Inferno: Canto Xxxiii
INFERNO: CANTO XXXIII
The sinner lifted up his mouth,
And wiped it on the hair of the same head that he had been Chewing on. Then he began:
"You want me to tell you of the desperate grief
That tears at my heart just to think of it,
Much less speak of it;
But if my words will bring
Infamy to the traitor that I am gnawing on,
I will speak to you, and weep the entire time.
I don't know who you are,
Nor how you got here; but you seem like a Florentine
Especially when I hear you speak.
You should know that I was Count Ugolino,
And this one was Ruggieri the Archbishop;
Now I will tell you why I am here with him.
I trusted him, but because of his malicious deeds,
I was put into prison,
And afterwards put to death, but you know that;
Nevertheless what you do not know, is just how cruel that Death really was, but I will tell you,
And you will see how heartless he was to me.
Through a narrow window in my prison tower, which was called
The Tower of Famine because of what happened to me,
And in which others must still be locked up,
I watched many moons go by
Until I dreamed the evil dream
Which finally showed me the future.
This person here appeared to me as lord and master,
Hunting a wolf and its pups on the mountain
Which blocks Lucca from seeing the Pisans.
With hunting dogs, gaunt, and eager, and well trained,
He sent out Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfianchi
Ahead of him.
After a brief run, the father and sons grew tired,
And then the sharp fangs were upon them, and
It seemed to me that I saw their legs ripped open.
When I finally woke up, before sunrise,
I heard my sons moaning in their sleep
As they lay near me, and asking for bread.
You are indeed cruel, if you do not grieve,
Knowing what I felt in my heart when I heard their pleas,
And if that does not make you cry, then nothing can.
They woke up, and it was almost the time
When our food would normally be brought to us,
But because of this dream, we were all apprehensive;
Then I heard the lower door of the tower close and lock
And without speaking a word
I gazed into the faces of my sons.
I did not cry, and inside, I turned to stone;
They wept; and my darling little Anselm said:
'You do not look good, father, what is bothering you?'
Still I did not shed a tear, nor answer him
For the rest of that day, nor the following night,
Until the next morning.
Then the first ray of sunlight shone
In that miserable prison, and I saw
My own face on the four faces of my sons,
I bit both of my hands in agony;
And, they thought that it was because I was hungry
Since they had just woken up, and one of them said
'Father, we would be in less pain if you would eat us.
You were the one who clothed us with this poor skin,
And you should be the one to strip it off.'
I calmed down then, so that they would not be sad.
That day we were all silent, and the next day as well.
Ah! Unmerciful earth, why didn't you open up and swallow us?
When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo
Threw himself down outstretched at my feet,
Saying, 'Father, why didn't you help me?'
And there he died; and, as you see me now,
I saw the three of them fall, one by one, between
The fifth day and the sixth;
I was already blind, and began to feel for them.
For three days I called to them after they were dead;
Then hunger made me do what sorrow could not."
After he said this, his eyes flared with rage.
He sank his teeth into the skull in front of him,
And tore at the bone like a dog.
Ah! Pisa, there is so much shame on the people
Of your fair land who, always seem to say 'Yes' to everything.
Since your neighbors are slow to punish you,
Let the Capraia and Gorgona move,
And make a dam across the mouth of the Arno
So that every person in your city may drown!
For if Count Ugolino was accused
Of having betrayed you within your walls,
You still should not have punished his sons.
They were guiltless of any crime, you modern Thebes!
Their youth made them innocent. Uguccione and Brigata,
And the other two named before!
We continued on to where the rugged ice
Held another group of people trapped. This group was
Not looking down, but all of them were looking up.
The act of weeping itself stopped them from weeping,
And the grief that could not be released from their eyes
Turned itself inward to increase their anguish;
Because when the first tears begin to form,
They freeze like a crystal visor,
Filling the entire cup beneath the eyebrow.
Just like a hard callus of skin,
Because of the cold, I had lost all sensation
And could not feel anything in my face,
Still it seemed to me as though I felt some wind;
And I said: "Master, where is that wind coming from?
Is not all motion in the air stopped this far down?"
And he said to me: "Soon enough, you will see with your own eyes
Where this is coming from,
And what is causing this blast of air."
One of the wretches trapped in the frozen crust
Cried out to us: "You merciless souls
Who have been cast down to this final pit of Hell,
Break these rigid veils from my eyes, so that I
Can vent the sorrow which strangles my heart,
At least a little, before my tears freeze again."
And I said to him: "If you want me to help you
Tell me who you were; and then, if I don't free you,
May I go to the bottom of the ice."
Then he replied: "I am Friar Alberigo;
I was the one who offered the fruits of the evil garden,
And down here, I am given dates for the figs I gave above."
I said to him, "Wait. Are you already dead?"
And he said to me:
"I do not know how my body is doing in the upper world.
Many times, the soul ends up here
Before Atropos has arrived to take it.
This can happen here in Ptolomaea.
And, so that you are more willing to remove
These glassy tears from my eyes, I will tell you that
As soon as any soul betrays another, as I have done,
His body is taken over by a demon,
Who rules it from that point on,
For as long as it remains alive.
The person's soul rushes down into this frozen Hell;
This is true also for the person that is behind me,
His body may still be up in the world above as well.
You should know this, since you have just come down;
It is Ser Branca d' Oria, and many years
Have passed away since he was locked down here."
I said to him, "I think that you are trying to deceive me;
For Branca d' Oria is not dead yet.
He eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes."
"In the moat of the Malebranche above," he said,
"There are pools of boiling pitch,
And Michel Zanche had not yet arrived there,
When this one behind me left a devil
In his own body as well as some of his family,
And together they made the betrayal.
Now, stretch out your hand,
And open my eyes;" But I didn't,
Being rude to him was actually a courtesy.
Ah, Genoese! Your men are always at odds
With every virtue and full of every vice.
Why have they not been purged from the world?
For with the vilest spirit of Romagna
I have found one of you, who, for his deeds,
His soul already bathes in Cocytus,
And still his body remains alive!