Canto I of Dante’s Inferno.

by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321).
translated by Stephen Binns.

Midway along the journey of our days
__I found myself astray in a dark wood,
__for lost was right direction in that maze.
How hard a thing to speak of how it stood:
__how dense the wood, how difficult the course.
__The very thought renews the chill of blood.
So bitter was it, death is scarcely worse,
__and yet to tell of all the good I’d see,
__all other things I saw I’ll now rehearse.
My entrance there is lost to memory.
__I felt filled up with sleep, deep in a daze,
__when from truth’s way I wandered waywardly.

But after I had reached a mountain’s base,
__delimiting the valley, rising tall
__above what pierced my heart in that low place,
I lifted up my eyes and saw a shawl
__of light around its shoulders, the sun’s bright ____the “shoulders” of the mount
__and warming rays, which are a guide to all.
And so came ease to dread, however slight,
__the dread that plumbed my heart’s lake to its depth

__while I so piteously passed the night.
And as a swimmer who, with labored breath,
__will crawl to safety from a parlous sea,
__then turn to memorize his own near death,
just so my soul, which still seemed trying to flee:
__I looked upon that pass of mortal fear,
__which never let a living being be. ____suggestive of Jeremiah 2:6

Then after time to rest my body there,
__I made my way through deserts high and wide,
__and always kept a firm-fixed foot at rear. ____he was climbing

Not far along the slope of mountainside,
__a leopard, light of step, did then appear, ____first of three beasts also in Jeremiah 5:6
__bedecked all over with its maculate hide. ____leopard perhaps a symbol of lust
It would not move, but stood as barrier.
__I turned and every turn it would deter.

__I turned round to turn back; no way was clear.
This happened when the morning was astir.
__The sun was rising with the Aries sign, ____as was the case, it was believed, at Creation
__the stars revolving, as they ever were,
once given motion by divine design.
__And so the lissome, gaily colored beast
__seemed of a piece with that time, gladsome, fine,
the season and the hour of day, at least
__until new vistas brought new fear to bear:
__a lion made advance and never ceased. ____perhaps a symbol of pride or wrath

It was, I then could see as it pressed near,
__irate with hunger, holding high its head.
__There seemed a tremor to the very air.
A she-wolf then. Though lean, as though ill-fed, ____perhaps a symbol of avarice
__she looked well-glutted with mere appetite,
__that one who’d made so many so wretched.
The terror coming from her very sight!

__The pain she caused me was so great, again
__I lost all hope of mounting one more height,
and like that miser, happy to obtain,
__who when times change and fortune follows suit
__will weep for every loss of every gain,
just so was I, sore vexed, irresolute.

__The beast was coming at a stealthy creep,
__which drove me back to where the sun is mute.
As I went rushing down, by bound, by leap,
__before my eyes a figure halted me,
__weak-voiced and wan, it seemed, from silent sleep.
Across the waste, I called vociferously:
__“Whatever you may be, a ghost or man,
__have mercy on me.” That was my one plea.
“Not man, though once I was,” he then began. ____Virgil
__“My parents both were born in Lombardy,
__and both of them were native Mantuan.
I came to birth sub Julio, tardily, ____in Julius Caesar’s last days
__and under good Augustus lived at Rome,
__in times of false and lying deity.
I was a poet, and my poem sang home ____the Aeneid
__the just son of Anchises, who’d left Troy,
__Aeneas, who to our own shores had come ____Italy
when Greece had laid the fires to destroy
__proud Ilium. But you, why return thence, ____Troy
__to troubles? Why not climb that Mount of Joy,
joy’s cause, its reason, its sole provenance?”

__“And you are, then, that Virgil, and that fount
__of speech that deepens into eloquence?”
I answered, and I bowed my shame-filled front.
__“O every other poet’s honored light!
__May my great love avail, my diligent
close study of your volume day and night.

__My master, author worthiest of praise:
__You see the beast that made me turn in flight.
Save me from her, you of the style whose grace
__has on myself so much honor bestowed. ____for Dante’s “sweet style,” inspired by Virgil
__My very blood is traveling apace!”

“Now you must travel by another road,”
__he said when he saw tears upon my face,
__“if you wish to escape this wild wood.
That beast, of which you cry, in no known case
__has left a person free to pass this way,
__but each impedes, all those strayed souls she slays.

She is by nature of such malign sway
__her avid appetite stays with her still,
__and even grows, the more she eats away.
And many are the animals who will
__be mate to her, until a day at hand:
__the hound will make of her a painful kill. ____perhaps Cangrande della Scala of Verona

That hound will not be fed with pelf or land,
__but feed on wisdom, virtue’s truest friend, ____Cangrande (Big Dog) was a Dante patron
__and rise between where those two Feltri stand. ____Verona, between Feltre and Montefeltro
Italia’s humbled lowlands he’ll defend,
__for which Camilla and Euryalus died,
__and Nisus, Turnus, wounded without mend. ____all discussed in the Aeneid

That hound will hunt through towns and countryside
__until he has returned her to her Hell,
__whence she was freed first by invidious pride.
I therefore think and judge you would do well
__to follow me, and I will lead you where
__the wicked go, that place perpetual,
where you will hear the shrieks of their despair,
__where ancient spirits cry out, as one choir,
__for second death, in pain they cannot bear. ____perhaps drawn from Revelation 9:6
And you’ll see some contented in a fire: ____in Purgatory
__they hope that, late or soon, they’ll reach the end
__where blessed ones go; to this they may aspire. ____in Heaven

And if you wish, yourself, so to ascend,
__another then will be your guiding star, ____Beatrice
__one worthier. On her you must depend.

The Emperor who’s reigning there must bar ____God, rarely named in the Inferno
__all coming through me to His great city,
__because I did not know what His laws are. ____he died before the time of Christianity
He rules in every part, as you will see.
__That Emperor has there a throne on high.

__Oh, happy His elect will ever be!”
“O Poet, what I ask,” was my reply,
__“is that, by God, the God you never knew,
__so from this and worse evil I might fly,
now lead me to the limits of your view,
__to see St. Peter’s gate and those consigned,
__as you have said, to sorrows—guide me through.”

And then he moved. I followed hard behind.

~~~

The Society of Classical Poets