Inferno -- Canto XXXIII

Count Ugolino, Ptolomea

Notes

13 Ugolino della Gherardesca, Count of Donoratico and a Pisan Guelph, plotted with Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, a Ghibelline chief, against his own party in 1288. Then Ruggieri treacherously imprisoned him, his sons and grandsons.

82 Caprara and Gorgona: two islands that belonged to Pisa, located between Corsica and the mouth of the Arno.

91 The pilgrims enter the third zone of Ptolomea, named either for Ptolemy, captain of Jericho, whose treachery is described in I Machabees 16:11-17, or Ptolemy XII, an Egyptian king, who slew his guest Pompey.

118 Brother Alberigo, a Jovial Friar, murdered his brother Manfred and his nephews in 1285 at a banquet to which he invited them in Faenza. The signal for the murder was the call, "Bring in the fruit."

126 Atropos was one of the Fates.

137 Branca d’Oria, a Ghibelline of Genoa, also invited a kinsman to a banquet, his father-in-law Michel Zanche, in 1275, to have him butchered.

          His mouth raised up above his savage meal,

          That sinner wiped his lips upon the hair

          Of the head that he had chewed on from behind.

 

          Then he began, "You want me to make new

5         A desperate grief which even to call back

          Crushes my heart before I start to speak.

 

          "But should my words become a fruitful seed

          Of infamy for this traitor whom I gnaw,

          You’ll see me speak and weep at the same time.

 

10       "I don’t know who you are or by what means

          You’ve come down here, but when I hear you talk

          You surely seem to me a Florentine.

 

          "You need to know I was Count Ugolino,

          And this is the Archbishop Ruggieri.

15       Now I shall tell you why I am his neighbor.

 

          "How I was captured and then put to death

          As the result of his own evil scheming,

          I, who trusted him, need not explain.

 

          "What you cannot have heard, however, is

20       How cruel my death was: that you now shall hear

          And you will know whether he has wronged me.

 

          "A narrow window in a tower cell,

          Which for my sake is called the Tower of Hunger

          And in which others must be yet locked up,

 

25       "Had through its opening shown me several moons

          Already, when I dreamed the nightmare

          Which rent the veil of the future for me.

 

         "This man seemed lord and master of the hunt,

          Chasing the wolf and whelps upon the mountains

30       Which block the Pisans’ view toward Lucca.

 

          "With well-trained hounds, a lean and eager pack,

          He had sent up ahead of him, in front,

          Gualandi, with Sismondi and Lanfranchi.

 

          "After a short run, so it seemed to me,

35       Father and sons fell tired, and with sharp teeth

          It seemed to me I saw their sides ripped open.

 

          "When I awoke before the break of day,

          I heard my little sons who were with me

          Crying in their sleep and asking bread.

 

40       "You are cruel if by now you do not grieve

          To think of all that my own heart forewarned:

          And if you do not weep, what would you weep for?

 

          "They then awakened, and the hour drew near

          When customarily they brought us food,

45       But each of us was worried by his dream.

 

          "Below I heard them nailing up the door

          Of the horrible tower — at that, I looked,

          Without a word into my young sons’ faces.

 

          "I did not weep, I had so turned to stone

50       Within me. They wept. And my little Anselm

          Said, ‘You stare so... Father, what is it?’

 

          "At that I shed no tears, and I said nothing

          In answer all that day nor the next night

          Until another sun rose on the world.

 

55       "When a small ray of sunlight made its way

          Into that forlorn prison and I saw

          By their four faces the look in my own,

 

          "I bit both of my hands in desperate grief,

          And they, thinking I acted out of hunger,

60       All of a sudden stood straight up and wailed,

 

          " ‘Father, the pain for us would be far less

          If you ate us! You put this wretched flesh

          Upon us and now you may strip it off!’

 

          "I calmed myself, not to make them sadder.

65       That and the following day we kept silence.

          Ah hard earth! Why did you not open up?

