HELL. Данте Алигьери
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34 The First Traitor. Hell’s Exit
1: The Dark Wood. Virgil
1 In middle age I wholly lost my way,
finding myself within an evil wood
far from the right straight road we all should tread,
4 and what a wood! So densely tangled, dark,
jaggily thorned, so hard to press on through,
even the memory renews my dread.
7 My misery, my almost deadly fear
led on to such discovery of good,
I’ll tell you of it, if you care to hear.
I cannot say how I had wandered there, 10
when dozy, dull and desperate for sleep
my feet strayed out of the true thoroughfare,
till deep among the trees an upward slope 13
gave to my fearful soul a thrill of hope
as rising ground at last became a hill,
and looking up I saw a summit bright 16
with dawn – the rising sun that shows us all
where we should travel by its heavenly light.
This quieted a little while the fright 19
that churned the blood within my heart’s lagoon
through the long journey of that gloomy night.
Like shipwrecked swimmers in a stormy sea 22
who, tired and panting but at last ashore,
look back on swamping breakers thoughtfully,
I turned to view, though wishing still to leave, 25
the terrifying forest in the glen
no living soul but mine had struggled through.
My weary body rested then until, 28
rising, I climbed the sloping wilderness,
so that each footstep raised me higher still.
But see! The uphill climb had just begun 31
when suddenly a leopard, light, quick, gay
and brightly spotted, sprang before my feet,
dodging from side to side, blocking the way 34
so swiftly and with such determination
she sometimes nearly forced me to retreat.
37 The sun had reached a height dimming the stars
created with him on the second day,
after the birth of time and space and light,
40 and this recalled God’s generosity,
letting me feel some good at least might be
within the leopard’s carnival ferocity,
43 so dappled, bright and jolly was that beast,
but not so bright to stop me shuddering
at a fresh shock – a lion came in sight,
46 his mighty head held high, his savage glare
fixed upon me in such a hungry way
it seemed to terrify the very air.
49 A wolf beside him, rabid from starvation,
horribly hungry, far more dangerous,
has driven multitudes to desperation,
52 me too! For she established my disgrace,
(that worst of beasts) by killing my desire
to climb up higher to a better place.
55 A millionaire made glorious by gain
then hit by sudden loss of all he has,
cries out in vast astonishment and pain.
58 So did I, shoved down backwards, foot by foot,
by pressure of that grim relentless brute
till forced into the sunless wood again.
61 Appearing in its shade a human shape
both seemed and sounded centuries away,
murmuring words almost beyond my hearing,
therefore I yelled, “Pity and help me, please, 64
whether you be a living man or ghost!”
and pleaded, crouching down before his knees.
“Not man – though once I was, in Lombardy, 67
where both my parents dwelled in Mantua,
and I was born in Caesar’s reign,” said he,
“but educated in Augustan Rome 70
when the