FOOTNOTES:
[220] Thundering sound: In a state of unconsciousness, Dante, he knows not how, has been conveyed across Acheron, and is awakened by what seems like the thunder-peal following the lightning-flash which made him insensible. He now stands on the brink of Inferno, where the sounds peculiar to each region of it converge and are reverberated from its rim. These sounds are not again to be heard by him except in their proper localities. No sooner does he actually pass into the First Circle than he hears only sighs.—As regards the topography of Inferno, it is enough, as yet, to note that it consists of a cavity extending from the surface to the centre of the earth; narrowing to its base, and with many circular ledges or terraces, of great width in the case of the upper ones, running round its wall—that is, round the sides of the pit. Each terrace or circle is thus less in circumference than the one above it. From one circle to the next there slopes a bank of more or less height and steepness. Down the bank which falls to the comparatively flat ground of the First Circle they are now about to pass.—To put it otherwise, the Inferno is an inverted hollow cone.
[221] Pity: The pity felt by Virgil has reference only to those in the circle they are about to enter, which is his own. See also Purg. iii. 43.
[222] Wouldst thou, etc.: He will not have Dante form a false opinion of the character of those condemned to the circle which is his own.
[223] Part: parte, altered by some editors into porta; but though baptism is technically described as the gate of the sacraments, it never is as the gate of the faith. A tenet of Dante’s faith was that all the unbaptized are lost. He had no choice in the matter.
[224] Limbo: Border, or borderland. Dante makes the First Circle consist of the two limbos of Thomas Aquinas: that of unbaptized infants, limbus puerorum, and that of the fathers of the old covenant, limbus sanctorum patrum. But the second he finds is now inhabited only by the virtuous heathen.
[225] Sir—Master: As a delicate means of expressing sympathy, Dante redoubles his courtesy to Virgil.
[226] Hidden drift: to find out, at first hand as it were, if the article in the creed is true which relates to the Descent into Hell; and, perhaps, to learn if when Christ descended He delivered none of the virtuous heathen.
[227] Lately: Virgil died about half a century before the crucifixion.
[228] A Potentate: The name of Christ is not mentioned in the Inferno.
[229] A hemisphere, etc.: An elaborate way of saying that part of the limbo was clearly lit. The flame is symbolical of the light of genius, or of virtue; both in Dante’s eyes being modes of worth.
[230] Wins grace, etc.: The thirst for fame was one keenly felt and openly confessed by Dante. See, e.g. De Monarchia, i. 1. In this he anticipated the humanists of the following century. Here we find that to be famous on earth helps the case of disembodied souls.
[231] Poet: Throughout the Comedy, with the exception of Parad. i. 29, and xxv. 8, the term ‘poet’ is confined to those who wrote in Greek and Latin. In Purg. xxi. 85 the name of poet is said to be that ‘which is most enduring and honourable.’
[232] A sword: Because Homer sings of battles. Dante’s acquaintance with his works can have been but slight, as they were not then translated into Latin, and Dante knew little or no Greek.
[233] To their honour: ‘And in that they do well:’ perhaps as showing themselves free from jealousy. But the remark of Benvenuto of Imola is: ‘Poets love and honour one another, and are never envious and quarrelsome like those who cultivate the other arts and sciences.’—I quote with misgiving from Tamburini’s untrustworthy Italian translation. Benvenuto lectured on the Comedy in Bologna for some years about 1370. It is greatly to be wished that his commentary, lively and full of side-lights as it is, should be printed in full from the original Latin.
[234] The lords, etc.: Not the company of him—Homer or Virgil—who is lord of the great song, and soars above all others; but the company of the great masters, whose verse, etc.
[235] Did my Master smile: To see Dante made free of the guild of great poets; or, it may be, to think they are about to discover in him a fellow poet.
[236] A noble castle: Where the light burns, and in which, as their peculiar seat, the shades of the heathen distinguished for virtue and genius reside. The seven walls are in their number symbolical of the perfect strength of the castle; or, to take it more pedantically, may mean the four moral virtues and the three speculative. The gates will then stand for the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, etc. The moat may be eloquence, set outside the castle to signify that only as reflected in the eloquent words of inspired men can the outside world get to know wisdom. Over the stream Dante passes easily, as being an adept in learned speech. The castle encloses a spacious mead enamelled with eternal green.
