The Inferno

by Dante Alighieri

‘ “We should fear those things alone that have the power to harm. 90 Nothing else is frightening. ‘ “I am made such by God’s grace that your affliction does not touch, 93 nor can these fires assail me.

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE CITY OF WOE, → THROUGH ME THE WAY TO EVERLASTING PAIN, 3 THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST. → JUSTICE MOVED MY MAKER ON HIGH. → DIVINE POWER MADE ME, → 6 WISDOM SUPREME, AND PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NOTHING WAS BUT THINGS ETERNAL, → AND ETERNAL, I ENDURE. 9 ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE.

But those souls, naked and desolate, lost their color. With chattering teeth 102 they heard his brutal words. They blasphemed God, their parents, the human race, the place, the time, the seed → 105 of their begetting and their birth. Then, weeping bitterly, they drew together to the accursèd shore that waits 108 for everyone who fears not God.

‘beware how you come in and whom you trust. Don’t let the easy entrance fool you.

I understood that to such torment the carnal sinners are condemned, 39 they who make reason subject to desire.

‘There is no greater sorrow → than to recall our time of joy 123 in wretchedness—

Pride, envy, and avarice are the sparks → 75 that have set the hearts of all on fire.’

‘Although these accursèd people → will never come to true perfection, 111 they will be nearer it than they are now.’

‘All of them had such squinting minds in their first lives,’ he said, 42 ‘they kept no measure in their spending. ‘Their voices howl this clear enough just as they reach the twin points on the circle 45 where opposing sins divide them. ‘These were clerics who have no lid of hair → upon their heads, and popes and cardinals, 48 in whom avarice achieves its excess.’

The undiscerning life that made them foul 54 now makes them hard to recognize.

‘Now you see, my son, what brief mockery Fortune makes of goods we trust her with, → 63 for which the race of men embroil themselves. ‘All the gold that lies beneath the moon, or ever did, could never give a moment’s rest 66 to any of these wearied souls.’

And I, my gaze transfixed, could see → people with angry faces in that bog, 111 naked, their bodies smeared with mud. They struck each other with their hands, their heads, their chests and feet, 114 and tore each other with their teeth. The good master said: ‘Son, now you see the souls of those whom anger overcame.

‘ “Now we are sullen in black mire.” This hymn they gurgle in their gullets, 126 for they cannot get a word out whole.’

While we crossed the stagnant swamp → one cloaked in mud rose up to say: → 33 ‘Who are you that you come before your time?’ And I to him: ‘If I come, I do not stay. But you, who are you, now become so foul?’ 36 He answered: ‘As you can see, I am one who weeps.’ And I to him: ‘In weeping and in misery, → accursèd spirit, may you stay. 39 I know you, for all your filth.’ When he stretched both his hands toward the boat, → the wary master thrust him off, saying: 42 ‘Away there with the other dogs!’

‘How many now above who think themselves great kings will lie here in the mud, like swine, 51 leaving behind nothing but ill repute!’

‘Turn your back and keep your eyes shut, for if the Gorgon head appears and should you see it, 57 all chance for your return above is lost.’ While my master spoke he turned me round → and, placing no trust in my own hands, 60 covered my face with his hands also.

‘Every evil deed despised in Heaven → has as its end injustice. Each such end 24 harms someone else through either force or fraud. ‘But since the vice of fraud is man’s alone, it more displeases God, and thus the fraudulent 27 are lower down, assailed by greater pain.

‘The first circle holds the violent → but is divided and constructed in three rings, 30 since violence takes three different forms. ‘Violence may be aimed at God, oneself, or at one’s neighbor—

‘Violence may be committed against God → when we deny and curse Him in our hearts, 48 or when we scorn nature and her bounty.

‘Do you not recall the words your Ethics uses to expound 81 the three dispositions Heaven opposes, ‘incontinence, malice, and mad brutishness, and how incontinence offends God less 84 and incurs a lesser blame? ‘If you consider well this judgment and consider who they are 87 that suffer punishment above, outside the wall, ‘you’ll understand why they are set apart from these wicked spirits and why God’s vengeance 90 smites them with a lesser wrath.’

‘Around the moat they go in thousands, shooting arrows at any soul that rises 75 higher from the blood than guilt allows.’

‘Just as on this side you can see → the boiling stream always diminishing,’ 129 said the centaur, ‘so, I’ll have you know, ‘on the other side the bottom falls away until it plumbs the depths 132 where tyranny must groan.

Then I stretched out my hand → and plucked a twig from a tall thorn-bush, 33 and its stem cried out: ‘Why do you break me?’ When it ran dark with blood it cried again: ‘Why do you tear me? 36 Are you completely without pity? ‘We once were men and now are turned to thorns. Your hand might well have been more merciful 39 had we been souls of snakes.’ As from a green log, burning at one end, → that blisters and hisses at the other 42 with the rush of sap and air, so from the broken splinter oozed blood and words together, and I let drop 45 the twig and stood like one afraid.

They peered at us with knitted brows 21 like an old tailor at his needle’s eye.

He began: ‘What chance or fate is it that brings you here before your final hour, 48 and who is this that shows the way?’ → ‘In the sunlit life above,’ I answered, ‘in a valley there, I lost my way → 51 before I reached the zenith of my days.

