Canto XXXIV of Hell

The triumph of Belzebuth.
The crumbling of the Societal Project.

 
«Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni
verso di noi; però dinanzi mira»,
disse 'l maestro mio «se tu 'l discerni».

  Come quando una grossa nebbia spira,
o quando l'emisperio nostro annotta,
par di lungi un molin che 'l vento gira,

  veder mi parve un tal dificio allotta;
poi per lo vento mi ristrinsi retro
al duca mio; ché non lì era altra grotta.

  Già era, e con paura il metto in metro,
là dove l'ombre tutte eran coperte,
e trasparien come festuca in vetro.

"See the banners of Hell advancing, look if you can distinguish them." 

It seems to me, that I then saw a building, similar to these windmills that trembles in the wind.
I squeeze myself behind my guide, because there was no other shelter.

 I had reached the place, and, I remember that with fear, where the shadows
 resembles foetuses encrusted in glass.
Some are lying, the others are upright, this one on her head, that one on her legs;
another, curved like an arch, turns her face towards her feet, they do not have any personality, 
if not, each one engraved with red letters on their forehead, a "number of social dependency". 

When we had approached enough so that it please my Master to show me the creature 
who was of all beauty, he withdrew from in front of me and made me stop:


 "Here is Dite, and here is the place where it will be necessary for you, to be armed with courage."

 I then became frozen and without strenght, do not ask me for more dear reader ;
I only describe this place with sorrow, any word would be superfluous. 

The Emperor of the kingdom of pain, throned such a scarecrow, 
in the center of a garden made of brambles and nettles of glacial aspect.
 He had the shape of a structural complex, in pyramidal form, with widened bases 
fragile and shaking frames, so high that one can hardly see the summit.

 The structure comprised several degrees connected to each other by complex ramifications, 
 formed of deformed beings whose dimensions went from smaller to larger until the top dominated 
 by the head of the Emperor; he thus had the scale of a giant with seemingly normal human attributes;
 the beings forming the degrees mutually supported themselves on their shoulders, so that the structure 
 appeared  more fragile as it approached its base,whose extent was such as one could not see its limits. 

From where I was, I could not see in detail, the attributes of the giant whose head throned all up there 
such a Zephyr but of which, I apprehended with horror the disproportion and the monstrosity;
 physical attributes whose certain features let me understand that it was, on one hand, 
female functions, whereas others were of male caracters, of which one could not perceive 
which one of them were the dominating functions. 
This anachronistic and sinister system rested on the ground on four legs, 
if this word can be applied to such a protoplasmic structure. 


"He is Belzebuth, told me my Master, and He adorns himselve with the attributes 
of all His diabolic functions, and on which we must climb to leave the Hades. 
You will see Him in detail from the feet to the head, all along our ascension, 
I will describe you what your eye sees, what your ear hears, 
what your mouth will want to shout with horror if your spirit is able to support my description!" 


And my Master continued blowing as if he were tired: 

"Night comes and it is necessary for us to leave now. 
Arm yourself with all your courage to reach the exit and hang up well, because, 
by such ladders, it is necessary for us to move away from such difficulties and to reach the exit." 


We walked in a hurry in direction of the structure, through the icy shadows  bound together and that, 
let herselves cross through without stumbling, by my sensitive and hot body. We thus reached one of the feet 
of the monster under which, thousands of body lay there, crushed, jagged by the unconscious movements 
of the structure which moved thus, trying to maintain balance and to prevent the collapse of 
the Societal Project that this structure represented. In a hurry to leave, we climbed the first degree, 
harassed by dressed up beings with vigilent eyes like that of beasts: police officers, leaders of opinion, 
maffiosos, aubergines, "Hell's angels", union delegates, guardians of the moral order, who, assimilating us 
with zombies that populated the ground, tried to prohibit the access  to us or to make us captive 
in the links of their "social security net" with a zeal that only suit the State Tortionaries. 

We finally reached the first degree to take our breath there. We where drawn from our indolence 
by cries and rumours,demonstrations and provocations, they originates from State Servants, and 
like my Master told me, they are always in anger as if it were their only  way to serve people; 
they take people in hostage, they sabotage the structure to satisfy their corporative and union interests 
without worrying about the common good. They are protected from up there and they climb up the social ladder,
helped in that, by whowever is placed higher, who came from their ranks; the benefits from the top, 
stops on their level and never reach the level where lays the beings with cold blood.


