Inferno by Dante Alighiere, extract

      Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. For it is only by encountering Satan, in the heart of Hell, that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin.

Extract

 CANTO 1

1 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che´ la diritta via era smarrita.

4 Ahi quanto a dir qual era e` cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte che nel pensier rinova la paura!

7 Tant' e` amara che poco e` piu` morte; ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai, diro` de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

10 Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai, tant' era pien di sonno a quel punto che la verace via abbandonai.

13 Ma poi ch'i' fui al pie` d'un colle giunto, la` dove terminava quella valle che m'avea di paura il cor compunto,

16 guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle vestite gia` de' raggi del pianeta che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.

19 Allor fu la paura un poco queta che nel lago del cor m'era durata la notte ch'i' passai con tanta pieta.

22 E come quei che con lena affannata, uscito fuor del pelago a la riva, si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata:

25 cosı` l'animo mio, ch'ancor fuggiva, si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo che non lascio` gia` mai persona viva.

CANTO 1

1* At one point midway on our path in life, I came around and found myself now searching through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost.

4 How hard it is to say what that wood was, a wilderness, savage, brute, harsh and wild. Only to think of it renews my fear!

7* So bitter, that thought, that death is hardly worse. But since my theme will be the good I found there, I mean to speak of other things I saw.

10 I do not know, I cannot rightly say, how first I came to be here – so full of sleep, that moment, abandoning the true way on.

13* But then, on reaching the foot of a hill which marked the limit of the dark ravine that had before so pierced my heart with panic,

16 I looked to that height and saw its shoulders already clothed in rays from the planet that leads all others, on any road, aright.

19 My fears, at this, were somewhat quieted, though terror, awash in the lake of my heart, had lasted all the night I'd passed in anguish.

22 And then, like someone labouring for breath who, safely reaching shore from open sea, still turns and stares across those perilous waves,

25 so in my mind – my thoughts all fleeing still –  I turned around to marvel at that strait that let no living soul pass through till now.

http://www.popularpenguins.com.au/default.cfm