across his back, and a demon cried, “Move on,
you pimp, there are no women here to sell.”
Turning away then, I rejoined my Guide.
We came in a few steps to a raised ridge
that made a passage to the other side.
This we climbed easily, and turning right
along the jagged crest, we left behind
the eternal circling of those souls in flight.
And when we reached the part at which the stone
was tunneled for the passage of the scourged,
my Guide said, “Stop a minute and look down
on these other misbegotten wraiths of sin.
You have not seen their faces, for they moved
in the same direction we were headed in.”
So from that bridge we looked down on the throng
that hurried toward us on the other side.
Here, too, the whiplash hurried them along.
And the good Master, studying that train,
said: “Look there, at that great soul that approaches
and seems to shed no tears for all his pain—
what kingliness moves with him even in Hell!
It is Jason, who by courage and good advice
made off with the Colchian Ram. Later it fell
that he passed Lemnos, where the women of wrath,
enraged by Venus’ curse that drove their lovers
out of their arms, put all their males to death.
There with his honeyed tongue and his dishonest
lover’s wiles, he gulled Hypsipyle,
who, in the slaughter, had gulled all the rest.
And there he left her, pregnant and forsaken.
Such guilt condemns him to such punishment;
and also for Medea is vengeance taken.
All seducers march here to the whip.
And let us say no more about this valley
and those it closes in its stony grip.”
We had already come to where the walk
crosses the second bank, from which it lifts
another arch, spanning from rock to rock.
Here we heard people whine in the next chasm,
and knock and thump themselves with open palms,
and blubber through their snouts as if in a spasm.
Steaming from that pit, a vapour rose
over the banks, crusting them with a slime
that sickened my eyes and hammered at my nose.
That chasm sinks so deep we could not sight
its bottom anywhere until we climbed
along the rock arch to its greatest height.
Once there, I peered down; and I saw long lines
of people in a river of excrement
that seemed the overflow of the world’s latrines.
I saw among the felons of that pit
one wraith who might or might not have been tonsured—
He bellowed: “You there, why do you stare at me
more than at all the others in this stew?”
And I to him: “Because if memory
serves me, I knew you when your hair was dry.
You are Alessio Interminelli da Lucca.
That’s why I pick you from this filthy fry.”
And he then, beating himself on his clown’s head:
“Down to this have the flatteries I sold
the living sunk me here among the dead.”
And my Guide prompted then: “Lean forward a bit
and look beyond him, there—do you see that one
scratching herself with dungy nails, the strumpet
who fidgets to her feet, then to a crouch?
It is the whore Thaïs who told her lover
when he sent to ask her, ‘Do you thank me much?’
‘Much? Nay, past all believing!’ And with this
let us turn from the sight of this abyss.”
NOTES
2. Malebolge: Bolgia (BOWL-djah) in Italian equals “ditch” or “pouch.” That combination of meanings is not possible in a single English word, but it is well to bear in mind that Dante intended both meanings: not only a ditch of evil, but a pouch full of it, a filthy treasure of ill-gotten souls.
5. a well: This is the final pit of Hell, and in it are punished the Treacherous (those Guilty of Compound Fraud). Cantos XXIX-XXXIV will deal with this part of Hell.
22. below, on my right: (See diagram.) The Poets have, as usual, borne left from the point where Geryon left them. They are walking along the outer ridge of the first bolgia , and the sinners are below them on the right. The Panderers are walking toward them along the near bank; the Seducers are walking the other way (i.e., in the same direction as the Poets) along the far bank. Dante places the Seducers closer to the center of Hell, thereby indicating that their sin is a shade worse than that of the Panderers. It is difficult to see why Dante should think so, but since both receive exactly the same punishment, the distinction is more or less academic.
28-33. Boniface VIII had proclaimed 1300 a Jubilee Year, and consequently throngs of pilgrims had come to Rome. Since the date of the vision is also 1300, the Roman throngs are moving back and forth across the Tiber via Ponte Castello Sant’ Angelo at the very time Dante is watching the sinners in Hell.
47. thought to hide his face: The general rule of the sinners above the great barrier cliff has been a great willingness—in fact, an eagerness—to make themselves known and to be remembered in the world. From this point to the bottom of Hell that rule is reversed, and the sinners, with a few exceptions, try to conceal their identity, asking only to be forgotten. This change should be noted as one more evidence of Dante’s architectural sense of detail: this exploitation of many interrelated themes and their progression from point to point of the great journey give the poem its symphonic and many-leveled richness.