 Then, pushed by anger more than fear, we start climbing again and we reached, in a small time, 
 the second degree. This one was made of a barrier of inert characters who seemed to sleep. 

My Master then says to me:

 "Do not let yourself baffle by the illusion, because their sleep is actually very active in scaffolding plans,  
laying down rules,  inventing inintelligibles languages, to create traps all intended to render 
more complex the structure, so that it is illegible to whoever would try to understand it,
to improve it, or to make it play the roles for which it was conceived."


It seemed to us, thus, that the more their brain functioned, the more the structure became complex 
under our eyes and the more it became fragile and so it could not do without these Civils servant, 
who, by this fact became useful although objectively useless. 

And my Master became impatient to leave, I felt it by his nervous gestures:


 "Before I am angry and that I drive out these salesmen of this Temple, from where Kafka has,
 undoubtedly drawn all the absurd contents of his litterature, 
 let us leave and try to reach the Light as fast as possible."



 We climbed the following degree with a strength fed more by vexation than by haste,
 to reach the degree where  groups of  benevolent and obsequious characters gattered around. 


"Those ones, believe they are the Deputies of the beings on the ground, 
they are there to give but they do nothing else but receive.
These are hybrid and gelatinous beings whose function is saying yes or not,
 according to whether, from up there, one asks them to say YE or NE." 


And my Master, at the same time he was speaking to me, showed me those aberrant things 
that modelled the structure in its epicenter and which appeared to be 
intermingled genitals, of which it was difficult for me to understand the function, 
so that my trouble showed on my face.


 "And yes, it is difficult here, to establish the sex of the monster, because you see there
the genitals of Belzebuth."


 I saw male testicles that hung loosely above a vagina 
surrounded by friezed flesh, in which, it seemed to me, that a clitoris was developing slowly
 in the shape of a phallus in erection, increasing in a disproportionate way,
  attracted as it was, out of the vulva, he rolled up on itself and went plunging into the anus. 

And the monster incensed himself with its long tail hanging from its buttock until he introduces it 
gloomingly in the deepness of His vagina. He was then shaken by violent convulsions, 
as if He was activated, in two acts at the same time, of autofecondation. 


"I please you my dear Marco, not to ask me explain to you the meaning of this aberration, 
if not that Belzebuth knows that God fertilizes, and that, in his desire to be as great as God,
 He tries to fertilize also, but, not knowing the manner, He uses the wrong opening.
 But I do not know myself the ways of the Divine. 
You who will have the chance to go over there, I wish you will be the witness of the Orgasms of God." 


Then I say to my Master: 
 "Master, protect me from all these wires that encumber the structure and which form 
an immense cobweb woven by demons full of goodwill who says they want me good, but who only tends 
to imprison my soul. Take me away from these deputies, these State servants, these Bureaucrats, 
these Legislators, all these representatives who pretend to be my mother 
and who wants me so much good, that they give me only evil!" 


The more we went up on the structure, the more the climbing became difficult and perilous.

"If you never climbed the Monts Chic Chocs, know that 
the more you approach to the top, the more the climbing is difficult and perilous. 
It is similar for the State than for the Chic Chocs; count yourself  lucky 
that the purpose of your climbing is to make you find this freedom which is precious to you, 
and that only the consciousness you have of it, enables you to climb these ladders 
without having to ask anything to those who detains the Power. 
Think of those, and do not envy them, who are below  in the coldness of the ground, 
and who have exchanged their consciousness against the hope to receive a little of that, 
concentrated above, who can, in return, neither see them, nor hear them, nor speak to them." 


And my Master stop talking, he seemed sad and I stop talking also. 

We climbed the following degree with many difficulties, clinging to
 the organic structures which made it dangerous, then we reached a degree suddenly narrower 
where we find the Ministers of Belzebuth and his Executive Council. 
I perceive there, much power and rivalties, I feel myself very small 
and intimidated a little, of what Baudelaire reproached me. 


"Do not fear those who project their Power and who are as fragiles as  wisp of straws; 
know that they are agitated and that they dispute the chairs, the one who will produce the bulkiest belly,
or who will bring them closer to the chair that holds the Zenith up there. But, they fall 
from their chairs as often as there are chairs to be filled. Why then  irritates yourself, whereas 
they nourish themselves from those which are cold, not from those who keep, like you, their consciousness?" 


