Данте Алигьери – The Divine Comedy / Божественная комедия (страница 41)

15 As to look forward had been taken from them.

Perchance indeed by violence of palsy

Some one has been thus wholly turned awry;

But I ne'er saw it, nor believe it can be.

As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit

20 From this thy reading, think now for thyself

How I could ever keep my face unmoistened,

When our own image near me I beheld

Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes

Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts.

25 Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak

Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said

To me: “Art thou, too, of the other fools?

Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;

Who is a greater reprobate than he

30 Who feels compassion at the doom divine?

Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom

Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes;

Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou,

Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?'

35 And downward ceased he not to fall amain

As far as Minos, who lays hold on all.

See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!

Because he wished to see too far before him

Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:

40 Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,

When from a male a female he became,

His members being all of them transformed;

And afterwards was forced to strike once more

The two entangled serpents with his rod,

45 Ere he could have again his manly plumes.

That Aruns is, who backs the other's belly,

Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs

The Carrarese who houses underneath,

Among the marbles white a cavern had

50 For his abode; whence to behold the stars

And sea, the view was not cut off from him.

And she there, who is covering up her breasts,

Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses,

And on that side has all the hairy skin,

55 Was Manto, who made quest through many lands,

Afterwards tarried there where I was born;

Whereof I would thou list to me a little.

After her father had from life departed,

And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved,

60 She a long season wandered through the world.

Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake

At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany

Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.

By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,

65 'Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,

With water that grows stagnant in that lake.

Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor,

And he of Brescia, and the Veronese

Might give his blessing, if he passed that way.

70 Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,

To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks,

Where round about the bank descendeth lowest.

There of necessity must fall whatever

In bosom of Benaco cannot stay,

75 And grows a river down through verdant pastures.

Soon as the water doth begin to run,

No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio,

Far as Governo, where it falls in Po.

Not far it runs before it finds a plain