Inferno: Canto XXXIV

“Vexilla Regis prodeunt inferni towards us: therefore look in front of thee,” my Master said, “if thou discernest him.”

As, when a thick mist breathes, or when the night comes on our hemisphere, a mill, [which] the wind [turns], appears at distance:

such an edifice did I now seem to see; and, for the wind, shrunk back behind my Guide, because no other shed was there.

Already I had come (and with fear I put it into verse) where the souls were [wholly] covered, and shone through like straw in glass.

Some [are] lying; some stand upright, this on its head, and that upon its soles; another, like a bow, bends face to feet.

When we had proceeded on so far, that it pleased my Guide to show to me the Creature which was once so fair,

he took himself from before me, and made me stop, saying: “Lo Dis! and lo the place where it behoves thee arm thyself with fortitude.”

How icy chill and hoarse I then became, ask not, O Reader! for I write it not, because all speech would fail to tell.

I did not die, and did not remain alive: now think for thyself, if thou hast any grain of ingenuity, what I became, deprived of both death and life.

The Emperor of the dolorous realm, from mid breast stood forth out of the ice; and I in size am liker to a giant,

than the giants are to his arms: mark now how great that whole must be, which corresponds to such a part.

If he was once as beautiful as he is ugly now, and lifted up his brows against his Maker, well may all affliction come from him.

Oh how great a marvel seemed it to me, when I saw three faces on his head! The one in front, and it was fiery red;

the others were two, that were adjoined to this, above the very middle of each shoulder; and they were joined [at] his crest;

and the right seemed between white and yellow; the left was such to look on, as they who come from where the Nile [descends].

Under each there issued forth two mighty wings, of size befitting such a bird: sea-sails I never saw so broad.

No plumes had they; but were in form and texture like a bat’s: and he was flapping them, so that three winds went forth from him.

Thereby Cocytus all was frozen; with six eyes he wept, and down three chins gushed tears and bloody foam.

In every mouth he champed a sinner with his teeth, like a brake; so that he thus kept three of them in torment.

To the one in front, the biting was nought, compared with the tearing: for at times the back of him remained quite stript of skin.

“That soul up there, which suffers greatest punishment,” said the Master, “is Judas Iscariot, he who has his head within, and outside plies his legs.

Of the other two, who have their heads beneath, that one, who hangs from the black visage is Brutus: see how he writhes himself, and utters not a word;

and the other is Cassius, who seems so stark of limb. But night is reascending; and now must we depart: for we have seen the whole.”

As he desired, I clasped his neck; and he took opportunity of time and place; and when the wings were opened far,

applied him to the shaggy sides, and then from shag to shag descended down, between the tangled hair and frozen crusts.

When we had come to where the thigh revolves just on the swelling of the haunch, my Guide with labour and with difficulty

turned his head where he had had his feet before, and grappled on the hair, as one who mounts; so that I thought we were returning into Hell again.

“Hold thee fast! for by such stairs,” said my Guide, panting like a man forespent, “must we depart from so much ill.”

Thereafter through the opening of a rock he issued forth, and put me on its brim to sit; then towards me he stretched his wary step.

I raised my eyes, and thought to see Lucifer as I had left him; and saw him with the legs turned upwards;

and the gross people who see not what [that] point [is] which I had passed, [let them] judge if I grew [perplexed] then.

“Rise up!” said the Master, “upon thy feet: the way is long, and difficult the road; and [already] to middle tierce the Sun returns.”

It was no palace-hall, there where we stood, but natural dungeon with an evil floor and want of light.

“Before I pluck myself from the Abyss,” said I when risen up, “O Master! speak to me a little, to draw me out of error.

Where is the ice? and this, how is he fixed thus upside down? and how, in so short a time, has the Sun from eve to morn made transit?”

And he to me: “Thou imaginest that thou art still upon the other side of the centre, where I caught hold on the hair of the evil Worm which pierces through the world.

Thou wast on that side, so long as I descended; when I turned myself, thou then didst pass the point to which all gravities from every part are drawn;

and now thou art arrived beneath the hemisphere opposed to that which canopies the great dry land, and underneath whose summit was consumed

the Man, who without sin was born and lived; thou hast thy feet upon a little sphere, which forms the other face of the Judecca.

Here it is morn, when it is evening there; and this Fiend, who made a ladder for us with his hair, is still fixed as he was before.

On this side fell he down from Heaven; and the land, which erst stood out here, through fear of him veiled itself with sea,

and came to our hemisphere; and perhaps, in order to escape from him, that which on this side appears left here the empty space, and upwards rushed.”

Down there, from Beelzebub as far removed as his tomb extends, is a space, not known by sight but by the sound

of a rivulet descending in it, along the hollow of a rock which it has eaten out with tortuous course and slow declivity.

The Guide and I entered by that hidden road, to return into the bright world; and, without caring for any rest,

we mounted up, he first and I second, so far that I distinguished through a round opening the beauteous things which Heaven bears; and thence we issued out, again to see the Stars.