Canto XXXIII
CANTO XXXIII
Weeping, the sinner whom Dante encountered at the end of the last canto interrupts his horrid meal to identify himself as Ugolino della Gherardesca and his prey as Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. He assumes that, being Florentine, the Poet knows the circumstances of his arrest and sentence but not the cruel nature of his death (1–21). Having been locked in a tower for several months, he dreamed one night that the Archbishop as lord of the hunt was pursuing him as a wolf and his offspring as the whelps, with the leading families of Pisa as huntsmen, and a mob of citizens as hounds, whose fangs tore into his flanks (22–36). He awoke to find his children crying in their sleep for bread and soon thereafter to hear the tower door being nailed shut at the hour when food was usually brought. Gazing upon the faces of his sons, he fell into a stonelike silence until the dawn of the second day, when the sun showed the reflection of his fear and hunger on their faces (37–57). He then bit at his hands from grief, and, thinking he did so from famine, his children were more pained than if he had fed upon their flesh. They sat in mute despair the rest of the second and all of the third day (58–66). On the fourth, his son Gaddo died after crying in vain for his father’s help. His other son, Uguiccione, and his grandsons Nino and Anselmo followed on the fifth and sixth days. On the seventh and eighth, now blinded by his starvation, he groped for them, calling out their names. At last, his fasting proved even stronger than his grief and killed him. Now that he has finished the account of his demise, Ugolino returns to the prelate’s skull like a dog to his bone (67–78). Moved to wrath by his story, the Poet likens Pisa to the crime-infested Thebes of old and wishes that the islands of Capraia and Gorgona would block the Arno’s mouth to dam up the river, flood the city, and drown its inhabitants, for if Ugolino had incurred the guilt of treachery, his offspring were innocent of his sin (79–90). The Wayfarers then cross over to Ptolomea, the third ring of the ninth circle, where traitors to guests are punished. Here the sinners’ heads lie bent back, so that their tears freeze into a crystal visor in their eye sockets (91–108). A soul cries out to them to remove the veil of ice from his eyes, and the Pilgrim fraudulently promises the betrayer that he will do so in exchange for information about him. Revealing himself as Fra Alberigo, a friar who had murdered a relative at a banquet to which the latter had invited him, he claims that the souls of all such traitors are immediately cast down into Hell while a demon possesses their bodies on earth for the remainder of their allotted days (109–135). The monk discloses to the incredulous Dante that Branca d’Oria, who committed the same sin, has suffered the same fate and then asks him to fulfill his promise. The indignant Pilgrim refuses to do so, however, considering it courtesy to be rude to such a sinner (136–157).
1 The sinner raised his mouth up from the taste
Of that fierce meal and wiped it with the hair
Upon the head whose backside he laid waste.
4 “You wish me to renew the pained despair,
The thought of which has wrung the heart in me
Before I’ve told,” he started, “this affair.
7 If my words are the seeds, and infamy
The fruit for him, this traitor whom I chew,
Both speech and tears together you will see.
10 I don’t know who you are nor how you flew
Down here below, but truly, by your cry,
I seem to hear a Florentine in you.
13 Count Ugolino, you should know, was I;[517]
This is Ruggieri, the Archbishop, who
Has such a neighbor, and I’ll tell you why.
16 How I was captured, then was murdered, through
My trust in him, I need not now declare
(Effects which to his evil schemes were due!).
19 But what you can’t have heard of anywhere
—How cruel was my death—you’ll hear, and then
You’ll know if I was once offended there.
22 A narrow window in the Mew, which men[518]
Have named the ‘Hunger Tower’ for my sake
(And which will lock up others yet again),
25 Had often, through its hole, let moonlight break[519]
Before I dreamed an evil dream one night
That rent the future’s veil so as to make
28 A man appear as lords and masters might;[520]
He chased the wolf and whelps on mountain grounds[521]
That shut out Lucca from the Pisans’ sight.[522]
31 With all their eager, lean, and well-trained hounds,[523]
Gualandi and Sismondi had been sent
In front, Lanfranchi too. With but brief rounds,[524]
34 The father and his sons were fully spent,
As it appeared to me, and up ahead
I thought I saw the flanks sharp teeth had rent.
37 When I awoke, before the dawn was red,
I heard my children crying in their sleep,
For they were with me, asking for their bread.
40 How cruel you must be if you don't reap
Great grief to think what to my heart appeared;
And if you don’t weep now, when would you weep?
43 They were awake at last—the hour had neared
At which they’d always brought our food before;
And each, because of what he’d dreamed, now feared.
46 I heard them nail the horrid tower’s door
Down there below, at which I turned to view
The faces of my sons and spoke no more.
