Che l'arte vostra quella, quanto puote, Lo Genesì dal principio, conviene Per sè natura, e per la sua seguace, E il balzo via là oltra si dismonta.' 103. "That human industry follows nature, as far as it can.' 105. 'So that human industry is, so to speak, the grandchild of God.' 106. Queste due: nature and industry. 108. Mankind must derive its sustenance and progress.' See Gen. ii, 15, and iii, 19: And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it;' 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. . .' 110. He despises nature both directly and indirectly (through its follower, human industry). III. The money-lender sets his hope on gain derived neither from nature nor from toil. 113. Virgil, as usual, indicates the hour (in Jerusalem) by a description of the sky, which, of course, is not visible from Hell. The Fishes are wriggling on the horizon (orizzonta=orizonte), i. e., the constellation of Pisces, which precedes Aries, is just rising; the wain, or Great Bear, lies wholly in the quarter of Caurus, the northwest wind. The time is three hours or more after midnight. CANTO XII ARGUMENT THROUGHOUT this episode, either by accident or by design, Dante does not speak. The canto deals with the descent into the seventh circle the abode of the violent and the description of the first of the three concentric rings that compose it. This first girone consists of a river of hot blood, a picture of sanguinary relations to one's fellow-men. The Visio Alberici also tells of homicides in a lake of boiling blood; and the Visio Sancti Pauli shows different kinds of sinners immersed to varying depths in a fiery stream. In the Inferno, too, the degree of immersion varies between eyebrows and feet, according to the wickedness of the offence. Along the narrow bank run centaurs, whose business it is to keep the other souls in their proper place. These half-human guardians are not depicted as hateful or repulsive: they do not seem to be demons, although their function is similar to that of the devils beside the ditch of barrators in the eighth circle; they appear to be rather the spirits of real centaurs, creatures whose semi-equine character made their excesses more natural and consequently less blameworthy. They may be intended also to serve as illustrations of Aristotle's doctrine of bestiality. A still stronger suggestion of bestiality is conveyed by the presiding genius of the whole seventh circle, the Minotaur, half man and half bull, whose blind fury ('quell' ira bestial') defeats its own end and affords the travellers a chance to pass him. This monster — 'bestia,' Virgil calls him was the offspring of a bull and Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete, who satisfied her abnormal passion (inflicted by Venus as a curse) by enclosing herself in a wooden cow 'colei Che s' imbestid nelle 'mbestiate schegge,' as Dante says in Purg. XXVI, 86-7. The Athenian hero Theseus slew him in the Labyrinth, guided by Ariadne, the daughter of Pasiphae and Minos. Dante, to avoid placing him in any one of the three gironi, puts him on the cliff that overlooks them all. So he represents Geryon, the image of Fraud, as hovering over the eighth circle. The poets' way down the precipice lies in a huge landslide made by the earthquake which, when Christ died and descended into Hell, shook also a part of the wall between the unbaptized and the lustful (V, 34), and likewise damaged the hypocrites' valley in the eighth circle. In each case Dante uses the word ruina. This vast slide our poet compares with one in northeastern Italy, the Slavini di Marco, described by Albertus Magnus. For the passage from Albertus Magnus, see Torraca. Era lo loco, ove a scender la riva Venimmo, alpestro e, per quel ch' ivi er' anco, Di qua da Trento l' Adice percosse, O per tremuoto o per sostegno manco, E in su la punta della rotta lacca Tu credi che qui sia il duca d' Atene, Ammaestrato dalla tua sorella, 2. Quel ch' ivi er' anco is the Minotaur. 11. Lacca: cf. VII, 16. 12. Creti was in use beside Creta. Cf. XIV, 95. 15. Fiacca, 'weakens,' 'subdues.' 17. Theseus: so called by Boccaccio and Chaucer. 5 10 15 20 Qual è quel toro che si slaccia in quella E quegli accorto gridò: 'Corri al varco! Mentre ch'è in furia è buon che tu ti cale.' Così prendemmo via giù per lo scarco Di quelle pietre, che spesso moviensi Ch' io discesi quaggiù nel basso inferno, Ma certo poco pria, se ben discerno, Da tutte parti l'alta valle feda Tremò sì ch' io pensai che l'universo Sentisse amor, per lo quale è chi creda 22. In quella, sc., ora: cf. VIII, 16. Cf. Æn., II, 223–4. 'Quales mugitus, fugit cum saucius aram Taurus, et incertam excussit cervice securim.' 28. Scarco, 'dump.' 31. Gia-giva, i. e., andava. 25 30 35 40 40. Feda, foul.' Cf. Mat. xxvii, 50-1: 'Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.' 42. According to Empedocles, the four elements, mixed together, produced chaos; hate, separating the seeds, brought forth from chaos all the things of the universe; love, by drawing the seeds together, can restore chaos. Dante probably got his idea of Empedocles (whom he mentioned in Inf. IV, 138) from Aristotle. Ed in quel punto questa vecchia roccia Che sì ci sproni nella vita corta, E nell' eterna poi sì mal c' immolle ! Come solean nel mondo andare a caccia. E della schiera tre si dipartiro 45 50 55 Con archi ed asticciuole prima elette; Mal fu la voglia tua sempre si tosta.' 60 65 45. Altrove in the circle of the lustful, V, 34. The same earthquake shook down the bridges over the ditch of the hypocrites in the eighth circle, but of this Virgil is not yet aware; cf. XXI, 106 and XXIII, 136. 49. The motives of violence to our fellow-man are greed and wrath. 51. C' immolle, 'dost steep us': cf. V, 19. 53. 'As if encircling all the plain.' So it does, but of course Dante can see only a small section, or arc, of it at once. 55. Traccia, 'file.' 60. Cf. Lucan, Pharsalia, VII, 142: 'Cura fuit lectis pharetras implere sagittis.' 63. Cf. Æn., VI, 389: 'Fare age, quid venias; jam istinc et comprime gressum.' 65. Chiron, son of Saturn, skilled in surgery, was the preceptor of Achilles. |