Inferno
Canto XXIX
The poets, as they cross to the next chasm, talk of Geri del Bello, a kinsman of Dante. They now come to the tenth and last bolgia, containing the Falsifiers. Their penalty is to be afflicted with loathsome diseases, and they lie grovelling and helpless and inert. Dante speaks with one (Grifolino) who promised to teach Albero of Siena to fly, and was also an alchemist, like his companion Capocchio, who derides the Sienese in an ironic speech.
THOSE throngs and their unheard-of wounds had made
Mine eyes so drunk, they were with longing faint
To tarry, and weep out what on them weighed.
But Virgil said: “Why gazest still intent?
Why on the maimed unhappy shades below
Still lingering is thy vision wholly bent?
Thou hast not at the other chasms done so.
Consider, if all the tale thou wouldst complete,
This circle two and twenty miles doth go;
The Moon already is underneath our feet; [10][i]10. The moon being under their feet, the sun must be over their heads: it is about noon in Jerusalem.
Near to its end the time permitted draws,
And more is yet to see than here we meet.”
“Had’st thou,” I then replied, “marked but the cause
Which made my eyes go questing with my mind,
Perhaps thou wouldst have suffered me to pause.”
Meantime the Guide was going, and I behind
Moved in his steps, now making my reply
And adding: “There within the cavern blind
Whereon I kept so fixt a scrutiny
I think one of my own blood makes lament [20]
For guilt which down there costs a price so high.”
The Master then: “On him should not be spent
Thy thought; let him distract thee not at all.
Turn to others, let him stay there, where he went;
For him I saw beneath the bridge’s wall
With angry threats at thee his finger dart.
Geri del Bello’s name I heard them call.[ii]27. “Geri del Bello”: a first cousin of Dante’s father, who was killed by one of the Sacchetti. In 1300 his death, to Dante’s shame, was still unavenged.
So all preoccupied with him thou wert
Who once held Hautefort, thou wouldst not thy head[iii]29. “Hautefort” was the castle of Bertran de Born.
Turn to the other; and so did he depart.” [30]
“O my dear Guide, his violent death,” I said,
“Which hath not yet found vengeance or redress
From any who share dishonour with the dead,
Made him indignant; therefore, as I guess,
He went with no word spoken from my sight;
And the more pity is in my heart’s distress.”
Thus talking, we won vantage of the height
Where first the ridge the other valley shows
Down to the bottom, were there but more light.
When we above the final cloister rose [40]
Of Malebolge’s monastery, where
All its lay-brethren it could now disclose,
A volley of strange lamentings came to tear
My heart so barbed with pity’s sudden prick
That with my hands I covered either ear.
Pain such as if from lazarets the sick[iv]46. The swampy Valdichiana and Maremma (in Tuscany) and the fens of Sardinia were noted haunts of malaria.
In feverish August from Chiana’s fen,
And from Maremma and Sardinia, thick
Were heaped together in a single pen
With all their sores, was here: and all so stank [50]
As when they fester do the wounds of men.
Now we descended over the last bank
Of the long ridge, and still were moving toward
The left; and now my vision deeper sank
Where Justice of the infallible award,
Ministress of the great Sire, punishes
The falsifiers whom her scrolls record.
I think no greater pang of grief was his
Who saw Aegina’s people all infirm[v]59-64. A pest sent by Juno carried off the inhabitants and even the animals that occupied the island of Aegina; afterwards, Jupiter restored the population by turning ants into men.
When the air was so charged with malign disease [60]
That the animals, down to the little worm,
Dropt dying, and afterwards the ancient folk,
As poets for a certainty affirm,
From seed of ants reanimated woke,
Than here to see along that valley black
The listless spirits huddled by the rock.
This on the belly and that upon the back
Of the other lay, and some were shifting round
At crawling pace along the dismal track.
Step by step went we without speech or sound [70]
Looking and listening to the sick, who drooped
Helpless to raise their bodies from the ground.
I saw two sit who one another propt,
As pan is propt on pan for the warmth’s sake,
From head to foot bespotted and corrupt.
Ne’er saw I curry-comb more frenzy take
From hand of groom for whom his master waits
Or one who is kept unwillingly awake,
Than here did the anguished clawing upon pates
And bodies, as each plied the nail to appease [80]
The fury of the itch that nothing yet abates.
Those fevered nails the scabby leprosies
Scraped off, as the knife scrapes from bream the scales
Or what fish hath them larger yet than these.
“O thou whom fury of fingers so dis-mails,”
My Guide to one of them began, “and who
So often makest pincers of thy nails,
Tell us if any Latian be with you
Who are here within, so may thy nails be hard
Eternally to avail for what they do.” [90]
“Latians are we whom here thou seest so marred,
Both of us,” the one answered, making moan,
“But who art thou who hast of us regard?”
And the Guide: “I am one who, zone by zone,
Descend, and this man living with me take
Until all Hell be to his vision shown.”
Then did the mutual prop suddenly break,
And each of them turned toward me, with the rest
Who chanced to have heard him; and it made them quake.
To me the Master all his gaze addressed, [100]
Saying: “Tell whatever thou art so inclined,”
And I began, obeying his behest,
“So may your memory out of human mind
There in the first world, not for ever fade
But under many suns a life yet find,
Tell me who ye are, and in what city bred,
Nor let your penance, loathly and foul howe’er
It be, of that disclosure make you afraid.”
I was of Arezzo,” the one answered clear,[vi]109. “I was of Arezzo”: Grifolino (see the Argument).
“And Albero of Siena had me burned; [110]
But what I died for hath not brought me here.
In jest, 'tis true, I said to him, ‘I have learned
To lift myself in the air and earth to skim’;
But he who craved much but small knowledge earned,
Willed I should show him the art, and for that whim,
Because I made him not a Daedalus,
He had me burned by one who had fathered him.
But for the alchemy I loved to use
On earth, to this last pocket of the ten
Minos, who may not err, condemns me thus.” [120]
And I to the Poet: “Now did ever men
People as vain as the Sienese record?
Truly the French are not by far so vain.”
Whereat the other leper, who caught my word,[vii]124. “The other leper” is Capocchio.
Answered to me: “Except me Stricca, who I[viii]125-127. “Except me”: evidently ironical. “Stricca”: probably Giovanni Stricca, mayor of Bologna in 1286. His brother “Niccolé” was, apparently, the one who introduced into Siena the use of cloves as a spice.
Contrived to spend so modestly his hoard,
And Niccolé who made invention new
Of that so costly usage of the clove
Within the garden where such spices grew.
Except the Band of Prodigals where strove [130]
Caccia of Ascian to waste wood and vine,[ix]131-132. “Caccia of Ascian” is perhaps the poet known as Caccia dz Siena. “Abbagliato”: a nickname of Bartolommeo Folcacchieri, z brother of the poet Folcacchiero.
And by his wit the Abbagliato throve.
But that thou may’st know whose vote seconds thine
Against the Sienese, sharpen thy sight
So that thou may’st retain this face of mine.
So shalt thou know Capocchio’s shade, whose might
Of alchemy to metals gave false shape,
And thou’lt remember, if I scan thee right,
How I of Nature was so good an ape.”