1–3. his mouth … from behind: The emphatic opening of the canto, focusing especially on the sinner’s “mouth” (bocca; cf. the note on 32.106–8,), follows immediately, without proem, on the pilgrim’s words at the end of Canto 32. The episode begins and ends with his “savage meal.” Note the featuring of an etymological figure (capelli … capo) parallel to that in 32.126 (capo … cappello).
4–75. You wish … than grief: This “oration” of Count Ugolino (identified in line 13) is, with Francesca da Rimini’s and Ulysses’, probably the most famous in the Comedy. With them, Ugolino is the classic model for the Romantic view of Dante’s damned as great-souled and rising above the background of Hell and the theological categories of sin. In Ugolino’s case, the consuming desire for revenge was seen as the expression of the father’s outrage at his children’s suffering. Recent opinion has moved to another extreme: Russo (1967) has argued that Ugolino’s term dolore [grief, pain] is to be interpreted exclusively in terms of the desire for revenge; Barberi-Squarotti (1971) has analyzed Ugolino’s speech as cynically contrived so as to obscure his guilt and attract to himself the pathos of the children. A major issue has been the interpretation of line 75.
4–21. You wish … if he has injured me: The proem of Ugolino’s oration: the painfulness of speaking (4–6); the greater intensity of his desire to bring infamy on his enemy (7–9); his identification of the pilgrim as familiar with the publicly known events (10–18); and the announcement of his subject, his own death (19–21).
4–6. You wish me … before I speak of it: Ugolino is echoing the words with which Aeneas begins his account of the fall of Troy (Aen. 2.3, 6–8, 12–13):
Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem. … quis talia fando
Myrmidonum Dolopumve aut duri miles Ulixi temperet a lacrimis? …
quamquam animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit, incipiam.
[You bid me renew, O queen, unspeakable grief. … speaking such things, who
of the Myrmidons or the Dolopes, or what soldier of cruel Ulysses could refrain from tears? …
although my spirit shudders to remember and shrinks from this grief, I will begin.]
The allusion suggests the larger political context of Ugolino’s tragedy. That Ugolino’s grief “presses” (preme) on his heart continues the motif of pressure set up by 32.1–12 (cf. especially 32.4: premerei [I would press]).
7–9. But if my words … speak and weep together: The metaphor is complex: it amounts to saying that Ugolino accepts the pact with the pilgrim, who is to repeat his story among the living; at that point Ruggieri will gain infamy. Thus Ugolino’s words are to be the seed; the pilgrim’s memory, the earth where it is planted; the text of lines 4–75, the plant; and infamy, the fruit. This is the first of the series of references in the canto to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) (see the note to line 120).
9. speak and weep together: Mouth and eyes. The phrase conspicuously echoes 5.126, where Francesca says, “I will do as one who weeps and speaks.”
11–12. a Florentine when I hear you: Like Farinata (10.25–27), Ugolino has recognized the pilgrim’s city, not merely his region, by his speech.
13–18. I was Count Ugolino … no need to say: As a Florentine, the pilgrim must know of these events; they took place when Dante was in his early twenties. Ugolino uses the past tense of himself (“I was”) and the present tense of Ruggieri (“this is”), placing his own guilt in the past, Ruggieri’s in the present.
Ugolino della Gherardesca, count of Donoratico, was born in the first decades of the thirteenth century. Gmelin’s outline of events is succinct:
Ugolino was descended from an old Longobard Ghibelline family with rich possessions in the region of Pisa. He had been the representative of the Hohenstaufen in Sardinia, but after their downfall he returned to Pisa and joined the Guelf party, in the hope of gaining control of Pisa with their help. Later, when the Pisan Ghibellines under the leadership of the archbishop, Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, became dominant again, he negotiated with them in order to drive out his own grandson Nino Visconti, but he was treacherously lured into the city by the Archbishop, arrested, and imprisoned. Dante, who was a friend of Nino Visconti (he placed him among the negligent rulers in Purgatorio 8), could have heard the entire story from him.
