The Edge of the Central Well
The Giants
One and the selfsame tongue first wounded me,
so that it colored both my cheeks, and then
supplied me with the medicine required;
Achilles’ and his father’s lance, I hear,
was likewise wont to be the source of, first,
a sad, and, after, of a grateful gift.
We turned our backs upon the woeful vale
over the bank which girds it round about,
and passed across without a single word.
Here less than night it was, and less than day,
so that my sight advanced not far; but here
I heard a horn give forth so loud a sound,
that it had rendered any thunder faint;
this led mine eyes, as counter to its path
they followed, wholly to a single place.
After the woeful rout, when Charlemagne
the holy army of his knights had lost,
Roland blew not so terrible a blast.
I had not kept my head turned toward it long,
when many lofty towers I seemed to see;
I, therefore: “Teacher, say what town is this?”
“Since through the darkness from too far away
thou peerest,” he replied, “it comes about
that afterward thou errest in conceiving.
If yonder thou attain, thou ’lt clearly see
how from afar one’s senses are deceived;
hence onward urge thyself a little more.”
Thereat he took my hand with kindly care,
and said to me: “Ere further on we go,
so that the fact may seem less strange to thee,
know, then, that towers they are not, but Giants;
and all of them are standing in the well
around the bank, each from his navel down.”
As, when a fog is thinning off, one’s gaze
little by little giveth shape to that,
which, since it packs the air, the mist conceals;
even so, as through the dense, dark air I pierced,
and nearer drew and nearer to the brink,
error in me took flight, and fear increased;
for, as upon its round enclosing walls
Montereggione crowns itself with towers;
thus o’er the margin which surrounds the well
with one half of their bodies towered up
those frightful Giants, whom, when from the sky
he thunders, Jupiter is threatening still.
Already now was I distinguishing
the face of one, his shoulders and his breast,
most of his paunch, and, down his sides, both arms.
When Nature ceased from making animals
like these, and took such executioners
from Mars, she certainly did very well;
and ev’n if she of elephants and whales
repent her not, whoever subtly looks
holds her therein the more discreet and just;
for where the reasoning faculty is joined
to evil will equipped with power to act,
people can make against it no defence.
His face appeared to me as long and big
as is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter’s,
and in proportion to it were his other bones;
so that the bank, which from his middle down
an apron was, showed quite so much of him
above it,…
