Classic

The Divine Comedy27 / 104

Inferno

Canto XXV

Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa de’ Donati, and Guercio Cavalcanti.

At the conclusion of his words, the thief1Lifted his hands aloft with both the figs,2Crying: “Take that, God, for at thee I aim them.”From that time forth the serpents were my friends;For one entwined itself about his neckAs if it said: “I will not thou speak more”;And round his arms another, and rebound him,Clinching itself together so in front,That with them he could not a motion make.Pistoia, ah, Pistoia! why resolve not3To burn thyself to ashes and so perish,Since in ill-doing thou thy seed excellest?Through all the sombre circles of this Hell,Spirit I saw not against God so proud,Not he who fell at Thebes down from the walls!4He fled away, and spake no further word;And I beheld a Centaur full of rageCome crying out: “Where is, where is the scoffer?”I do not think Maremma has so many5Serpents as he had all along his back,As far as where our countenance begins.Upon the shoulders, just behind the nape,With wings wide open was a dragon lying,And he sets fire to all that he encounters.My Master said: “That one is Cacus, who6Beneath the rock upon Mount AventineCreated oftentimes a lake of blood.He goes not on the same road with his brothers,7By reason of the fraudulent theft he madeOf the great herd, which he had near to him;Whereat his tortuous actions ceased beneathThe mace of Hercules, who peradventureGave him a hundred, and he felt not ten.”While he was speaking thus, he had passed by,And spirits three had underneath us come,8Of which nor I aware was, nor my Leader,Until what time they shouted: “Who are you?”On which account our story made a halt,9And then we were intent on them alone.I did not know them; but it came to pass,As it is wont to happen by some chance,That one to name the other was compelled,Exclaiming: “Where can Cianfa have remained?”10Whence I, so that the Leader might attend,Upward from chin to nose my finger laid.If thou art, Reader, slow now to believeWhat I shall say, it will no marvel be,For I who saw it hardly can admit it.As I was holding raised on them my brows,Behold! a serpent with six feet darts forthIn front of one, and fastens wholly on him.With middle feet it bound him round the paunch,And with the forward ones his arms it seized;Then thrust its teeth through one cheek and the other;The hindermost it stretched upon his thighs,And put its tail through in between the two,And up behind along the reins outspread it.Ivy was never fastened by its barbsUnto a tree so, as this horrible reptileUpon the other’s limbs entwined its own.Then they stuck close, as if of heated waxThey had been made, and intermixed their color;Nor one nor other seemed now what he was;E’en as proceedeth on before the flameUpward along the paper a brown color,11Which is not black as yet, and the white dies.The other two looked on, and each of themCried out: “O me, Agnello, how thou changest!Behold, thou now art neither two nor one.”Already the two heads had one become,When there appeared to us two figures mingledInto one face, wherein the two were lost.Of the four lists were fashioned the two arms,12The thighs and legs, the belly and the chestMembers became that never yet were seen.Every original aspect there was cancelled;13Two and yet none did the perverted imageAppear, and such departed with slow pace.Even as a lizard, under the great scourgeOf days canicular, exchanging hedge,Lightning appeareth if the road it cross;Thus did appear, coming towards the belliesOf the two others, a small fiery serpent,14Livid and black as is a peppercorn.And in that part whereat is first receivedOur aliment, it one of them transfixed;Then downward fell in front of him extended.The one transfixed looked at it, but said naught;Nay, rather with feet motionless he yawned,Just as if sleep or fever had assailed him.He at the serpent gazed, and it at him;One through the wound, the other through the mouthSmoked violently, and the smoke commingled.Henceforth be silent Lucan, where he mentionsWretched Sabellus and Nassidius,15And wait to hear what now shall be shot forth.Be silent Ovid, of Cadmus and Arethusa;16For if him to a snake, her to fountain,Converts he fabling, that I grudge him not;Because two natures never front to frontHas he transmuted, so that both the formsTo interchange their matter ready were.Together they responded in such wise,That to a fork the serpent cleft his tail,And eke the wounded drew his feet together.The legs together with the thighs themselvesAdhered so, that in little time the junctureNo sign whatever made that was apparent.He with the cloven tail assumed the figureThe other one was losing, and his skinBecame elastic, and the other’s hard.I saw the arms draw inward at the armpits,And both feet of the reptile, that were short,Lengthen as much as those contracted were.Thereafter the hind feet, together twisted,Became the member that a man conceals,And of his own the wretch had two created.While both of them the exhalation veilsWith a new color, and engenders hairOn one of them and depilates the other,The one uprose and down the other fell,Though turning not away their impious lamps,Underneath which each one his muzzle changed.He who was standing drew it tow’rds the temples,And from excess of matter, which came thither,Issued the ears from out the hollow cheeks;What did not backward run and was retainedOf that excess made to the face a nose,And the lips thickened far as was befitting.He who lay prostrate thrusts his muzzle forward,And backward draws the ears into his head,In the same manner as the snail its horns;And so the tongue, which was entire and aptFor speech before, is cleft, and the bi-forkedIn the other closes up, and the smoke ceases.The soul, which to a reptile had been changed,Along the valley hissing takes to flight,And after him the other speaking sputters.Then did he turn upon him his new shoulders,And said to the other: “I’ll have Buoso run,Crawling as I have done, along this road.”In this way I beheld the seventh ballastShift and reshift, and here be my excuseThe novelty, if aught my pen transgress.17And notwithstanding that mine eyes might beSomewhat bewildered, and my mind dismayed,They could not flee away so secretlyBut that I plainly saw Puccio Sciancato;And he it was who sole of three companions,Which came in the beginning, was not changed;The other was he whom thou, Gaville, weepest.18

