Inferno
Canto XXXIII
The two sinners are Count Ugolino and the Archbishop of Pisa, both traitors. Ugolino, having the chief power in Pisa, where he was head of the Guelfs, allied himself with the Archbishop, the leader of the Ghibellines, in order to get rid of his nephew; then the Archbishop turned against him and had him and his four sons imprisoned in a tower and starved to death, as Ugolino now describes to Dante. After an outburst of bitter indignation against Pisa, Dante passes on with Virgil to the third ring, the Ptolomea, so called from Ptolemy, whose treacherous act of murder is told in the Book of Maccabees. Here they find Friar Alberic, who invited his brother and nephew to a feast and then had them killed; the signal to the murderers being “Bring in the fruit.” He explains the peculiar privilege of Ptolomea, that sometimes a man is brought there still alive, leaving a demon in his body on earth. This is the case with him and with Branca d’Oria, who had his father-in-law, Michel Zanche (already met with in Malebolge), murdered.
THAT sinner raised up from the brute repast
His mouth, wiping it on the hairs left few
About the head he had all behind made waste.
Then he began: “Thou willest that I renew
Desperate grief, that wrings my very heart
Even at the thought, before I tell it you.
But if my words prove seed for fruit to start
Of infamy for the traitor I gnaw now
Thou shalt hear words that with my weeping smart.
Albeit I know not who thou art, nor how [10]
Thou hast descended hither, Florentine,
Unless thy speech deceive me, seemest thou.
Know then that I was the Count Ugolin,
And this man Roger, the Archbishop: why
I neighbour him so close, shall now be seen.
That by the malice of his plotting I,
Trusting in him, was seized by treachery,
Needs not to tell, nor that I came to die.
But what hath not yet been reported thee,
How cruel was that dying, hear, and then [20]
Judge with what injury he hath injured me.
The narrow slit within the prison-pen
That has from me the name of Famine’s Tower
(And it must yet imprison other men)
Had shown me through its chink the beam of more
Than one moon, when the dream of evil taste[i]26. Just before dawn of the day when the door is to be nailed up, Ugolino has an allegorical dream; from lines 38-39 we learn that his companions have ominous dreams, but of a more literal character.
For me the curtain of the future tore.
This man appeared as master and lord who chased[ii]28. “This man”: Archbishop Ruggeri.
The wolf, and the wolf-cubs, over the mount
That lets not Pisan eyes on Lucca rest. [30]
Hounds, trained and lean and eager, led the hunt
Where with Gualandi and Sismondi went[iii]32-33. Gualandi, Sismondi and Lanfranchi are the leaders of the Pisan Ghibellines; in the dream they figure as huntsmen.
Lanfranchi; these he had posted in the front.
Full soon it seemed both sire and sons were spent;
And in my vision the strained flanks grew red
Where by the tearing teeth the flesh was rent.
When I awoke before the dawn, in dread,
I heard my children crying in their sleep,
Them who were with me, and they cried for bread.
Cruel art thou if thou from tears canst keep [40]
To think of what my heart misgave in fear.
If thou weep not, at what then canst thou weep?
By now they were awake, and the hour drew near
When food should be set by us on the floor.
Still in the trouble of our dreams we were:
And down in the horrible tower I heard the door
Nailed up. Without a word I looked anew
Into my sons’ faces, all the four.
I wept not, so to stone within I grew.
They wept; and one, my little Anselm, cried: [50]
“You look so, Father, what has come on you?”
But I shed not a tear, neither replied
All that day nor the next night, until dawn
Of a new day over the world rose wide.
A little of light crept in upon the stone
Of that dungeon of woe; and I saw there
On those four faces the aspect of my own.
I bit upon both hands in my despair;
And they supposing it was in the access
Of hunger, rose up with a sudden prayer, [60]
And said: ‘O Father, it will hurt much less
If you of us eat: take what once you gave
To clothe us, this flesh of our wretchedness.’
Then, not to make them sadder, I made me brave.
That day and the one after we were dumb.
Hard earth, couldst thou not open for our grave?
But when to the fourth morning we were come,
Gaddo at my feet stretched himself with a cry:
‘Father, why won’t you help me?’ and lay numb
And there died. Ev’n as thou seest me, saw I, [70]
One after the other, the three fall: they drew,
Between the fifth and sixth day, their last sigh.
I, blind now, groping arms about them threw,
And still called on them that were two days gone.
Then fasting did what anguish could not do.”[iv]75. Hunger did more than grief could do: it caused my death.
He ceased, and twisting round his eyes, thereon
Seized again on the lamentable skull
With teeth strong as a dog’s upon the bone.
