The Portable Dante (33 page)

“
Vexilla regis prodeunt Inferni
, ” my master said, “closer to us, so now look ahead and see if you can make him out. ”

A far-off windmill turning its huge sails when a thick fog begins to settle in, or when the light of day begins to fade,

that is what I thought I saw appearing. And the gusts of wind it stirred made me shrink back behind my guide, my only means of cover.

Down here, I stood on souls fixed under ice (I tremble as I put this into verse); to me they looked like straws worked into glass.

Some lying flat, some perpendicular, either with their heads up or their feet, and some bent head to foot, shaped like a bow.

When we had moved far enough along the way that my master thought the time had come to show me the creature who was once so beautiful,

he stepped aside, and stopping me, announced: “This is he, this is Dis; this is the place that calls for all the courage you have in you. ”

How chilled and nerveless, Reader, I felt then; do not ask me—I cannot write about it— there are no words to tell you how I felt.

I did not die—I was not living either! Try to imagine, if you can imagine, me there, deprived of life and death at once.

The king of the vast kingdom of all grief stuck out with half his chest above the ice; my height is closer to the height of giants

than theirs is to the length of his great arms; consider now how large all of him was: this body in proportion to his arms.

If once he was as fair as now he’s foul and dared to raise his brows against his Maker, it is fitting that all grief should spring from him.

Oh, how amazed I was when I looked up and saw a head—one head wearing three faces! One was in front (and that was a bright red),

the other two attached themselves to this one just above the middle of each shoulder, and at the crown all three were joined in one:

The right face was a blend of white and yellow, the left the color of those people’s skin who live along the river Nile’s descent.

Beneath each face two mighty wings stretched out, the size you might expect of this huge bird (I never saw a ship with larger sails):

not feathered wings but rather like the ones a bat would have. He flapped them constantly, keeping three winds continuously in motion

to lock Cocytus eternally in ice. He wept from his six eyes, and down three chins were dripping tears all mixed with bloody slaver.

In each of his three mouths he crunched a sinner, with teeth like those that rake the hemp and flax, keeping three sinners constantly in pain;

the one in front—the biting he endured was nothing like the clawing that he took: sometimes his back was raked clean of its skin.

“That soul up there who suffers most of all, ” my guide explained, “is Judas Iscariot: the one with head inside and legs out kicking.

As for the other two whose heads stick out, the one who hangs from that black face is Brutus— see how he squirms in silent desperation;

the other one is Cassius, he still looks sturdy. But soon it will be night. Now is the time to leave this place, for we have seen it all. ”

I held on to his neck, as he told me to, while he watched and waited for the time and place, and when the wings were stretched out just enough,

he grabbed on to the shaggy sides of Satan; then downward, tuft by tuft, he made his way between the tangled hair and frozen crust.

When we had reached the point exactly where the thigh begins, right at the haunch’s curve, my guide, with strain and force of every muscle,

turned his head toward the shaggy shanks of Dis and grabbed the hair as if about to climb— I thought that we were heading back to Hell.

“Hold tight, there is no other way, ” he said, panting, exhausted, “only by these stairs can we leave behind the evil we have seen. ”

When he had got me through the rocky crevice, he raised me to its edge and set me down, then carefully he climbed and joined me there.

I raised my eyes, expecting I would see the half of Lucifer I saw before. Instead I saw his two legs stretching upward.

If at that sight I found myself confused, so will those simple-minded folk who still don’t see what point it was I must have passed.

“Get up, ” my master said, “get to your feet, the way is long, the road a rough climb up, already the sun approaches middle tierce!”

It was no palace promenade we came to, but rather like some dungeon Nature built: it was paved with broken stone and poorly lit.

“Before we start to struggle out of here, O master, ” I said when I was on my feet, “I wish you would explain some things to me.

Where is the ice? And how can he be lodged upside-down? And how, in so little time, could the sun go all the way from night to day?”

“You think you’re still on the center’s other side, ” he said, “where I first grabbed the hairy worm of rottenness that pierces the earth’s core;

and you
were
there as long as I moved downward but, when I turned myself, you passed the point to which all weight from every part is drawn.

Now you are standing beneath the hemisphere which is opposite the side covered by land, where at the central point was sacrificed

the Man whose birth and life were free of sin. You have both feet upon a little sphere whose other side Judecca occupies;

when it is morning here, there it is evening. And he whose hairs were stairs for our descent has not changed his position since his fall.

When he fell from the heavens on this side, all of the land that once was spread out here, alarmed by his plunge, took cover beneath the sea

and moved to our hemisphere; with equal fear the mountain-land, piled up on this side, fled and made this cavern here when it rushed upward.

Below somewhere there is a space, as far from Beelzebub as the limit of his tomb, known not by sight but only by the sound

of a little stream that makes its way down here through the hollow of a rock that it has worn, gently winding in gradual descent. ”

My guide and I entered that hidden road to make our way back up to the bright world. We never thought of resting while we climbed.

We climbed, he first and I behind, until, through a small round opening ahead of us I saw the lovely things the heavens hold,

and we came out to see once more the stars.

For better waters, now, the little bark of my poetic powers hoists its sails, and leaves behind that cruelest of the seas.

And I shall sing about that second realm where man’s soul goes to purify itself and become worthy to ascend to Heaven.

Here let death’s poetry arise to life, O Muses sacrosanct whose liege I am! And let Calliope rise up and play

her sweet accompaniment in the same strain that pierced the wretched magpies with the truth of unforgivable presumptuousness.

The tender tint of orient sapphire, suffusing the still reaches of the sky, as far as the horizon deeply clear,

renewed my eyes’ delight, now that I found myself free of the deathly atmosphere that had weighed heavy on my eyes and heart.

The lovely planet kindling love in man made all the eastern sky smile with her light, veiling the Fish that shimmered in her train.

Then to my right I turned to contemplate the other pole, and there saw those four stars the first man saw, and no man after him.