| |
| COULD I command rough rhymes and hoarse, to suit | |
| That hole of sorrow o’er which every rock | |
| His firm abutment rears, then might the vein | |
| Of fancy rise full springing: but not mine | |
| Such measures, and with faltering awe I touch | 5 |
| The mighty theme; for to describe the depth | |
| Of all the universe, is no emprise | |
| To jest with, and demands a tongue not used | |
| To infant babbling. But let them assist | |
| My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid | 10 |
| Amphion wall’d in Thebes; so with the truth | |
| My speech shall best accord. Oh ill-starr’d folk, | |
| Beyond all others wretched! who abide | |
| In such a mansion, as scarce thought finds words | |
| To speak of, better had ye here on earth | 15 |
| Been flocks, or mountain goats. As down we stood | |
| In the dark pit beneath the giants’ feet, | |
| But lower far than they, and I did gaze | |
| Still on the lofty battlement, a voice | |
| Bespake me thus: “Look how thou walkest. Take | 20 |
| Good heed, thy soles do tread not on the heads | |
| Of thy poor brethren.” Thereupon I turn’d, | |
| And saw before and underneath my feet | |
| A lake, whose frozen surface liker seem’d | |
| To glass than water. Not so thick a veil | 25 |
| In winter e’er hath Austrian Danube spread | |
| O’er his still course, nor Tanais far remote | |
| Under the chilling sky. Roll’d o’er that mass | |
| Had Tabernich or Pietrapana 1 fallen, | |
| Not e’en its rim had creak’d. As peeps the frog | 30 |
| Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams | |
| The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, | |
| So, to where modest shame appears, thus low | |
| Blue pinch’d and shrined in ice the spirits stood, | |
| Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork. | 35 |
| His face each downward held; their mouth the cold, | |
| Their eyes express’d the dolour of their heart. | |
| A space I look’d around, then at my feet | |
| Saw two so strictly join’d, that of their head | |
| The very hairs were mingled. “Tell me ye, | 40 |
| Whose bosoms thus together press,” said I, | |
| “Who are ye?” At that sound their necks they bent; | |
| And when their looks were lifted up to me, | |
| Straightway their eyes, before all moist within, | |
| Distill’d upon their lips, and the frost bound | 45 |
| The tears betwixt those orbs, and held them there. | |
| Plank unto plank hath never cramp closed up | |
| So stoutly. Whence, like two enraged goats, | |
| They clash’d together: them such fury seized. | |
| And one, from whom the cold both ears had reft, | 50 |
| Exclaim’d, still looking downward: “Why on us | |
| Dost speculate so long? If thou wouldst know | |
| Who are these two, 2 the valley, whence his wave | |
| Bisenzio slopes, did for its master own | |
| Their sire Alberto, and next him themselves. | 55 |
| They from one body issued: and throughout | |
| Caïna thou mayst search, nor find a shade | |
| More worthy in congealment to be fix’d; | |
| Not him, 3 whose breast and shadow Arthur’s hand | |
| At that one blow dissever’d; not Focaccia, 4 | 60 |
| No, not this spirit, whose o’erjutting head | |
| Obstructs my onward view; he bore the name | |
| Of Mascheroni: 5 Tuscan if thou be, | |
| Well knowest who he was. And to cut short | |
| All further question, in my form behold | 65 |
| What once was Camiccione. 6 I await | |
| Carlino 7 here my kinsman, whose deep guilt | |
| Shall wash out mine.” A thousand visages | |
| Then mark’d I, which the keen and eager cold | |
| Had shaped into a doggish grin; whence creeps | 70 |
| A shivering horror o’er me, at the thought | |
| Of those frore shallows. While we journey’d on | |
| Toward the middle, at whose point unites | |
| All heavy substance, and I trembling went | |
| Through that eternal chillness, I know not | 75 |
| If will it were, or destiny, or chance, | |
| But, passing ’midst the heads, my foot did strike | |
| With violent blow against the face of one. | |
| “Wherefore dost bruise me?” weeping the exclaim’d; | |
| “Unless thy errand be some fresh revenge | 80 |
| For Montaperto, 8 wherefore troublest me?” | |
| I thus: “Instructor, now await me here, | |
| That I through him may rid me of my doubt: | |
| Thenceforth what haste thou wilt.” The teacher paused | |
| And to that shade I spake, who bitterly | 85 |
| Still cursed me in his wrath. “What art thou, speak, | |
| That railest thus on others?” He replied: | |
| “Now who art thou, that smiting others’ cheeks, | |
| Through Antenora 9 roamest, with such force | |
| As were past sufferance, wert thou living still?” | 90 |
| “And I am living, to thy joy perchance,” | |
| Was my reply, “if fame be dear to thee, | |
| That with the rest I may thy name enrol.” | |
