The Eighth Circle. Fraud
The Ninth Trench. Sowers of Discord
Who ever could, ev’n with unfettered words,
tell fully of the blood and of the wounds
which now I saw, though oft he told the tale?
All tongues would certainly fall short of it,
by reason of our speech and of our mind,
whose means are small for taking in so much.
If all the people should again assemble,
who on Apulia’s fortune-ravaged soil
suffered of old from all the loss of blood
shed by the Trojans, and in that long war,
which with its spoil of rings made such high heaps,
as Livy writes, who maketh no mistakes;
with those who felt the painful force of blows
received in waging war with Robert Guiscard,
and those whose bones are still heaped up together
at Ceperano, where a faithless liar
was each Apulian, and near Tagliacozzo,
where old Alardo won, though all unarmed;
and if, of these, one showed a limb pierced through,
and one a limb lopped off, ’t would all be nothing,
compared with this ninth trench’s foul display.
No cask, indeed, by loss of middle-board
or stave, is opened as was one I saw,
split from the chin to where one breaketh wind;
while down between his legs his entrails hung,
his pluck appeared, and that disgusting sack,
which maketh excrement of what is swallowed.
While I on seeing him was all intent,
he looked at me, and opening with his hands
his breast, he said: “See now how I am cloven!
Behold how torn apart Mahomet is!
Ali in tears moves on ahead of me,
cloven in his face from forelock down to chin;
and all the others whom thou seest here
disseminators were, when still alive,
of strife and schism, and hence are cloven thus.
There is a devil here behind, who thus
fiercely adorns, and to the sword’s edge puts
each member of this company anew,
when we have gone around the woeful road;
because, ere one return in front of him,
the wounds thus made have all been closed again.
But who art thou, that musest on the crag,
perhaps to put off going to the torture
adjudged thine accusation of thyself?”
“Death hath not reached him yet,” replied my Teacher,
“nor to a torment is he led by guilt,
but that complete experience may be giv’n him,
I, who am dead, must needs conduct him here
from circle unto circle down through Hell;
and this is true, as that I speak to thee.”
On hearing him, more were there than a hundred
who stopped there in the ditch to look at me,
and who through their surprise forgot their pain.
“To Fra Dolcino do thou therefore say,
thou that, perhaps, wilt shortly see the sun,
if soon he would not hither follow me,
to arm him so with food, lest stress of snow
should give the Novarese a victory,
which else would not be easily obtained.”
When one foot he had raised…