Ugolino, two of his sons, and two (according to some sources, three) grandsons were imprisoned in July 1288 and probably died in March 1289. It is possible but unlikely that Dante was badly informed about the identity of those in the tower with Ugolino. The changes, making all four of them children (rather than two grown men and two adolescents), are probably deliberate.
Dante places both Ugolino and Ruggieri (a typical pairing of lay and cleric, Guelf and Ghibelline) in Antenora (see the note to 32.88) as betrayers of party; that they are not in Ptolomea (the third section of Cocytus, for traitors to guests) is assured by the clarity of the transition in line 92.
15. such a neighbor: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matt. 22.37–40, 5.43–48): another in the series of allusions to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). The intimate enmity parodies the social bonds on which the city rests.
22–25. A small aperture … several moons already: That is, through a small opening or window Ugolino had been able to see the waxing and waning of the moon a number of times (it is not clear that he can see the sun). A mew (Italian, muda)is a room for molting hawks, dark so as to keep them quiet; Bud suggests that the city’s eagles had been kept there. After the deaths of Ugolino and his children, the tower became known as the Torre della fame [Hunger Tower]; it was used as a prison until 1318. This stone tower with a small window (like an eye) is a version of the image of the body as a prison (see the note to 10.58–59).
26–27.1 dreamed the evil dream … for me: The most famous “rent veil” is that of the Temple in Jerusalem, rent at Christ’s death (see the note to 12.31–45); Ugolino’s language is biblical and apocalyptic. His assertion that the dream was “evil” is discussed in Additional Note 15.
28–36. This man … tearing their flanks: Ugolino’s dream occurs just before dawn (line 37), at the time for prophetic dreams (26.7–12). It shows Ruggieri as master of the hunt for the wolf and his cubs (Ugolino and his sons), on Monte Pisano or Monte San Giuliano, both between Pisa and (Guelf) Lucca (the recurrent motif of blocked sight; see the note to 32.63–64). The bitches recall those of the infernal hunt in 13.124–29; Gualandi, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi were powerful Pisan Ghibelline families. The dream sums up events so far and predicts Ugolino’s and his sons’ deaths; the dogs’ fangs repeat the motif of teeth. Ugolino sees himself as a wolf, the traditional enemy of man.
38–39. I heard my sons … asking for bread: The Italian diminutiveftgliuoli already suggests that the children are small; they are never represented as asking for food while awake. This is another allusion to the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7.9–10).
40–42. You are surely cruel … usually weep: This highly rhetorical appeal to the pilgrim’s pity, belied by Ugolino’s own failure to weep (lines 49–50), is a chief basis for the claim that Ugolino’s speech is cynically self-aggrandizing (see the note to lines 4–75).
41. what my heart was announcing to me: Because of the importance of the Annunciation (to Mary), Ugolino’s use of the term annunziava is laden with irony.
45. each was afraid because of his dream: Each of the children, then, has also had a dream, perhaps a prophetic one.
46–47. I heard them … horrible tower: According to the chroniclers, not only was the tower nailed up, its keys were thrown into the river.
47–50. hence … they were weeping: The causal relation implied by the Italian onde [hence] is extremely loose; Ugolino means, it would seem, that he was so overwhelmed by the event that he is incapable of speaking: he can only stare at the children. The contrast between his silent rigidity and their expressiveness is the focus of the account.
50–51. my Anselmuccio … what is it: Anselmuccio was the legal name of Ugolino’s fifteen-year-old grandson (Ugolino is also a diminutive, of Ugo, but still the count’s name). The use of the name here suggests that the affectionate diminutive (-uccio) is used for a very small child, incapable of grasping the implications of events.
52. Therefore: Ugolino represents his silence here and later as the expression of forbearance, since the only things he could say—expressions of his despair and his hatred for Ruggieri—would only upset the children more (cf. line 64).
