The Portable Dante by Dante Alighieri
as this crust here; for if Mount Tambernic or Pietrapana would crash down upon it, not even at its edges would a crack creak.
30
The way the frogs (in the season when the harvest will often haunt the dreams of the peasant girl) sit croaking with their muzzles out of water,
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so these frigid, livid shades were stuck in ice up to where a person’s shame appears; their teeth clicked notes like storks’ beaks snapping shut.
36
And each one kept his face bowed toward the ice: the mouth bore testimony to the cold, the eyes, to sadness welling in the heart.
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I gazed around awhile and then looked down, and by my feet I saw two figures clasped so tight that one’s hair could have been the other’s.
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“Tell me, you two, pressing your chests together, ” I asked them, “who are you?” Both stretched their necks and when they had their faces raised toward me,
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their eyes, which had before been only glazed, dripped tears down to their lips, and the cold froze the tears between them, locking the pair more tightly.
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Wood to wood with iron was never clamped so firm! And the two of them like billy-goats were butting at each other, mad with anger.
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Another one with both ears frozen off, and head still bowed over his icy mirror, cried out: “What makes you look at us so hard?
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If you’re interested to know who these two are: the valley where Bisenzio’s waters flow belonged to them and to their father, Albert;
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the same womb bore them both, and if you scour all of Caïna, you will not turn up one who’s more deserving of this frozen aspic—
60
55-58. The two brothers were Napoleone and Alessandro, sons of Count Alberto of Mangona, who owned part of the valley of the Bisenzio near Florence. The two quarreled often and eventually killed each other in a fight concerning their inheritance.
59 . The icy ring of Cocytus is named Caïna after Cain, who slew his brother Abel. Thus, in the first division of this, the Ninth Circle, are punished those treacherous shades who murderously violated family bonds.
not him who had his breast and shadow pierced with one thrust of the lance from Arthur’s hand; not Focaccia; not even this one here,
63
whose head gets in my way and blocks my view, known in the world as Sassol Mascheroni, and if you’re Tuscan you must know who he was.
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To save me from your asking for more news: I was Camicion de’ Pazzi, and I await Carlin, whose guilt will make my own seem less. ”
69
Farther on I saw a thousand doglike faces, purple from the cold. That’s why I shudder, and always will, when I see a frozen pond.
72
While we were getting closer to the center of the universe, where all weights must converge, and I was shivering in the eternal chill—
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by fate or chance or willfully perhaps, I do not know—but stepping among the heads, my foot kicked hard against one of those faces.
78
Weeping, he screamed: “Why are you kicking me? You have not come to take revenge on me for Montaperti, have you? Why bother me?”
81
61-62. Mordred, the wicked nephew of King Arthur, tried to kill the king and take his kingdom. But Arthur pierced him with such a mighty blow that when the lance was pulled from the dying traitor a ray of sunlight traversed his body and interrupted Mordred’s shadow. The story is told in the Old French romance Lancelot du Lac, the book that Francesca claims led her astray with Paolo in Canto V, 127.
63. Focaccia was one of the Cancellieri family of Pistoia and a member of the White party. His treacherous murder of his cousin, Detto de’ Cancellieri (a Black), was possibly the act that led to the Florentine intervention in Pistoian affairs.
65. The early commentators say that Sassol Mascheroni was a member of the Toschi family in Florence who murdered his nephew in order to gain his inheritance.
68-69. Nothing is known of Camicion de’ Pazzi except that he murdered one Umbertino, a relative. Another of Camicion’s kin, Carlino de’ Pazzi (69) from Valdarno, was still alive when the Pilgrim’s conversation with Camicion was taking place. But Camicion already knew that Carlino, in July 1302, would accept a bribe to surrender the castle of Piantravigne to the Blacks of Florence.
And I: “My master, please wait here for me, let me clear up a doubt concerning this one, then I shall be as rapid as you wish. ”
84
My leader stopped, and to that wretch, who still had not let up in his barrage of curses, I said: “Who are you, insulting other people?”
87
“And you, who are you who march through Antenora kicking other people in their faces? No living man could kick as hard!” he answered.
90
“I am a living man, ” was my reply, “and it might serve you well, if you seek fame, for me to put your name down in my notes. ”
93
And he said: “That’s the last thing I would want! That’s not the way to flatter in these lowlands! Stop pestering me like this—get out of here!”
96
At that I grabbed him by his hair in back and said: “You’d better tell me who you are or else I’ll not leave one hair on your head. ”
99
And he to me: “Go on and strip me bald and pound and stamp my head a thousand times, you’ll never hear my name or see my face. ”
102
I had my fingers twisted in his hair and already I’d pulled out more than one fistful, while he yelped like a cur with eyes shut tight,
105
when someone else yelled: “What’s the matter, Bocca? It’s bad enough to hear your shivering teeth; now you bark! What the devil’s wrong with you?”
