Chapter 53
chapter fifty three of jerusalem to revelations a quartet of spiritual experience by william blake and others this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by tony addison inferno twenty-nine the eighth circle fraud the tenth trench falsifiers of metals the many people and unheard-of wounds had caused my eyes to be so drunk with tears that fain they were to linger there and weep but virgil said at what art gazing still why is it that thine eye still rest down there among the wretched mutilated shades thou didst not thus when in the other trenches consider then if thou propose to count them that this trench circles two-and-twenty miles and that the moon is now beneath our feet short is the time allowed us still and more there is to see than what thou seest here
if thou hadst heeded i thereat replied the reason for my gazing there thou wouldst perhaps have granted me a longer stay meantime my leader on his way was going and i behind him moving as i made my answer adding in that hollow place whereon i kept mine eyes so steadily i think a spirit sprang from mine own blood bewails the fault so dearly paid for there thereat my teacher said let not thy thoughts hereafter break on him heed other things and there let him remain for at the foot of that small bridge i saw him point thee out and with his finger fiercely threaten thee gery del bello i then heard him call so holy wast thou then intent on him who formerly possessed haute faute that thou till he departed didst not look beyond leader said i his death by violence which is not yet avenged for him by any who shared the shame made him indignant that as i believe was why he went away without addressing me
he thus has caused me to pity him the more we thus conversed till we had reached the first place on the crag whence had there been mornlight the next ravine had to its very bottom been revealed when we o'er malebolge's final cloister were situated so that its lay brethren could be perceived by us uncouth laments which had their arrow-heads with pity barbed so pierced me through and through that with my hands i closed mine ears such pain as there would be if from the hospitals of valdiciana maremma and sardinia from july until september all diseases came together in one ditch such was it here and out of it there came a stench like that which out of rotting limbs is wont to come down the last bank of the lengthy crag we went as ever to the left and then much clearer was my vision toward the bottom
wherein the servant of the most high lord justice infallible is punishing the falsifiers she recordeth here i do not think it were a sadder sight to see the whole race in igena sick when so suffused with poison was the air that all the animals down to the little worm fell dead and when the ancient race of people according to what poets hold for truth out of the seed of ants restored themselves then now it was to see the spirits languish down in that gloomy ditch in different heaps one on his belly lay and others leaned against each other's shoulders while another crawled on all fours along the dismal path without conversing step by step we moved both looking at and listening to the sick who could not raise their bodies two of these i then saw sitting and against each other leaning just as a pan against a pan is leaned to warm
and spotted o'er with scabs from head to foot and never have i seen a curry-comb plied by a boy for whom his master waited or by one who kept awake against his will as each oft plied upon himself the edge of finger-nails for the great rage of itching which hath else no help their nails kept scraping down their scabs as doth a knife the scales of bream or fish of other kinds equipped with larger scales o thou that with thy fingers playest thyself to one of them my leader then began and who at times dost pincers make of them pray tell us whether latin any be of these in here so may thy nails suffice thee for thy work eternally we both of us whom thou beholdest here so spoiled are latin answered one who wept but who art thou that didst inquire of us
my leader thereupon said i am one who would this living man from ledge to ledge descend and who proposed to show him hell thereat the common back was broken up and trembling each of them turned round toward me with others who had heard him by rebound then my good teacher drew close up to me and said say whatsoe'er thou wilt to them hence since he so had wished it i began so may your memory never fly away from human minds in that first world of ours but rather under many suns survive pray tell me who ye are and of what people nor let your foul and loathsome punishment make you afraid to show yourselves to me "'I, of Arezzo, was, and Alberto da Siena had me burned,' one then replied.
