12
Here sighs and cries and shrieks of lamentation
echoed throughout the starless air of Hell;
as first these sounds resounding made me weep:
tongues confused, and languish strained in anguish
with cadences of anger, shrill outcries
and raucous groans in time to slapping hands.
raising a whirling storm that turns itself
Forever through that air of endless black,
like grains of sand swirling when a whirlwind blows
(III. 22-30).
50
He vividly depicted the distressing torment suffered by those who had committed sins springing
from lust.
And now the notes of anger start to play
upon my ears; and now I find myself
where sounds on sounds of weeping pound at me.
I came to a place where no light shone at all,
bellowing like the sea racked by a tempest,
when warring sounds attack it from both sides.
The infernal storm, eternal in its rage,
sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast:
it whirls them, lashing them with punishment.
When they are swept back past their place of judgment,
then come the shrieks, laments and anguished cries;
there they blaspheme the power of almighty God.
I learned that to this place of punishment
all those who sin in lust have been condemned,
those who make reason slave to appetite;
And as the wings of starlings in the winter
bear them along in wide-spread, crowded flocks,
so does that wind propel the evil spirits:
here, then there, and up and down, it sweeps them
forever, without hope to comfort them
(hope, not of getting rest, but of suffering less)
(V. 25-45).
51
Different, but no less repugnant, torment will be the fate of those who were overcome by
anger or who were excessively lazy. Dante described these sufferings as occurring in a swamp
named Styx.
And I, intent on looking as we passed,