OK, get ready.
It's time for Dante.
I'll tell you, just briefly, what
I've done with my translation.
I love this poem, and I'm sure you will too.
And maybe you already do.
What's brilliant about it is that Dante conceived
a kind of hell where the punishments were
an exact fit for the crime.
And it's fascinating how smart he was about it,
and what a vivid world he's able to create,
where you see your own foibles as a human.
And you also see the river of boiling blood
with the despots in it.
But it's impossible not to see one's own shortcomings
and try to be better.
So it's a brilliant poem, but it's often,
when it's translated into English,
there are certain gestures translators
make to make sure that you know it's
an old poem from a previous era.
It was written between, say, 1307 and 1316,
something like that.
It's part of the Divine Comedy, so Inferno, Purgatory,
and Paradise.
So I kept thinking, shouldn't it sound like everyday English?
Isn't that what translation is, is to put
a poem into your language?
And, in fact, if we put it into the language of the 1300s,
it would sound like Chaucer.
And they don't do that.
Instead, they put it into some kind of 16th or 17th century
English with thouest and canst.
So, Dante actually wrote, not in literary Latin, which
was the language of poetry at that time,
but in the Tuscan dialect, in the vernacular, because he
wanted a living language.
So what I've done is to put it into contemporary English.
And yet, I've tried to substitute.
He had a very elaborate rhyme scheme that
created a very musical sound.
So instead, I've substituted the sounds
of contemporary English poetry, which are alliteration,
assonance, and internal rhyme.
And I've kept the three-line stanzas,
which is how he did it.
And every once in a while there would be moments
where, if I was going to put it into contemporary English,
things seemed very old-fashioned,
like something was faster than an arrow.
And that's not usually how we think about speed anymore.
So I would try to find an equivalent that
embodied the original.
And in that case, I came up with a car that's called an Ultimate
Aero, A-E-R-O, that, in 2007, was the fastest production car
in the world.
It's since been replaced in the Guinness World Records
by a faster car.
But that's our idea of speed.
So now it's, "the skiff that came across the pond
was faster than an Ultimate Aero."
But I've also not done that so often
that it becomes a comic romp, because I really
wanted the original poem.
So I'm going to read you Canto III, which
is kind of the antechamber to Hell proper.
And the people who are there were people who would have
opportunities to stand up for good, but didn't.
And so, they haven't really been terrible,
so they're not farther down where the punishments are
more painful.
But you'll see what happens.
So the first three tercets are all in caps,
because it's a sign.
So Dante's reading this sign, more or less out loud.
"WELCOME TO THE CITY OF WOE.
WELCOME TO EVERLASTING SADNESS.
WELCOME TO THE GRAVE CAVE.
JUSTICE MADE THE MAKER BUILD IT JUST LIKE THIS, WITH PRIMITIVE
LOVE AND BRICKS OF WISDOM.
IF BEING IS POWER, POWER CREATED IT, i.e., IT IS.
BEFORE THIS, THERE WAS NOTHING THAT WASN'T ETERNAL, AND AFTER,
NOTHING BUT THE ETERNAL.
YOU, WHO HAVE NO HOPE, ENTER HERE."
These words, in soot and all in caps, as if by a hurried hand,
were scrawled on the stone overhead,
above a creaking door.
"Sir," I said.
"This is harsh."
He spoke like an expert nephew to a drunkard uncle.
"Now you need to leave behind your fear.
Now you need to kill your cowardice.
We're where I said we'd come to, the place
where you see the wretched dead, who have lost
the aid of their intellect."
He touched my hand as if to tell me all would be all right.
Then we crossed over from where we'd been,
into the inner sanctum that houses hidden things.
The starless air was echoing with countless sighs,
horrific cries, extended loud laments.
I was in tears as I listened.
The angry accents, the strident utterances, the striking hands,
the near deafening chorus of a million dolls'
dark inner voices crying mama, mama, mama,
veered off walls and swirled around and around,
like sand in a storm becomes one with the wind that carries it.
And I, circled by horror, said, "Sir, what am I hearing?