"'But what I died for doth not bring me here. "'Tis true,' I said to him, although in jest, "'that I knew how to raise me in the air, "'and he who, curious, had but little sense, "'wished me to show that art to him,
"'and only because I did not make him Daedalus. he had me burned by one who treated him as son but to the last trench of the ten minos who may not make mistakes condemned me for the alchemy i practised in the world then to the poet now was there ever a people as vainglorious as the men of siena surely not the french by far whereat the other leprous one who heard me replied to what i said excepting whom moderation knew in what he spent and niccolo who was the first to find the costly use of cloves in gardens where such seed takes root excepting too the company on whom caccia d'ascion wasted his vineyard and great forest land while da baglietto squandered all his sense
but so that thou mayst know who backs thee thus against the men of siena point thine eyes toward me that well my face may answer thee so shalt thou see that i'm capocio's shade who metals falsified by alchemy and thou if well i see thee shouldst recall how good an ape of nature i was inferno thirty the eighth circle fraud the tenth trench falsifiers of persons money and word when juno on account of summerlee was angry with the royal blood of thebes as several times she showed herself to be so fiercely mad did athemas become that when he saw his wife approaching him burdened by her two sons on either side spread we the nets he cried that i may take upon their passing lioness and cubs
and thereupon stretched out his cruel claws and taking hold of one lyarchus named whirled him around and dashed him against a rock his wife then with the other drowned herself again when fortune so low down had brought the trojans arrogant all-daring power that with their kingdom shattered was their king hecuba sad forlorn and captive now when she had seen her dead polixena and in her painful anguish had perceived her polydorus lying on the beach out of her senses barked as would a dog so greatly had her suffering turned her mind but ne'er did furies or of thebes or troy reveal in any one such cruelty in goading beasts or much less human limbs as that which i behold in two death-pale and naked shades who ran around and bit as doth a ball when from the sty let out one reached capuccio
and so thrust his tusks into his neck behind that dragging him he made his belly scrape the solid ground the aratine still trembling said to me that imp is chianni shichi who enraged goes all around ill-treating others thus then oh said i to him so may the other not fix his teeth in thee be not too tired to tell me who he is before he skips and he to me that is the ancient soul of wicked mera who outside the bounds of lawful love became her father's mistress she came to sin with him by counterfeiting another's person in herself as dared the other one who yonder goes away that he might gain the lady of the stud to counterfeit bewusso donati's self and make his will and give it legal form
when the two furious souls on whom my eyes were fixed had passed away i turned them round to look upon the other evil-born and one i saw who like a lute were shaped if he had only had his groin cut off down in the region where a man is forked the heavy dropsy which unmates the limbs in such a way with ill-digested humour that face and paunch no longer correspond was causing him to keep his lips apart as doth the hectic who because of thirst turns one lip chinward and the other up oh ye that are and wherefore i know not free from all torment in this world of woe said he to us behold and pay attention to master adam's wretched misery when living i had all that i desired and now alas i crave a drop of water the little brooks which toward the honor run
down from the kazantinos green-clad hills and render all their channels cool and fresh are evermore before me nor in vain because their image makes me drier far than this disease which strips my face of flesh the rigid justice which is scourging me takes from the very place in which i send the means to give my sighs a greater flight there lies ramina where i falsified the coin on which the baptist for me stamped for that i left my body burned above but could i see the woeful soul of guido or alexander or their brother here for fonte baranda i'd not give the sight one is in here already if the shades who go around here raging tell the truth but what is that to me if his limbs are bound if only i were still so light a foot that i could in a hundred years advance one inch i'd be already on the road in search of him among the loathsome people although this trench goes round eleven miles and is no less than half a mile across
through them am i in such a family for they persuaded me to coin the florins which had at least three carats of alloy then i to him said who are these two wretches who smoking like wet hands in winter time are lying there beside thee on thy right i found them here he answered when i reined into this ditch since when they have not turned nor will i think for all eternity one is the woman who charged joseph falsely the other sinon "'Troy's deceitful Greek,
"'their burning fever makes them reek like this.' "'And one of them, who felt aggrieved perhaps "'at being named so darkly, "'smote the speaker upon his hard, stiff belly with his fist. "'It made a sound as it had been a drum.
"'Then Master Adam smote him with his arm, which did not seem less hard upon his face, and said, Thou high of motion be deprived by reason of my limbs which heavy are, I have an arm that's loose for needs like this. Then he replied,
When going to the fire, thou hadst it not so ready but just so, and more thou hadst it when thou madest coin. he of the dropsy. Here, thou sayest true, but thou wast not so true a witness there
when thou wast questioned of the truth of Troy. If I spoke falsely, thou didst falsify the coin, said Sinon. I'm for one sin here, and thou for more than any other demon.
