| 1 |
Of a strange new punishment I must make verses and take matter for the twentieth song in this first canticle, which is of those submerged. |
| 4 |
I was already bent over to gaze into the uncovered depth, which was bathed with anguished weeping; |
| 7 |
and I saw people coming along the curving valley, silent and shedding tears, at the pace taken by litanies in this world. |
| 10 |
As my gaze went lower on them, I saw that each was marvelously twisted between the chin and the beginning of the chest, |
| 13 |
for the face was turned toward the kidneys, and they were forced to walk backwards, since seeing forward was taken from them. |
| 16 |
Perhaps the force of paralysis at some time has contorted someone so completely, but I have never seen it, nor do I believe it can be. |
| 19 |
So may God permit you, reader, to take profit from your reading, now think for yourself how I could keep dry eyes, |
| 22 |
when from close by I saw our image so twisted that the tears of their eyes were bathing their buttocks down the cleft. |
| 25 |
Surely I wept, leaning on one of the rocks of the hard ridge, so that my guide said to me: “Are you still one of the other fools? |
| 28 |
Here pity lives when it is quite dead: who is more wicked than one who brings passion to God’s judgment?
|
| 31 |
Raise your head, raise it and see the one for whom the earth opened before the eyes of the Thebans, so that they all cried: ‘Where are you rushing, |
| 34 |
Amphiaraus? Why are you leaving the war?’ And he did not stop falling downward until he reached Minos, who seizes each one. |
| 37 |
Look how he has made his breast his back; because he wished to see too far ahead, now he looks backward and treads a backward path. |
| 40 |
See Tiresias, who changed shape when he turned from male to female, changing all his members, every one; |
| 43 |
and then he had to strike the two entangled serpents with his staff once more, before he could regain his male plumage. 46 Arruns is the one who backs up against his belly there; in the mountains of Luni, where the Carrarese hoes, who lives below, 49 he had a cave in the white marble for his dwelling, whence the view of the stars and the sea was not cut off. |
| 52 |
And she who covers up her breasts, which you cannot see, with her loosened tresses, and has every hairy skin on the other side, |
| 55 |
was Manto, who searched through many lands; finally she settled where I was born; therefore I wish you to listen for a little. |
| 58 |
After her father departed from life, and the city of Bacchus was enslaved, for a long time she wandered through the world. |
| 61 |
Up in beautiful Italy there lies a lake, at the foot of the Alps that close in Germany above the Tyrol, whose name is Benaco. |
| 64 |
A thousand springs, I think, and more, bathe the land between Garda and Val Camonica and the Alps, with the water that collects in that lake. |
| 67 |
In the center there is a place where the shepherds of Trento and Brescia, and the Veronese, could all give blessing, if they made the journey.
|
| 70 |
Peschiera sits there, a handsome, strong fortress, to hold the front against the Brescians and the Bergamasques, where the shore around it is lowest. |
| 73 |
There must fall whatever cannot stay in Benaco, becoming a river through green fields. |
| 76 |
As soon as the water begins to flow, it is no longer called Benaco but Mincio, as far as Governolo, where it falls into the Po. |
| 79 |
It has not flowed far before finding a depression in which it spreads out and becomes a swamp; and in the summer it is often noxious. |
| 82 |
Passing there the harsh virgin saw land in the midst of the fens, uncultivated and bare of people. |
| 85 |
There, to flee all human fellowship, with her servants she stayed to ply her arts, there lived, and there left her empty body. |
| 88 |
The people who were scattered about later gathered to that spot, which the swamp in all directions made strong. |
| 91 |
They built their city over those dead bones; and, after her who first chose the place, they named it Mantua without any other augury. |
| 94 |
The people housed there used to be more numerous, before the fool of Casalodi was deceived by Pinamonte. |
| 97 |
Therefore I advise you, if you ever hear any other origin given for my city, that you let no lie defraud the truth.” |
| 100 |
And I: “Master, your discourse is so sure and so gains my belief, that any others would be spent coals to me. |
| 103 |
But among the people in this procession, tell me if you see any worthy of note; for my mind still comes back to that alone.” |
| 106 |
Then he told me: “That one, who from his cheek spreads his beard down over his dark shoulders, was –when Greece was emptied of males,
|
| 109 |
so that hardly any remained in the cradles—an augur, and along with Calchas he determined the point to cut the first ship’s cable in Aulis. |
| 112 |
Eurypylus was his name, and thus my high tragedy sings of him at one place: you know that well, for you know it through and through. |
| 115 |
That other who is so slender in the flanks was Michael Scot, who truly knew the game of magic frauds. |
| 118 |
See Guido Bonatti; see Asdente, who now wishes he had attended to his leather and his thread, but repents too late. |
| 121 |
See the wretched women who left their needles, their spindles, and their distaffs, and became soothsayers; they cast spells with herbs and images. |
| 124 |
But come along now, for Cain with his thorns now holds the boundary of the two hemispheres and touches the wave below Seville; |
| 127 |
and already last night the moon was full: you must remember it well, for several times it did not harm you in the deep forest.” |
| 130 |
So he spoke to me, and we walked meanwhile.
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