Canto XXXIV: Once More the Stars from L’Inferno di Dante, 1996–2000
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Online ExhibitionAmerican, 1935–2009
Canto XXXIV: Once More the Stars from L’Inferno di Dante, 1996–2000
Etching on Arches cover white paper
Purchase, Philip and Lynn Straus, class of 1946, 2002.42.83
. . .There is below,
As far from Beelzebub as one can be
Within his tomb, a palace one cannot know
By sight, but by the sound a little runnel
Makes as it wends the hollow rock its flow
Has worn, descending through its winding channel:
To get back up to the shining world from there
My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel;
And following its path, we took no care
To rest, but climbed: he first, then I – so far,
Through a round aperture I saw appear
Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears,
Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.
— Dante’s Inferno, English translation by Robert Pinsky