The Inferno (The Divine Comedy series Book 1)
Page 22
And I: ‘Master, would you wait for just a moment →
so that I may resolve a doubt about this person.
84
And then I’ll make what haste you like.’
My leader stopped, and I said to the shade,
who was still shouting bitter curses:
87
‘And who are you, so to reproach another?’ →
‘No, who are you to go through Antenora,’
he answered, ‘buffeting another’s cheeks?
90
Were I alive, this still would be an outrage.’
‘Well, I’m alive,’ I said, ‘and if it’s fame you seek,
it might turn out to your advantage
93
if I put your name among the others I have noted.’
And he: ‘I long for just the opposite.
Take yourself off and trouble me no more—
96
you ill know how to flatter at this depth.’
Then I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck
and said: ‘Either you name yourself
99
or I’ll leave you without a single hair.’
And he: ‘You can peel me bald and I
won’t tell you who I am, nor give a hint,
102
even if you jump upon my head a thousand times.’
I now had his hair twisted in my hand
and had already plucked a tuft or two,
105
while he howled on, keeping his eyes cast down,
when another cried: ‘What ails you, Bocca?
Isn’t it enough, making noise with your jaws,
108
without that howling too? What devil’s at you?’
‘Now you no longer need to say a word,
vile traitor,’ said I, ‘to your shame
111
shall I bring back true news of you.’
‘Be off,’ he answered, ‘and tell what tale you will.
But don’t be silent, if you escape from here, →
114
about the one whose tongue was now so nimble.
‘Here he laments the Frenchmen’s silver.
“I saw him of Duera,” you can say,
117
“there where they set the sinners out to cool.”
‘And if someone were to ask you: “Who else was there?”
beside you is the one from Beccherìa—
120
Florence sawed his throat in two.
‘I think Gianni de’ Soldanier is farther on,
with Ganelon and Tebaldello,
123
who opened up Faenza while it slept.’
We had left him behind when I took note →
of two souls so frozen in a single hole
126
the head of one served as the other’s hat.
As a famished man will bite into his bread, →
the one above had set his teeth into the other
129
just where the brain’s stem leaves the spinal cord.
Tydeus gnawed the temples of Melanippus
with bitter hatred just as he was doing
132
to the skull and to the other parts.
‘O you, who by so bestial a sign →
show loathing for the one whom you devour,
135
tell me why,’ I said, ‘and let the pact be this: →
‘if you can give just cause for your complaint,
then I, knowing who you are and what his sin is,
may yet requite you in the world above,
139
if that with which I speak does not go dry.’
OUTLINE: INFERNO XXXIII
ii. Antenora [continued] (country or party)
1–3
a gruesome opening rhetorical flourish
4–75
Ugolino’s speech:
4–21
Ruggieri the culprit
22–39
Ugolino’s dream and the children
40–42
address to Dante
43–54
Day 1, the door nailed shut
55–64
Day 2, hunger
65–66
Day 3, silence
67–70
Day 4, Gaddo’s cry for help; his death
71–72
Days 5 and 6, the other three children die
73–75
Days 6 and 7, grief and death
76–78
Ugolino resumes his cannibalistic behavior
79–90
apostrophe of Pisa as “modern Thebes”
iii. Ptolomea (guests and friends)
91–99
new assemblage of sinners, faces upturned
100–105
Dante feels the wind even on his callused face
106–108
Virgil: soon you will see the wind’s source
109–114
Fra Alberigo’s request: clear out my iced-over eyes
115–120
Dante offers a bargain that Alberigo accepts
121–138
Dante: are you already dead? Alberigo’s response
139–141
Dante: Branca d’Oria is still alive
142–147
Alberigo: but his and his kinsman’s souls are here
148–150
again Alberigo asks for aid; Dante does not give it
151–157
apostrophe of Genoa
INFERNO XXXIII
He raised his mouth from his atrocious meal, →
that sinner, and wiped it on the hair
3
of the very head he had been ravaging.
Then he began: ‘You ask me to revive →
the desperate grief that racks my heart
6
even in thought, before I tell it.
