Of joy, when misery is at hand! That kens Thy learned instructor. Yet so eagerly If thou art bent to know the primal root, From whence our love gat being, I will do, As one, who weeps and tells his tale. For our delight we read of Lancelot, How him love thralled. Alone we were, and no Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue Fled from our altered cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wished smile, rapturously kissed
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kissed. The book and writer both (Were love's purveyors. In its leaves that day We read no more." While thus one spirit spake, The other wailed so sorely, that heart-struck I, through compassion fainting, seemed not far From death, and like a corpse fell to the ground.
On his recovery, the Poet finds himself in the third circle, where the gluttonous are punished. Their torment is, to lie in the mire, under a continual and heavy storm of hail, snow, and discolored water; Cerberus meanwhile barking over them with his threefold throat, and rending them piecemeal. One of these, who on earth was named Ciacco, foretells the divisions with which Florence is about to be distracted. Dante proposes a question to his guide, who solves it; and they proceed towards the fourth circle.
My sense reviving, that erewhile had drooped With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief O'ercame me wholly, straight around I see
New torments, new tormented souls, which way Soe'er I move, or turn, or bend my sight.
In the third circle I arrive, of showers
Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged Forever, both in kind and in degree.
Large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw
Through the dun midnight air streamed down amain : Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell.
Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange, Through his wide threefold throat, barks as a dog Over the multitude immersed beneath. His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard, His belly large, and clawed the hands, with which He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs, Under the rainy deluge, with one side
The other screening, oft they roll them round, A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm Descried us, savage Cerberus, he oped
His jaws, and the fangs showed us; not a limb Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth Raised them, and cast it in his ravenous maw. E'en as a dog, that yelling bays for food His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall His fury, bent alone with eager haste
To swallow it; so dropped the loathsome cheeks Of demon Cerberus, who thundering stuns
The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain.
We, o'er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet Upon their emptiness, that substance seemed. They all along the earth extended lay, Save one, that sudden raised himself to sit, Soon as that way he saw us pass. "O thou! He cried, "who through the infernal shades art led, Own, if again thou know'st me. Thou wast framed Or ere my frame was broken." I replied:
sudden gust or burst of wind. Cf.
"Snow and hail, and stormy gust and flaw."
12. Cerberus, a dog with three heads, in ancient mythology, guardian of Hell.
21. "Juxta-infernum vermis erat infinitæ magnitudinæ ligatus maximâ catenâ." Alberici Visio, § 9.
In Canto XXXIV. 102, Lucifer is called "The abhorred worm, that boreth through the world."
"Ch' al gran verme infernal mette la briglia, E che di lui come a lei par dispone."
Orl. Fur. xlvi. 78. 35. The spirits have not yet their body, but merely the appearance of them. Only after the Last Judgment will their human forms be restored to them.
40. "You were born before I died." Dante was born in 1265; Ciacco died in 1286.
"The anguish thou endurest perchance so takes Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems As if I saw thee neyer. But inform
Me who thou art, that in a place so sad Art set, and in such torment, that although Other be greater, none disgusteth more. He thus in answer to my words rejoined: "Thy city heaped with envy to the brim, Aye, that the measure overflows its bounds, Held me in brighter days. Ye citizens Were wont to name me Ciacco. For the sin Of gluttony, damned vice, beneath this rain, E'en as thou seest, I with fatigue am worn; Nor I sole spirit in this woe: all these Have by like crime incurred like punishment."
No more he said, and I my speech resumed: "Ciacco! thy dire affliction grieves me much, Even to tears. But tell me, if thou knowest, What shall at length befall the citizens Of the divided city; whether any Just one inhabit there and tell the cause, Whence jarring discord hath assailed it thus?'
He then: "After long striving they will come To blood; and the wild party from the woods Will chase the other with much injury forth. Then it behoves, that this must fall, within Three solar circles; and the other rise By borrowed force of one, who under shore Now rests. It shall a long space hold aloof Its forehead, keeping under heavy weight The other opprest, indignant at the load, And grieving sore. The just are two in number, But they neglected. Avarice, envy, pride, Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all On fire." Here ceased the lamentable sound; And I continued thus: "Still would I learn
52. Ciacco, according to some commentators, is a nickname, meaning "hog." Others hold that it is the man's real name. He is introduced in Boccaccio's Decameron, Giorn. ix. Nov. 8.
61. Divided into the Bianchi and Neri factions.
65. So called because it was headed by Veri de' Cerchi, whose family had lately come into the city from Acone, and the woody country of the Val di Nievole.
