The Inferno: A New Verse Translation by Dante Alighieri

Author:Dante Alighieri [Alighieri, Dante]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2017-04-11T06:00:00+00:00

Canto XVIII

Hell has a region known as Devil’s Gulches,

entirely formed from iron-colored rock

like the encircling rampart of the cliffs.

Dead in the center of that evil space

there yawns a very wide deep well, whose features5

I shall account for at the proper time,

so the remaining belt between this well

and the base of the rocky wall is circular,

its floor divided up into ten valleys.

When moats are looped outside of other moats10

around a castle to defend its walls,

the ground they occupy displays a pattern

configured like the one these valleys formed;

and just as from the gate of such a fortress

small bridges lead across to the outer bank,15

down here stone ridges ran from the cliff’s base

and spanned the banks and ditches up to the well,

which cut them off and gathered them together.

Shaken from Geryon’s back, it was this place

in which we found ourselves; and then the poet20

set out upon the left and I behind him.

I saw upon my right new anguish, torments

not seen before, strange torturers wielding whips,

for spectacles like these filled the first gulch.

Down on the bottom naked sinners walked,25

approaching on our side but on the other

pacing our progress though with longer strides,

as the Romans in the year of the Jubilee,

because of the great crowds, devised a method

for making people cross the Tiber bridge30

so that on one side everybody faced

the castle and proceeded toward St. Peter’s,

while on the other side they faced the hill.

Scattered upon the dark rock on both sides

I saw horned demons standing with great whips,35

who struck the sinners cruelly from behind.

Ah, how they made them lift their heels up high

at the first lash! for there was none among them

who waited for a second or a third.

My eyes, as I was walking, chanced upon40

the eyes of one of them; and I exclaimed

at once, “I know I’ve seen that face before!”

And so I stopped to make him out more clearly;

my kindly leader halted too and even

permitted me to go a short way back.45

The one beneath the lash thought he could hide

by lowering his face; it did not help,

for I called out, “You there, that drop your eyes:

unless the face you’re wearing lies about you,

your name’s Venèdico Caccianemico.50

But what has landed you in such hot sauce?”

“Unwillingly I say it,” he replied,

“but your plain speech, which makes me once again

remember the old world, compels my answer.

I it was who induced Ghisolabella55

to satisfy the marquis’s desires,

however they now tell the sordid tale.

Nor am I the only Bolognese who weeps here;

the place is so well stocked with us, in fact,

that fewer tongues now learn our dialect term60

for yes between the Sàvena and the Reno;

and if you want convincing evidence

of that, recall our avaricious hearts.”

As he was saying this, a demon struck him

with a leather whip and said, “Get moving, pimp!65

There are no women here to play your tricks on.”

I joined my guide again and after that

it took us only a few more steps to reach

a rocky ridge projecting from the cliffs.

This we were able easily to mount,70

and turning right upon its jagged spine,

we left behind those everlasting circuits.

When

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