Inferno
The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against God. Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the Four Infernal Rivers.
Out of love for my native city
I gathered up the scattered leaves
and gave them back to him, who
We reached the boundary where the second circle
breaks away from the third, and there
a terrible form of justice reveals itself.
To make these strange new things clear,
I'll tell you we arrived upon a plain
that rejects every plant from its bed.
The sorrowful forest wraps around it
like a garland, as the sad moat encircles that.
There at the very edge we stopped.
The ground was dry, thick sand,
made no different than the desert
once pressed by Cato's feet.
O vengeance of God, how much you should be feared
by everyone who reads
what was revealed before my eyes!
I saw many flocks of naked souls,
all weeping most wretchedly,
and different laws seemed imposed on each.
Some people lay flat on the ground,
others sat huddled together,
and still others walked about continuously.
Those who wandered in circles were by far the most,
and those lying down to suffer were the fewest,
but their tongues were loosest in lamentation.
Over the entire wasteland, falling slowly,
dilated flakes of fire rained down
like snow on mountains without wind.
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THE BLASPHEMERS—CAPANEUS
“Over the entire wasteland, falling slowly, / dilated flakes of fire rained down”
Just as Alexander, in those burning regions
of India, saw flames fall
unbroken until they reached the ground,
and had his soldiers trample the soil
because the fire was better extinguished
while still separate—
so descended this eternal heat,
setting the sand ablaze like tinder
under steel, doubling the agony.
The dance of wretched hands never ceased,
shaking away the fresh burning coals
now here, now there.
"Master," I began, "you who overcome
all things except those dire demons
who rushed against us at the gate's entrance,
who is that mighty one who seems to ignore
the fire, lying there scowling and disdainful,
as if the rain cannot touch him?"
And he himself, realizing
I was asking my guide about him,
cried out: "What I was living, I am dead!
Even if Jupiter should exhaust his blacksmith,
from whom he seized in anger the sharp thunderbolt
that struck me down on my last day,
and even if he wore out all the others
in Mount Etna's dark forge,
shouting 'Help me, good Vulcan, help!'
just as he did in the battle of Phlegra,
and hurled his bolts at me with all his might—
still he would not have his sweet revenge!"
Then my leader spoke with such force
that I had never heard him so loud:
"O Capaneus, because your pride
remains unquenched, you are punished all the more.
No torment except your own rage
could be fitting pain for your fury."
Then he turned to me with gentler expression:
"He was one of the seven kings
who besieged Thebes. He held God in contempt
and seems to prize him little still.
But as I told him, his own scorn
becomes the perfect ornament for his chest.
Now follow me, and be careful
not to step on the burning sand yet—
keep your feet close to the forest edge."
Without speaking, we came to where
a small stream gushes from the wood,
its redness still makes my hair stand on end.
Like the brook that flows from Bulicame
and the sinful women share among themselves,
it made its way down through the sand.
Its bottom and both sloping banks
were made of stone, with stone margins—
I could see our passage lay there.
"Of everything I've shown you
since we entered through the gate
whose threshold is denied to none,
nothing discovered by your eyes
has been as remarkable as this river,
which quenches all the flames above it."
These were my leader's words, so I asked him
to grant me the food
for which he had given me the appetite.
"In the middle of the sea lies a ruined land
called Crete," he said,
"under whose king the world was once pure.
A mountain stands there that was once
glad with water and leaves, called Ida—
now deserted like something worn out.
Rhea chose it as the trusted cradle
for her son, and to hide him better
whenever he cried, she had clamor made there.
Inside the mountain stands a great old man
with his back turned toward Egypt
and his face toward Rome as his mirror.
His head is made of refined gold,
his arms and chest of pure silver,
then brass down to the crotch.
From there down he is all iron,
except the right foot is baked clay—
he stands more on that than the other.
Every part except the gold
is split by a crack that weeps tears.
These gather and pierce through the cavern,
fall from rock to rock into this valley,
forming Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon,
then flow down this narrow channel
to where there is no more descending.
There they form Cocytus—you'll see
what that pool is, so I won't describe it here."
"If this stream originates
from our world in this way," I said,
"why do we see it only at this edge?"
"You know this place is circular," he replied,
"and though you've traveled far,
always turning left toward the bottom,
you haven't completed the full circle.
So if something new appears to us,
it shouldn't surprise you."
"Master, where will we find
Lethe and Phlegethon?" I asked again.
"You're silent about one
and say the other comes from this rain."
"All your questions truly please me,"
he answered, "but the boiling red water
should solve one of them.
You'll see Lethe, but outside this moat,
where souls go to wash themselves
when repented sin has been removed."
Then he said: "Now it's time to leave
the wood. Make sure you follow me—
the stone margins make a path that doesn't burn,
and above them all the flames are extinguished."