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Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy – Inferno

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DIVINE COMEDY -INFERNO DANTE ALIGHIERI HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND NOTES PAUL GUSTAVE DORE´ ILLUSTRATIONS JOSEF NYGRIN PDF PREPARATION AND TYPESETTING ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND NOTES Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ILLUSTRATIONS Paul Gustave Dor´e Released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ You are free: to share – to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work; to remix – to make derivative works. Under the following conditions: attribution – you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work); noncommercial – you may not use this work for commercial purposes. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. English translation and notes by H. W. Longfellow obtained from http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/new/comedy/. Scans of illustrations by P. G. Dor´e obtained from http://www.danshort.com/dc/, scanned by Dan Short, used with permission. MIKTEXLATEX typesetting by Josef Nygrin, in Jan & Feb 2008. http://www.paskvil.com/ Some rights reserved c 2008 Josef Nygrin Contents Canto 1 1 Canto 2 9 Canto 3 16 Canto 4 23 Canto 5 30 Canto 6 38 Canto 7 44 Canto 8 51 Canto 9 58 Canto 10 65 Canto 11 71 Canto 12 77 Canto 13 85 Canto 14 93 Canto 15 99 Canto 16 104 Canto 17 110 Canto 18 116 Canto 19 124 Canto 20 131 Canto 21 136 Canto 22 143 Canto 23 150 Canto 24 158 Canto 25 164 Canto 26 171 Canto 27 177 Canto 28 183 Canto 29 192 Canto 30 200 Canto 31 207 Canto 32 215 Canto 33 222 Canto 34 231 Dante Alighieri 239 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 245 Paul Gustave Dor´e 251 Some rights reserved c 2008 Josef Nygrin http://www.paskvil.com/ Inferno Figure 1: Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark... Inferno Canto 1 MIDWAY upon the journey of our life 1 I found myself within a forest dark, 2 For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more; But of the good to treat, which there I found, Speak will I of the other things I saw there. I cannot well repeat how there I entered, So full was I of slumber at the moment In which I had abandoned the true way. But after I had reached a mountain’s foot, 3 At that point where the valley terminated, 4 Which had with consternation pierced my heart, Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders 1The action of the poem begins on Good Friday of the year 1300, at which time Dante, who was born in 1265, had reached the middle of the Scriptual threescore years and ten. It ends on the first Sunday after Easter, making in all ten days. 2The dark forest of human life, with its passions, vices, and perplexities of all kinds; politically the state of Florence with its fractions Guelf and Ghibelline. 3Bunyan, in his Pilgrim’s Progress, which is a kind of Divine Comedy in prose, says: “I beheld then that they all went on till they came to the foot of the hill Difficulty... But the narrow way lay right up the hill, and the name of the going up the side of the hill is called Difficulty... They went then till they came to the Delectable Mountains, which mountains belong to the Lord of that hill of which we have spoken before.” 4Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress – “But now in this valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it; for he had gone but a little way before he spied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back or stand his ground. ...Now at the end of this valley was another, called the valley of the Shadow of Death; and Christian must needs go through it, because the way to the Celestial City lay through the midst of it.” 1 2 http://www.paskvil.com/ Vested already with that planet’s rays 5 Which leadeth others right by every road. Then was the fear a little quieted That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout 6 The night, which I had passed so piteously And even as he, who, with distressful breath, Forth issued from the sea upon the shore, Turns to the water perilous and gazes; So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward, Turn itself back to re-behold the pass Which never yet a living person left. 7 After my weary body I had rested, The way resumed I on the desert slope, So that the firm foot ever was the lower. 8 And lo! almost where the ascent began, 9 A panther light and swift exceedingly, 10 Which with a spotted skin was covered o’er! And never moved she from before my face, Nay, rather did impede so much my way, That many times I to return had turned. 11 The time was the beginning of the morning, And up the sun was mounting with those stars 12 That with him were, what time the Love Divine 5The sun, with all its symbolical meanings. This is the morning of Good Friday. In the Ptolemaic system the sun was one of the planets. 6The deep mountain tarn of his heart, dark with its own depth, and the shadows hanging over it. 7Jeremiah ii. 6: “That led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt.” In his note upon this passage Mr. Wright quotes Spenser’s lines, Faerie Queene, I. v. 31, – “there creature never passed That back returned without heavenly grace.” 8Climbing the hillside slowly, so that he rests longest on the foot that is lowest. 9Jeremiah v. 6: “Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, a wolf of the evening shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces.” 10Wordly Pleasure; and politically Florence, with its factions of Bianchi and Neri. 11Pi`uvolte volto. Dante delights in a play upon words as much as Shakespeare. 12The stars of Aries. Some philosophers and fathers think the world was created in Spring. Dante Alighieri - Divine Comedy, Inferno 3 Figure 2: And lo! almost where the ascent began, a panther light and swift exceedingly... At first in motion set those beauteous things; So were to me occasion of good hope, The variegated skin of that wild beast, The hour of time, and the delicious season; But not so much, that did not give me fear A lion’s aspect which appeared to me. 13 He seemed as if against me he were coming With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger, So that it seemed the air was afraid of him; 14 And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings 15 Seemed to be laden in her meagreness, And many folk has caused to live forlorn! 13Ambition; and politically the royal house of France. 14Some editions read temesse, others tremesse. 15Avarice; and politically the Court of Rome, or temporal power of the Popes. 4 http://www.paskvil.com/ She brought upon me so much heaviness, With the affright that from her aspect came, That I the hope relinquished of the height. And as he is who willingly acquires, And the time comes that causes him to lose, Who weeps in all his thoughts and is despondent, E’en such made me that beast withouten peace, Which, coming on against me by degrees Thrust me back thither where the sun is silent 16 While I was rushing downward to the lowland, Before mine eyes did one present himself, Who seemed from long-continued silence hoarse. 17 When I beheld him in the desert vast, “Have pity on me,” unto him I cried, “Whiche’er thou art, or shade or real man!” He answered me: “Not man; man once I was, And both my parents were of Lombardy, And Mantuans by country both of them. Sub Julio was I born, though it was late, 18 And lived at Rome under the good Augustus, During the time of false and lying gods. A poet was I, and I sang that just Son of Anchises, who came forth from Troy, After that Ilion the superb was burned But thou, why goest thou back to such annoyance? Why climb’st thou not the Mount Delectable Which is the source and cause of every joy?” Now, art thou that Virgilius and that fountain 19 16Dante as a Ghibelline and Imperialist is in opposition to the Guelfs, Pope Boniface VIII., and the King of France, Philip the Fair, and is banished from Florence, out of the sunshine, and into “the dry wind that blows from dolorous poverty.” Cato speaks of the “silent moon” in De Re Rustica, XXIV., Evehito luna silenti; and XL., Vites inseri luna silenti. Also Pliny, XVI. 39, has Silens luna; and Milton, in Samson Agonistes, “Silent as the moon.” 17The long neglect of classic studies in Italy before Dante’s time.
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