The Distich of Maristo is the only poem the Chorus of the Descent preserves from Maristo: a two-line self-description spoken in the fourth circle of the Inferno. It opens the anthology of the Poet Paladins.
| Type | Work (distich) |
| Author | Maristo |
| Spanish entry | Dístico de Maristo |
Text
Rostro solemne. Túnica blanca, monástica. Una capa roja ensangrentada.
(“Solemn face. White tunic, monastic. / A red cape, bloodied.“)
Circumstances
The Lost Ones were leaving the storm and descending toward the city of avarice, lantern lit, with a huge chained figure waiting in the shadow. Each was asked for “a description of each one. Five words”, like a haiku. Maristo went first: “solemn face”, “white tunic, monastic”, then stopped. Someone offered the word rojo (“red”), and he returned it as “a red cape, bloodied”. It was called “the example of a haiku”; the round moved on to the axe of Sven and the chains of Ärsvan.
It is two lines, a distich, naming only surfaces; its one color was supplied by another. The paladin whom the Contest marks as the one “who must be killed” names himself in it no further. In the anthology, Benetton’s contribution runs to pages; Lirio’s was left to a sword.
The earlier portrait
Two circles earlier, in a cliff cave under the storm, the same request drew a long answer: “a skull-like face bathed in silver that frightens”, with “a whole Doric Greek filigree”; beneath the skull, when the stout figure in bloodied red cape and monastic white tunic raises its head, “the noble face of a saddened middle-aged man”, with “a trace of salt on the cheeks as if he had been weeping” and bloodshot eyes; over his shoulder “a heavy sword in total disproportion to his body and his strength”, which drags him. His look is surprised, “and perhaps saddened”. Only tunic and cape pass into the distich.
Conflicting accounts
- The distich’s cape is red and bloodied; the entry on Maristo the Condemned records a long, half-sunken, blackened cape.
Open questions
- No other composition by Maristo is recorded.
- Whether the tunic is the “clonic” one other voices mention is unknown.
- Whose blood is on the cape is not stated.