The Divine Comedy (Complete Annotated Edition). Dante Alighieri

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      Canto VI

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      ARGUMENT.—On his recovery, the Poet finds himself in the third circle, where the gluttonous are punished. Their torment is, to lie in the mire, under a continual and heavy storm of hail, snow, and discolored water; Cerberus, meanwhile barking over them with his threefold throat, and rending them piecemeal. One of these, who on earth was named Ciacco, foretells the divisions with which Florence is about to be distracted. Dante proposes a question to his guide, who solves it; and they proceed toward the fourth circle.

      MY sense reviving, that erewhile had droop’d

      With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief

      O’ercame me wholly, straight around I see

      New torments, new tormented souls, which way

      Soe’er I move, or turn, or bend my sight.

      In the third circle I arrive, of show’rs

      Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang’d

      For ever, both in kind and in degree.

      Large hail, discolour’d water, sleety flaw

      Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain:

      Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell.

      Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange,

      Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog

      Over the multitude immers’d beneath.

      His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard,

      His belly large, and claw’d the hands, with which

      He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs

      Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs,

      Under the rainy deluge, with one side

      The other screening, oft they roll them round,

A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm1

      Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op’d

      His jaws, and the fangs show’d us; not a limb

      Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms

      Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth

      Rais’d them, and cast it in his ravenous maw.

      E’en as a dog, that yelling bays for food

      His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall

      His fury, bent alone with eager haste

      To swallow it; so dropp’d the loathsome cheeks

      Of demon Cerberus, who thund’ring stuns

      The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain.

      We, o’er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt

      Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet

      Upon their emptiness, that substance seem’d.

      They all along the earth extended lay

      Save one, that sudden rais’d himself to sit,

      Soon as that way he saw us pass. “O thou!”

      He cried, “who through the infernal shades art led,

      Own, if again thou know’st me. Thou wast fram’d

      Or ere my frame was broken.” I replied:

      “The anguish thou endur’st perchance so takes

      Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems

      As if I saw thee never. But inform

      Me who thou art, that in a place so sad

      Art set, and in such torment, that although

      Other be greater, more disgustful none

      Can be imagin’d.” He in answer thus:

      “Thy city heap’d with envy to the brim,

      Ay that the measure overflows its bounds,

      Held me in brighter days. Ye citizens

Were wont to name me Ciacco.2 For the sin

      Of glutt’ny, damned vice, beneath this rain,

      E’en as thou see’st, I with fatigue am worn;

      Nor I sole spirit in this woe: all these

      Have by like crime incurr’d like punishment.”

      No more he said, and СКАЧАТЬ