66. The opposite party of the Neri, at the head of which was Corso Donati.
67. The Bianchi must fall.
More from thee, further parley still entreat. Of Farinata and Tegghiaio say,
They who so well deserved; of Giacopo, Arrigo, Mosca, and the rest, who bent
Their minds on working good. Oh! tell me where They bide, and to their knowledge let me come. For I am prest with keen desire to hear
If heaven's sweet cup or poisonous drug of hell, Be to their lip assigned." He answered straight: "These are yet blacker spirits. Various crimes Have sunk them deeper in the dark abyss. If thou so far descendest, thou mayst see them. But to the pleasant world when thou returnest, Of me make mention, I entreat thee, there. No more I tell thee, answer thee no more.
This said, his fixed eyes he turned askance, A little eyed me, then bent down his head, And 'midst his blind companions with it fell.
When thus my guide: "No more his bed he leaves, Ere the last angel-trumpet blow. The Power Adverse to these shall then in glory come,
Each one forthwith to his sad tomb repair, Resume his fleshly vesture and his form, And hear the eternal doom re-echoing rend
The vault." So passed we through that mixture foul Of spirits and rain, with tardy steps; meanwhile Touching, though slightly, on the life to come. For thus I questioned: "Shall these tortures, Sir! When the great sentence passes, be increased, Or mitigated, or as now severe?"
He then: "Consult thy knowledge; that decides That, as each thing to more perfection grows, It feels more sensibly both good and pain. Though ne'er to true perfection may arrive This race accurst, yet nearer then, than now, They shall approach it." Compassing that path, Circuitous we journeyed, and discourse, Much more than I relate between us passed: Till at the point, whence the steps led below, Arrived, there Plutus, the great foe, we found.
79. See notes to Hell, x. 32, and xvi. 42. 80. See note to Hell, xvi. 45.
81. Of Arrigo, who is said by the commentators to have been of the noble family of the Fifanti, no mention afterwards occurs. Mosca degli Uberti is introduced in Canto xxviii.
91. Ciacco, like other souls in Hell, desires Dante to keep his name alive in the world above. 97. The trumpet announcing the Last Judgment. Cf. Matth. xxiv. 31. The "adverse Power" is Christ.
108. The usual explanation of this passage is to refer the word "knowledge" to the teachings of Aristotle, who declares that the more perfect the body, the more susceptible is it to pain and pleasure.
117. Plutus, the god of Riches, is made by Dante a demon, in accordance with his custom when introducing mythological characters in Hell.
In the present Canto, Dante describes his descent into the fourth circle, at the beginning of which he sees Plutus stationed. Here one like doom awaits the prodigal and the avaricious; which is, to meet in direful conflict, rolling great weights against each other with mutual upbraidings. From hence Virgil takes occasion to show how vain the goods that are committed into the charge of Fortune; and this moves our author to inquire what being that Fortune is, of whom he speaks: which question being resolved, they go down into the fifth circle, where they find the wrathful and slothful tormented in the Stygian lake. Having made a compass round great part of this lake, they come at last to the base of a lofty tower.
"Ан me! O Satan! Satan!" loud exclaimed Plutus, in accent hoarse of wild alarm: And the kind sage, whom no event surprised, To comfort me thus spake: "Let not thy fear Harm thee, for power in him, be sure, is none To hinder down this rock thy safe descent." Then to that swoln lip turning, "Peace!" he cried, "Curst wolf! thy fury inward on thyself Prey, and consume thee! Through the dark profound Not without cause he passes. So 't is willed On high, there where the great Archangel poured Heaven's vengeance on the first adulterer proud."
As sails, full spread and bellying with the wind, Drop suddenly collapsed, if the mast split; So to the ground down dropped the cruel fiend.
Thus we, descending to the fourth steep ledge, Gained on the dismal shore, that all the woe Hems in of all the universe. Ah me! Almighty Justice! in what store thou heap'st New pains, new troubles, as I here beheld. Wherefore doth fault of ours bring us to this? E'en as a billow, on Charybdis rising, Against encountered billow dashing breaks; Such is the dance this wretched race must lead, Whom more than elsewhere numerous here I found,
I. Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe."
Of the many efforts to explain this line none are satisfactory, and perhaps it is better to understand it simply as an exclamation of rage.
11. Michael, as it is in the original.
12. Satan. The best commentary on this passage is contained in Rev. xii. 7-9. The word strupo, translated here "adulterer," means rather adultery in the sense of infidelity.
16. The word lacca, which Cary translates "ledge," means cavity, hollow.
"As when two billows in the Irish sowndes Forcibly driven with contrarie tides, Do meet together; each aback rebounds With roaring rage, and dashing on all sides, That filleth all the sea with foam, divides The doubtful current into divers wayes." Spenser, F. Q. IV, 1, 42. 25. In Purg. xx. 11, Dante says that Ava- rice-antica lupa - is more universal than all other vices.
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