 

          "After we had come to the fourth day,

          Gaddo threw himself down full length at my feet

          And cried, ‘Father, why don’t you help me?’

 

70      "He died then, and just as you see me

          I saw my three fall one by one by one

          Between the fifth day and the sixth, and then,

 

          "By now blind, I went groping over each boy

          And for two days I called them who were dead.

75       Then fasting did what grief had failed to do."

 

          When he had spoken this, with his eyes rolling

          He once more seized the loathed skull in his teeth

          Which were as strong on the bone as a dog’s.

 

          Ah, Pisa! scandal to all the peoples

80       Of the lovely land where our sė is sounded,

          Since your own neighbors are slow to punish you,

 

          Then let Caprara and Gorgona move

          And make a dam for the mouth of the Arno

          So that every soul in you might drown!

 

85       For if Count Ugolino was accused

          Of having himself betrayed your fortresses,

          You had no right to crucify his sons.

 

          Their newborn years had made them innocent,

          You newborn Thebes! — Uguiccione, Brigata,

90       And the other two my canto named above.

 

          We pushed on farther, where frost wraps around

          With its rough covering another race

          With bodies not bent down but turned face up.

 

          Their own weeping will not let them weep,

95       And grief which finds no outlet through their eyes

          Turns inward to intensify their anguish,

 

          Because the first tears cluster in a knot

          And, like a mask of crystal, fill up all

          The hollow socket underneath the eyebrows.

 

100      And although the deeply freezing cold

          Had taken all sensation from my face

          And left it feeling like a hard dead callus,

 

          I now thought that I felt a breath of wind

          And asked, "My master, who has stirred this breeze?

105     Are not all vapors snuffed out here below?"

 

          And he replied, "Shortly you shall be where

          Your own eyesight will answer you on this

          When you see why the wind blows from above."

 

          And one of those sad wraiths in the cold crust

110     Cried out to us, "O souls so cruel that

          This final outpost has been given to you,

 

          "Lift off from my face the stiffened veils

          That I may free the pain that fills my heart

          Before this weeping freezes up once more."

 

115      To this I told him, "If you want my help,

          Tell me who you are: if I give no aid

          May I drop to the bottom of the ice!"

 

          He answered, "I am Brother Alberigo,

          One of the fruits of the corrupted garden

120     Who here gets dates for figs I handed out."

 

          "Oh," I exclaimed, "are you already dead?"

          And he said to me, "How my body does

          There in the world above, I do not know.

 

          "For Ptolomea has this privilege:

125     Often the soul falls down into this place

          Before Atropos sends it out of life.

 

          "And that you may be all the more willing

          To scrape the frost-glazed tears from off my face

          Know this: as soon as the soul proves a traitor,

 

130      "As I did, its body then is snatched away

          By a demon who takes possession of it

          Until its time on earth has all run out.

 

          "The soul comes crashing down into this cistern,

          And maybe the body of the shade wintering

135      Here behind me still appears up there.

         

          "You must know him, if you but recently arrived.

          He is Ser Branca d’Oria, and many years

          Have passed since he was locked up in this ice."

 

          "I think," I said to him, "you must be lying,

140      For Branca d’Oria has not even died;

          He eats and drinks and sleeps and puts on clothes."

 

          "Above in the ditch of the Malebranche,"

          He said then, "where the sticky pitch boils up,

          Michel Zanche had not as yet rained down

 

145      "When Branca left his body for a devil

          To take his place, and so did a close kinsman

          Who carried out this treachery with him.

 

          "But now — reach out your hand — open my eyes!"

          I did not, however, open them for him,

150     Since rudeness toward him was a courtesy.

 

          Ah Genoese! you men so estranged

          From all sound custom and full of all corruption,

          Why have you not been scattered from this world?

 

          For with the wickedest spirit of Romagna

155     I found one of you so vile that for his deeds

          In Cocytus he already bathes in soul

 

          And still appears up here alive in body.

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