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PAOLO AND FRANCESCA

from the Italian of

Dante Alighieri

(Inferno, Canto 5, lines 115-142)

VERSION 1

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA

Then spake I to them as I turned again,
     starting, ‘Francesca, thou in torment dost
     wring tears from me of pity and of pain.

Tell me how, in that time of sighing, just
     how love could it have been with you allied
     when you drank the dubieties of lust.’

And she to me: ‘No greater pangs betide
     than to recall the happiest of years
     in wretchedness, as knoweth well thy guide.

‘But if thou wouldst discern with thine own ears
     the way the love-root made in us its bed,
     I will speak as a person must in tears.

‘One day for pastime in a book we read
     of Lancelot, whom love caught and enraged.
     Alone we were and knew not where this led.

‘Many the time our eyes met as we paged
     the story, and blushing both confided—
     but one particular moment us engaged.

‘When we read how a loving smile confided
     was kissed by such an honest paramour,
     the man, who from me ne’er will be divided

‘Whilst the one spirit spake with troubled look
    the other wept and pity smote my brain
    to swooning, as if body life forsook;

and fell I as with baleful damage slain.

(translated by Alan Marshfield)                    (back)

(VERSIONS 2)
Dante’s Paolo and Francesca

Then I turned turning turned. your torment ache of bodily desire	Began: guts me	“Francesca! with pain and pity.
“Tell me how it was there	could have been that when you drank deep	Love of the dubieties of lust.”
And she to me: the happiest of times	“No greater pain exists when one is nothing empty.	than to recall Your analyst knows this.
“But if you want to know that rooted rutted in us	with your own ears I will try, will try through tears	the kind of love I can’t keep back to tell.
“One day one time one day of Lancelot and the adulterous Guivevere	with nothing else to do who were caught up in passion’s snare.	Paolo he and I, we two began to read We did not know where this was leading to.
“Our eyes his eyes my eyes We blushed but (blushing)	met, ONE one moment in the tale	turned as we turned the pages turned. nailed us to the moment nailed, transfixed.
“We read how Guinevere’s and Paolo then	too-lingering smile towards her lover (whose soul for all eternity all time all time	was kissed by him is fixed in mine)
turned trembled quivering turned had set us up, had led us on to this.	and kissed me on my mouth! We read	That book and dreadful author no more that day no more that day.”
I shook	quite ill with pity	at the scene

This version intentionally omits the final tercet and jumps from the penultimate tercet to the solitary last line.

(translated by Alan Marshfield) (back)
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