yellow.
The left in colour had the tint of those
beyond the source from which the Nile first swells.
Behind each face there issued two great vanes,
all six proportioned to a fowl like this.
I never saw such size in ocean sails.
Not feathered as a bird’s wings are, bat-like
and leathery, each fanned away the air,
so three unchanging winds moved out from him,
Cocytus being frozen hard by these.
He wept from all six eyes. And down each chin
both tears and bloody slobber slowly ran.
In every mouth he mangled with his teeth
(as flax combs do) a single sinning soul,
but brought this agony to three at once.
Such biting, though, affects the soul in front
as nothing to the scratching he received.
His spine at times showed starkly, bare of skin.
‘That one up there, condemned to greater pain,
is Judas Iscariot,’ my teacher said,
‘his head inside, his feet out, wriggling hard.
The other two, their heads hung down below,
are Brutus, dangling from the jet black snout
(look how he writhes there, uttering not a word!),
the other Cassius with his burly look.
But night ascends once more. And now it’s time
for us to quit this hole. We’ve seen it all.’
As he desired, I clung around his neck.
With purpose, he selected time and place
and, when the wings had opened to the full,
he took a handhold on the furry sides,
and then, from tuft to tuft, he travelled down
between the shaggy pelt and frozen crust.
But then, arriving where the thigh bone turns
(the hips extended to their widest there),
my leader, with the utmost stress and strain,
swivelled his head to where his shanks had been
and clutched the pelt like someone on a climb,
so now I thought: ‘We’re heading back to Hell.’
‘Take care,’ my teacher said. ‘By steps like these,’
breathless and panting, seemingly all-in,
‘we need to take our leave of so much ill.’
Then through a fissure in that rock he passed
and set me down to perch there on its rim.
After, he stretched his careful stride towards me.
Raising my eyes, I thought that I should see
Lucifer where I, just now, had left him,
but saw instead his legs held upwards there.
If I was struggling then to understand,
let other dimwits think how they’d have failed
to see what point it was that I now passed.
‘Up on your feet!’ my teacher ordered me.
‘The way is long, the road is cruelly hard.
The sun is at the morning bell already.’
This was no stroll, where now we had arrived,
through any palace but a natural cave.
The ground beneath was rough, the light was weak.
‘Before my roots are torn from this abyss,
sir,’ I said, upright, ‘to untangle me
from error, say a little more of this.
Where is the ice? And why is that one there
fixed upside down? How is it that the sun
progressed so rapidly from evening on to day?’
And he in answer: ‘You suppose you’re still
on that side of the centre where I gripped
that wormrot’s coat that pierces all the world.
While I was still descending, you were there.
But once I turned, you crossed, with me, the point
to which from every part all weight drags down.
So you stand here beneath the hemisphere
that now is covered wholly with dry land,
under the highest point at which there died
the one man sinless in his birth and life.
Your feet are set upon a little sphere
that forms the other aspect of Giudecca.
It’s morning here. It’s evening over there.
The thing that made a ladder of his hair
is still as fixed as he has always been.
Falling from Heaven, when he reached this side,
the lands that then spread out to southern parts
in fear of him took on a veil of sea.
These reached our hemisphere. Whatever now
is visible to us – in flight perhaps from him –
took refuge here and left an empty space.’
There is a place (as distant from Beelzebub
as his own tomb extends in breadth)
known not by sight but rather by the sound
of waters falling in a rivulet
eroding, by the winding course it takes (which is
not very steep), an opening in that rock.
So now we entered on that hidden path,
my lord and I, to move once more towards
a shining world. We did not care to rest.
We climbed, he going first and I behind,
until through some small aperture I saw
the lovely things the skies above us bear.
Now we came out, and once more saw the stars.
- BOCCACCIO · Mrs Rosie and the Priest
- GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS · As kingfishers catch fire
- The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue
- THOMAS DE QUINCEY · On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
- FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE · Aphorisms on Love and Hate
- JOHN RUSKIN · Traffic
- PU SONGLING · Wailing Ghosts
- JONATHAN SWIFT · A Modest Proposal
- Three Tang Dynasty Poets
- WALT WHITMAN · On the Beach at Night Alone
- KENKŌ · A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees
- BALTASAR GRACIÁN · How to Use Your Enemies
- JOHN KEATS · The Eve of St Agnes
- THOMAS HARDY · Woman much missed
- GUY DE MAUPASSANT · Femme Fatale
- MARCO POLO · Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls
- SUETONIUS · Caligula
- APOLLONIUS OF RHODES · Jason and Medea
- ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON · Olalla
- KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS · The Communist Manifesto
- PETRONIUS · Trimalchio’s Feast
- JOHANN PETER HEBEL · How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher’s Dog
- HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN · The Tinder Box
- RUDYARD KIPLING · The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
- DANTE · Circles of Hell
- HENRY MAYHEW · Of Street Piemen
- HAFEZ · The nightingales are drunk
- GEOFFREY CHAUCER · The Wife of Bath
- MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE · How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing
- THOMAS NASHE · The Terrors of the Night
- EDGAR ALLAN POE · The Tell-Tale Heart
- MARY KINGSLEY · A Hippo Banquet
- JANE AUSTEN · The Beautifull Cassandra
- ANTON CHEKHOV · Gooseberries
- SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE · Well, they are gone, and here must I remain
- JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE · Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings
- CHARLES DICKENS · The Great Winglebury Duel
- HERMAN MELVILLE · The Maldive Shark
- ELIZABETH GASKELL · The Old Nurse’s Story
- NIKOLAY LESKOV · The Steel Flea
- HONORÉ DE BALZAC · The Atheist’s Mass
- CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN · The Yellow Wall-Paper
- C.P. CAVAFY · Remember, Body …
- FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY · The Meek One
- GUSTAVE FLAUBERT · A Simple Heart
- NIKOLAI GOGOL · The Nose
- SAMUEL PEPYS · The Great Fire of London
- EDITH WHARTON · The Reckoning
- HENRY JAMES · The Figure in the Carpet
- WILFRED OWEN · Anthem For Doomed Youth
- WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART · My Dearest Father
- PLATO · Socrates’ Defence
- CHRISTINA ROSSETTI · Goblin Market
- Sindbad the Sailor
- SOPHOCLES · Antigone
- RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA · The Life of a Stupid Man
- LEO TOLSTOY · How Much Land Does A Man Need?
- GIORGIO VASARI · Leonardo da Vinci
- OSCAR WILDE · Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
- SHEN FU · The Old Man of the Moon
- AESOP · The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon
- MATSUO BASHŌ · Lips too Chilled
- EMILY BRONTË · The Night is Darkening Round Me
- JOSEPH CONRAD · To-morrow
- RICHARD HAKLUYT · The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe
- KATE CHOPIN · A Pair of Silk Stockings
- CHARLES DARWIN · It was snowing butterflies
- BROTHERS GRIMM · The Robber Bridegroom
- CATULLUS · I Hate and I Love
- HOMER · Circe and the Cyclops
- D. H. LAWRENCE · Il Duro
- KATHERINE MANSFIELD · Miss Brill
- OVID · The Fall of Icarus
- SAPPHO · Come Close
- IVAN TURGENEV · Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands
- VIRGIL · O Cruel Alexis
- H.
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