  1. The subject of the preceding Canto is continued in this. ↩
  2. This vulgar gesture of contempt consists in thrusting the thumb between the first and middle fingers. It is the same that the ass-driver made at Dante in the street; Sacchetti, Nov. CXV:— “When he was a little way off, he turned round to Dante, and, thrusting out his tongue and making a fig at him with his hand, said, ‘Take that.’ ” Villani, VI 5, says:— “On the Rock of Carmignano there was a tower seventy yards high, and upon it two marble arms, the hands of which were making the figs at Florence.” Others say these hands were on a finger-post by the roadside. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, I 3, Pistol says:— “Convey, the wise it call; Steal! foh; a fico for the phrase!” And Martino, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Widow, V I:— “The fig of everlasting obloquy / Go with him.” ↩
  3. Pistoia is supposed to have been founded by the soldiers of Catiline. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I i 37, says:— “They found Catiline at the foot of the mountains and he had his army and his people in that place where is now the city of Pestoire. There was Catiline conquered in battle, and he and his were slain; also a great part of the Romans were killed. And on account of the pestilence of that great slaughter the city was called Pestoire.” The Italian proverb says, Pistoia la ferrigna, iron Pistoia, or Pistoia the pitiless. ↩
  4. Capaneus, Canto XIV 44. ↩
  5. See note 181. ↩
  6. Cacus was the classic Giant Despair, who had his cave in Mount Aventine, and stole a part of the herd of Geryon, which Hercules had brought to Italy. Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, Dryden’s Tr.:— “See yon huge cavern, yawning wide around, / Where still the shattered mountain spreads the ground: / That spacious hold grim Cacus once possessed, / Tremendous fiend! half human, half a beast: / Deep, deep as hell, the dismal dungeon lay, / Dark and impervious to the beams of day. / With copious slaughter smoked the purple floor, / Pale heads hung horrid on the lofty door, / Dreadful to view! and dropped with crimson gore.” ↩
  7. Dante makes a Centaur of Cacus, and separates him from the others because he was fraudulent as well as violent. Virgil calls him only a monster, a half-man, Semihominis Caci facies. ↩
  8. Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, and Puccio Sciancato. ↩
  9. The story of Cacus, which Virgil was telling. ↩
  10. Cianfa Donati, a Florentine nobleman. He appears immediately, as a serpent with six feet, and fastens upon Agnello Brunelleschi. ↩
  11. Some commentators contend that in this line papiro does not mean paper, but a lamp-wick made of papyrus. This destroys the beauty and aptness of the image, and rather degrades “The leaf of the reed, / Which has grown through the clefts in the ruins of ages.” ↩
  12. These four lists, or hands, are the fore feet of the serpent and the arms of Agnello. ↩
  13. Shakespeare, in the “Additional Poems to Chester’s Love’s Martyrs,” Knight’s Shakespeare, VII 193, speaks of “Two distincts, division none”; and continues:— “Property was thus appalled / That the self was not the same, / Single nature’s double name / Neither two nor one was called. / “Reason, in itself confounded, / Saw division grow together; / To themselves yet either neither, / Simple were so well compounded.” ↩
  14. This black serpent is Guercio Cavalcanti, who changes form with Buoso degli Abati. ↩
