Inferno, Canto I, 1 - 60.

Translated by Martha Giambanco

In the middle of the path of our life I found myself through a dark wood, for the upright path was lost.

Ah much hard thing it is to tell how that was this wood wild and biting and strong that the very thought renews the fear!

So bitter that little more is death; but to treat of the good that there I found, I will tell of the other things that there I saw.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered, so full of slumber I was thereby that the veracious road I abandoned. But after that at the foot of a hill I had arrived, there where it ended that valley that of fear my heart had stung, upward I looked, and saw its shoulders vested already of the rays of the planet that leadeth others straight by every road.

Then was the fear a little quiet, that in the lake of the heart for me had lasted the night that I spent with such piety.

And like he who with laboured breath, come out of the sea to the shore, turns to the water perilous and stares, so my spirit, that was still fleeing, turned back to behold the pass which never left yet a living person.

After I had put down my weary body a bit, I resumed way for the deserted shore, so that the firm foot ever was the lower.

And lo! almost at the beginning of the ascent, a leopard light and much swift, which of spotted skin was covered; and not departing from before my face, rather impeded so much my path, that I was to return many times turned.

Time was the beginning of the morning, and the sun was mounting up with those stars that were with him when the divine love set in motion at first those beaueous things; so that of good hoping it was cause for me against that wild beast and the speckled skin the hour of time and the sweet season; but not so that fear did not give me the sight that appeared to me of a lion.

He seemed that against me he were coming with the head uplifted and with rabid hunger, so that it seemed the air of him trembled.

And a she-wolf, that of all longings seemed loaded in her meagreness, and many folk yet made to live forlorn, she brought me so much heaviness with the fear that exuded of her sight, that I relinquished hope of the height.

And as he who willingly acquires, and comes the time that makes him lose, who in all his thoughts cries and is afflicted; such made me that beast withouten peace, which, coming towards me, little by little was thrusting me back thither where the sun is silent.

Paolo Rumiz

La mia è una terra di mare, di rocce e di vento. È un luogo che vivo come campo base, più che come città. Trieste è un luogo-rifugio aggrappato alla costa nord del Mediterraneo, un luogo che Dio ogni tanto si compiace di rivoltare col suo mestolo, in una tempesta di aria e acqua che si chiama bora.

[…] Sono fieramente attaccato a questa mia sponda dove ho sognato ogni partenza. Ci sono sere, d’autunno specialmente, quando la brezza si sveglia, l’aria diventa vetro e i traghetti per Istanbul mollano gli ormeggi per passare davanti alle Alpi appena imbiancate, che ho davvero l’impressione che Dio abbia invidia di noi, bastardi sanguemisto appollaiati su questa favolosa scarpata tra i mondi. Noi che, stando in cima a un molo, senza muoverci di un millimetro possiamo vedere l’Europa e la Turchia, immaginare le isole di Ulisse e le birrerie di Praga dove Hrabal cercò i suoi personaggi, indovinare sulla nervatura delle colline il fronte della Grande guerra che si intreccia con la Cortina di ferro, annusare i magazzini della Serenissima stracolmi di cose d’Oriente e nello stesso tempo l’odore selvaggio delle steppe oltre il Danubio. A metà degli anni ottanta, quando un cancelliere bavarese atterrò col suo elicottero su uno di questi moli, disse “Unglaublich”, incredibile, perché tale era quella sintesi di mondi.

Translated by Greta Chies

Mine is a land of sea, rocks, and wind. To me, it feels more like a basecamp than a city. Trieste is a place-refuge, clinging to the northern coast of the Mediterranean. A place which every now and then God likes to stir up with his ladle, creating a storm of air and water called bora.

[…] I am fiercely attached to this shore of mine, where I have dreamt every departure. There are evenings, in Autumn especially, when the breeze stirs, the air turns to glass, and the ferries headed to Istanbul set sail and glide before the Alps, just whitened by snow, when I really believe that God envies us mixed-blooded bastards, perched on top of this wonderful rift between worlds. Us, who, standing on a pier and without moving a single millimetre, can see both Europe and Turkey, imagine the isles of Ulysses and the Prague pubs where Hrabal went looking for his characters, look at the ribbed hills and make out the First World War front intertwining with the Iron Curtain, smell at once the Venetian Republic’s warehouses, packed with goods from the Orient, and the wild scent of the steppes beyond the Danube. In the mid-eighties, when a Bavarian chancellor landed his helicopter on one of these piers, he said “Unglaublich”, incredible, because such was this blending of worlds.

Chinese

白云无尽时

Translated by Rachele Faggiani

I dismount my horse, and offer the gentleman a sip of wine

Where are you headed to? I ask him

I’m not happy with myself, he says

I’m going back to the southern mountains

Go your way, and ask me no more

The white clouds here are endless