55–57. When a little ray … my own appearance: The sun’s light makes it possible for him to see the children’s faces. His “own appearance” (cf. Theb. 8.753, of Tydeus looking at Menalippus’s head: “seseque agnovit in illo” [and he recognized himself in him]; see the note to 32.130–31) has several implications. It signifies the children’s family resemblance to himself; it suggests that he can see the progress of their starvation, can read both his and their deaths inscribed in their faces. For this moment and the Medusa, see Additional Note 15.
58. both my hands I bit for rage: Italian dolore, which we here translate as “rage,” includes suggestions of sorrow, grief, anger, desire for revenge, and, here, guilt. Ugolino’s first turning to stone and then biting his hands are stages of his becoming what we find in Cocytus; see Filippo Argenti (8.62–63), who “turned on himself with his teeth.” Of course, Ugolino’s biting his hands does express, along with its other complexities, his hunger for justice against Ruggieri; compare with Matt. 5.6.
59–63. they, thinking … divest us of it: The children are represented as not understanding their father’s agony because of their youth and innocence. Lines 62–63 echo Job 1.21: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away… . blessed be the name of the Lord.” The commentators point out that their offer of their flesh as food involves allusion to the Eucharist. See Additional Note 15.
The Italian spogliare means both “to take away” and “to undress” (cf. 3.114). Manicar [to eat], like manducare (32.127), is a familiar dialect word; in De vulgari eloquentia 1.13.2, Dante identifies it as Florentine and excludes it from the “tragic” style (cf. the notes to 32.1–12).
67. After we had reached the fourth day: The sun has risen, then, and the inmates of the tower can see each other again.
69. My father, why do you not help me: As the commentators point out, these words echo Jesus’ last words as reported by Matthew and Mark: “Eli, Eli, lamma sabachthani, that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27.46).
70–72. There he died … and the sixth: Gaddo dies on the fourth day, the others on the fifth and sixth days. Medieval readers would have been alert to the fact that Christ’s death took place on the sixth day of the week.
72–74. I, already blind … after they were dead: Ugolino calls them for two days: he lives, then, into the eighth day, when presumably he dies—Macrobius had written that a man cannot live more than a week without food. The commentators have seen the ironic parallel with the week of the Creation; there is also a negative parallel with Christ’s resurrection, which took place on the day after the Sabbath (in the Middle Ages the number eight was universally associated with baptism and resurrection).
75. Then fasting had more power than grief: “Grief” translates dolor, which includes the complexities noted at line 58. The line is ambiguous: his rage could not kill him, but on the eighth day his hunger did; or: hunger overcame his grief, and he fed on the children’s bodies. There has been much debate about this line. See Additional Note 15.
76. with eyes askance: Ugolino’s eyes are torti [twisted], past participle of the verb Dante uses of Ciacco in 6.91 to describe the characteristic oblique gaze of envy and in 30.21 of doglike madness.
78. like a dog’s: The vivid image picks up the several comparisons of the souls in Cocytus to dogs (32.70, 105, and 108), as well as the dogs of Ugolino’s dream. Here part of the point is the adaptation of dogs’ teeth to grinding bones. The wolf is implied also: Ugolino and Ruggieri are instances of homo homini lupus: men who have become wolves to others.
79–90. Ah, Pisa … my song names above: The poet’s calling down of punishment on Pisa recalls God’s destruction of Sodom, not to speak of the Flood. The method, flooding Pisa by blocking the mouth of the Arno with the two small offshore islands of Capraia and Gorgona, imagines a closing in of rock and the formation of a lake parallel to that of Cocytus or Thebes (see 32.10, with note). The names Capraia [Goat Island] and Gorgona seem to have appealed to Dante for their association with the damned (who are goats to be separated from the sheep; Matt. 25.33) and with the Medusa. He is remembering Christ’s words in Matt. 18.6: “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea” (see the note to 28.79). The next-to-last denunciation of an Italian city in the Inferno (see lines 151–57).
