INFERNO, Episode 26. Damning Lust And Then Confusing It With Love: Inferno, Canto V, Lines 52 - 87
When we left Virgil and Dante, the pilgrim had just asked who was being tossed this way and that in the winds of lust.
Virgil answers with a list of the "great" sinners out on the wind: figures from shadowy antiquity, through the Trojan War, and up to medieval romance. Maybe that’s no so shocking. But here’s what is: Virgil also seems to redefine lust, away from a "simple" sin to something more insane, more earth-shattering, and socially disruptive.
The Divine Comedy is nothing short of shocking at every turn. Dante-the-poet feels free to warp the very nature of reality to his art. Would we expect anything less?
Here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto V, Lines 52 - 87:
“The first of those whose stories
You want to know,” he then told me,
“Was empress of a polyglot world.
“She got so rotted by the vice of lechery
That she made lust legit in her laws
To blot out the shame she’d brought on herself.
“She is Semiramis—we read that
As his wife, she succeeded Ninos [to the throne]
And held the land that the Sultan now rules.
“Next is she who offed herself for love
And ripped up her faithfulness to the ashes of Sychaeus.
And then there’s raunchy Cleopatra.
“Look at Helen, around whom so many horrid times
Revolved, and look at the great Achilles
Who waged a final battle with love.
“Look at Paris, Tristan!” And he pointed out
More than a thousand shadows and named them, too,
Every one whom love had cut off from our life.
After I heard my teacher name
The ladies of old and their knights,
Pity grabbed me, and I was almost lost.
I began: “Poet, I really want
To speak with those two who go together
And seem so light in the wind.”
And he to me, “You will see them when they
Get closer to us. Then beg them
By the love that drives them and they will come to you.”
Right when the wind bent them close to us,
I spoke up, “O worn-out souls,
Come talk to us, if no one disallows it.”
As doves are drawn to their sweet nest
With their wings open and firm, summoned by their desire,
Moving on the air, wanting to land,
Just so these spirits slipped away from the flock near Dido
And came to us through the malevolent air—
That’s how strong my endearing cry was.