49 I did not weep but turned to stone all through;
And as they wept, my little Anselm cried:[525]
‘O Father, how you stare! What’s wrong with you?’
52 I neither shed a teardrop nor replied
The whole day long, nor all throughout the night,
Till one more sun lit up the world outside.
55 But when there fell a little ray of light
In that distressing prison, I saw writ
On their four faces aspects of my plight.
58 Because of grief, at both my hands I bit,
So that my children quickly rose to say
(They thought I’d done so in a hungry fit):
61 ‘If but on us, O Father, you would prey,
We would have far less pain; to us you gave
This cloak of wretched flesh—take it away!’
64 To spare them sorrow, I grew calmly brave;
Through that day and the next we all sat dumb.
Hard earth, why not have opened for our grave?
67 But after, when the fourth such day had come,
Thrown at my feet, stretched out, ‘O Father dear,
Why don't you help me?' Gaddo asked me, numb.[526]
70 And there he died. Just as you see me near,
I saw the other three fall one by one
Between days five and six; and it was here
73 That I went blindly groping for each son.
Two days I called them after they were dead,
Then fasting did much more than grief had done.”
76 With eyes askance, this having all been said,
Between his teeth he took that skull of woe
And, strong as dog-teeth, bit that bony head.
79 Ah Pisa, you who shame the people so
Of that fair land where sì is heard to sound,[527]
Since punishment by neighbors is so slow,[528]
82 Capraia and Gorgona should shift ground[529]
To let a hedge at Arno’s mouth be made,
So every person in you may be drowned.
85 For if Count Ugolino had betrayed
Your castles, as is said, it’s by your crimes
That all his sons on such a cross were laid.
88 By youth, like two above named in my rhymes,[530]
Were Uguiccione and Brigata kept[531]
Quite innocent, O Thebes of modern times![532]
91 Then onwards to another folk we stepped,[533]
Whom frost had rudely folded in its sweep;
Their faces, turned not down but upwards, wept.
94 Their very weeping does not let them weep:
The pain that on their eyes has found a clot
Turns inward, making agony more steep,
97 Because the tears shed first will make a knot
And, like a crystal visor, in the space[534]
Beneath the brow fill up the cup’s full lot.[535]
100 And though, as with a callous, every trace
Of feeling, owing to the cold, no doubt,
Had ceased already dwelling in my face,
103 It now appeared I felt some wind about.
I asked: “My Lord, who moves these currents past?
Are not all vapors here below put out?”[536]
106 He said to me: “You soon will be at last
Where your own eye will answer you, I trust,
For you will see the cause that rains this blast.”
109 And one sad sinner in that frozen crust
Cried out to us: “O souls who are so fell
That in the final station you are thrust,[537]
112 Lift from my face this hardened, veiling shell
To give my pain-filled heart a little vent,
Before my tears return to freezing.” “Well,”
115 I said, “if you desire that help be lent,
Say who you are; if I don’t set you free,
So to the icy depths may I be sent.”
118 “I am Fra Alberígo,” answered he,[538]
“One of the fruits an evil garden bred,
And, date for fig, I here receive my fee.”
121 “But then,” I asked, “are you already dead?”
“I have no knowledge of what fate may sit
Upon my body in the world,” he said,
124 “For Ptolomea bears this benefit:[539]
A spirit often falls down here and stays
Before great Átropos releases it.[540]
127 So you more willingly may scrape the glaze
Of frozen tears which on my face is found,
Know this: the moment that a soul betrays,
130 As I had done, its body is held bound
And governed by a demon who will rule
Until its time has fully come around.
133 The soul falls headlong to this cistern’s pool;
Above, perhaps, the frame of one appears
Who winters here behind me. Surely you’ll
136 Have known him, if just coming to these spheres;
He is Ser Branca d’Orïa, a cheat[541]
Who has been thus enclosed for many years.”
139 “I think,” I said, “that this is but deceit:
For Branca d’Orïa has not yet died;
He still must sleep, and dress, and drink, and eat.”
142 “But to the Malebranche’s ditch, inside[542]
Of which there boils the sticky tar,” he said,
“Michele Zanche had as yet not hied,
145 When this one left a devil in his stead
Within his frame, as did his kinsmen—he
By whom, with him, the treachery was bred.[543]
148 Now stretch your hand, unstick my eyes for me!”
And yet I did not open up his eyes;
To be so rude to him was courtesy!
151 Ah, Genoese, filled with corruption’s lies,
Estranged from all good ways, are you not bound
To be cast out from under earthly skies?
154 For with Romagna’s vilest shade I found[544]
One of your ranks, who, for his deeds of ill,[545]
Within Cocytus has in soul been drowned,
157 But seems alive above in body still.