Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l’etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapïenza e ‘l primo amore
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here.
—Dante Aligheri, Inferno canto iii, vv 1-9 (1310)(inscription on the gates of hell)
Listen to Itzhak Perlman perform the Sonata in G Minor “il trillo del diavolo” (1749) by Giuseppe Tartini:
