Divine Comedy: Inferno by Dante Alighieri (free novels TXT) 📖

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The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno]

by Dante Aligheri

Translated by Charles Eliot Norton

 

HELL

 

To

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

E come sare’ io sense lui corso?

It is a happiness for me to connect this volume with the memory of my friend and master from youth. I was but a beginner in the study of the Divine Comedy when I first had his incomparable aid in the understanding of it. During the last year of his life he read the proofs of this volume, to what great advantage to my work may readily be conceived.

When, in the early summer of this year, the printing of the Purgatory began, though illness made it an exertion to him, he continued this act of friendship, and did not cease till, at the fifth canto, he laid down the pencil forever from his dear and honored hand.

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.

 

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,

1 October, 1891

The text followed in this translation is, in general, that of Witte. In a few cases I have preferred the readings which the more recent researches of the Rev. Dr. Edward Moore, of Oxford, seem to have established as correct.

 

CONTENTS

CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into the eternal world.

CANTO II. Dante, doubtful of his own powers, is discouraged at the outset.—Virgil cheers him by telling him that he has been sent to his aid by a blessed Spirit from Heaven.—Dante casts off fear, and the poets proceed.

CANTO III. The gate of Hell. Virgil leads Dante in.—The punishment of the neither good nor bad.—Acheron, and the sinners on its bank.—Charon.—Earthquake.—Dante swoons.

CANTO IV. The further side of Acheron.—Virgil leads Dante into Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, containing the spirits of those who lived virtuously but without Christianity.—Greeting of Virgil by his fellow poets.—They enter a castle, where are the shades of ancient worthies.—Virgil and Dante depart.

CANTO V. The Second Circle: Carnal sinners.—Minos.—Shades renowned of old.—Francesca da Rimini.

CANTO VI. The Third Circle: the Gluttonous.—Cerberus.—Ciacco.

CANTO VII. The Fourth Circle: the Avaricious and the Prodigal.— Pluto.—Fortune.—The Styx.—The Fifth Circle: the Wrathful and the Sullen.

CANTO VIII. The Fifth Circle.—Phlegyas and his boat.—Passage of the Styx.—Filippo Argenti.—The City of Dis.—The demons refuse entrance to the poets.

CANTO IX. The City of Dis.—Eriehtho.—The Three Furies.—The Heavenly Messenger.—The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs.

CANTO X. The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs.—Farinata degli Uberti.— Cavalcante Cavalcanti.—Frederick II.

CANTO XI. The Sixth Circle: Heretics.—Tomb of Pope Anastasius.— Discourse of Virgil on the divisions of the lower Hell.

CANTO XII. First round of the Seventh Circle: those who do violence to others.—Tyrants and Homicides.—The Minotaur.—The Centaurs.—Chiron.—Nessus.—The River of Boiling Blood, and the Sinners in it.

CANTO XIII. Second round of the Seventh Circle: those who have done violence to themselves and to their goods.—The Wood of Self-murderers.—The Harpies.—Pier della Vigne.—Lano of Siena and others.

CANTO XIV. Third round of the Seventh Circle those who have done violence to God.—The Burning Sand.—Capaneus.—Figure of the Old Man in Crete.—The Rivers of Hell.

CANTO XV. Third round of the Seventh Circle: those who have done violence to Nature.—Brunetto Latini.—Prophecies of misfortune to Dante.

CANTO XVI. Third round of the Seventh Circle: those who have done violence to Nature.—Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacopo Rusticucci.—The roar of Phlegethon as it pours downward.- -The cord thrown into the abyss.

CANTO XVII. Third round of the Seventh Circle: those who have done violence to Art.—Geryon.—The Usurers.—Descent to the Eighth Circle.

CANTO XVIII. Eighth Circle: the first pit: Panders and Seducers.- -Venedico Caccianimico.—Jason.—Second pit: false flatterers.— Alessio Interminei.—Thais.

CANTO XIX. Eighth Circle: third pit: Simonists.—Pope Nicholas III

CANTO XX. Eighth Circle: fourth pit: Diviners, Soothsayers, and Magicians.—Amphiaraus.—Tiresias.—Aruns.—Manto.—Eurypylus.— Michael Scott.—Asolente.

CANTO XXI. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: Barrators.—A magistrate of Lucca.—The Malebranche.—Parley with them.

CANTO XXII. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: Barrators.—Ciampolo of Navarre.—Brother Gomita.—Michael Zanche.—Fray of the Malebranche.

CANTO XXIII. Eighth Circle. Escape from the fifth pit.—The sixth pit: Hypocrites.—The Jovial Friars.—Caiaphas.—Annas.—Frate Catalano.

CANTO XXIV. Eighth Circle. The poets climb from the sixth pit.— Seventh pit: Fraudulent Thieves.—Vanni Fucci.—Prophecy of calamity to Dante.

CANTO XXV. Eighth Circle: seventh pit: Fraudulent Thieves.— Cacus.—Agnello Brunellesehi and others.

CANTO XXVI. Eighth Circle: eighth pit: Fraudulent Counsellors.— Ulysses and Diomed.

CANTO XXVII. Eighth Circle: eighth pit: Fraudulent Counsellors.— Guido da Montefeltro.

CANTO XXVIII. Eighth Circle: ninth pit: Sowers of discord and schism.—Mahomet and Ali.—Fra Dolcino.—Pier da Medicina.— Curio.—Mosca.—Bertran de Born.

CANTO XXIX. Eighth Circle: ninth pit.—Geri del Bello.—Tenth pit: Falsifiers of all sorts.—Griffolino of Mezzo.—Capocchio.

CANTO XXX. Eighth Circle: tenth pit: Falsifiers of all sorts.— Myrrha.—Gianni Schiechi.—Master Adam.—Sinon of Troy.

CANTO XXXI. The Giants around the Eighth Circle.—Nimrod.— Ephialtes.—Antiens sets the Poets down in the Ninth Circle.

CANTO XXXII. Ninth Circle: Traitors. First ring: Caina.—Counts of Mangona.—Camicion de’ Pazzi.—Second ring: Antenora.—Bocca degli Abati.—Buoso da Duera.—Count Ugolino.

CANTO XXXIII. Ninth Circle: Traitors. Second ring: Antenora.— Count Ugolino.—Third ring: Ptolomaea.—Brother Alberigo.—Branca d’ Oria.

CANTO XXXIV. Ninth Circle: Traitors. Fourth ring: Judecca.— Lucifer.—Judas, Brutus and Cassius.—Centre of the universe.— Passage from Hell.—Ascent to the surface of the Southern hemisphere.

 

INTRODUCTION.

So many versions of the Divine Comedy exist in English that a new one might well seem needless. But most of these translations are in verse, and the intellectual temper of our time is impatient of a transmutation in which substance is sacrificed for form’s sake, and the new form is itself different from the original. The conditions of verse in different languages vary so widely as to make any versified translation of a poem but an imperfect reproduction of the archetype. It is like an imperfect mirror that renders but a partial likeness, in which essential features are blurred or distorted. Dante himself, the first modern critic, declared that “nothing harmonized by a musical bond can be transmuted from its own speech without losing all its sweetness and harmony,” and every fresh attempt at translation affords a new proof of the truth of his assertion. Each language exhibits its own special genius in its poetic forms. Even when they are closely similar in rhythmical method their poetic effect is essentially different, their individuality is distinct. The hexameter of the Iliad is not the hexameter of the Aeneid. And if this be the case in respect to related forms, it is even more obvious in respect to forms peculiar to one language, like the terza rima of the Italian, for which it is impossible to find a satisfactory equivalent in another tongue.

If, then, the attempt be vain to reproduce the form or to represent its effect in a translation, yet the substance of a poem may have such worth that it deserves to be known by readers who must read it in their own tongue or not at all. In this case the aim of the translator should he to render the substance fully, exactly, and with as close a correspondence to the tone and style of the original as is possible between prose and poetry. Of the charm, of the power of the poem such a translation can give but an inadequate suggestion; the musical bond was of its essence, and the loss of the musical bond is the loss of the beauty to which form and substance mutually contributed, and in which they were both alike harmonized and sublimated. The rhythmic life of the original is its vital spirit, and the translation losing this vital spirit is at best as the dull plaster cast to the living marble or the breathing bronze. The intellectual substance is there; and if the work be good, something of the emotional quality may be conveyed; the imagination may mould the prose as it moulded the verse,—but, after all, “translations are but as turn-coated things at best,” as Howell said in one of his Familiar Letters.

No poem in any tongue is more informed with rhythmic life than the Divine Comedy. And yet, such is its extraordinary distinction, no poem has an intellectual and emotional substance more independent of its metrical form. Its complex structure, its elaborate measure and rhyme, highly artificial as they are, are so mastered by the genius of the poet as to become the most natural expression of the spirit by which the poem is inspired; while at the same time the thought and sentiment embodied in the verse is of such import, and the narrative of such interest, that they do not lose their worth when expressed in the prose of another tongue; they still haye power to quicken imagination, and to evoke sympathy.

In English there is an excellent prose translation of the Inferno, by Dr. John Carlyle, a man well known to the reader of his brother’s Correspondence. It was published forty years ago, but it is still contemporaneous enough in style to answer every need, and had Dr. Carlyle made a version of the whole poem I should hardly have cared to attempt a new one. In my translation of the Inferno I am often Dr. Carlyle’s debtor. His conception of what a translation should be is very much the same as my own. Of the Purgatorio there is a prose version which has excellent qualities, by Mr. W. S. Dugdale. Another version of great merit, of both the Purgatorio and Paradiso, is that of Mr. A. J. Butler. It is accompanied by a scholarly and valuable comment, and I owe much to Mr. Butler’s work. But through what seems to me occasional excess of literal fidelity his English is now and then somewhat crabbed. “He overacts the office of an interpreter,” I cite again from Howell, “who doth enslave himself too strictly to words or phrases. One may be so over-punctual in words that he may mar the matter.”

I have tried to be as literal in my translation as was consmstent with good English, and to render Dante’s own words in words as nearly correspondent to them as the difference in the languages would permit. But it is to be remembered that the familiar uses and subtle associations which give to words their full meaning are never absohitely the same in two languages. Love in English not only SOUNDS but IS different from amor in Latin, or amore in Italian. Even the most felicitous prose translation must fail therefore at times to afford the entire and precise meaning of the original.

Moreover, there are difficulties in Dante’s poem for Italians, and there are difficulties in the translation for English readers. These, where it seemed needful, I have endeavored to explain in brief footnotes. But I have desired to avoid distracting the attention of the reader from the narrative, and have mainly left the understanding of it to his good sense and perspicacity. The clearness of Dante’s imaginative vision is so complete, and the character of his narration of it so direct and simple, that the difficulties in understanding his intention are comparatively few.

It is a noticeable fact that in by far the greater number of passages where a doubt in regard to the interpretation exists, the obscurity lies in the rhyme-word. For with all the abundant resources of the Italian tongue in rhyme, and with all Dante’s mastery of them, the truth still is that his triple rhyme often compelled him to exact from words such service as they did not naturally render and as no other poet had required of them. The compiler of the Ottimo Commento records, in an often-cited passage, that “I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say for him