80. the lovely land where sì is spoken: In De vulgari eloquentia, Dante classifies the Romance languages on the basis of the word used for “yes” (cf. 18.61, 21.42); this was already traditional. The traitor, of course, says an everlasting “no.”
85–88. For if Count Ugolino … on such a cross: While podesta of Pisa in 1285, Ugolino ceded several Pisan castles to Lucca and Florence (Guelf cities), apparently with the intention—successful, in fact—of weakening their alliance with Genoa against Pisa. Later the Pisan Ghibellines charged that this was done treacherously. Even if true, the charge could not justify the killing of his sons (porre a croce can mean simply “to torture,” but after line 69 the reference to Christ’s cross is unmistakable).
88–90. Their young age … my song names above: Uguiccione was a son of Ugolino’s; Nino, called “il Brigata,” was a grandson. One should note that Dante’s denunciation of the starving of the children validates Ugolino’s denunciation of Ruggieri (lines 7–9 and 19–21), as does God’s making him the instrument of Ruggieri’s punishment.
The Italian juxtaposes two different senses of the word novello [new, young]. Pisa is a “;new Thebes” because its wickedness rivals that of Thebes, the most wicked city of antiquity; and it is a “young Thebes” in terms of the mythographic tradition that identified it as a Theban colony (Zampese 1989). For Dante’s references to the saga of Thebes, see the notes to 26.52–54, 30.1–27; for denunciations of Italian cities, including Genoa, 33.151–57, see the note to 26.1–3.
91–93. We passed further … heads thrown back: In both Caina (32.3172) and Antenora (32.73–33.90), the souls can protect their eyes by lowering their heads; they also face away from the wind. Now we enter Ptolomea, reserved for those who have murdered guests.
94–99. Weeping itself … below the brow: The exquisite painfulness of the “crystal visors” is due in part to the fact that, as Dante knew, water expands when it forms ice. This is a particularly uncomfortable version of the insistence in these cantos on the idea of pressure. The tropological significance of the “crystal visors” is probably that the malice and hatred of these sinners have blocked their ability to see anything else; it is a continuation of the theme of blocked sight, a version of the “beam” of the Gospel (Matt. 7.3): “And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye; and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye?” See also Matt. 6.22–23: “The light of thy body is thy eye. … But if thy eye be evil thy whole body shall be darkness. If then the light that is in thee be darkness: the darkness itself, how great shall it be!” The note to line 148 discusses the probable source for the visors in the Gospel of John. As part of a helmet, the visors refer ironically to the “armor of God” (Eph. 6.13–17), which includes “the helmet of salvation.”
104–5. who moves … extinguished down here: The pilgrim asks who– rather than what–moves the wind (it is explained in 34.49–52). The accepted theory of winds was that they resulted from the heat of the sun evaporating moisture (hence “vapor”) and from the consequent differences in temperature (as in 9.67–68); earthquakes were caused by winds trapped underground (3.131–33). But “down here” all heated air (“vapor”) is chilled (“extinguished,” since the element of fire has been removed).
110–14. O souls so cruel … freeze up again: In contrast with the ferocious energy of Ugolino, this last and most wicked soul is apparently suffering so intensely that he entreats souls he supposes even more merciless than himself. The swelling of the heart with sorrow and the gathering of tears are coalesced here, as if the pressure on the eyes reaches the heart itself. The generative imagery (impregna [impregnates]) is continued in lines 118–20.
115–17. If you wish … bottom of the ice: The pilgrim has already encountered Bocca degli Abbati’s resistance to revealing his identity (32.94–105). His promise here is of course fraudulent, since he has realized that he and Virgil will descend through the ice; his betrayal of the betrayer (lines 149–50) is already prepared; he will violate this pact (see the note to 33.149–50).
