Divine Comedy: Inferno | Page 4

XV. Third round of the Seventh Circle: those who have done
violence to Nature.--Brunetto Latini.--Prophecies of misfortune to
Dante.
CANTO XVI. Third round of the Seventh Circle: those who have done
violence to Nature.--Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacopo
Rusticucci.--The roar of Phlegethon as it pours downward.- -The cord
thrown into the abyss.
CANTO XVII. Third round of the Seventh Circle: those who have done
violence to Art.--Geryon.--The Usurers.--Descent to the Eighth Circle.
CANTO XVIII. Eighth Circle: the first pit: Panders and Seducers.-
-Venedico Caccianimico.--Jason.--Second pit: false flatterers.-- Alessio
Interminei.--Thais.
CANTO XIX. Eighth Circle: third pit: Simonists.--Pope Nicholas III
CANTO XX. Eighth Circle: fourth pit: Diviners, Soothsayers, and

Magicians.--Amphiaraus.--Tiresias.--Aruns.--Manto.--Eurypylus.--
Michael Scott.--Asolente.
CANTO XXI. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: Barrators.--A magistrate of
Lucca.--The Malebranche.--Parley with them.
CANTO XXII. Eighth Circle: fifth pit: Barrators.--Ciampolo of
Navarre.--Brother Gomita.--Michael Zanche.--Fray of the

Malebranche.
CANTO XXIII. Eighth Circle. Escape from the fifth pit.--The sixth pit:
Hypocrites.--The Jovial Friars.--Caiaphas.--Annas.--Frate Catalano.
CANTO XXIV. Eighth Circle. The poets climb from the sixth pit.--
Seventh pit: Fraudulent Thieves.--Vanni Fucci.--Prophecy of calamity
to Dante.
CANTO XXV. Eighth Circle: seventh pit: Fraudulent Thieves.--
Cacus.--Agnello Brunellesehi and others.
CANTO XXVI. Eighth Circle: eighth pit: Fraudulent Counsellors.--
Ulysses and Diomed.
CANTO XXVII. Eighth Circle: eighth pit: Fraudulent Counsellors.--
Guido da Montefeltro.
CANTO XXVIII. Eighth Circle: ninth pit: Sowers of discord and
schism.--Mahomet and Ali.--Fra Dolcino.--Pier da Medicina.--
Curio.--Mosca.--Bertran de Born.
CANTO XXIX. Eighth Circle: ninth pit.--Geri del Bello.--Tenth pit:
Falsifiers of all sorts.--Griffolino of Mezzo.--Capocchio.
CANTO XXX. Eighth Circle: tenth pit: Falsifiers of all sorts.--
Myrrha.--Gianni Schiechi.--Master Adam.--Sinon of Troy.
CANTO XXXI. The Giants around the Eighth Circle.--Nimrod.--
Ephialtes.--Antiens sets the Poets down in the Ninth Circle.

CANTO XXXII. Ninth Circle: Traitors. First ring: Caina.--Counts of
Mangona.--Camicion de' Pazzi.--Second ring: Antenora.--Bocca degli
Abati.--Buoso da Duera.--Count Ugolino.
CANTO XXXIII. Ninth Circle: Traitors. Second ring: Antenora.--
Count Ugolino.--Third ring: Ptolomaea.--Brother Alberigo.--Branca d'
Oria.
CANTO XXXIV. Ninth Circle: Traitors. Fourth ring: Judecca.--
Lucifer.--Judas, Brutus and Cassius.--Centre of the universe.-- Passage
from Hell.--Ascent to the surface of the Southern
hemisphere.
INTRODUCTION.
So many versions of the Divine Comedy exist in English that a new
one might well seem needless. But most of these translations are in
verse, and the intellectual temper of our time is impatient of a
transmutation in which substance is sacrificed for form's sake, and the
new form is itself different from the original. The conditions of verse in
different languages vary so widely as to make any versified translation
of a poem but an imperfect
reproduction of the archetype. It is like an
imperfect mirror that renders but a partial likeness, in which essential
features are blurred or distorted. Dante himself, the first modern critic,
declared that "nothing harmonized by a musical bond can be

transmuted from its own speech without losing all its sweetness and
harmony," and every fresh attempt at translation affords a new proof of
the truth of his assertion. Each language exhibits its own special genius
in its poetic forms. Even when they are closely similar in rhythmical
method their poetic effect is essentially different, their individuality is
distinct. The hexameter of the Iliad is not the hexameter of the Aeneid.
And if this be the case in respect to related forms, it is even more
obvious in respect to forms peculiar to one language, like the terza rima
of the Italian, for which it is impossible to find a satisfactory equivalent
in another tongue.
If, then, the attempt be vain to reproduce the form or to
represent its
effect in a translation, yet the substance of a poem may have such

worth that it deserves to be known by readers who must read it in their
own tongue or not at all. In this case the aim of the translator should he
to render the substance fully, exactly, and with as close a
correspondence to the tone and style of the original as is possible
between prose and
poetry. Of the charm, of the power of the poem
such a translation can give but an inadequate suggestion; the musical
bond was of its essence, and the loss of the musical bond is the loss of
the beauty to which form and substance mutually contributed, and in
which they were both alike harmonized and sublimated. The

rhythmic life of the original is its vital spirit, and the
translation
losing this vital spirit is at best as the dull plaster cast to the living
marble or the breathing bronze. The intellectual substance is there; and
if the work be good,
something of the emotional quality may be
conveyed; the
imagination may mould the prose as it moulded the
verse,--but, after all, "translations are but as turn-coated things at best,"
as Howell said in one of his Familiar Letters.
No poem in any tongue is more informed with rhythmic life than the
Divine Comedy. And yet, such is its extraordinary
distinction, no
poem has an intellectual