INFERNO XX
INFERNO XX
Of strange new pain I now must make my verse, →
giving matter to the canto numbered twenty
3 of this first canzone, which tells of those submerged.
By now I was all eagerness to see →
what sights the chasm, bathed in tears
6 of anguish, would disclose.
I saw people come along that curving canyon
in silence, weeping, their pace the pace of slow
9 processions chanting litanies in the world.
As my gaze moved down along their shapes, →
I saw into what strange contortions
12 their chins and chests were twisted.
Their faces were reversed upon their shoulders →
so that they came on walking backward,
15 since seeing forward was denied them.
Perhaps some time by stroke of palsy
a person could be twisted in that way,
18 but I’ve not seen it nor do I think it likely.
Reader, so may God let you gather fruit →
from reading this, imagine, if you can,
21 how I could have kept from weeping
when I saw, up close, our human likeness
so contorted that tears from their eyes
24 ran down their buttocks, down into the cleft.
Yes, I wept, leaning against a spur →
of the rough crag, so that my escort said:
27 ‘Are you still as witless as the rest?
’Here piety lives when pity is quite dead. →
Who is more impious than one who thinks
30 that God shows passion in His judgment?
‘Raise your head! Raise it and look on him →
under whose feet the earth gaped open
33 in sight of all the shouting Thebans:
‘ “Where are you rushing, Amphiaraus? Why
do you leave the war?” Nor did he stop his plunge
36 until he fell to Minos, who lays hold on all.
‘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.
‘See Tiresias, who changed his likeness →
when he was turned from male to female,
42 transformed in every member.
‘Later on he had to touch once more
the two twined serpents with his rod
45 before he could regain his manly plumes.
‘He who puts his back to that one’s belly is Aruns. →
In the hills of Luni—where the Carraresi,
48 who shelter in the valley, work the earth—
‘he lived inside a cave in that white marble,
from which he could observe the sea and stars
51 in a wide and boundless prospect.
‘And that female whose backward-flowing tresses →
fall upon her breasts so they are hidden,
54 and has her hairy parts on that same side,
‘was Manto, who searched through many lands
before she settled in the place where I was born—
57 for just a moment hear me out on this. →
’After her father had parted from this life
and the city of Bacchus was enslaved,
60 she wandered for a time about the world.
‘High in fair Italy, at the foot of the alps →
that form a border with Germany near Tyrol,
63 lies a lake they call Benàco.
‘By a thousand springs and more, I think, →
the region between Garda, Val Camonica, and Pennino
66 is bathed by waters setthng in that lake.
‘There is an island in its middle
that the pastors of Trent, Brescia, and Verona,
69 should they pass that way, would bless.
‘Peschiera, a strong and splendid fortress →
against the Brescians and the Bergamese,
72 sits on the lowest point of land around.
‘There all the water Benàco’s bosom cannot hold →
flows over and descends into a river
75 running through green pastures.
‘This river, as it leaves the lake
and all the way to Govérnolo, is called
78 Mincio until it falls into the Po.
‘Before that, after but the briefest run, →
it levels off and spreads to make a swamp
81 sometimes scarce of water in the summer.
‘When she passed that way, the cruel virgin
saw dry land in the middle of the marsh
84 where no one lived and no one tilled the soil.
‘There, to avoid all company, she stopped, →
with only servants, to ply her magic arts.
87 There she lived and left her empty body.
’Later on, the people scattered round about
collected there because it was protected
90 by the marsh on every side.
‘They built the city over those dead bones
and, after her who first had claimed the spot,
93 named it Mantua, with no spells or incantations.
‘Once, its population was more plentiful, →
before the foolishness of Casalodi
96 bore the brunt of Pinamonte’s guile.
‘I charge you, therefore, should you ever hear →
my city’s origin described another way,
99 allow no lie to falsify the truth.’
And I: ‘Master, to me your explanation
is so convincing and so takes my trust
102 that any other tale would seem spent embers.
‘But tell me, among these people who are passing,
if you see any worthy of my notice,
105 for my thoughts keep going back to them alone.’
Then he replied: ‘The one whose beard →
falls from his jowls onto his swarthy shoulders
108 was—when Greece was so deprived of males
‘that the only ones still there were in their cradles—
a soothsayer. At Aulis, along with Calchas,
111 he told the favoring time for setting sail.
‘Eurypylus was his name, and thus he is sung
in certain verses of my lofty tragedy,
114 as you know very well, who know it all.
‘That other, with the skinny shanks, →
was Michael Scot, who truly understood
117 the way to play the game of magic tricks.
’See Guido Bonatti. See Asdente, who now regrets → →
not having worked his leather and his thread—
120 but he repents too late.
‘See the wretched women who gave up needle, →
spool, and spindle to take up fortune-telling,
123 casting spells with images and herbs.
‘But come now, for Cain, with his thorns, →
already stands above the border of both hemispheres
126 and touches the waves below Seville.
‘and recall two nights ago →
the moon, already full, did you no harm,
at any time in the deep wood.’