| 1 |
Not yet had Nessus reached the other side, when we entered a wood that no path marked. |
| 4 |
Not green leaves, but dark in color, not smooth branches, but knotted and twisted, no fruit was there, but thorns with poison. |
| 7 |
Not such harsh thickets nor so dense do those wild beasts hold, that hate the cultivated places between Cecina and Corneto. |
| 10 |
There the ugly Harpies make their nests, who drove the Trojans from the Strophades with dire prophecy of their future woe. |
| 13 |
Their wings are broad, their necks and faces human, their feet have claws, and their great bellies are feathered; they utter laments on the strange trees. |
| 16 |
And my good master: “Before you enter, know that you are in the second subcircle,” he began to say, ”and will be until |
| 19 |
you come to the horrible sands. Therefore look carefully; and you will see things that would make you disbelieve my speech.” |
| 22 |
I heard cries of woe on every side but saw no person uttering them, so that all dismayed I stood still. |
| 25 |
My belief is that he believed that I must believe that so many voices, among those thickets, came forth from people hidden from us. |
| 28 |
Therefore my master said: “If you break off some little twig from one of these plants, the thoughts you have will all be cut off.” |
| 31 |
Then I stretched out my hand a little before me and plucked a small branch from a great thornbush; and its stem cried out: “Why do you split me?” |
| 34 |
When it had become dark with blood, it began again: “Why do you pluck me? Have you no spirit of pity at all? |
| 37 |
We were men, and now we have become plants: truly your hand should be more merciful had we been the souls of serpents.” |
| 40 |
As when a green log is burnt at one end, from the other it drips and sputters as air escapes: |
| 43 |
so from the broken stump came forth words and blood together, and I let the tip fall and stood like one afraid. |
| 46 |
”If he could have believed first,” replied my sage, ”O wounded soul, what he has seen only in my rhymes, |
| 49 |
he would not have stretched out his hand against you; but the incredible thing made me induce him to do what pains me as well. |
| 52 |
But tell him who you were, so that as a kind of amends he may refresh your fame in the world above, where he is permitted to return.” |
| 55 |
And the branch: “You so tempt me with sweet speech that I cannot be silent, and let it not vex you that I am lured to speak a little. |
| 58 |
I am he who held both the keys to the heart of Frederick and turned them, locking and unlocking, so gently |
| 61 |
that I excluded almost everyone else from his intimacy; I kept faith with my glorious office, so much that because of it I lost sleep and vigor. |
| 64 |
The whore who never turns her sluttish eyes away from Caesar’s dwelling, the common death and vice of courts, |
| 67 |
inflamed against me all spirits; and those inflamed inflamed Augustus so that my bright honors turned to sad mourning. |
| 70 |
My spirit, at the taste of disdain, believing by death to flee disdain, made me unjust against my just self. |
| 73 |
By the strange new roots of this wood, I swear to you that I never broke faith with my lord, who was so worthy of honor. |
| 76 |
And if either of you goes back to the world, strengthen my memory, languishing still beneath the blow that envy dealt it.” |
| 79 |
My poet waited a little, and then, “Now that he is silent,” he said, “do not lose the moment, but speak, question him further if you will.” |
| 82 |
And I to him: “You ask him again about what you think will satisfy me; for I could not, so much pity weighs on my heart.” |
| 85 |
Therefore he began again: “So may one do liberally for you what your speech has begged, imprisoned spirit, let it please you still |
| 88 |
to tell us how the soul is bound in these knots; and tell us, if you can, if anyone ever unties himself from such limbs.” |
| 91 |
The broken branch hissed loudly, and then that wind was converted into these words: “Briefly will you be answered. |
| 94 |
When the fierce soul departs from the body from which it has uprooted itself, Minos sends it to the seventh mouth. |
| 97 |
It falls into the wood, and no place is assigned to it, but where chance hurls it, there it sprouts like a grain of spelt. |
| 100 |
It grows into a shoot, then a woody plant; the Harpies, feeding on its leaves, give it pain and a window for the pain. |
| 103 |
Like the others, we will come for our remains, but not so that any may put them on again, for it is not just to have what one has taken from oneself. |
| 106 |
Here we will drag them, and through the sad wood our corpses will hang, each on the thornbush of the soul that harmed it.” |
| 109 |
We were still attentive to the broken branch, believing it had more to say, when we were surprised by a noise: |
| 112 |
like one who hears the boar and the hunt approaching his post, who hears the beasts, and the branches breaking. |
| 115 |
And behold two on our left, naked and scratched, fleeing so fast that they were breaking every opposing branch in the forest. |
| 118 |
The one in front: “Now hurry, hurry, death!” And the other, who seemed to himself too slow, “Lano, not so nimble were |
| 121 |
your legs at the jousts at Toppo!” And perhaps because his breath was failing, he made one clump of himself and a bush. |
| 124 |
Behind them the wood was full of black bitches, ravenous and running like greyhounds loosed from the chain. |
| 127 |
They set their teeth to the one that had squatted, tearing him to pieces, bit by bit; then they carried off those suffering members. |
| 130 |
My guide then took me by the hand and led me to the bush that wept through its bleeding wounds in vain. |
| 133 |
”O Iacopo,” it was saying, “di Santo Andrea, what did it profit you to make a shield of me? how am I to blame for your wicked life?” |
| 136 |
When my master stopped above it, he said: “Who were you, who through so many splintered branches puff out with blood your sad speech?” |
| 139 |
And he to us: “O souls who have arrived to see the shameful rending that has so divided my leaves from me, |
| 142 |
gather them together at the foot of my sad shrub. I was from the city that for the Baptist changed its first patron, who for this |
| 145 |
with his art will always grieve it. And were it not that at the crossing of Arno there still remains some trace of him, |
