The Portable Dante (27 page)

He said: “Within, Ulysses and Diomed are suffering in anger with each other, just vengeance makes them march together now.

And they lament inside one flame the ambush of the horse become the gateway that allowed the Romans’ noble seed to issue forth.

Therein they mourn the trick that caused the grief of Deïdamia, who still weeps for Achilles; and there they pay for the Palladium. ”

“If it is possible for them to speak from within those flames, ” I said, “master, I pray and repray you—let my prayer be like a thousand—

that you do not forbid me to remain until the two-horned flame comes close to us; you see how I bend toward it with desire!”

“Your prayer indeed is worthy of highest praise, ” he said to me, “and therefore I shall grant it; but see to it your tongue refrains from speaking.

Leave it to me to speak, for I know well what you would ask; perhaps, since they were Greeks, they might not pay attention to your words. ”

So when the flame had reached us, and my guide decided that the time and place were right, he addressed them and I listened to him speaking:

“O you who are two souls within one fire, if I have deserved from you when I was living, if I have deserved from you much praise or little,

when in the world I wrote my lofty verses, do not move on; let one of you tell where he lost himself through his own fault, and died. ”

The greater of the ancient flame’s two horns began to sway and quiver, murmuring just like a flame that strains against the wind;

then, while its tip was moving back and forth, as if it were the tongue itself that spoke, the flame took on a voice and said: “When I

set sail from Circe, who, more than a year, had kept me occupied close to Gaëta (before Aeneas called it by that name),

not sweetness of a son, not reverence for an aging father, not the debt of love I owed Penelope to make her happy,

could quench deep in myself the burning wish to know the world and have experience of all man’s vices, of all human worth.

So I set out on the deep and open sea with just one ship and with that group of men, not many, who had not deserted me.

I saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco, both shores; I had left behind Sardinia, and the other islands which that sea encloses.

I and my mates were old and tired men. Then finally we reached the narrow neck where Hercules put up his signal-pillars

to warn men not to go beyond that point. On my right I saw Seville, and passed beyond; on my left, Ceüta had already sunk behind me.

’Brothers, ’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand perils have made your way to reach the West, during this so brief vigil of our senses

that is still reserved for us, do not deny yourself experience of what there is beyond, behind the sun, in the world they call unpeopled.

Consider what you came from: you are Greeks! You were not born to live like mindless brutes but to follow paths of excellence and knowledge. ’

With this brief exhortation I made my crew so anxious for the way that lay ahead, that then I hardly could have held them back;

and with our stern turned toward the morning light, we made our oars our wings for that mad flight, gaining distance, always sailing to the left.

The night already had surveyed the stars the other pole contains; it saw ours so low it did not show above the ocean floor.

Five times we saw the splendor of the moon grow full and five times wane away again since we had entered through the narrow pass—

when there appeared a mountain shape, darkened by distance, that arose to endless heights. I had never seen another mountain like it.

Our celebrations soon turned into grief: from the new land there rose a whirling wind that beat against the forepart of the ship

and whirled us round three times in churning waters; the fourth blast raised the stern up high, and sent the bow down deep, as pleased Another’s will.

And then the sea was closed again, above us. ”

By now the flame was standing straight and still, it said no more and had already turned from us, with sanction of the gentle poet,

when another, coming right behind it, attracted our attention to its tip, where a roaring of confusing sounds had started.

As the Sicilian bull—that bellowed first with cries of that one (and it served him right) who with his file had fashioned such a beast—

would bellow with the victim’s voice inside, so that, although the bull was only brass, the effigy itself seemed pierced with pain:

so, lacking any outlet to escape from the burning soul that was inside the flame, the suffering words became the fire’s language.

But after they had made their journey upward to reach the tip, giving it that same quiver the sinner’s tongue inside had given them,

we heard the words: “O you to whom I point my voice, who spoke just now in Lombard, saying: ’you may move on, I won’t ask more of you. ’

although I have been slow in coming to you, be willing, please, to pause and speak with me. You see how willing I am—and I burn!

If you have just now fallen to this world of blindness, from that sweet Italian land where I took on the burden of my guilt,

tell me, are the Romagnols at war or peace? For I come from the hills between Urbino and the mountain chain that lets the Tiber loose. ”

I was still bending forward listening when my master touched my side and said to me:
“You
speak to him;
this
one is Italian. ”

And I, who was prepared to answer him, began without delaying my response: “O soul who stands concealed from me down there,

your Romagna is not now and never was without war in her tyrants’ hearts, although there was no open warfare when I came here.

Ravenna’s situation has not changed: the eagle of Polenta broods up there, covering all of Cervia with its pinions;

the land that stood the test of long endurance and left the French piled in a bloody heap is once again beneath the verdant claws.

Verrucchio’s Old Mastiff and its New One, who both were bad custodians of Montagna, still sink their fangs into their people’s flesh;

the cities by Lamone and Santerno are governed by the Lion of the White Lair, who changes parties every change of season.

As for the town whose side the Savio bathes: just as it lies between the hills and plains, it lives between freedom and tyranny.

And now I beg you tell us who you are— grant me my wish as yours was granted you— so that your fame may hold its own on earth. ”

And when the fire, in its own way, had roared awhile, the flame’s sharp tip began to sway to and fro, then released a blow of words:

“If I thought that I were speaking to a soul who someday might return to see the world, most certainly this flame would cease to flicker;

but since no one, if I have heard the truth, ever returns alive from this deep pit, with no fear of dishonor I answer you:

I was a man of arms and then a friar, believing with the cord to make amends; and surely my belief would have come true

were it not for that High Priest (his soul be damned!) who put me back among my early sins; I want to tell you why and how it happened.

While I still had the form of the bones and flesh my mother gave me, all my actions were not those of a lion, but those of a fox;

the wiles and covert paths, I knew them all, and so employed my art that rumor of me spread to the farthest limits of the earth.

When I saw that the time of life had come for me, as it must come for every man, to lower the sails and gather in the lines,

things I once found pleasure in then grieved me; repentant and confessed, I took the vows a monk takes. And, oh, to think it could have worked!

And then the Prince of the New Pharisees chose to wage war upon the Lateran instead of fighting Saracens or Jews,