[237] Cæsar in arms, etc.: Suetonius says of Cæsar that he was of fair complexion, but had black and piercing eyes. Brunetto Latini, Dante’s teacher, says in his Tesoro (v. 11), of the hawk here mentioned—the grifagno—that its eyes ‘flame like fire.’
[238] Brutus: Introduced here that he may not be confounded with the later Brutus, for whom is reserved the lowest place of all in Inferno.
[239] Marcia: Wife of Cato; mentioned also in Purg. i. Julia: daughter of Cæsar and wife of Pompey.
[240] Saladin: Died 1193. To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries he supplied the ideal of a just Mohammedan ruler. Here are no other such. ‘He sits apart, because not of gentle birth,’ says Boccaccio; which shows what even a man of genius risks when he becomes a commentator.
[241] The Master: Aristotle, often spoken of by Dante as the Philosopher, and reverenced by him as the genius to whom the secrets of nature lay most open.
[242] Democritus, etc.: According to whom the world owes its form to a chance arrangement of atoms.
[243] Linus: Not Livy, into which some have changed it. Linus is mentioned by Virgil along with Orpheus, Egl. iv.
[244] Ptolemy: Greek geographer of the beginning of the second century, and author of the system of the world believed in by Dante, and freely used by him throughout the poem.
[245] Avicenna: A physician, born in Bokhara, and died at Ispahan, 1037. His Medical Canon was for centuries used as a text-book in Europe.
[246] Averroes: A Mohammedan philosopher of Cordova, died 1198. In his great Commentary on Aristotle he gives and explains every sentence of that philosopher’s works. He was himself ignorant of Greek, and made use of Arabic versions. Out of his Arabic the Commentary was translated into Hebrew, and thence into Latin. The presence of the three Mohammedans in this honourable place greatly puzzles the early commentators.
[247] A part, etc.: He passes into the darkness of the Limbo out of the brightly-lit, fortified enclosure. It is worth remarking, as one reads, how vividly he describes his first impression of a new scene, while when he comes to leave it a word is all he speaks.
CANTO V.
From the First Circle thus I downward went
Into the Second,[248] which girds narrower space,
But greater woe compelling loud lament.
Minos[249] waits awful there and snarls, the case
Examining of all who enter in;
And, as he girds him, dooms them to their place.
I say, each ill-starred spirit must begin
On reaching him its guilt in full to tell;
And he, omniscient as concerning sin,
Sees to what circle it belongs in Hell;10
Then round him is his tail as often curled
As he would have it stages deep to dwell.
And evermore before him stand a world
Of shades; and all in turn to judgment come,
Confess and hear, and then are downward hurled.[250]
‘O thou who comest to the very home
Of woe,’ when he beheld me Minos cried,
Ceasing a while from utterance of doom,
‘Enter not rashly nor in all confide;
By ease of entering be not led astray.’20
‘Why also[251] growling?’ answered him my Guide;
‘Seek not his course predestinate to stay;
For thus ’tis willed[252] where nothing ever fails
Of what is willed. No further speech essay.’
And now by me are agonising wails
Distinguished plain; now am I come outright
Where grievous lamentation me assails.
Now had I reached a place devoid of light,
Raging as in a tempest howls the sea
When with it winds, blown thwart each other, fight.30
The infernal storm is raging ceaselessly,
Sweeping the shades along with it, and them
It smites and whirls, nor lets them ever be.
Arrived at the precipitous extreme,[253]
In shrieks and lamentations they complain,
And even the Power Divine itself blaspheme.
I understood[254] that to this mode of pain
Are doomed the sinners of the carnal kind,
Who o’er their reason let their impulse reign.
As starlings in the winter-time combined40
Float on the wing in crowded phalanx wide,
So these bad spirits, driven by that wind,
Float up and down and veer from side to side;
Nor for their comfort any hope they spy
Of rest, or even of suffering mollified.
