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In this passage Dante, guided by Virgil, peers down from
an arch over the Eighth Bolgia, a ditch circling the Inferno around
which proceed the souls of the Deceivers eternally engulfed in flame.
As
Dante watches, a flame with two tongues approaches containing the
souls of two of the damned: the Greeks Diomedes and Ulysses. Virgil
responds to Dante's request to question the sinners enclosed in the
flame by speaking to it himself. The passage starts in the middle
of line 41 of the Pinsky translation.
. . . so each flame moves
Along the ditch's gullet with not one
Showing its plunder, though every flame contrives
To steal
away a sinner. I had climbed up
To
balance where the bridge's high point gives
A better view, and if I didn't grip
A rock, I
would have fallen from where I stood
Without a
push. Seeing how from the top
I gazed intently down, my master said,
"Within
the flames are spirits; each one here
Enfolds
himself in what burns him." I replied,
"My Master, to hear you say it makes me sure,
But I
already thought it; already, too,
I wanted
to ask you who is in that fire
Which at its top is so split into two
It seems
to surge from the fire Eteocles
Shared
with his brother?" He answered, "In it go
Tormented Ulysses and Diomedes
Enduring
vengeance together, as they did wrath;
And in
their flame they grieve for their device,
The horse that made the doorway through which went forth
The
Romans' noble seed. Within their fire
Now they
lament the guile that even in death
Made Daedamia mourn Achilles, and there
They pay
the price for the Palladium."
"Master,"
I said, "I earnestly implore,
If they can speak within those sparks of flame—
And pray
my prayer be worth a thousand pleas—
Do not
forbid my waiting here for them
Until their horned flame makes its way to us;
You see
how yearningly it makes me lean."
And he to
me: "Your prayer is worthy of praise,
And therefore I accept it. But restrain
Your
tongue, leave speech to me—Greeks that they were,
They
might treat words of yours with some disdain."
My master waited as the flame drew near
For the
right place and moment to arrive,
Then
spoke: "O you, who are two within one fire:
If I deserved of you while I was alive—
If I
deserved anything great or small
From you
when I wrote verse, then do not move;
But rather grant that one of you will tell
Whither,
when lost, he went away to die."
The
greater horn of flame began to flail
And murmur like fire the wind beats, and to ply
Its tip
which, as it vibrated here and there
Like a
tongue in speech, flung out a voice to say:
"When Circe had detained me more than a year
There
near Gaeta, before it had that name
Aeneas
gave it, and I parted from her,
No fondness for my son, nor any claim
Of
reverence for my father, nor love I owed
Penelope,
to please her, could overcome
My longing for experience of the world,
Of human
vice and virtue. But I sailed out
On the
deep open seas, accompanied
By that small company that still had not
Deserted
me, in a single ship. One coast
I saw,
and then another, and I got
As far as Spain, Morocco, Sardinia, a host
Of other
islands that the sea bathes round.
My men
and I were old and slow when we passed
The narrow outlet where Hercules let stand
His
markers beyond which men were not to sail.
On my
left hand I left Ceuta behind,
And on the other sailed beyond Seville.
'O
brothers who have reached the West,' I began,
'Through
a hundred thousand perils, surviving all:
So little is the vigil we see remain
Still for
our senses, that you should not choose
To deny
it the experience—behind the sun
Leading us onward—of the world which has
No people
in it. Consider well your seed:
You were
not born to live as a mere brute does,
But for the pursuit of knowledge and the good.'
Then all
of my companions grew so keen
To
journey, spurred by this little speech I'd made,
I would have found them difficult to restrain.
Turning
our stern toward the morning light,
We made
wings of our oars, in an insane
Flight, always gaining on the left. The night
Showed
all the stars, now, of the other pole—
Our own
star fallen so low, no sign of it
Rose from the sea. The moon's low face glowed full
Five
times since we set course across the deep,
And as
many times was quenched invisible,
When dim in the distance we saw a mountaintop:
It seemed
the highest I had ever seen.
We
celebrated—but soon began to weep,
For from the newfound land a storm had grown,
Rising to
strike the forepart of the ship.
It
whirled the vessel round, and round again
With all the waters three times, lifting up
The stern
the fourth—as pleased an Other—to press
The prow
beneath the surface, and did not stop
Until the seas had closed up over us."
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