developed between Francesca and Gianciotto’s younger brother, Paolo. One day the betrayed husband discovered them in an amorous embrace and slew them both.
“O living creature, gracious and so kind, who makes your way here through this dingy air to visit us who stained the world with blood,
90
if we could claim as friend the King of Kings, we would beseech him that he grant you peace, you who show pity for our atrocious plight.
93
Whatever pleases you to hear or speak we will hear and we will speak about with you as long as the wind, here where we are, is silent.
96
The place where I was born lies on the shore where the river Po with its attendant streams descends to seek its final resting place.
99
Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart, seized this one for the beauty of my body, torn from me. (How it happened still offends me!)
102
Love, that excuses no one loved from loving, seized me so strongly with delight in him that, as you see, he never leaves my side.
105
Love led us straight to sudden death together. Caïna awaits the one who quenched our lives. ” These were the words that came from them to us.
108
When those offended souls had told their story, I bowed my head and kept it bowed until the poet said, “What are you thinking of?”
111
When finally I spoke, I sighed, “Alas, all those sweet thoughts, and oh, how much desiring brought these two down into this agony. ”
114
And then I turned to them and tried to speak; I said, “Francesca, the torment that you suffer brings painful tears of pity to my eyes.
117
107. Caïna was one of the four divisions of Cocytus, the lower part of Hell, wherein those souls who treacherously betrayed their kin are tormented.
But tell me, in that time of your sweet sighing how, and by what signs, did love allow you to recognize your dubious desires?”
120
And she to me: “There is no greater pain than to remember, in our present grief,. past happiness (as well your teacher knows)!
123
But if your great desire is to learn the very root of such a love as ours, I shall tell you, but in words of flowing tears.
126
One day we read, to pass the time away, of Lancelot, of how he fell in love; we were alone, innocent of suspicion.
129
Time and again our eyes were brought together by the book we read; our faces flushed and paled. To the moment of one line alone we yielded:
132
it was when we read about those longed-for lips now being kissed by such a famous lover, that this one (who shall never leave my side)
135
then kissed my mouth, and trembled as he did. Our Galehot was that book and he who wrote it. That day we read no further. ” And all the while
138
the one of the two spirits spoke these words, the other wept, in such a way that pity blurred my senses; I swooned as though to die,
141
and fell to Hell’s floor as a body, dead, falls.
CANTO VI
O
N RECOVERING
consciousness the Pilgrim finds himself with Virgil in the Third Circle, where the Gluttons are punished. These shades are mired in filthy muck and are eternally battered by cold and dirty hail,rain, and snow. Soon the travelers come upon Cerberus, the three-headed, doglike beast who guards the Gluttons, but Virgil pacifies him with fistfuls of slime and the two poets pass on. One of the shades recognizes Dante the Pilgrim and hails him. It is Ciacco, a Florentine who, before they leave, makes a prophecy concerning the political future of Florence. As the poets move away, the Pilgrim questions Virgil about the Last Judgment and other matters until the two arrive at the next circle.
Regaining now my senses, which had fainted at the sight of these two who were kinsmen lovers, a piteous sight confusing me to tears,
3
new suffering and new sinners suffering appeared to me, no matter where I moved or turned my eyes, no matter where I gazed.
6
I am in the third circle, in the round of rain eternal, cursed, cold, and falling heavy, unchanging beat, unchanging quality.
9
Thick hail and dirty water mixed with snow come down in
“O living creature, gracious and so kind, who makes your way here through this dingy air to visit us who stained the world with blood,
90
if we could claim as friend the King of Kings, we would beseech him that he grant you peace, you who show pity for our atrocious plight.
93
Whatever pleases you to hear or speak we will hear and we will speak about with you as long as the wind, here where we are, is silent.
96
The place where I was born lies on the shore where the river Po with its attendant streams descends to seek its final resting place.
99
Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart, seized this one for the beauty of my body, torn from me. (How it happened still offends me!)
102
Love, that excuses no one loved from loving, seized me so strongly with delight in him that, as you see, he never leaves my side.
105
Love led us straight to sudden death together. Caïna awaits the one who quenched our lives. ” These were the words that came from them to us.
108
When those offended souls had told their story, I bowed my head and kept it bowed until the poet said, “What are you thinking of?”
111
When finally I spoke, I sighed, “Alas, all those sweet thoughts, and oh, how much desiring brought these two down into this agony. ”
114
And then I turned to them and tried to speak; I said, “Francesca, the torment that you suffer brings painful tears of pity to my eyes.
117
107. Caïna was one of the four divisions of Cocytus, the lower part of Hell, wherein those souls who treacherously betrayed their kin are tormented.
But tell me, in that time of your sweet sighing how, and by what signs, did love allow you to recognize your dubious desires?”
120
And she to me: “There is no greater pain than to remember, in our present grief,. past happiness (as well your teacher knows)!
123
But if your great desire is to learn the very root of such a love as ours, I shall tell you, but in words of flowing tears.
126
One day we read, to pass the time away, of Lancelot, of how he fell in love; we were alone, innocent of suspicion.
129
Time and again our eyes were brought together by the book we read; our faces flushed and paled. To the moment of one line alone we yielded:
132
it was when we read about those longed-for lips now being kissed by such a famous lover, that this one (who shall never leave my side)
135
then kissed my mouth, and trembled as he did. Our Galehot was that book and he who wrote it. That day we read no further. ” And all the while
138
the one of the two spirits spoke these words, the other wept, in such a way that pity blurred my senses; I swooned as though to die,
141
and fell to Hell’s floor as a body, dead, falls.
CANTO VI
O
N RECOVERING
consciousness the Pilgrim finds himself with Virgil in the Third Circle, where the Gluttons are punished. These shades are mired in filthy muck and are eternally battered by cold and dirty hail,rain, and snow. Soon the travelers come upon Cerberus, the three-headed, doglike beast who guards the Gluttons, but Virgil pacifies him with fistfuls of slime and the two poets pass on. One of the shades recognizes Dante the Pilgrim and hails him. It is Ciacco, a Florentine who, before they leave, makes a prophecy concerning the political future of Florence. As the poets move away, the Pilgrim questions Virgil about the Last Judgment and other matters until the two arrive at the next circle.
Regaining now my senses, which had fainted at the sight of these two who were kinsmen lovers, a piteous sight confusing me to tears,
3
new suffering and new sinners suffering appeared to me, no matter where I moved or turned my eyes, no matter where I gazed.
6
I am in the third circle, in the round of rain eternal, cursed, cold, and falling heavy, unchanging beat, unchanging quality.
9
Thick hail and dirty water mixed with snow come down in
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