‘If all my prayers were answered,’ I said to him, ‘You would not yet 81 be banished from mankind. ‘For I remember well and now lament the cherished, kind, paternal image of You → 84 when, there in the world, from time to time, ‘You taught me how man makes himself immortal. And how much gratitude I owe for that 87 my tongue, while I still live, must give report.

Ah, how cautious we should be with those who do not see our actions only, 120 but with their wisdom peer into our thoughts!

‘Behold the beast with pointed tail, that leaps → past mountains, shatters walls and weapons! 3 Behold the one whose stench afflicts the world!’

Rebuked by shame, which, in the presence 90 of a worthy master, makes a servant bold,

There is a place in Hell called Malebolge,

O Simon Magus, o wretches of his band, → greedy for gold and silver, 3 who prostitute the things of God that should be brides of goodness!

I stood there like a friar who confesses → a treacherous assassin. Once fixed in place, 51 he calls the friar back to stay his death.

I do not know if then I was too bold → when I answered him in just this strain: 90 ‘Please tell me, how much treasure → ‘did our Lord insist on from Saint Peter before He gave the keys into his keeping? 93 Surely He asked no more than “Follow me,” ‘nor did Peter, or the others, take gold or silver from Matthias when he was picked by lot 96 to fill the place lost by the guilty soul. ‘Stay there then, for you are justly punished, guarding well those gains, ill-gotten, 99 that made you boldly take your stand against King Charles.

‘Shepherds like you the Evangelist had in mind when he saw the one that sits upon the waters 108 committing fornication with the kings, ‘she that was born with seven heads and from ten horns derived her strength 111 so long as virtue pleased her bridegroom. ‘You have wrought yourselves a god of gold and silver. How then do you differ from those who worship idols 114 except they worship one and you a hundred? ‘Ah, Constantine, to what evil you gave birth, → not by your conversion, but by the dowry 117 that the first rich Father had from you!’

’Here piety lives when pity is quite dead. → Who is more impious than one who thinks 30 that God shows passion in His judgment?

‘See how his shoulder-blades are now his chest. Because he aspired to see too far ahead 39 he looks behind and treads a backward path.

Every man there—except Bonturo—is a swindler. → 42 There money turns a No into a Yeah.’

On we went, escorted by ten demons. → What savage company! But, as they say, 15 ‘in church with saints, with guzzlers in the tavern.’

And he: ‘I just now came from one ‘who hailed from near those parts. I wish → I still were with him in the pitch— 69 then I’d have no fear of hook or claw!’

‘Now must you cast off sloth,’ my master said. ‘Sitting on feather cushions or stretched out 48 under comforters, no one comes to fame. ‘Without fame, he who spends his time on earth → leaves only such a mark upon the world 51 as smoke does on the air or foam on water.

a just request 78 should be followed by the act, in silence.’

And behold, one of these souls was near our ridge → when a serpent launched and pierced him through → 99 right where the neck and shoulders join. Never has ‘o’ nor even ‘i’ been writ so quick → as he caught fire and burned, turned, 102 in the very act of falling, into ashes. And as he lay unmade upon the ground, the dust regathered of its own accord 105 and suddenly he was himself again. Just, as is attested by great sages, the phoenix perishes and is reborn → 108 when it approaches its five-hundredth year— lifelong it feeds on neither grain nor grasses, but thrives on drops of frankincense and cardamom, 111 while nard and myrrh make up its winding sheet— and just as one who faints, and knows not why— whether possessed by devils that pull him down 114 or seized by the sickness that causes men to fall— rises to his feet, and gazes round, wholly bewildered by the breathless anguish 117 he has undergone, and as he looks, he sighs, such did that sinner seem when he had risen. O how stern it is, the power of God, → 120 hurling such blows as it takes vengeance!

Then, making the figs with both his thumbs, → the thief raised up his fists and cried: 3 ‘Take that, God! It’s aimed at you!’

My leader, when he saw me so intent, said: ‘These spirits stand within the flames. 48 Each one is wrapped in that in which he burns.’

‘ “One may not be absolved without repentance, → nor repent and wish to sin concurrently— 120 a simple contradiction not allowed.”

When we stood above the final cloister → of Malebolge and all of its lay brothers 42 became discernible to us, strange arrows of lament, their shafts, with pity at their tips, pierced me, 45 so that I pressed my hands against my ears.

The same tongue that had stung me → so that both my cheeks turned red, 3 had also brought my cure,

For when the power of thought is coupled with ill will and naked force 57 there is no refuge from it for mankind.

This is Nimrod, because of whose vile plan 78 the world no longer speaks a single tongue. ‘Let us leave him and not waste our speech, for every language is to him as his 81 to others, and his is understood by none.’

It is no enterprise undertaken lightly— to describe the very bottom of the universe— 9 nor for a tongue that still cries ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy.’ But may those ladies who aided Amphion → to build the walls of Thebes now aid my verse, 12 that the telling be no different from the fact. O you misgotten rabble, worse than all the rest, → who fill that place so hard to speak of, 15 better had you here been sheep or goats!