50. Venedico Caccianemico (Ven-AID-ee-coe Kah-tchah-neh-MEE-coe): A nobleman of Bologna. To win the favor of the Marquis Obbizo da Este of Ferrara, Caccianemico acted as the procurer of his own sister Ghisola, called “la bella” or “Ghisolabella.”
61. sipa: Bolognese dialect for “si,” i.e., “yes.” Bologna lies between the Savena and the Reno. This is a master taunt at Bologna as a city of panderers and seducers, for it clearly means that the Bolognese then living on earth were fewer in number than the Bolognese dead who had been assigned to this bolgia.
70. turning right: See diagram.
83-96. Jason: Leader of the Argonauts. He carried off the Colchian Ram (i.e., The Golden Fleece). “The good advice” that helped him win the fleece was given by Medea, daughter of the King of Colchis, whom Jason took with him and later abandoned for Creusa. (“Also for Medea is vengeance taken.”) In the course of his very Grecian life, Jason had previously seduced Hypsipyle and deserted her to continue his voyage after the fleece. She was one of the women of Lemnos whom Aphrodite, because they no longer worshiped her, cursed with a foul smell which made them unbearable to their husbands and lovers. The women took their epic revenge by banding together to kill all their males, but Hypsipyle managed to save her father, King Thoas, by pretending to the women that she had already killed him.
THE FLATTERERS. BOLGIA 2.
It should be noted as characteristic of Dante’s style that he deliberately coarsens his language when he wishes to describe certain kinds of coarseness. The device has earned Dante the title of “master of the disgusting.” It may well be added that what is disgusting in the Victorian drawing-room may be the essential landscape of Hell. Among the demons who guard the grafters (Cantos XXI-XXII), and among the sowers of discord (Canto XXVIII), Dante reinvokes the same gargoyle quality. It would be ridiculous prudery to refine Dante’s diction at these points.
122. Alessio Interminelli da Lucca (In-ter-min-ELL-ee): One of the noble family of the Interminelli or Interminei, a prominent White family of Lucca. About all that is known of Alessio is the fact that
he was still alive in 1295.
131. Thaïs: The flattery uttered by Thaïs is put into her mouth by Terence in his Eunuchus (Act III, 1:1-2). Thaïs’ lover had sent her a slave, and later sent a servant to ask if she thanked him much. Magnas vero agere gratias Thais mihi? The servant reported her as answering Ingentes! Cicero later commented on the passage as an example of immoderate flattery, and Dante’s conception of Thaïs probably springs from this source. (De Amicitia, 26.)
Canto XIX
CIRCLE EIGHT: BOLGIA THREE
The Simoniacs
Dante comes upon the SIMONIACS (sellers of ecclesiastic favors and offices) and his heart overflows with the wrath he feels against those who corrupt the things of God. This bolgia is lined with round tubelike holes and the sinners are placed in them upside down with the soles of their feet ablaze. The heat of the blaze is proportioned to their guilt.
The holes in which these sinners are placed are debased equivalents of the baptismal fonts common in the cities of Northern Italy and the sinners’ confinement in them is temporary: as new sinners arrive, the souls drop through the bottoms of their holes and disappear eternally into the crevices of the rock.
As always, the punishment is a symbolic retribution. Just as the Simoniacs made a mock of holy office, so are they turned upside down in a mockery of the baptismal font. Just as they made a mockery of the holy water of baptism, so is their hellish baptism by fire, after which they are wholly immersed in the crevices below. The oily fire that licks at their soles may also suggest a travesty on the oil used in Extreme Unction (last rites for the dying).
Virgil carries Dante down an almost sheer ledge and lets him speak to one who is the chief sinner of that place, POPE NICHOLAS III. Dante delivers himself of another stirring denunciation of those who have corrupted church office, and Virgil carries him back up the steep ledge toward the FOURTH BOLGIA.
O Simon Magus! O you wretched crew
who follow him, pandering for silver and gold
the things of God which should be wedded to
love and righteousness! O thieves for hire,
now must the trump of judgment sound your doom
here in the third fosse of the rim of fire!