‘But if my words shall be the seeds that bear
infamous fruit to the traitor I am gnawing, →
9
then you will see me speak and weep together. →
‘I don’t know who you are, nor by what means
you have come down here, but when I listen to you speak, →
12
it seems to me you are indeed from Florence.
‘Take note that I was Count Ugolino,
and he Archbishop Ruggieri. Let me
15
tell you why I’m such a neighbor to him.
‘How, as consummation of his malicious schemes,
after I’d lodged my trust in him, he had me seized
18
and put to death, there is no need to tell.
‘But when you learn what you cannot have heard—
that is to say, the cruelty of my death— →
21
then you shall know if he has wronged me.
‘A little spyhole in the Mew, which now →
on my account is called the Tower of Hunger,
24
where others yet shall be imprisoned,
‘had through its opening shown me several moons,
when, in a dreadful dream, →
27
the veil was rent, and I foresaw the future.
‘This man appeared to be the lord and master, →
hunting the wolf and wolfcubs on the mountain
30
that hides Lucca from the sight of Pisans.
‘Along with well-trained hounds, lean and eager,
he had ranged in his front rank
33
Gualandi, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi.
‘Father and sons, after a brief pursuit,
seemed to be flagging, and it seemed to me I saw
36
the flesh torn from their flanks by sharp incisors.
‘When I awoke before the dawn of day →
I heard my children, in that prison with me,
39
weep in thei
r sleep and ask for bread.
‘You are cruel indeed, thinking what my heart →
foretold, if you remain untouched by grief,
42
and if you weep not, what can make you weep?
‘Now they were awake, and the hour drew near
at which our food was brought to us.
45
Each of us was troubled by his dream. →
‘Down below I heard them nailing shut →
the entry to the dreadful tower. I looked
48
my children in the face, without a word.
‘I was so turned to stone inside I did not weep. →
But they were weeping, and my little Anselm
51
said: “You look so strange, father, what’s wrong?”
‘Even then I shed no tear, and made no answer
all that day, and all the night that followed
54
until the next day’s sun came forth upon the world.
‘As soon as some few rays had made their way
into the woeful prison, and I discerned
57
four other faces stamped with my expression,
‘the sorrow of it made me gnaw my hands. →
And they, imagining I was doing this
60
from hunger, rose at once, saying:
‘ “Father, we would suffer less
if you would feed on us: you clothed us
63
in this wretched flesh—now strip it off.”
‘Then, not to increase their grief, I calmed myself. →
That day and the next we did not speak a word.
66
O hard earth, why did you not engulf us?
‘When we had come as far as the fourth day
my Gaddo threw himself on the ground before me,
69
crying, “O father, why won’t you help me?”
‘There he died; and even as you see me now
I watched the other three die, one by one,
72
on the fifth day and the sixth. And I began,
‘already blind, to grope over their bodies,
and for two days called to them, though they were dead. →
75
Then fasting had more power than grief.’ →
Having said this, with maddened eyes he seized →
that wretched skull again between his teeth
78
and clenched them on the bone just like a dog.
Ah Pisa, how you shame the people →
of that fair land where ‘sì’ is heard!
81
Since your neighbors are so slow to punish you,
may the islands of Capraia and Gorgona
move in to block the Arno at its mouth
84
and so drown every living soul in you!
Even if Count Ugolino bore the name
of traitor to your castles, you still
87
should not have put his children to such torture.
Their tender years, you modern Thebes,
made Uguiccione and Brigata innocent,
90
and the other two this canto names above.
We went on farther, to where the ice-crust →
rudely wraps another sort of souls,
93
their faces not turned down but up.
The very weeping there prevents their weeping, →
for the grief that meets a barrier at the eyelids
96
turns inward to augment their anguish,
since their first tears become a crust
that like a crystal visor fills
99
the cups beneath the eyebrows.
Although the cold had made →
all feeling leave my face
102
as though it were a callus,
I still could feel a breath of wind.
And I said: ‘Master, who sets this in motion?
105
Are not all winds banished here below?’
