Dinanzi A Me Non Fuor Cose Create

SE NON ETTERNE, E IO ETTERNO DURO.
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE

The final part of our journey into the depths of Hell

Cantos XXV-XXXIV

Canto XXV

While I was staring down at the three sinners
I saw a serpent with six feet, from in front
Leap up on one and entirely grip him.

It wrapped his stomach with its middle feet
And with its forefeet pinned him by the arms;
Then sank its teeth in one cheek, then the other.

It spread its hind feet down about his thighs
And thrust the tail out between his legs
And at his back pulled it up straight again.

Never did ivy cling to any tree
So tightly as that horrendous beast
Twined its limbs around and through the sinner’s.

Then the two stuck together as if made
Of hot wax and mixed their colors so
Neither one nor other seemed what once they were:

Just as, in front of the flame, a brown color
Advances on the burning paper, so that
It is not yet black but the white dies away.

The other two glared at one another, each
Crying out, "O Agnello, how you change!
Look! already you are neither two nor one."

The two heads by now had become one
When we saw the two features fuse together
Into one face in which they both were lost.

Two arms took shape out of the four remnants;
The thighs with the legs, belly, and chest,
Changed into members never before seen.

Then every former likeness was blotted out:
That perverse image seemed both two and neither,
And, such, at a slow pace, it moved away

Canto XXVI

In this way each flame moved through the throat
Of that deep ditch, none showing what it stole,
Though every flame secreted its own sinner.

I stood straight, then leaned out on the bridge
To look — had I not grabbed a jutting rock
I would have toppled off without a push!

And my guide, seeing me so attentive,
Said, "Within those fires there are souls,
Each one swathed in its self-scorching torment

Canto XXVIII

Even a cask with bottom or sides knocked out
Never cracked so wide as one soul I saw
Burst open from the chin to where one farts.

His guts were hanging out between his legs;
His pluck gaped forth and that disgusting sack
Which turns to shit what throats have gobbled down.

While I was all agog with gazing at him,
He stared at me and, as his two hands pulled
His chest apart, cried, "Look how I rip myself!

"Look at how mangled is Mohammed here!
In front of me, Ali treks onward, weeping,
His face cleft from his chin to his forelock.

"And all the others whom you see down here
Were sowers of scandal and schism while
They lived, and for this they are rent in two


I saw for sure — and still I seem to see it —
A body without a head that walked along
Just as the others in that sad herd were walking,

But it held the severed head by the hair,
Swinging it like a lantern in its hand,
And the head stared at us and said, "Ah me!"

Itself had made a lamp of its own self,
And they were two in one and one in two:
How can that be? He knows who so ordains it.

When it was right at the base of the bridge,
It raised up full length the arm with the head
To carry closer to us words, which were:

"Now you see the galling punishment,
You there, breathing, come visiting the dead:
See if you find pain heavier than this!

"And so that you may bring back news of me,
Know that I am Bertran de Born, the one
Who offered the young king corrupt advice.

"I made the son and father rebel foes.
Achitophel with his pernicious promptings
Did no worse harm to Absalom and David.

"Because I severed persons bound so closely,
I carry my brain separate (what grief!)
From its life-source which is within this trunk.

"So see in me the counterstroke of justice."

Canto XXIX

The swarms of people and the sweep of wounds
Had left my eyes so blind drunk with their tears
That still they ached to linger on and weep.

But Virgil said to me, "Why do you stare?
Why does your vision wallow down there yet
Among those dismal, mutilated shadows?

"At the other pockets you did not do so:
Consider, if you could count all of them,
Twenty-two miles the valley loops around.

"The moon already is beneath our feet:
The time that’s now allotted us is short
And you have more to see than you see here."

Canto XXXI

To this he answered, "Near here you shall see
Antaeus, who can talk and goes unfettered:
He’ll place us on the bottom pit of sin.
We left him to continue on our way,
And came to Antaeus, who rose five ells,
Not reckoning his head, above the rockbed.

[snip]
and in haste the giant
Stretched out his hands, whose tremendous grip
Hercules once felt, and clasped my guide.

Virgil, when he felt hands grasping him,
Called to me, "Come here, so I can hold you!"
And then he made himself and me one bundle.

As the Garisenda tower appears to look
From under its leaning side when clouds pass over
On the opposite direction it hangs in,

So Antaeus looked to me while I watched
Him bending over, and at such a moment
I wished that I had gone some other way.

But gently at that bottom which swallows
Lucifer with Judas, he put us down
And did not stay bent over us for long

Canto XXXII

At that I turned around and saw before me
And underneath my feet a lake of ice
So frozen that it looked like glass, not water.

Neither the Danube in Austria nor the Don,
Far-off under the cold sky, ever fashioned
So thick a veil in winter for its current

As was here: for if the peaks of Tambernic
Or Pietrapana had fallen down on it,
Not even at its edge would it have creaked.

The way frogs sit to croak with muzzles out
Of water, in the season when the peasant girl
Often dreams about her harvesting,

So these mournful shadows were sealed in ice,
Livid to where they blush their cheek with shame,
Teeth chattering with the clatter of a stork.

Each held his face bowed down before the ice,
Witnessing to the cold by their mouths,
Witnessing to the heartache with their eyes.
We left them, and soon afterward I saw
Two souls frozen in one hole so close
That one’s head served as the other’s hood.

Just as a hungry man chews on bread crusts,
So did the one on top sink his teeth into
The other’s nape at the base of the brain.

Tydeus gnawed the head of Menalippus
With no more fury than this sinner showed
In gnawing on the skull of skin and bone.

Canto XXXIV

The emperor of the kingdom of despair
Rose up from mid-chest out of the sheer ice;
And I come closer to a giant’s height

Than giants match the size of his huge arms:
See now how large the whole of him must be
If it’s proportionate to that one part!

Were he once as beautiful as now he’s ugly
(And yet he raised his fist against his Maker!)
Well may all our grief come down from him!

Oh how much wonder was it for me when
I saw that on his head he had three faces:
One in front — and it was fiery red —

And two others, which joined onto this one
Above the center of his shoulder blades,
And all three came together at his crown.

The right face seemed halfway white and yellow
While the left one looked the color of the race
That lives close to the source of the Nile.

Beneath each face there sprouted two large wings,
Suitably massive for such a bird of prey:
I never sighted sails so broad at sea.

They had no feathers but looked just like a bat’s,
And he kept flapping these wings up and down
So that three winds moved out from in around him:

This was the cause Cocytus was all iced.
With six eyes he wept, and from his three chins
Dripped down the teardrops and a bloody froth.

In each mouth he mashed up a separate sinner
With his sharp teeth, as if they were a grinder,
And in this way he put the three through torture

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