And as the cranes[255] in long-drawn company
Pursue their flight while uttering their song,
So I beheld approach with wailing cry
Shades lifted onward by that whirlwind strong.
‘Master, what folk are these,’[256] I therefore said,50
‘Who by the murky air are whipped along?’
‘She, first of them,’ his answer thus was made,
‘Of whom thou wouldst a wider knowledge win,
O’er many tongues and peoples, empire swayed.
So ruined was she by licentious sin
That she decreed lust should be uncontrolled,
To ease the shame that she herself was in.
She is Semiramis, of whom ’tis told
She followed Ninus, and his wife had been.
Hers were the realms now by the Sultan ruled.60
The next[257] is she who, amorous and self-slain,
Unto Sichæus’ dust did faithless show:
Then lustful Cleopatra.’ Next was seen
Helen, for whom so many years in woe
Ran out; and I the great Achilles knew,
Who at the last[258] encountered love for foe.
Paris I saw and Tristram.[259] In review
A thousand shades and more, he one by one
Pointed and named, whom love from life withdrew.
And after I had heard my Teacher run70
O’er many a dame of yore and many a knight,
I, lost in pity, was wellnigh undone.
Then I: ‘O Poet, if I only might
Speak with the two that as companions hie,
And on the wind appear to be so light!’[260]
And he to me: ‘When they shall come more nigh
Them shalt thou mark, and by the love shalt pray
Which leads them onward, and they will comply.’
Soon as the wind bends them to where we stay
I lift my voice: ‘O wearied souls and worn!80
Come speak with us if none[261] the boon gainsay.’
Then even as doves,[262] urged by desire, return
On outspread wings and firm to their sweet nest
As through the air by mere volition borne,
From Dido’s[263] band those spirits issuing pressed
Towards where we were, athwart the air malign;
My passionate prayer such influence possessed.
‘O living creature,[264] gracious and benign,
Us visiting in this obscurèd air,
Who did the earth with blood incarnadine;90
If in the favour of the King we were
Who rules the world, we for thy peace[265] would pray,
Since our misfortunes thy compassion stir.
Whate’er now pleases thee to hear or say
We listen to, or tell, at your demand;[266]
While yet the wind, as now, doth silent stay.
My native city[267] lies upon the strand
Where to the sea descends the river Po
For peace, with all his tributary band.
Love, in a generous heart set soon aglow,100
Seized him for the fair form was mine above;
And still it irks me to have lost it so.[268]
Love, which absolves[269] no one beloved from love,
So strong a passion for him in me wrought
That, as thou seest, I still its mastery prove.
Love led us where we in one death were caught.
For him who slew us waits Caïna[270] now.’
Unto our ears these words from them were brought.
When I had heard these troubled souls, my brow
I downward bent, and long while musing stayed,110
Until the Poet asked: ‘What thinkest thou?’
And when I answered him, ‘Alas!’ I said,
‘Sweet thoughts how many, and what strong desire,
These to their sad catastrophe betrayed!’
Then, turned once more to them, I to inquire
Began: ‘Francesca, these thine agonies
Me with compassion unto tears inspire.
But tell me, at the season of sweet sighs
What sign made love, and what the means he chose
To strip your dubious longings of disguise?’120
And she to me: ‘The bitterest of woes
Is to remember in the midst of pain
A happy past; as well thy teacher[271] knows.
Yet none the less, and since thou art so fain
The first occasion of our love to hear,
Like one I speak that cannot tears restrain.
As we for pastime one day reading were
How Lancelot[272] by love was fettered fast—
All by ourselves and without any fear—
Moved by the tale our eyes we often cast130
On one another, and our colour fled;
But one word was it, vanquished us at last.
When how the smile, long wearied for, we read
Was kissed by him who loved like none before,
This one, who henceforth never leaves me, laid
A kiss on my mouth, trembling the while all o’er.
The book was Galahad,[273] and he as well
Who wrote the book. That day we read no more.’
And while one shade continued thus to tell,
The other wept so bitterly, I swooned140
Away for pity, and as dead I fell:
Yea, as a corpse falls, fell I on the ground.