A cask by losing centre-piece or cant Was never shattered so, as I saw one Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; His heart was visible, and the dismal sack That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
While I was all absorbed in seeing him, He looked at me, and opened with his hands His bosom, saying: “See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; In front of me doth Ali weeping go, Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest, Disseminators of scandal and of schism While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us Thus cruelly, unto the falchion’s edge Putting again each one of all this ream,
When we have gone around the doleful road; By reason that our wounds are closed again Ere any one in front of him repass.
But who art thou, that musest on the crag, Perchance to postpone going to the pain That is adjudged upon thine accusations?”
“Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,” My Master made reply, “to be tormented; But to procure him full experience,
Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle; And this is true as that I speak to thee.”
More than a hundred were there when they heard him, Who in the moat stood still to look at me, Through wonderment oblivious of their torture.
“Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him, Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun, If soon he wish not here to follow me,
So with provisions, that no stress of snow May give the victory to the Novarese, Which otherwise to gain would not be easy.”
After one foot to go away he lifted, This word did Mahomet say unto me, Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it.
Another one, who had his throat pierced through, And nose cut off close underneath the brows, And had no longer but a single ear,
Staying to look in wonder with the others, Before the others did his gullet open, Which outwardly was red in every part,
And said: “O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn, And whom I once saw up in Latian land, Unless too great similitude deceive me,
Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina, If e’er thou see again the lovely plain That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo,
And make it known to the best two of Fano, To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise, That if foreseeing here be not in vain,
Cast over from their vessel shall they be, And drowned near unto the Cattolica, By the betrayal of a tyrant fell.
Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca Neptune ne’er yet beheld so great a crime, Neither of pirates nor Argolic people.
That traitor, who sees only with one eye, And holds the land, which some one here with me Would fain be fasting from the vision of,
Will make them come unto a parley with him; Then will do so, that to Focara’s wind They will not stand in need of vow or prayer.”
And I to him: “Show to me and declare, If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee, Who is this person of the bitter vision.”
Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw Of one of his companions, and his mouth Oped, crying: “This is he, and he speaks not.
This one, being banished, every doubt submerged In Caesar by affirming the forearmed Always with detriment allowed delay.”
O how bewildered unto me appeared, With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit, Curio, who in speaking was so bold!
And one, who both his hands dissevered had, The stumps uplifting through the murky air, So that the blood made horrible his face,
Cried out: “Thou shalt remember Mosca also, Who said, alas! ‘A thing done has an end!’ Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people.”
“And death unto thy race,” thereto I added; Whence he, accumulating woe on woe, Departed, like a person sad and crazed.
But I remained to look upon the crowd; And saw a thing which I should be afraid, Without some further proof, even to recount,
If it were not that conscience reassures me, That good companion which emboldens man Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it, A trunk without a head walk in like manner As walked the others of the mournful herd.
And by the hair it held the head dissevered, Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern, And that upon us gazed and said: “O me!”
It of itself made to itself a lamp, And they were two in one, and one in two; How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.
When it was come close to the bridge’s foot, It lifted high its arm with all the head, To bring more closely unto us its words,
Which were: “Behold now the sore penalty, Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding; Behold if any be as great as this.
And so that thou may carry news of me, Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort.
I made the father and the son rebellious; Achitophel not more with Absalom And David did with his accursed goadings.
Because I parted persons so united, Parted do I now bear my brain, alas! From its beginning, which is in this trunk.
Thus is observed in me the counterpoise.”
Inferno: Canto XXIX
The many people and the divers wounds These eyes of mine had so inebriated, That they were wishful to stand still and weep;
But said Virgilius: “What dost thou still gaze at? Why is thy sight still riveted down there Among the mournful, mutilated shades?
Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge; Consider, if to count them thou believest, That two-and-twenty miles the valley winds,
And now the moon is underneath our feet; Henceforth the time allotted us is brief, And more is to be seen than what thou seest.”
“If thou hadst,” I made answer thereupon, “Attended to the cause for which I looked, Perhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned.”
Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him I went, already making my reply, And superadding: “In that cavern where
I held mine eyes with such attention fixed, I think a spirit of my blood laments The sin which down below there costs so much.”
Then said the Master: “Be no longer broken Thy thought from this time forward upon him; Attend elsewhere, and there let him remain;
For him I saw below the little bridge, Pointing at thee, and threatening with his finger Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello.
So wholly at that time wast thou impeded By him who formerly held Altaforte, Thou didst not look that way; so he departed.”
“O my Conductor, his own violent death, Which is not yet avenged for him,” I said, “By any who is sharer in the shame,
Made him disdainful; whence he went away, As I imagine, without speaking to me, And thereby made me pity him the more.”
Thus did we speak as far as the first place Upon the crag, which the next valley shows Down to the bottom, if there were more light.
When we were now right over the last cloister Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers Could manifest themselves unto our sight,
Divers lamentings pierced me through and through, Which with compassion had their arrows barbed, Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands.
What pain would be, if from the hospitals Of Valdichiana, ’twixt July and September, And of Maremma and Sardinia
All the diseases in one moat were gathered, Such was it here, and such a stench came from it As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.
We had descended on the furthest bank From the long crag, upon the left hand still, And then more vivid was my power of sight
Down tow’rds the bottom, where the ministress Of the high Lord, Justice infallible, Punishes forgers, which she here records.
I do not think a sadder sight to see Was in Aegina the whole people sick, (When was the air so full of pestilence,
The animals, down to the little worm, All fell, and afterwards the ancient people, According as the poets have affirmed,
Were from the seed of ants restored again,) Than was it to behold through that dark valley The spirits languishing in divers heaps.
This on the belly, that upon the back One of the other lay, and others crawling Shifted themselves along the dismal road.
We step by step went onward without speech, Gazing upon and listening to the sick Who had not strength enough to lift their bodies.
I saw two sitting leaned against each other, As leans in heating platter against platter, From head to foot bespotted o’er with scabs;
And never saw I plied a currycomb By stable-boy for whom his master waits, Or him who keeps awake unwillingly,
As every one was plying fast the bite Of nails upon himself, for the great rage Of itching which no other succour had.
And the nails downward with them dragged the scab, In fashion as a knife the scales of bream, Or any other fish that has them largest.