The Divine Comedy (Illustrated Edition). Dante Alighieri

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СКАЧАТЬ shalt discover, that your art on her

      Obsequious follows, as the learner treads

      In his instructor’s step, so that your art

      Deserves the name of second in descent

      From God. These two, if thou recall to mind

Creation’s holy book,4 from the beginning

      Were the right source of life and excellence

      To human kind. But in another path

      The usurer walks; and Nature in herself

      And in her follower thus he sets at nought,

Placing elsewhere his hope.5 But follow now

      My steps on forward journey bent; for now

      The Pisces play with undulating glance

Along the’ horizon, and the Wain6 lies all

      O’er the north-west; and onward there a space

      Is our steep passage down the rocky height.”

      Footnotes

1 By some supposed to have been Anastasius II.; by others, the fourth of that name; while a third set, jealous of the integrity of the papal faith, contend that our poet has confounded him with Anastasius I., Emperor of the East.

2 “Thy ethic page.” He refers to Aristotle’s Ethics, lib. vii. c. 1: “———let it be defined that respecting morals there are three sorts of things to be avoided, malice, incontinence, and brutishness.”

3 “Her laws.” Aristotle’s Physics, lib. ii. c. 2: “Art imitates nature.”

4 “Creation’s holy book.” Genesis, c. ii. v. 15: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it.” And, Genesis, c. iii. v. 19: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.”

5 “Placing elsewhere his hope.” The usurer, trusting in the produce of his wealth lent out on usury, despises nature directly, because he does not avail himself of her means for maintaining or enriching himself; and indirectly, because he does not avail himself of the means which art, the follower and imitator of nature, would afford him for the same purposes.

6 “The Wain.” The constellation Boötes, or Charles’s Wain.

      Canto XII

       Table of Contents

      ARGUMENT.—Descending by a very rugged way into the seventh circle, where the violent are punished, Dante and his leader find it guarded by the Minotaur; whose fury being pacified by Virgil, they step downward from crag to crag; till, drawing near the bottom, they descry a river of blood, wherein are tormented such as have committed violence against their neighbor. At these, when they strive to emerge from the blood, a troop of Centaurs, running along the side of the river, aim their arrows; and three of their band opposing our travellers at the foot of the steep, Virgil prevails so far that one consents to carry them both across the stream; and on their passage, Dante is informed by him of the course of the river, and of those that are punished therein.

      THE place where to descend the precipice

      We came, was rough as Alp, and on its verge

      Such object lay, as every eye would shun.

As is that ruin, which Adice’s stream1

      On this side Trento struck, should’ring the wave,

      Or loos’d by earthquake or for lack of prop;

      For from the mountain’s summit, whence it mov’d

      To the low level, so the headlong rock

      Is shiver’d, that some passage it might give

      To him who from above would pass; e’en such

      Into the chasm was that descent: and there

      At point of the disparted ridge lay stretch’d

The infamy of Crete,2 detested brood

Of the feign’d heifer:3 and at sight of us

      It gnaw’d itself, as one with rage distract.

      To him my guide exclaim’d: “Perchance thou deem’st

The King of Athens4 here, who, in the world

      Above, thy death contriv’d. Monster! avaunt!

He comes not tutor’d by thy sister’s art,5

      But to behold your torments is he come.”

      Like to a bull, that with impetuous spring

      Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow

      Hath struck him, but unable to proceed

      Plunges on either side; so saw I plunge

      The Minotaur; whereat the sage exclaim’d:

      “Run to the passage! while he storms, ’t is well

      That thou descend.” Thus down our road we took

      Through those dilapidated crags, that oft

      Mov’d underneath my feet, to weight like theirs

      Unus’d. I pond’ring went, and thus he spake:

      “Perhaps thy thoughts are of this ruin’d steep,

      Guarded by the brute violence, which I

      Have vanquish’d СКАЧАТЬ