We had already made our way across
to the next grave, and to that part of the bridge
which hangs above the mid-point of the fosse.
O Sovereign Wisdom, how Thine art doth shine
in Heaven, on Earth, and in the Evil World!
How justly doth Thy power judge and assign!
I saw along the walls and on the ground
long rows of holes cut in the livid stone;
all were cut to a size, and all were round.
They seemed to be exactly the same size
as those in the font of my beautiful San Giovanni,
built to protect the priests who come to baptize;
(one of which, not so long since, I broke open
to rescue a boy who was wedged and drowning in it.
Be this enough to undeceive all men).
From every mouth a sinner’s legs stuck out
as far as the calf. The soles were all ablaze
and the joints of the legs quivered and writhed about.
Withes and tethers would have snapped in their throes.
As oiled things blaze upon the surface only,
so did they burn from the heels to the points of their toes.
“Master,” I said, “who is that one in the fire
who writhes and quivers more than all the others?
From him the ruddy flames seem to leap higher.”
And he to me: “If you wish me to carry you down
along that lower bank, you may learn from him
who he is, and the evil he has done.”
And I: “What you will, I will. You are my lord
and know I depart in nothing from your wish;
and you know my mind beyond my spoken word.”
We moved to the fourth ridge, and turning left
my Guide descended by a jagged path
into the strait and perforated cleft.
Thus the good Master bore me down the dim
and rocky slope, and did not put me down
till we reached the one whose legs did penance for him.
“Whoever you are, sad spirit,” I began,
“who lie here with your head below your heels
and planted like a stake—speak if you can.”
I stood like a friar who gives the sacrament
to a hired assassin, who, fixed in the hole,
recalls him, and delays his death a moment.
“Are you there already, Boniface? Are you there
already?” he cried. “By several years the writ
has lied. And all that gold, and all that care—
are you already sated with the treasure
for which you dared to turn on the Sweet Lady
and trick and pluck and bleed her at your pleasure?”
I stood like one caught in some raillery,
not understanding what is said to him,
lost for an answer to such mockery.
Then Virgil said, “Say to him: ‘I am not he,
I am not who you think.’ ” And I replied
as my good Master had instructed me.
The sinner’s feet jerked madly; then again
his voice rose, this time choked with sighs and tears,
and said at last: “What do you want of me then?
If to know who I am drives you so fearfully
that you descend the bank to ask it, know
that the Great Mantle was once hung upon me.
And in truth I was a son of the She-Bear,
so sly and eager to push my whelps ahead,
that I pursed wealth above, and myself here.
Beneath my head are dragged all who have gone
before me in buying and selling holy office;
there they cower in fissures of the stone.
I too shall be plunged down when that great cheat
for whom I took you comes here in his turn.
Longer already have I baked my feet
and been planted upside-down, than he shall be
before the west sends down a lawless Shepherd
of uglier deeds to cover him and me.
He will be a new Jason of the Maccabees;
and just as that king bent to his high priests’ will,
so shall the French king do as this one please.”
Maybe—I cannot say—I grew too brash
at this point, for when he had finished speaking
I said: “Indeed! Now tell me how much cash
our Lord required of Peter in guarantee
before he put the keys into his keeping?
Surely he asked nothing but ‘Follow me!’
Nor did Peter, nor the others, ask silver or gold
of Matthias when they chose him for the place
the despicable and damned apostle sold.
Therefore stay as you are; this hole well fits you—
and keep a good guard on the ill-won wealth
that once made you so bold toward Charles of Anjou.
And were it not that I am still constrained
by the reverence I owe to the Great Keys
you held in life, I should not have refrained
from using other words and sharper still;
for this avarice of yours grieves all the world,
tramples the virtuous, and exalts the evil.
Of such as you was the Evangelist’s vision
when he saw She Who Sits upon the Waters
locked with the Kings of earth in fornication.
She was born with seven heads, and ten enormous
and shining horns strengthened and made her glad
as long as love and virtue pleased her spouse.
Gold and silver are the gods you adore!
In what are you different from the
idolator,
save that he worships one, and you a score?
Ah Constantine, what evil marked the hour—
not of your conversion, but of the fee
the first rich Father took from you in dower!”
And as I sang him this tune, he began to twitch
and kick both feet out wildly, as if in rage
or gnawed by conscience—little matter which.