Remember, perjure the horse. replied he of the swollen paunch and bitter be for thee that known it is by all the world ill be for thee the thirst
wherewith thy tongue is cracking said the Greek and that foul water which for thine eyes thus makes thy paunch ahead thereat the coiner said
as is its wound, thy mouth in speaking evil gapeth wide, for though I'm thirsty, and humour stuffs me out, thine is the fever and the aching head, and thou'dst not stand in need of many words, bidding thee lick the mirror of Narcissus. On listening to them, I was all intent, when, Now, be careful there, my teacher said, for I am not far from quarrelling with thee. When I thus heard him speak to me in anger, such was the shame wherewith I turned to him,
that through my memory it is circling still, and such is he who dreameth of his harm, and dreaming wishes that he dreamt, and thus, as if it were not, longs for that which is. Such I became, who, impotent to speak, would fain excuse myself, and all the while was doing so, but did not think I was. LESS SHAME WOULD WASH AWAY A GREATER FAULT THAN THINE HATH BEEN, MY TEACHER SAID TO ME. THEREFORE, UNBURDEN THEE OF ALL THY SADNESS, AND COUNT ON ME AS EVER AT THY SIDE,
IF IT AGAIN SHOULD CHANCE THAT FORTUNE FIND THEE WHERE FOLK IN SUCH A WRANGLE ARE ENGAID, FOR VULGAR IS THE WISH TO HEAR SUCH THINGS. inferno thirty-one the edge of the central well the giants one and the self-same tongue first wounded me so that it coloured both my cheeks and then supplied me with the medicine required achilles and his father's lance i hear was likewise willing to be the source of first a sad and after of a grateful gift we turned our backs upon the woeful veil over the bank which girds it round about and passed across without a single word here less than night it was and less than day so that my sight advanced not far but here i heard a horn give forth so loud a sound that it had rendered any thunder faint
this let mine eyes as counter to its path they followed wholly to a single place after the woeful rout when charlemagne the holy army of his knights had lost roland blew not so terrible a blast i had not kept my head turned toward it long when many lofty towers i seemed to see i therefore teacher say what town is this since through the darkness from too far away thou pearest he replied it comes about that afterward thou errest in conceiving if yonder thou were tame thou'll clearly see how from afar one's senses are deceived hence onward urge thyself a little more thereat he took my hand with kindly care and said to me ere further on we go so that the fact may seem less strange to thee know then that towers they are not but giants and all of them are standing in the well around the bank each from his navel down
as when a fog is thinning off one's gaze little by little giveth shape to that which since it packs the air the mist conceals even so as through the dense dark air i pierced and nearer drew and nearer to the brink error in me took flight and fear increased for as upon its round enclosing walls monteregione crowns itself with towers thus o'er the margin which surrounds the well with one half of their bodies towered up those frightful giants whom when from the sky he thunders jupiter is threatening still already now was i distinguishing the face of one his shoulders and his breast most of his paunch and down his sides both arms when nature ceased from making animals like these and took such execution as from mars she certainly did very well
and even if she of elephants and whales repent her not whoever subtly looks holds her therein the more discreet and just for where the reasoning faculty is joined to evil will equipped with power to act people can make against it no defence his face appeared to me as long and big as is at rome the pine-cone of st peter's and in proportion to it were his other bones so that the bank which from his middle down an apron was showed quite so much of him above it that of reaching to his hurt three frisians would have made a useless boast for i full thirty spans of him perceived down from the place at which one buckles cloaks raffel my amexabi et almi the fightful mouth to which no sweeter psalms were fitting thereupon began to cry
then toward him cried my leader foolish soul keep to thy horn and vent thyself therewith when wrath or other passion seizes thee search at thy neck and thou wilt find the cord which holds it tied o spirit of confusion and see it lying on thy mighty breast to me then self-accused he stands for this is nimrod to whose evil thought is due that more than one tongue in the world is spoken let us leave him alone nor talk in vain for such is every tongue to him as his to others is for that is known to none then turning to the left we travelled on much further and within a crossbow shot we found the next one far more large and fierce what was the master's power who girded him i cannot say
but this one had in front his left arm and behind his back his right tied by a chain which downward from his neck held him so bound that on the uncovered part it wound around as far as the fifth coil my leader said to me gains job most high this proud soul wished to test his strength and hence hath this reward efialtes is his name his haughty undertaking he attempted what time the giants caused the gods to fear the arms he plied he moveth now no more and i to him if possible it be i'd gladly have these eyes of mine and joy experience of the measureless then he replied and ta'est thou behold not far from here who speaks and since unbound can set us at the bottom of all he is much further on whom thou wouldst see and bound he is and shaped like this one save that more ferocious in his looks he seems
there never was an earthquake strong enough to shake a tower with so much violence as epaeltes quickly shook at this then more than ever yet did i fear death nor for it was there need of more than fear had it not been that i perceived his bonds we thereupon proceeded further still and to antaeus came who full five owls beside his head protruded from the pit O thou, that in the valley fortune-blessed, which once caused Scipio to inherit glory, when with his followers Hannibal to flight, once took'st a thousand lions as thy prey, and who hadst thou been at thy brethren's war on high, it seems that it is still believed
the sons of earth had been the victors there. Pray, set us down below, nor let disdain affect thee Where the cold locks up cocitus Make us not go to Titius or to Tipius This man can give what most is longed for here
Stoop then, nor twist thy muzzle He can still give fame to thee on earth Since he is living, and still looks forward to long life if grace recalled him not untimely to itself the teacher thus then he in haste stretched out the hands whose mighty pressure hercules once felt and took my leader virgil then on feeling himself taken said to me come here that i may take thee up
and then so did that he and i one bundle were such as the carry sender seems when viewed beneath its leaning side when e'er a cloud sails o'er it so that opposite it hangs such did antaeus seem to me who watched to see him stoop and such a moment twas that i had gladly gone another road but likely at the bottom which devours judas and lucifer he set us down nor thus bent over did he linger there but raised himself as on a ship amass chapter fifty three