And I could better undergo their circumspect and haughty glances, and I approached the interior of 
the structure to discover what was behind: mammals hung up at the black flesh structure, 
of which one was inordinately inflated, the other arid  and that could not give anything more to drink; 
on the still fertile mammal clung an oversise being who was titing the mammal with avidity, 
clinging to it like a starving nourrisson and all the other ministers of Belzebuth 
where looking at him with envy. Then a scintillating light drew my attention, as a heart beating 
just above the solar plexus of the beast with the infamous attributes. 
My Master saw my distress and said to me: 

"It is indeed, the sacred Hearth of the Vilain."

And after one moment of reflexion, he continued as follows:

 "He sees everything, he hears everything, he understand everything, and, like a robot 
that uses the Hertzian waves, to infiltrate  the data bases, to search and gather information; 
he is such, that he travels from brain to brain,  memorizing information, about each being 
who are in the cold: then he knows from them all: their anguishes, their dreams, 
their customs and habits, their practices, their secret thoughts, their present actions, 
their future projects, and like a Big Brother, he believes he protects them from 
external influences, as well as from themselves, by imprisoning them in a uniform Truth." 


I looked at the Sacred Heart, struck; he scintillated like a burning bush, he inflated 
and deflated under the effort he deployed to probe the consciousness of the beings 
lying in unconsciousness, like a loving and protective mother who chokes her beloved son. 
Then we undertook what proved to be the most difficult climbing of this infernal voyage.
 I suffered, I complained constantly and my Master tried to encourage me the best he could:


 "Do not fear, we now reach the coated consciousness of Belzebuth, 
the heads of Persephone, Pluton and Lucifer, those are the three virtues of Belzebuth 
and, if our praises are pleasant to them, we will have free access to the sun."


 The Emperor of the kingdom of pain had the aspect and the arrogance of a miscreant.
 Ho! how this subject appeared to me like one of amazement when I saw that His head had three faces! 
One was in front and the two others came adding to the first one in the middle of each shoulder. 
The one on the  right side was white and did not have eyes, of color of people who descend the Nile 
was the one on the left which did not have a mouth, and the one on the center was of the color 
of the hot fires, did not have any ear, and had only an attribute to devour. 
Below each one come out large wings, of scale such that 
one can not see on sea  such sails which were convenient to such a bird.
 They had no feathers but were like those of the bats; 
and he made them beat so that three winds took from him, their rise.

All the Cocyte was frozen by that; he cried and his tears drained in a bloody dribble.
In his mouth, he crushed three sinners of his teeth. 
The bites and the blows of claws tore their spines which remained all dismantled from their skin.

I said to my Master who tried, without any success, to explain the meaning of this vision: 


"Master, tell me if this voyage draws at its end, I cannot support it any more 
and I fear not to be able to finally escape from this hell." 

"Hang up well, because we must move away from so many evils." 



My Master clutched himself to the internal walls of the rock then he step outside by a hole in the wall 
and deposed me, sitted, on the edge; after what, he came close to me with a careful step.
I raised my eyes thinking I would see Belzebuth like he was when we left; 
and I saw that he was upside-down what intrigued me as much that I intrust my trouble to my Master. 


And so, he says to me:

 "You think you are still on the other side of the center, 
where I clung to the flesh of the monster who has no cease but giving shit to people. 
Now you arrived under the opposed hemisphere, under what top,  was put to death,
the Prophet who was born and lived without sin; your feet stands on a small sphere
 which forms the other face of the Giudecca. It is morning here when over there it is evening."


 And while starting moving he continued: 
"Stand up and rises: The journey is long and the road difficult, that already the sun reaches half of the third."


 The place where we were was a natural cavern, with rough soil and without any light. 
A place over there that deviates from Belzebuth as much as his tomb extends to there; 
place known by the sound that it releases from a fall which plunges by an opening on the rock, 
he had dug out in the course of the Ouiatchouane which it unrolls in a sharp inclination! 

My guide and I, we follow this hidden path to return in the world of lightness; 
and, without  troubling about taking a rest, we went up, him at first, and me after him, 
as long as finally I saw, by a round sluice, these beautiful things which compose the sky; 
and we left by there, on the Val called Jalbert*,
 to leave our phantoms and to finally, look over again at the stars.