| 1 |
That sinner lifted up his mouth from his savage meal, wiping it on the hairs of the head he had wasted from behind. |
| 4 |
Then he began: “You wish me to renew desperate grief that already presses my heart merely thinking, before I speak of it. |
| 7 |
But if my words will be seed to bear the fruit of infamy for the traitor I gnaw, you will see me speak and weep together. |
| 10 |
I know not who you are nor in what manner you have come down here; but truly, you seem to me a Florentine when I hear you. |
| 13 |
You are to know that I was Count Ugolino and this is the Archbishop Ruggieri: now I will tell you why I am such a neighbor to him. |
| 16 |
That by effect of his evil thoughts, trusting him, I was taken and then killed, there is no need to say; |
| 19 |
but what you cannot have heard, that is, how cruel my death was, you shall hear, and you shall know if he has injured me. |
| 22 |
A small aperture within that mew which because of me has the name of Hunger, and where others must still be shut, |
| 25 |
had shown me through its opening several moons already, when I dreamed the evil dream that rent the veil of the future for me. |
| 28 |
This man appeared to me master and lord, hunting the wolf and his little cubs on the mountain for which the Pisans cannot see Lucca. |
| 31 |
With lean, eager, alert bitches, he had put Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfranchi before his face. |
| 34 |
In brief course the father and his sons seemed to tire, and I seemed to see the sharp fangs tearing their flanks. |
| 37 |
When I awoke before the dawn, I heard my sons, who were with me, crying in their sleep and asking for bread. |
| 40 |
You are surely cruel if you do not already grieve, thinking what my heart was announcing to me; and if you are not weeping, about what do you usually weep? |
| 43 |
They were already awake, and the hour was drawing near when our food used to be brought to us, and each was afraid because of his dream; |
| 46 |
and I heard them nailing up the door at the base of the horrible tower, hence I looked into the faces of my sons without a word. |
| 49 |
I was not weeping, I so turned to stone within: they were weeping; and my Anselmuccio said: ‘You have such a look, father! what is it?’ |
| 52 |
Therefore I did not shed tears, nor did I reply all that day or the night after, until the next sun came forth into the world. |
| 55 |
When a little ray had entered our dolorous prison, and I perceived on four faces my own appearance, |
| 58 |
both my hands I bit for rage; and they, thinking that I must be doing it out of a desire to eat, suddenly stood up |
| 61 |
and said: ‘Father, it will be much less pain for us if you eat of us: you clothed us with this wretched flesh, so do you divest us of it.’ |
| 64 |
I quieted myself then, so as not to make them sadder; that day and the next we were all mute: ah, had earth, why did you not open? |
| 67 |
After we had reached the fourth day, Gaddo threw himself stretched out at my feet, saying: ‘My father, why do you not help me?’ |
| 70 |
There he died; and as you see me, I saw the three fall one by one between the fifth day and the sixth; and I, |
| 73 |
already blind, took to groping over each of them, and for two days I called them, after they were dead. Then fasting had more power than grief.” |
| 76 |
When he had said that, with eyes askance he took the wretched skull in his teeth again, which were strong against the bone, like a dog’s. |
| 79 |
Ah, Pisa, shame of the peoples of the lovely land where sì is spoken, since your neighbors are slow to punish you, |
| 82 |
let Capraia and Gorgona move and make a barrier at the mouth of Arno, so that it may drown every person in you! |
| 85 |
For if Count Ugolino was reported to have betrayed your fortresses, you should not have put his sons on such a cross. |
| 88 |
Their young age, O new Thebes, made Uguiccione and Brigata innocent, and the other two my song names above. |
| 91 |
We passed further, where the freezing rudely swathes another people, not bent over but with heads thrown back. |
| 94 |
Weeping itself prevents weeping there, and the sorrow that finds a block over the eyes turns back within to increase the pain; |
| 97 |
for the first tears make a knot and, like crystal visors, fill all the cup below the brow. |
| 100 |
And although, as if by a callus, because of the cold every feeling had ended its stay on my face, |
| 103 |
already I seemed to feel some wind; for which I: “My master, who moves this wind? is not every vapor extinguished down here?” |
| 106 |
And he to me: “Soon you will be where your eye will give you the answer, when you see the cause raining down this breath.” |
| 109 |
And one of the grievers of the icy crust cried to me: “O souls so cruel that you are given the last place, |
| 112 |
lift from my eyes the hard veils, so that I may give vent a little to the anguish that gathers in my heart, before my tears freeze up again.” |
| 115 |
Therefore I to him: “If you wish me to help you, tell me who you are, and if I do not extricate you, may I have to go down to the bottom of the ice.” |
| 118 |
He replied therefore: “I am Brother Alberigo, I am he of the fruits of the evil orchard, and here I receive a date for every fig.” |
| 121 |
“Oh,” said I to him, “now are you already dead?” And he to me: “How my body may fare up in the world, I have no knowledge. |
| 124 |
Ptolomea has this advantage, that often the soul falls here before Atropos has sent it off. |
| 127 |
And that you may more willingly shave the glassy tears from my eyes, know that, as soon as the soul betrays |
| 130 |
as I did, its body is taken over by a demon, who then governs it until his time has all revolved; |
| 133 |
the soul falls down into this cistern. And perhaps the body still appears up there of the shade who is wintering here behind me; |
| 136 |
you must know of him, if you have just now come down here: he is ser Branca Doria, and years have passed since he was closed in like that.” |
| 139 |
“I believe,” I told him, “that you are deceiving me, for Branca Doria is not yet dead, and he eats and drinks and sleeps and wears clothes.” |
| 142 |
“Up in the ditch,” he said “of the Evil Claws, there where the sticky pitch is boiling, Michel Zanche had not yet arrived, |
| 145 |
when this one left a devil in his stead, in his body and that of a relative of his who committed the betrayal along with him. |