Ah, Pisa! thou offence to the whole people
Of the fair land where sound is heard of Si, [80][v]80. The languages of Europe were classified according to the word for “yes,” Italian being the language of si.
Since vengeance in thy neighbours’ hands is dull,[vi]81. “Thy neighbours”: Lucca and Florence, which waged bitter war against Pisa.
Caprara and Gorgona shifted be[vii]82. “Caprara and Gorgona”: two small islands in the sea not far tom the mouth of the Arno, beside which Pisa lies.
Into Arno’s mouth, and Arno back be rolled,
That every living soul be drowned in theel
For if Count Ugolin by treachery sold[viii]85. The archbishop represented to the Pisans that Ugolino, in 1285, had betrayed them in the matter of five strongholds which he had allowed Lucca and Florence to occupy. In reality the cession of these castles was a necessary piece of diplomacy.
Thy forts, it was not cause thou shouldst torment
His little sons, whatever of him was told.
Their youth, O thou new Thebes, made innocent
Uguiccione and Brigata, and those[ix]89. Thebes being the wickedest city of the ancients, Dante calls Pisa the “new Thebes.”
Two others named already in that lament. [90][x]90. “Those two others”: Anselmuccio and Gaddo. Gaddo and Uguccione were Ugolino’s sons, Brigata and Anselmuccio his grandsons.
We passed on, where the frost imprisons close
Another crew, stark in a rugged heap,
Not bent down, but reversed all where they froze.
The very weeping there forbids to weep;
And the grief, finding in the eyes a stop,
Turns inward, to make anguish bite more deep.
For their first tears collect in one great drop,
And like a vizor of crystal, in the space
Beneath the brows, fill all the hollow up.
And now although, as with a callous place [100]
Upon the skin, because the cold stung so,
All feeling had departed from my face,
It seemed as if I felt some wind to blow.
Wherefore I: “Master, who is it moves this air?
Is not all heat extinguished here below?”
Whereto he answered: “Soon shalt thou be where,
Seeing the cause which poureth down the gust,
Thine eye to this the answer shall declare.”
And one sad shadow amid the icy crust
Cried to us: “O ye souls, so cruel found, [110]
That into the last dungeon ye are thrust,
Raise the stiff veils wherein my face is bound,
So that the grief which chokes my heart have vent
A little, ere the weeping harden round.”
Wherefore I: “Tell me, if I to this consent,
Who thou art; if I do not succour thee,
May I to the bottom of the ice be sent.”
“I am Friar Alberic,” then he answered me;[xi]118-120. “Friar Alberic”: see the Argument. “Dates for figs,” that is: I am being repaid with interest, a date being worth more than a fig.
“He of the fruits out of the bad garden,
Who, dates for figs, receive here my full fee.” [120]
“Oh,” replied I to him, “thou art dead, then,
Already?” He answered, “I have no knowledge
How stands my body in the world of men.
This Ptolomea hath such privilege
That often a soul falls down into this place
Ere Atropos the fated thread abridge.[xii]126. “Atropos”: the Fate who cuts the thread of life.
And that thou may’st more willingly the glaze
Of tears wipe from my cheek-bones’ nakedness,
Know that, on the instant when the soul betrays,
As I did, comes a demon to possess [130]
Its body, and thenceforth ruleth over it
Until the timed hour come for its decease.
The soul falls headlong to this cistern-pit:
The body of him who winters there behind
Perhaps among men still appears to sit.
Thou must, if newly come, call it to mind;
It is Ser Branca d’ Oria. Years enough
Have passed since he was to his prison assigned.”
“I think,” I said, “that thou dost lie; whereof
Proof is, that Branca d’ Oria never died, [140]
And eats, drinks, sleeps, and puts clothes on and off.”
“Up there with the Evil Talons,” he replied,
“Where sticky pitch is boiling in its bed,
Not yet had Michel Zanche come to bide,
When this man left a devil in his stead[xiii]145. Branca’s soul, leaving a devil in its stead, reached this ninth circle as soon as the murdered man’s soul (Michel Zanche) reached the eighth.
In his own body, and in one of his house
Who with him played the traitor and did the deed.
But stretch thy hand out hither and unclose
My eyes for me.” And I unclosed them not;
And to be rude to him was courteous. [150]
Ah, Genoese, who have utterly forgot
All honesty, and in corruption abound,
Why from the earth will none your people blot?
For with Romagna’s evillest spirit I found[xiv]154. Alberigo de’ Mantredi.
One of you, who, for deeds he did contrive[xv]155. Branca d’Oria.
Even now in soul is in Cocytus drowned
And still in body appears on earth alive.