Canto I of Hell

General Prolog of the Human Comedy. The meeting with Baudelaire

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

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

  Tant'è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

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

At midway of my life, I was in a perverse place, I had lost my way.

It was in a wild Country, rough and fierce, I am still shivering, 
as bitter as death itself.

could not say how I came there, pushed by my appetites,
before losing my way out. When I arrived in front of a bottomless precipice
at the far end of this Country 
what frightened me so much, I closed my eyes 
and I imagined the joys that I could expect from there. 
Also, my fright calmed down and I looked at  the journey back which had left my spirit 
so disturbed and which, besides,  leave no one indifferent.

After being rest, I took the road again, it was early morning, a she-wolf 
stopped me on my way; she was frivolous and agile, her naked flesh covered with redness marks. 

She was walking beside me, perverse, with a carnal hunger, 
she was like a female in heat, she must had made many males, miserable.

I was terrified, I requested the pity from a shadow passing by, by chance: 

"Have pity on me, whoever you are, shadow or man of full-right!" 

The shadow answered me: 
 "Do not fear, I was a poet I sang the beast, 
Her, the same one who haunts your souls. And you, why so much anguish, 
shouldn't you cross that precipice, right in front, which leads you to Beatitude?" 


"So, you are Baudelaire, as eloquent in your speach than in your verses," 

I answered him with surprise. 
"I read you, again and again and sang your verses with Léo Ferré's voice. 
My style is like yours, at least it is what I believe.


Do you see this she-wolf who stops my steps and makes me hesitate between her and all those,
 those other invisible beasts devouring my soul?

 
Defend me against her, who makes my arteries trembling and my apparatus inflates.
 Show me how to overcome the beasts that torment me 
and that you know so well how to understand."

 And he advised me as follows:  
"You must change your destiny, because this beast that make you feat  
does not leave any being indifferent 
She creates so much passion that she kills reasoning, on man. 
Her nature is so perverse and so cruel that never she appease her passions, 
and, after having filled all her desires, she has as much appetite than before."

 And he added:  

"Many are the mortals with whom she couples herself, as well as others like her; 
they will be more and more numerous, until the day the Immortal Male will appear
who will make them perish in the torments of the Gehenne, 
and it is very well from there, believe me, that they come from. 
For you, the best will be to follow me, I will be your guide away from this life 
and I will lead you to the eternal shores, where you will hear the clamours of the virgins, 
the cries of the girls, the song of the so beautiful ladies who proclaim the eternal pleasure." 


And he added after a long silence: 
"And then, you will see those that fire, give back happiness, by the hope to rejoin the virgins,
the too beautiful ladies and all these other girls 
who make the happy souls, rejoice forever, from an eternal fire.
 If you want to climb over them, I recommend an Antilope 
worthier than I am to lead you to Her, She is a very beautiful soul.
 Because I cannot enter this Place having been rebellious
 to his Master, as much as with the Other who reigns away from Heaven."


And I told him: 
 "Poet, in the name of Satan you knows so well and to free me 
from the impulses that harass me, I beg you to take me to this place 
 you describe so well, and let me join those who haunts it." 

Then, he started walking, and I followed his steps.