The Souls of Paola and Francesca View Annotations Image Gallery
1	So I descended from the first enclosure
2	down to the second circle, that which girdles
3	less space but grief more great, that goads to weeping.
4	There dreadful Minos stands, gnashing his teeth:
5	examining the sins of those who enter,
6	he judges and assigns as his tail twines.
7	I mean that when the spirit born to evil
8	appears before him, it confesses all;
9	and he, the connoisseur of sin, can tell
10	the depth in Hell appropriate to it;
11	as many times as Minos wraps his tail
12	around himself, that marks the sinner's level.
13	Always there is a crowd that stands before him:
14	each soul in turn advances toward that judgment;
15	they speak and hear, then they are cast below.
16	Arresting his extraordinary task,
17	Minos, as soon as he had seen me, said:
18	O you who reach this house of suffering,
19	be careful how you enter, whom you trust;
20	the gate is wide, but do not be deceived!
21	To which my guide replied: But why protest?
22	Do not attempt to block his fated path:
23	our passage has been willed above, where One
24	can do what He has willed; and ask no more.
25	Now notes of desperation have begun
26	to overtake my hearing; now I come
27	where mighty lamentation beats against me.
28	I reached a place where every light is muted,
29	which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest,
30	when it is battered by opposing winds.
31	The hellish hurricane, which never rests,
32	drives on the spirits with its violence:
33	wheeling and pounding, it harasses them.
34	When they come up against the ruined slope,
35	then there are cries and wailing and lament,
36	and there they curse the force of the divine.
37	I learned that those who undergo this torment
38	are damned because they sinned within the flesh,
39	subjecting reason to the rule of lust.
40	And as, in the cold season, starlings' wings
41	bear them along in broad and crowded ranks
42	so does that blast bear on the guilty spirits:
43	now here, now there, now down, now up, it drives them.
44	There is no hope that ever comforts them
45	no hope for rest and none for lesser pain.
46	And just as cranes in flight will chant their lays,
47	arraying their long file across the air,
48	so did the shades I saw approaching, borne
49	by that assailing wind, lament and moan;
50	so that I asked him: Master, who are those
51	who suffer punishment in this dark air?
52	The first of those about whose history
53	you want to know, my master then told me
54	once ruled as empress over many nations.
55	Her vice of lust became so customary
56	that she made license licit in her laws
57	to free her from the scandal she had caused.
58	She is Semiramis, of whom we read
59	that she was Ninus' wife and his successor:
60	she held the land the Sultan now commands.
61	That other spirit killed herself for love,
62	and she betrayed the ashes of Sychaeus;
63	the wanton Cleopatra follows next.
64	See Helen, for whose sake so many years
65	of evil had to pass; see great Achilles,
66	who finally met love in his last battle.
67	See Paris, Tristan . . .-and he pointed out
68	and named to me more than a thousand shades
69	departed from our life because of love.
70	No sooner had I heard my teacher name
71	the ancient ladies and the knights, than pity
72	seized me, and I was like a man astray.
73	My first words: Poet, I should willingly
74	speak with those two who go together there
75	and seem so lightly carried by the wind.
76	And he to me: You'll see when they draw closer
77	to us, and then you may appeal to them
78	by that love which impels them. They will come.
79	No sooner had the wind bent them toward us
80	than I urged on my voice: O battered souls
81	if One does not forbid it, speak with us.
82	Even as doves when summoned by desire,
83	borne forward by their will, move through the air
84	with wings uplifted, still, to their sweet nest,
85	those spirits left the ranks where Dido suffers
86	approaching us through the malignant air;
87	so powerful had been my loving cry.
88	O living being, gracious and benign,
89	who through the darkened air have come to visit
90	our souls that stained the world with blood, if He
91	who rules the universe were friend to us
92	then we should pray to Him to give you peace
93	for you have pitied our atrocious state.
94	Whatever pleases you to hear and speak
95	will please us, too, to hear and speak with you,
96	now while the wind is silent, in this place.
97	The land where I was born lies on that shore
98	to which the Po together with the waters
99	that follow it descends to final rest.
100	Love, that can quickly seize the gentle heart,
101	took hold of him because of the fair body
102	taken from me how that was done: still wounds me.
103	Love, that releases no beloved from loving
104	took hold of me so strongly through his beauty
105	that, as you see, it has not left me yet.
106	Love led the two of us unto one death.
107	Caina waits for him who took our life.
108	These words were borne across from them to us.
109	When I had listened to those injured souls,
110	I bent my head and held it low until
111	the poet asked of me: What are you thinking?
112	When I replied, my words began: Alas,
113	how many gentle thoughts, how deep a longing,
114	had led them to the agonizing pass!
115	Then I addressed my speech again to them,
116	and I began: Francesca, your afflictions
117	move me to tears of sorrow and of pity.
118	But tell me, in the time of gentle sighs,
119	with what and in what way did Love allow you
120	to recognize your still uncertain longings?
121	And she to me: There is no greater sorrow
122	than thinking back upon a happy time
123	in misery and this your teacher knows.
124	Yet if you long so much to understand
125	the first root of our love, then I shall tell
126	my tale to you as one who weeps and speaks.
127	One day, to pass the time away, we read
128	of Lancelot how love had overcome him.
129	We were alone, and we suspected nothing.
130	And time and time again that reading led
131	our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,
132	and yet one point alone defeated us.
133	When we had read how the desired smile
134	was kissed by one who was so true a lover,
135	this one, who never shall be parted from me,
136	while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.
137	A Gallehault indeed, that book and he
138	who wrote it, too; that day we read no more.
139	And while one spirit said these words to me,
140	the other wept, so that because of pity
141	I fainted, as if I had met my death.
142	And then I fell as a dead body falls.

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