DANTE'S SUBLIME COMEDY: HELL, Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Magicians

This, the twentieth chapter of my book,

            first section of my triple enterprise

            must put new matter here before your eyes.                          3

Along that circling valley I could see

            a wailing crowd of folk approaching me

            at pace of priests chanting the litany.                                     6

I saw their nakedness from feet to necks

            but higher they were faceless – there appeared

            the backs of heads. No epileptic fit                                        9

could twist a human head so wholly round.

            I turned, saw grieving faces move away

            with tears flooding each spine to buttock cleft,                      12

           

and these distortions of our human shape

made me weep too until my guide said, “Stop!

            To pity those God damns is impious,                                    15

so lift your head.  See Amphiareus.

            An earthquake swallowed him because he hid

            from death he had foretold. His chest is now                         18

his shoulder-blades. He goes backward with the rest

            who used black arts to see too far ahead

            so can’t see forward now.  See Tiresias.                                 21

His belly is in front of Aruns’ bum,

            prophet who read the stars from his high home,

            the cave of marble in Carrara’s cliff.                                       24

See her with breasts concealed by flowing hair,

            Manto, the daughter of Tiresias

            and virgin witch who founded Mantua,                                  27

my birthplace, of which I will tell you more.

            Forced out of Thebes, Manto first roamed afar

            in search of a new home.  In Italy                                           30

among the mountain ramparts of the North

            she saw Lake Garda fed by Alpine snow.

            The overflow led her to Mincio,                                             33 

a sluggish stream spreading in marshes round

            a plot of firm ground, uninhabited.

            On this she lived secure until she died.                                   36

Over her bones the scattered folk nearby

            built, fortified the town of Mantua.

            Tell all you know the truth of my account                             39       

which some misguided fools deny.” “O yes!”

            cried I, “but please, first tell me more about

            the sinners trudging in this dreary ditch.                                42

Which is that brown old man with the white beard?”

            “Eurypylus,” my guide explained, “the priest

            who chose when Greeks should sail to Trojan war.               45

I’ve written of him in my Aeneid.

            On his lean shanks see stalking Michael Scott,

            the Caledonian astrologer –                                                     48

Guido Bonatti, another sly cheat

            who told the Montefeltro when to fight –

            Asdente, Parma’s toothless shoemaker                                  51

sorry he’d not stuck to his former trade –

            with many wretched women who betrayed

            their sex and sold to neighbours magic drinks,                        54

curses, revengeful hocusses and worse.

            But let us leave this place, for high above

            moon sets and day dawns.  It is Saturday,                             57

a golden morning before Easter day.

Completed 30^th March 2013.