Thus he to me: ‘You will come soon enough →
to where your eyes will give an answer,
108
seeing the source that puts out such a blast.’
And one of the wretches in the icy crust →
cried out: ‘O souls, so hard of heart
111
you are assigned the lowest station,
‘lift from my face these rigid veils
so I can vent a while the grief that swells
114
my heart, until my tears freeze up again.’
‘If you want my help, let me know your name,’ →
I answered. ‘Then, if I do not relieve you,
117
may I have to travel to the bottom of the ice.’
He spoke: ‘I am Fra Alberigo. I am he →
who harvested the evil orchard,
120
and here, for figs, I am repaid in dates.’
‘Oh,’ said I to him, ‘are you already dead?’
And he to me: ‘I have no knowledge →
123
how my body fares in the world above.
‘Such privilege has this Ptolomea,
that many times a soul may fall down here
126
well before Atropos has cut it loose.
‘So that you may be all the more inclined
to scrape these tear-drops glazed upon my face,
129
know that the moment when a soul betrays
‘as I did, its body is taken by a devil,
who has it then in his control
132
until the time allotted it has run.
‘The soul falls headlong to this cesspool.
Perhaps the body of this shade, who spends →
135
the winter with me here, still walks the earth,
‘as you must know, if you’ve come down just now.
He is Branca d’Oria. Quite some years
138
have passed since he was thus confined.’
‘I think,’ I said to him, ‘you’re fooling me.
For Branca d’Oria is not yet dead: he eats
141
and drinks and sleeps and puts on clothes.’
‘In the ditch above, of the Malebranche,’
he said, ‘where the clingy pitch is at the boil,
144
Michel Zanche had not yet arrived
‘when this man left a devil in his stead
to own his body, as did his kinsman,
147
his partner in the treacherous act.
‘But now extend your hand and open →
my eyes for me.’ I did not open them.
150
And to be rude to him was courtesy.
O men of Genoa, race estranged →
from every virtue, crammed with every vice,
153
why have you not been driven from the earth?
With the most heinous spirit of Romagna
I found a son of yours who, for his evil deeds,
even now in Cocytus bathes his soul
157
while yet his body moves among the living.
OUTLINE: INFERNO XXXIV
iv. Judecca (lords and benefactors)
1–3
Virgil’s Latin beginning
4–7
simile: mill seen through fog or twilight
8–9
Dante retreats behind Virgil to escape the wind
10–15
the souls here are completely covered by ice
16–21
Virgil announces Satan and encourages Dante
22–27
the seventh address to the reader in Inferno
28–36
Lucifer: his size, his ugliness
37–45
his three-faced head: white-yellow:
Cassius; red: Judas; black: Brutus
46–52
his six wings, congealing Cocytus
53–54
tears from his six eyes mix with blood at his chins
55–60
each of his three jaws chews a sinner; with his talons he flays the one in the center
61–67
Virgil identifies Judas, Brutus, and Cassius
68–69
Virgil: it is time to depart, we have seen it all
the ascent
70–81
Dante attaches himself to Virgil; they turn around
82–84
Virgil’s encouragement: “hold fast”
85–93
arrival at a ledge; Dante sees Lucifer’s legs above
94–96
Virgil: it is already 7:30 AM Saturday
97–105
Dante’s three questions: (1) where’s the ice? (2) why is Lucifer upside down? (3) how is it already morn?
106–126
Virgil’s responses: (1) behind us; (3) because of where we are; (2) Lucifer’s fall
127–132
a watercourse leads them gently upward
133–139
they return to earth, under heaven.
INFERNO XXXIV
‘Vexilla regis produent inferno →
toward us. Look straight before you
3
and see if you can make him out,’ my master said.
As when a thick mist rises, or when our hemisphere →
darkens to night, one may discern
6
a distant windmill by its turning sails,
it seemed to me I saw such a contrivance.
And, to avoid the wind, I drew in close →
9
behind my leader: there was nowhere else to hide.
Now—and I shudder as I write it out in verse— →
I was where the shades were wholly covered, →
12