Читать книгу Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One - Данте Алигьери - Страница 8

CANTO V

MOST like the spirals of a pointed shell,

But separate each, go downward, hell from hell,

The ninefold circles of the damned; but each

Smaller, concentrate in its greater pain,

Than that which overhangs it.

Those who reach

The second whorl, on entering, learn their bane

Where Minos, hideous, sits and snarls. He hears,

Decides, and as he girds himself they go.

Before his seat each ill-born spirit appears

And tells its tale of evil, loath or no,

While he, their judge, of all sins cognizant,

Hears, and around himself his circling tail

Twists to the number of the depths below

To which they doom themselves in telling.

Alway’

The crowding sinners: their turn they wait: they show

Their guilt: the circles of his tail convey

Their doom: and downward they are whirled away.

“O thou who callest at this doleful inn,”

Cried Minos to me, while the child of sin

That stood confessing before him, trembling stayed,

“Heed where thou enterest in thy trust, nor say,

I walk in safety, for the width of way

Suffices.”

But my guide the answer took,

“Why dost thou cry? or leave thine ordered trade

For that which nought belongs thee? Hinder not

His destined path. For where he goeth is willed,

Where that is willed prevaileth.”

Now was filled

The darker air with wailing. Wailing shook

My soul to hear it. Where we entered now

No light attempted. Only sound arose,

As ocean with the tortured air contends,

What time intolerable tempest rends

The darkness; so the shrieking winds oppose

For ever, and bear they, as they swerve and sweep,

The doomed disastrous spirits, and whirl aloft,

Backward, and down, nor any rest allow,

Nor pause of such contending wraths as oft

Batter them against the precipitous sides, and there

The shrieks and moanings quench the screaming air,

The cries of their blaspheming.

These are they

That lust made sinful. As the starlings rise

At autumn, darkening all the colder skies,

In crowded troops their wings up-bear, so here

These evil-doers on each contending blast

Were lifted upward, whirled, and downward cast,

And swept around unceasing. Striving airs

Lift them, and hurl, nor ever hope is theirs

Of rest or respite or decreasing pains,

But like the long streaks of the calling cranes

So came they wailing down the winds, to meet

Upsweeping blasts that ever backward beat

Or sideward flung them on their walls. And I—

“Master who are they next that drive anigh

So scourged amidst the blackness?”

“These,” he said,

“So lashed and harried, by that queen are led,

Empress of alien tongues, Semiramis,

Who made her laws her lawless lusts to kiss,

So was she broken by desire; and this

Who comes behind, back-blown and beaten thus,

Love’s fool, who broke her faith to Sichæus,

Dido; and bare of all her luxury,

Nile’s queen, who lost her realm for Antony.”

And after these, amidst that windy train,

Helen, who soaked in blood the Trojan plain,

And great Achilles I saw, at last whose feet

The same net trammelled; and Tristram, Paris, he showed;

And thousand other along the fated road

Whom love led deathward through disastrous things

He pointed as they passed, until my mind

Was wildered in this heavy pass to find

Ladies so many, and cavaliers and kings

Fallen, and pitying past restraint, I said,

“Poet, those next that on the wind appear

So light, and constant as they drive or veer

Are parted never, I fain would speak.”

And he,—

“Conjure them by their love, and thou shalt see

Their flight come hither.”

And when the swerving blast

Most nearly bent, I called them as they passed,

“O wearied souls, come downward, if the Power

That drives allow ye, for one restful hour.”

As doves, desirous of their nest at night,

Cleave through the dusk with swift and open flight

Of level-lifting wings, that love makes light,

Will-borne, so downward through the murky air

Came those sad spirits, that not deep Hell’s despair

Could sunder, parting from the faithless band

That Dido led, and with one voice, as though

One soul controlled them, spake,

“O Animate!

Who comest through the black malignant air,

Benign among us who this exile bear

For earth ensanguined, if the King of All

Heard those who from the outer darkness call

Entreat him would we for thy peace, that thou

Hast pitied us condemned, misfortunate.—

Of that which please thee, if the winds allow,

Gladly I tell. Ravenna, on that shore

Where Po finds rest for all his streams, we knew;

And there love conquered. Love, in gentle heart

So quick to take dominion, overthrew

Him with my own fair body, and overbore

Me with delight to please him. Love, which gives

No pardon to the loved, so strongly in me

Was empired, that its rule, as here ye see,

Endureth, nor the bitter blast contrives

To part us. Love to one death led us. The mode

Afflicts me, shrinking, still. The place of Cain

Awaits our slayer.”

They ceased, and I my head

Bowed down, and made no answer, till my guide

Questioned, “What wouldst thou more?” and I replied,

“Alas my thought I what sweet keen longings led

These spirits, woeful, to their dark abode!”

And then to them,—“Francesca, all thy pain

Is mine. With pity and grief I weep. But say

How, in the time of sighing, and in what way,

Love gave you of the dubious deeds to know.”

And she to me, “There is no greater woe

In all Hell’s depths than cometh when those who fell

Look back to Eden. But if thou wouldst learn

Our love’s first root, I can but weep and tell.

One day, and for delight in idleness,

—Alone we were, without suspicion,—

We read together, and chanced the page to turn

Where Galahad tells the tale of Lancelot,

How love constrained him. Oft our meeting eyes,

Confessed the theme, and conscious cheeks were hot,

Reading, but only when that instant came

Where the surrendering lips were kissed, no less

Desire beat in us, and whom, for all this pain,

No hell shall sever (so great at least our gain),

Trembling, he kissed my mouth, and all forgot,

We read no more.”

As thus did one confess

Their happier days, the other wept, and I

Grew faint with pity, and sank as those who die.