Note from Rosalie:
I felt like we needed to keep the religious/surreal theme going -- and to tie it all into the reading group, I chose the sin of Gluttony!r
I have chosen two cantos from Dante's Inferno, the first volume/book of the Divine Comedy: Canto 5 "Lust" and Canto 6 "Gluttony". My primary focus will be on Canto 6, but Canto 5 is one of the most famous cantos so I couldn't leave it out and after all what else is there in life but sex and food?!
Concentrate on reading Canto 6 lines 1-58 and if you want to skip stuff, skip 59-87 (it is mostly about Florentine politics) resume at 88-end.
For Canto 5, it is all wonderful, but for those who don't feel like reading it all, just read the lines 118-end, the condemned one/sinner, Francesca, talks about how her and her guy got into trouble in the first place, and it has to do with books!
| 1
4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 82 88 91 94 97 100 103 106 109 112 115 118 121 124 127 130 133 136 139 142 |
Thus I descended from the first circle down to the
second, which encloses a smaller space, but so much more suffering that it goads the souls to shriek. There stands Minos bristling and snarling; he examines the soul's guild at the entrance; he judges and passes sentences by how he wraps. I say that when the ill-born soul comes before him, it confesses all and that connoisseur of sin sees which is its place in Hell; he girds himself with his tail as many times as the levels he wills the soul to be sent down. Always many stand before him; each goes in turn to judgment, they speak and hear and are cast into the deep. "O you who come to the dolorous hospice," said Minos when he say me, leaving off the exercise of his great office, "beware how you enter and to who you entrust yourself: be not deceived by the spacious entrance!" and my leader to him: "Why still cry out? Do not impede his going, which is decreed: this is willed where what is willed can be done, so ask no more." Now the grief-stricken notes being to make themselves heard; now I have to come where much weeping assails me. I came into a place where all light is silent, that groans like the sea in a storm, where it is lashed by conflicting winds. The infernal whirlwind, which never rests, drives the spirits before its violence; turning and striking, it tortures them. When they come before the landslide, there the shrieks, the wailing, the lamenting; there they curse God’s power. I understood that to this torment were damned the carnal sinners, who subject their reason to their lust. And as their winds carry off the starlings in the cold season, in large full flocks, so does that breath carry the evil spirits here, there, down, up; no hope ever comforts them, not of lessened suffering, much less of rest. And as the cranes go singing their lays, making a long line of themselves in the air, so I saw coming toward us, uttering cries, shades borne by the aforesaid violence; so I said: "Master, who are those people whom the black wind so chastises?" "The first of those about whom you wish to learn," he said to me then, "was empress over many languages. So broken was she to the vice of lust that in her laws she made licit whatever pleased, to lift from herself blame she had incurred. She is Semiramis, of whom we read that she succeeded Ninus and was his wife: she ruled the lands the Sultans governs now. The next is she who killed herself for love and broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus; next is lustful Cleopatra. Behold Helen, who brought such evil times, and see the great Achilles, who battled against Love at the end. Behold Paris, Tristan"; and more than a thousand shades he showed me, and name them, pointing, who Love parted from out life. After I had heard my teacher name the acient ladies and knights, pity came upon me, and I was almost lost. I began: "Poet, gladly would I speak with those two who go together and seem to be so light upon the wind." And he to me: "You will see when they are closer to us; and then beg them by the love that drives them, and they will come." As soon as the wind bends them toward us, I sent forth my voice: "O wearied souls, come speak with us, if anther does not forbid it:" as doves, called by their desire, with winds raised and steady come to their sweet nest through the air, borne by their will, so die they emerge from the flock where Dido is, coming to use through the cruel air, so compelling was my deepfelt cry. "O gracious and benign living creature who through the black air go visiting us who stained the world blood-red, if the king of the universe were friendly we would pray to him for your peace, since you have pity on our twisted pain. Of whatever it please you to hear and to speak we will listen and speak to you, while the wind is quiet for us, as it is now. The city where I was born sits beside the shore where the Po descends to have peace with its followers. Love, which is swiftly kindled in the noble hear, seized this one for the lovely person that was taken form me; and the manner still injures me. Love, which pardons no one loved from loving in return, seized me for his beauty so strongly that, as you see it still does not abandon me. Love led us on to one death. Caina awaits him who extinguished our life." These words were borne from them to us. When I understood those injured souls, I bent my face downward, and I held it down so long that the poet said: "What are you pondering?" When I replied, I began: "Alas, how many sweet thoughts, how much yearning led them to the grievous pass!" Then I turned back to them and spoke, and I began: "Francesca, your sufferings make me sad and piteous to tears. But tell me: in the time of your sweet sighs, by what and how did Love grant you to know your dangerous desires?" And she to me: "There is no greater pain than to remember the happy time in wretchedness; and this your teacher knows. But if you have so much desire to know the first root of our love, I will do as one who weeps and speaks. We were reading one day, for pleasure, of Lancelot, how Love beset him; we were alone and without suspicion. Many times that reading drove our eyes together and turned our faces pale; but one point alone was the one that overpowered us. When we read that the yearned-for smile was kissed by so great a lover, he, who will never be separated from me, Kissed my mouth all trembling. Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it: that day we read there no further." While one spirit said this, the other was weeping so that for pity I fainted as if I were dying, and I fell as a dead body falls. |
| 1
4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 100 103 106 109 112 115 |
When consciousness returned, after closing itself
up before the pity of the two in-laws, which utterly confounded me with sadness, new torments and new tormented ones I see around me wherever I walk, and wherever I turn, and wherever I look. I am in the third circle, with the eternal, cursed, cold, and heavy rain; its rule and quality never change. Great hailstones, filthy water, and snow pour down through the dark air; the earth sinks that receive them. Cerberus, cruel, monstrous beast, with three throats barks doglike over the people submerged there. His eyes are red, his beard greasy and black, his belly large, and his hands talons; he claws the spirits, flays and quarters them. The rain makes them howl like dogs; they make a shield for one of their sides with the other; castout wretches, they turn over frequently. When Cerberus, the great worm, caught sight of us, he opened his mouths and showed his fangs; not one of his members held still. And my leader opened his hands, took up earth, and with both fists full threw it into those ravenous pipes. Like a dog that baying hungers and is silent once he bites his food, for he looks and struggles only to devour it, so became those filthy snouts of the demon Cerberus, who thunders over the souls so that they wish they were deaf. We were passing through the shades that the heavy rain weights down, and we were placing our soles on their emptiness that seems a human body. They were lying on the ground, all of them, save one, who raised himself to sit as soon as he say us passing before him. "O you who are led through this Hell," he said to me, "recognize me if you can: you were made before I was unmade." And I to him: "The anguish that you have perhaps drives you from my memory, so that it does not seem I have ever seen you. But tell me who you are, who are put here in so painful a place, and have such punishment that if any is greater, none is so disgusting." And he to me: "Your city, which is so full of envy that the sack already overflows, kept me with her during my sunny life. You citizens called me Ciacco; because of the damnable sin of the gullet, as you see, I am broken by the rain. And I, wretched soul, am not alone for all these endure similar punishment for similar guilt." And he spoke no further word. I replied: "Ciacco, your trouble weighs on me so that it calls me to weep; but tell me, if you know, to what will come the citizens of the divided city; if any there is just; and tell me the reason so much discord has assailed it." And he to me: "After much quarreling they will come to blood, and the party from the woods will drive out the other with much harm. Then later this party must fall within three suns and the other rise, with the power of one who now hugs the shore. Long will they hold high their brows, keeping the others down under heavy weights, no matter how they weep or are shamed. Two are just, and no one heeds them; pride, envy, and greed are the three sparks that have set hearts ablaze." Here he put an end to the tearful sound. And I to him: "Again I wish you to instruct me and make me the gift of further speech. Farinata and Tegghiaio, who were so worthy, Iacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo and Mosca, and the others who turned their wits to doing well, tell me where they are and cause me to know them; for great desires urges me to understand if Heaven sweetens or Hell poisons them. And he: "They are among the blacker souls; various sins weigh them toward the bottom: if you descend so far, you can see them there. But when you are back in the sweet world, I bet you, bring me to people’s mind: no more do I say to you and no more do I answer you." His direct eyes then he twisted into oblique ones; he stared at me a little and then bent his head; with it he fell level with the other blind ones. And my leader said to me: "Never again will he arise this side of the angelic trumpet, when he will see the enemy governor: Each will see again his sad tomb, will take again his flesh and his shape, will hear what resounds eternally." Thus we passed through a filthy mixture of shades and rain, with slow steps, touching somewhat on the future life; So I said: "Master, these torments, will they grow after the great Judgment, or will they be less, or equally hot?" And he to me: "Return to your philosophy, which teaches that the more perfect a things is, the more it feels what is good, and the same for pain. Even though these cursed people will never enter into true perfection, on that side they can expect to have more being than on this." We followed that path in a curve, speaking much more than I recount; we came to the point where it descends. Then we found Plutus, the great enemy. |