Inferno, Canto XX

Of a new pain behoves me to make verses

And give material to the twentieth canto

Of the first song, which is of the submerged.

I was already thoroughly disposed

To peer down into the uncovered depth,

Which bathed itself with tears of agony;

And people saw I through the circular valley,

Silent and weeping, coming at the pace

Which in this world the Litanies assume.

As lower down my sight descended on them,

Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted

From chin to the beginning of the chest;

For tow'rds the reins the countenance was turned,

And backward it behoved them to advance,

As to look forward had been taken from them.

Perchance indeed by violence of palsy

Some one has been thus wholly turned awry;

But I ne'er saw it, nor believe it can be.

As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit

From this thy reading, think now for thyself

How I could ever keep my face unmoistened,

When our own image near me I beheld

Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes

Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts.

Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak

Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said

To me: "Art thou, too, of the other fools?

Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;

Who is a greater reprobate than he

Who feels compassion at the doom divine?

Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom

Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes;

Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou,

Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?'

And downward ceased he not to fall amain

As far as Minos, who lays hold on all.

See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!

Because he wished to see too far before him

Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:

Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,

When from a male a female he became,

His members being all of them transformed;

And afterwards was forced to strike once more

The two entangled serpents with his rod,

Ere he could have again his manly plumes.

That Aruns is, who backs the other's belly,

Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs

The Carrarese who houses underneath,

Among the marbles white a cavern had

For his abode; whence to behold the stars

And sea, the view was not cut off from him.

And she there, who is covering up her breasts,

Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses,

And on that side has all the hairy skin,

Was Manto, who made quest through many lands,

Afterwards tarried there where I was born;

Whereof I would thou list to me a little.

After her father had from life departed,

And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved,

She a long season wandered through the world.

Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake

At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany

Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.

By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,

'Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,

With water that grows stagnant in that lake.

Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor,

And he of Brescia, and the Veronese

Might give his blessing, if he passed that way.

Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,

To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks,

Where round about the bank descendeth lowest.

There of necessity must fall whatever

In bosom of Benaco cannot stay,

And grows a river down through verdant pastures.

Soon as the water doth begin to run,

No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio,

Far as Governo, where it falls in Po.

Not far it runs before it finds a plain

In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy,

And oft 'tis wont in summer to be sickly.

Passing that way the virgin pitiless

Land in the middle of the fen descried,

Untilled and naked of inhabitants;

There to escape all human intercourse,

She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise

And lived, and left her empty body there.

The men, thereafter, who were scattered round,

Collected in that place, which was made strong

By the lagoon it had on every side;

They built their city over those dead bones,

And, after her who first the place selected,

Mantua named it, without other omen.

Its people once within more crowded were,

Ere the stupidity of Casalodi

From Pinamonte had received deceit.

Therefore I caution thee, if e'er thou hearest

Originate my city otherwise,

No falsehood may the verity defraud."

And I: "My Master, thy discourses are

To me so certain, and so take my faith,

That unto me the rest would be spent coals.

But tell me of the people who are passing,

If any one note-worthy thou beholdest,

For only unto that my mind reverts."

Then said he to me: "He who from the cheek

Thrusts out his beard upon his swarthy shoulders

Was, at the time when Greece was void of males,

So that there scarce remained one in the cradle,

An augur, and with Calchas gave the moment,

In Aulis, when to sever the first cable.

Eryphylus his name was, and so sings

My lofty Tragedy in some part or other;

That knowest thou well, who knowest the whole of it.

The next, who is so slender in the flanks,

Was Michael Scott, who of a verity

Of magical illusions knew the game.

Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente,

Who now unto his leather and his thread

Would fain have stuck, but he too late repents.

Behold the wretched ones, who left the needle,

The spool and rock, and made them fortune-tellers;

They wrought their magic spells with herb and image.

But come now, for already holds the confines

Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville

Touches the ocean-wave, Cain and the thorns,

And yesternight the moon was round already;

Thou shouldst remember well it did not harm thee

From time to time within the forest deep."

Thus spake he to me, and we walked the while.