Open Book: A Dark, Disturbing MasterpieceOpen Book: A Dark, Disturbing Masterpiece

"Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow pour from the dismal air to putrefy the putrid slush that waits for them below.

Here monstrous Cerberus, the ravening beast, howls through his triple throats like a mad dog over the spirits sunk in that foul paste.

His eyes are red, his beard is greased with phlegm, his belly is swollen, and his hands are claws to rip the wretches and flay and mangle them.

And they, too, howl like dogs in the freezing storm, turning and turning from it as if they thought one naked side could keep the other warm.

When Cerberus discovered us in that swill his dragon-jaws yawed wide, his lips drew back, in a grin of fangs. No limb of his was still.

My Guide bent down and seized in either fist a clod of the stinking dirt that festered there and flung them down the gullet of the beast."

"Reader, so may God grant you to understand my poem and profit from it, ask yourself how I could check my tears, when near at hand I saw the image of our humanity distorted so that the tears that burst from their eyes ran down the cleft of their buttocks. Certainly I wept. I leaned against the jagged face of a rock and wept so that my Guide said: 'Still? Still like the other fools? There is no place for pity here.' Who is more arrogant within his soul, who is more impious than one who dares to sorrow at God's judgment?

Lift up your eyes, lift up your eyes and see him the earth swallowed before all the Thebans, at which they cried out: 'Whither do you flee, Amphiareus? Why do you leave the field?' And he fell headlong through the gaping earth to the feet of Minos, where all sin must yield."