Данте Алигьери – The Divine Comedy / Божественная комедия (страница 15)

That she might change at times the empty treasures

80 From race to race, from one blood to another,

Beyond resistance of all human wisdom.

Therefore one people triumphs, and another

Languishes, in pursuance of her judgment,

Which hidden is, as in the grass a serpent.

85 Your knowledge has no counterstand against her;

She makes provision, judges, and pursues

Her governance, as theirs the other gods.

Her permutations have not any truce;

Necessity makes her precipitate,

90 So often cometh who his turn obtains.

And this is she who is so crucified

Even by those who ought to give her praise,

Giving her blame amiss, and bad repute.

But she is blissful, and she hears it not;

95 Among the other primal creatures gladsome

She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices.

Let us descend now unto greater woe;

Already sinks each star that was ascending

When I set out, and loitering is forbidden.”

100 We crossed the circle to the other bank,

Near to a fount that boils, and pours itself

Along a gully that runs out of it.

The water was more sombre far than perse;

And we, in company with the dusky waves,

105 Made entrance downward by a path uncouth.

A marsh it makes, which has the name of Styx,

This tristful brooklet, when it has descended

Down to the foot of the malign gray shores.

And I, who stood intent upon beholding,

110 Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon,

All of them naked and with angry look.

They smote each other not alone with hands,

But with the head and with the breast and feet,

Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth.

115 Said the good Master: “Son, thou now beholdest

The souls of those whom anger overcame;

And likewise I would have thee know for certain

Beneath the water people are who sigh

And make this water bubble at the surface,

120 As the eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turns.

Fixed in the mire they say, 'We sullen were

In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened,

Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek;

Now we are sullen in this sable mire.'

125 This hymn do they keep gurgling in their throats,

For with unbroken words they cannot say it.”

Thus we went circling round the filthy fen

A great arc 'twixt the dry bank and the swamp,

With eyes turned unto those who gorge the mire;

130 Unto the foot of a tower we came at last.

Canto VIII

I say, continuing, that long before

We to the foot of that high tower had come,

Our eyes went upward to the summit of it,

By reason of two flamelets we saw placed there,

5 And from afar another answer them,

So far, that hardly could the eye attain it.

And, to the sea of all discernment turned,

I said: “What sayeth this, and what respondeth

That other fire? and who are they that made it?”

10 And he to me: “Across the turbid waves

What is expected thou canst now discern,

If reek of the morass conceal it not.”