  15. Lucan, Pharsalia, IX, Rowe’s Tr.:— “But soon a fate more sad with new surprise / From the first object turns their wondering eyes. / Wretched Sabellus by a Seps was stung: / Fixed on his leg with deadly teeth it hung. / Sudden the soldier shook it from the wound, / Transfixed and nailed it to the barren ground. / Of all the dire, destructive serpent race, / None have so much of death, though none are less. / For straight around the part the skin withdrew, / The flesh and shrinking sinews backward flew. / And left the naked bones exposed to view. / The spreading poisons all the parts confound, / And the whole body sinks within the wound. / ⋮ / Small relics of the mouldering mass were left, / At once of substance as of form bereft; / Dissolved, the whole in liquid poison ran, / And to a nauseous puddle shrunk the man. / ⋮ / So snows dissolved by southern breezes run, / So melts the wax before the noonday sun. / Nor ends the wonder here; though flames are known / To waste the flesh, yet still they spare the bone: / Here none were left, no least remains were seen, / No marks to show that once the man had been. / ⋮ / A fate of different kind Nasidius found— / A burning Prcster gave the deadly wound, / And straight a sudden flame began to spread, / And paint his visage with a glowing red. / With swift expansion swells the bloated skin— / Naught but an undistinguished mass is seen, / While the fair human form lies lost within; / The puffy poison spreads and heaves around, / Till all the man is in the monster drowned. / No more the steely plate his breast can stay, / But yields, and gives the bursting poison way. / Not waters so, when fire the rage supplies, / Bubbling on heaps, in boiling cauldrons rise; / Nor swells the stretching canvas half so fast, / When the sails gather all the driving blast, / Strain the tough yards, and bow the lofty mast. / The various parts no longer now are known, / One headless, formless heap remains alone.” ↩
  16. Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV, Eusden’s Tr.:— “ ‘Come, my Harmonia, come, thy face recline / Down to my face: still touch what still is mine. / O let these hands, while hands, be gently pressed, / While yet the serpent has not all possessed.’ / More he had spoke, but strove to speak in vain— / The forky tongue refused to tell his pain, / And learned in hissings only to complain. / “Then shrieked Harmonia, ‘Stay, my Cadmus, stay! / Glide not in such a monstrous shape away! / Destruction, like impetuous waves, rolls on. / Where are thy feet, thy legs, thy shoulders, gone? / Changed is thy visage, changed is all thy frame— / Cadmus is only Cadmus now in name. / Ye Gods! my Cadmus to himself restore. / Or me like him transform—I ask no more.’ ” And V, Maynwaring’s Tr.:— “The God so near, a chilly sweat possessed / My fainting limbs, at every pore expressed; / My strength distilled in drops, my hair in dew, / My form was changed, and all my substance new: / Each motion was a stream, and my whole frame / Turned to a fount, which still preserves my name.” See also Shelley’s “Arethusa”:— “Arethusa arose / From her couch of snows / In the Acroceraunian mountains— / From cloud and from crag / With many a jag / Shepherding her bright fountains. / She leapt down the rocks, / With her rainbow locks / Streaming among the streams; / Her steps paved with green / The downward ravine / Which slopes to the western gleams; / And gliding and springing, / She went, ever singing, / In murmurs as soft as sleep. / The Earth seemed to love her, / And Heaven smiled above her, / As she lingered towards the deep.” ↩
  17. Some editions read la penna, the pen, instead of la lingua, the tongue. ↩
  18. Gaville was a village in the Valdarno, where Guercio Cavalcanti was murdered. The family took vengeance upon the inhabitants in the old Italian style, thus causing Gaville to lament the murder. ↩

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