Who are these people so overcome by grief?"
He said, "This is the inheritance
of the contemptible, who did nothing wrong, but nothing
right.
They blend together with that band of vile angels
who didn't rebel but who also didn't stand with God, but only
for themselves in selfishness.
To preserve its beauty, heaven threw them out.
Deepest hell doesn't want them, since the truly wicked
would be able to gloat, We're worse.
We're truly depraved."
I asked, "What torments them?
Why do they cry so loud and so unremittingly?"
He answered, "I'll tell you quickly.
They wish to die, but cannot.
Their blind lives are so empty, so without reprieve, they
envy the nothing that an ending would be.
They're not meant to be remembered.
Mercy turns her back.
Justice disdains them.
They're not worth our attention.
Look, and then let's go."
Then I saw a flag, moving forward so fast,
and flipping back and forth so relentlessly it
seemed indefatigable.
It was followed by a sad and endless train of people,
racing after.
Never had I dreamed death had so many sycophants.
I saw some I recognized, and then
the ghost of one who'd stood down when faced with doing good
and chose instead to be a coward.
I knew, incontestably, this scourge, these contemptible sad
sacks were the enemies of both Jekyll and Hyde.
They'd never lived, and now would never die.
Naked as the they were born, bitter wasps and hornets
covered them.
Blood trickled between their tears.
The sorry, sticky mixture dripped from their chins
to their feet and into the mouths of maggots.
Further on, beyond these, I saw a crowd gathered
on the bank of a wide river.
I asked my guide, could you please tell me who these are,
and why they're waiting with such eagerness
to board the boat I can barely make out in the distance?
He told me, "Hush, it will all be clear
when we reach the bank of the miserable river Acheron."
I was afraid I'd annoyed him by asking, so I stared at my feet
and stayed quiet until we reached the river.
Then, out of nowhere, there was an old man
with white hair coming toward us in a boat, growling,
"Give it up, you scum uncles.
You'll never see the sky again.
Like Red Rover, I'm taking you over to the other side,
where you'll eat and drink perpetual darkness.
Your naked asses will feel the furnace and the ice.
And you, with the beating heart, step away from the dead."
When I stood my ground he said, "You
can't get to where you're going from here.
You need the dinghy marked P for purgatory.
That one leaves from a different pier."
Virgil said, "Charon, calm down.
We were standing on the ramp.
It's been decided where decisions are made.
His passport has a stamp.
Now leave it alone."
The hairy cheeks of the boatman, king of the river rats,
went slack.
His fire eyes flared, but he kept silent.
The weary and naked ones, however,
went ashen, and gritted their teeth
as soon as they heard his vicious speech.
They cursed God, their parents, the human race,
the moment of their conception, their fathers' seed,
the space between their mothers' legs,
and the bed where they were made.
Then they moved as one, as if conjoined,
sobbing all the while, along the evil shore that
awaits any and all who failed to fear God.
Where demon Charon, his eyes like hollow furnaces filled
with fire, herds them together with a nod,
or beckons with a bent finger, smacking the stragglers
with his oar.
Fall signals the tree to drop its leaves
and it does, one after another, until the branch
looks down and sees a blanket on the ground.
Like that, Adam's wicked children
leave the shore, one by one when summoned,
the way trained birds come when called with a tin whistle.
Then they go over the murky water.
Before the boat has landed on the far side,
a new group is already huddled, naked on the near.
"Now," said my teacher, "to your earlier question.
The ones you see here have died before making amends.
They come from every known country.
The reason they're so eager to cross the river
is that the desire for divine justice prompts them.
The very thing they fear is precisely what they want.
The good never board the boat, so if Charon
curses both your shoes and the dirt beneath your feet, perhaps
you now know why."
At that, the pitch-dark plane shook.
Every aspect of that moment is burned into my brain.
The cold sweat inside my clothes,
the hot wind that rose off the ground, wet with tears,
the massive crimson camera flash that lit the night scene
and turned us red.
I lost it and dropped, like someone taken by exhaustion,
or like a phone goes dead.