Inferno - Canto I

As when Divine Love set those beautiful
Lights into motion at creation's dawn,
And the time of day and season combined to fill


My heart with hope of that beast with festive skin --
But not so much that the next sight wasn't fearful:
A lion came at me, his head high as he ran,


Roaring with hunger so the air appeared to tremble.
Then, a grim she-wolf -- whose leanness seemed to compress
All the world's cravings, that had made miserable


Such multitudes; she put such heaviness
Into my spirit, I lost hope of the crest.
Like someone eager to win, who tested by loss


Surrenders to gloom and weeps, so did that beast
Make me feel, as harrying toward me at a lope
She forced me back toward where the sun is lost.

Inferno - Opening

... when I came to stop
Below a hill that marked one end of the valley
That had pierced my heart with terror, I looked up

Toward the crest and saw its shoulders already
Mantled in rays of that bright planet that shows
The road to everyone, whatever our journey.

CANTO I

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard -- so tangled and rough


And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well


I'll tell what I saw, though how I came to enter
I cannot well say, being so full of sleep
Whatever moment it was I began to blunder

For Frank Bidart

Copyright 1994 by Farrar, Straus and Grioux
English translation copyright 1994 by Robert Pinsky
Italian text copyright 1991 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano
Illustrations 1994 by Michael Mazur
Foreword copyright 1994 by John Freccero
Notes copyright 1994 by Nicole Pinsky
All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by Harper Collins Canada Ltd
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 1994

I The Supreme - pg. 108

(in the private notebook)

Signing this armistice, so contrary to the aims of the annexionist invasion and the interests of Buenos Aires, was to prod a sore spot, the Tacitus of the Plata will say later on. Our sorest spot of all, Tacitus-Brigadier. You too will invade our country; and then you will begin quietly translating the Divine Comedy by invading Alighieri's Avernal circles.

Pierre, Or The Ambiguities - pg. 79

His burst of impatience against the sublime Italian, Dante, arising
from that poet being the one who, in a former time, had first opened to his
shuddering eyes the infinite cliffs and gulfs of human mystery and misery; --
though still more in the way of experimental vision, than of sensational
presentiment or experience (for as yet he had not seen so far and deep as Dante,
and therefore was entirely incompetent to meet the grim bard fairly on his
peculiar ground), this ignorant burst of his young impatience, -- also arising
from that half-contamptuous dislike, and sometimes self-loathing, with which,
either naturally feebele or undeveloped minds, regard those dark ravings of the
loftier poets, which are in eternal opposition to their own finespun, shallow
dreams of rapturous or prudential Youth; -- this rash, untutured burst of
Pierre's young impatience, seemed to have carried off with it, all the other
forms of his melancholy -- if melancholy it had been -- and left him now serene
again, and ready for any tranquil pleasantness the gods might have in store. For
his, indeed, was true Youth's temperament, -- summary with sadness, swift to
joyfulness, and long protracting, and detaining with that joyfulness, when once
it came fully night to him.