| “The contrary of what I covet most,” | |
| Said he, “thou tender’st: hence! nor vex me more. | 95 |
| Ill knowest thou to flatter in this vale.” | |
| Then seizing on his hinder scalp I cried” | |
| “Name thee, or not a hair shall tarry here.” | |
| “Rend all away,” he answer’d, “yet for that | |
| I will not tell, nor show thee, who I am, | 100 |
| Though at my head thou pluck a thousand times.” | |
| Now I had grasp’d his tresses, and stript off | |
| More than one tuft, he barking, with his eyes | |
| Drawn in and downward, when another cried, | |
| “What ails thee, Bocca? Sound not loud enough | 105 |
| Thy chattering teeth, but thou must bark outright? | |
| What devil wrings thee?”—“Now,” said I, “be dumb, | |
| Accursed traitor! To thy shame, of thee | |
| True tidings will I bear.”—“Off!” he replied; | |
| “Tell what thou list: but, as thou ’scape from hence, | 110 |
| To speak of him whose tongue hath been so glib, | |
| Forget not: here he wails the Frenchman’s gold. | |
| ‘Him of Duera,’ 10 Thou canst say, ‘I mark’d, | |
| Where the starved sinners pine.’ If thou be ask’d | |
| What other shade was with them, at thy side | 115 |
| Is Beccaria, 11 whose red gorge distain’d | |
| The biting axe of Florence. Further on, | |
| If I misdeem not, Soldanieri, 12 bides, | |
| With Ganellon, 13 and Tribaldello, 14 him | |
| Who oped Faenza when the people slept.” | 120 |
| We now had left him, passing on our way, | |
| When I beheld two spirits by the ice | |
| Pent in one hollow, that the head of one | |
| Was cowl unto the other; and as bread | |
| Is raven’d up through hunger, the uppermost | 125 |
| Did so apply his fangs to the other’s brain, | |
| Where the spine joins it. Not more furiously | |
| On Menalippus’ temples Tydeus gnaw’d, | |
| Than on that skull and on its garbage he. | |
| “O thou! who show’st so beastly sign of hate | 130 |
| ’Gainst him thou prey’st on, let me hear,” said I, | |
| “The cause, on such condition, that if right | |
| Warrant thy grievance, knowing who ye are, | |
| And what the color of his sinning was, | |
| I may repay thee in the world above, | 135 |
| If that, wherewith I speak, be moist so long.” | |
| |
| Note 1. Tabernich or Pietrapana.” The one a mountain in Sclavonia, the other in that tract of country called the Garfagnana, not far from Lucca. [back] |
| Note 2. Alessandro and Napoleone, sons of Alberto Alberti, who murdered each other. They were proprietors of the valley of Falterona, where the Bisenzio rises, falling into the Arno six miles from Florence. [back] |
| Note 3. Mordred, son of King Arthur. In the romance of Lancelot of the Lake, Arthur, having discovered the traitorous intentions of his son, pierces him through with his lance, so that the sunbeam passes through the body. [back] |
| Note 4. Focaccia of Cancellieri (the Pistoian family), whose atrocious act of revenge against his uncle is said to have given rise to the parties, Bianchi and Neri, in the year 1300. [back] |
| Note 5. Sassol Mascheroni, a Florentine, who murdered his uncle. [back] |
| Note 6. Camiccione de’ Pazzi of Valdarno, by whom his kinsman Ubertino was treacherously put to death. [back] |
| Note 7. “Carlino.” One of the same family. He betrayed the Castel di Piano Travigne, in Valdarno, to the Florentines, after the refugees of the Bianca and Ghibelline party had defended it against a siege for twenty-nine days, in the summer of 1302. [back] |
| Note 8. The defeat of the Guelfi at Montaperto through the treachery of Bocca degli Abbati, who, during the engagement, cut off the hand of Giacopo del Vacca de’ Pazzi, the Florentine standard-bearer. [back] |
| Note 9. So called from Antenor, who, according to Dictys Cretensis (de Bello Troj. lib. v.) and Dares Phrygius (De Excidio Trojæ) betrayed Troy his country,” Lombardi. [back] |
| Note 10. Buoso of Cremona, of the family of Duera, bribed by Guy de Montfort to leave a pass between Piedmont and Parma, with the defence of which he had been intrusted by the Ghibellines, open to the army of Charles of Anjou, A. D. 1265, at which the people of Cremona were so enraged that they extirpated the whole family. G. Villani. [back] |
| Note 11. Abbot of Vallombrosa, Pope’s legate at Florence, beheaded for his intrigues with the Ghibellines. [back] |
| Note 12. “Gianni Soldanieri,” says Villani, Hist. lib. vii. c. xiv., “put himself at the head of the people, in the hopes of rising into power, not aware that the result would be mischief to the Ghibelline party, and his own ruin.”—A. D. 1266. [back] |
| Note 13. The betrayer of Charlemain, mentioned by Archbishop Turpin. He is a type of treachery with the poets of the Middle Ages. [back] |
| Note 14. Tribaldello de’ Manfredi, bribed to betray the city of Faenza, 1282. [back] |
| |