118–20. I am Brother Alberigo … every fig: Alberigo, a leading member of the Manfredi of Faenza, a prominent Guelf family, was a frate godente (see the notes to 23.103–8). In 1285 he invited to dinner several relatives from whom he had formerly been estranged in a dispute over land; at the end of the meal, his words “Vengan le frutta” [Let the fruits come] were the signal for the assassins who then murdered his relatives, including one who tried to hide under Alberigo’s cloak. Various phrases like “the fruits of friar Alberigo” became proverbial soon after, as did Dante’s “fruits of the evil orchard,” if it was not already so when he wrote.
120. a date for every fig: Dates being more expensive than figs, the phrase means “better than I gave” (cf. the proverbial phrase to give or receive “pan per focaccia” [bread for shortbread]). Maintaining the fruit metaphor, Dante is making scornful play on the name Alberigo as related to the word for “tree” (albero) and draws on the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7.16–20), especially:
Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. … Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
121. are you already dead: Brother Alberigo was still alive in the spring of 1302, in Ravenna, where he made a will; he seems to have died around 1307.
122–23. How my body … no knowledge: This sinner seems even more ignorant of the present than is usual (see 10.100–108).
124–33. Ptolomea … into this cistern: The name of this third division of Cocytus is derived from the Ptolemy, king of Egypt, who permitted the murder of his guest, the defeated Pompey the Great, possibly also from the Ptolemy of 1 Mace. 16.11–16, who murdered his father-in-law and two brothers-in-law when they were his guests. Dante’s bold imagining of a demon’s taking over the body of these traitors is probably heterodox, but it draws on the account of Judas in Luke 22.3: “And Satan entered into Judas,” as well as popular tradition (see below).
126. Atropos: One of the three Fates; Clotho was said to spin the thread of one’s life, Lachesis to measure it, and Atropos to sever it.
133. cistern: A cistern is a well or a reservoir for drinking water.
134–38. perhaps the body … closed in like that: Branca Doria, member of a famous noble family of Genoa, invited his father-in-law, Michele Zanche, to dinner and had him killed along with those who accompanied him. According to some, this took place in 1275; according to others, in 1290. Michele Zanche was mentioned by Ciampolo as always talking about Sardinia (22.89–90).
135. wintering here behind me: Italian vernare can mean “to spend the winter,” but the phrase may be even more sardonic, since vernare can also mean “to sing in the spring” (used of birds); there could be a reference to the “stork’s tune” (32.36) of chattering teeth.
140–41. Branca Doria … and wears clothes: Branca Doria outlived Dante; he was still alive in 1325. Dante’s words seem to echo a phrase from Caesarius of Heisterbach’s dialogue in which one interlocutor expresses surprise at the idea that a certain Landgraf Hermann was possessed: “I did not think a human body, without a soul, could eat, drink, and sleep” (cited in Biagioni 1957).
148. But stretch out your hand to me: What Brother Alberigo asks is an analogue (like the pilgrim’s gesture toward Brunetto Latini in 15.29) of a gesture of Jesus—for instance, in Matt. 8.3 (of the healing of a leper): “and Jesus, extending [extendens] his hand, touched him.” The allusion suggests that Dante may have developed his idea of the crystal visors on the basis of the mud visor in the healing of the man blind from birth: “[Jesus] spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and spread the clay on his eyes, And said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloe. … He went, therefore, and washed, and he came seeing” (John 9.6–7).
149–50. And I did not … to treat him boorishly: That is, to have lightened in any way the suffering of this wicked soul would have been a lapse; true cortesia (behavior appropriate to the court of a ruler, in this case, God) here requires what in other circumstances would be its reverse (the behavior of a peasant, a villcmo); cf. Met. 6.635: “scelus est pietas in coniuge Tereus” [compassion toward her husband Tereus would be a crime].
151–57. Ah, men of Genoa … up above: The denunciations of Italian cities in the Inferno are listed in the note to 26.1–3; this is the last of them.