108
88. Dante and Virgil have passed into the second division of Cocytus, named Antenora after the Trojan warrior who, according to one legend, betrayed his city to the Greeks. In this round are tormented those who committed acts of treachery against country, city, or political party.
106. Bocca degli Abati was a Ghibelline who appeared to side with the Florentine Guelphs. However, while fighting on the side of the Guelphs at the battle of Montaperti in 1260, he is said to have cut off the hand of the standard bearer. The disappearance of he standard led to panic among the Florentine Guelphs, who were then decisively defeated by the Sienese Ghibellines and their German allies under Manfred.
“There’s no need now for you to speak, ” I said, “you vicious traitor! Now I know your name and I’ll bring back the shameful truth about you. ”
111
“Go away!” he answered. “Tell them what you want; but if you do get out of here, be sure you also tell about that blabbermouth,
114
who’s paying here what the French silver cost him: ’I saw, ’ you can tell the world, ‘the one from Duera stuck in with all the sinners keeping cool. ’
117
And if you should be asked: ‘Who else was there?’ Right by your side is the one from Beccheria whose head was chopped off by the Florentines.
120
As for Gianni Soldanier, I think you’ll find him farther along with Ganelon and Tibbald, who opened up Faenza while it slept. ”
123
Soon after leaving him I saw two souls frozen together in a single hole, so that one head used the other for a cap.
126
As a man with hungry teeth tears into bread, the soul with capping head had sunk his teeth into the other’s neck, just beneath the skull.
129
116-117. The “one from Duera” is Buoso da Duera, a chief of the Ghibelline party of Cremona, who was a well-known traitor.
119-120. The “one from Beccheria” is Tesauro dei Beccheria of Pavia, an abbot of Vallombrosa and a papal legate to Alexander IV in Tuscany. He was tortured and finally
121. Gianni de’ Soldanier was an important Ghibelline of Florence who, when the Florentines (mostly Guelph) began to chafe under Ghibelline rule, deserted his party and went over to the Guelphs.
122-123. Ganelon was the treacherous knight who betrayed Roland (and the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army) to the Saracens.
Tibbald was one of the Zambrasi family of Faenza. In order to avenge himself on the Ghibelline Lambertazzi family (who had been exiled from Bologna in 1274 and had taken refuge in Faenza) he opened his city to their Bolognese Guelph enemies on the morning of November 13, 1280.
Tydeus in his fury did not gnaw the head of Menalippus with more relish than this one chewed that head of meat and bones.
132
“O you who show with every bestial bite your hatred for the head you are devouring, ” I said, “tell me your reason, and I promise,
135
if you are justified in your revenge, once I know who you are and this one’s sin, I’ll repay your confidence in the world above
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unless my tongue dry up before I die. ”
CANTO XXXIII
COUNT UGOLINO is the shade gnawing at the brain of his onetime associate Archbishop Ruggieri, and Ugolino interrupts his gruesome meallong enough to tell the story of his imprisonment and cruel death, which his innocent offspring shared with him. Moving farther into the area of Cocytus known as Tolomea, where those who betrayed their guests and associates are condemned, the Pilgrim sees sinners with their faces raised high above the ice, whose tears freeze and lock their eyes. One of the shades agrees to identify himself on condition that the ice be removed from his eyes. The Pilgrim agrees, and learns that this sinner is Friar Alberigo and that his soul is dead and damned even though his body is still alive on earth, inhabited by a devil. Alberigo also names a fellow sinner with him in the ice, Branca d’Oria, whose body is still functioning up on earth. But the Pilgrim does not honor his promise to break the ice from Alberigo’s eyes.
Lifting his mouth from his horrendous meal, this sinner first wiped off his messy lips in the hair remaining on the chewed-up skull,
3
130-131. Tydeus, one of the Seven against Thebes, in combat slew Menalippus— who, however, managed to wound him fatally. Tydeus called for his enemy’s head, which, when brought to him by Amphiaraus, he proceeded to gnaw in rage.
then spoke: “You want me to renew a grief so desperate that just the thought of it, much less the telling, grips my heart with pain;
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but if my words can be the seed to bear the fruit of infamy for this betrayer, who feeds my hunger, then I shall speak—in tears.
9
I do not know your name, nor do I know how you have come down here, but Florentine you surely seem to be, to hear you speak.
12
First you should know I was Count Ugolino and my neighbor here, Ruggieri the Archbishop; now I’ll tell you why I’m so unneighborly.
15
That I, trusting in him, was put in prison through his evil machinations, where I died, this much I surely do not have to tell you.
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What you could not have known, however, is the inhuman circumstances of my death. Now listen, then decide if he has wronged me!
21
Through a narrow slit of window high in that mew (which is called the tower of hunger, after me, and I’ll not be the last to know that place)
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I had watched moon after moon after moon go by, when finally I dreamed the evil dream which ripped away the veil that hid my future.
27
13-14. Ugolino della Gherardesca, the Count of Donoratico, belonged to a noble Tuscan family whose political affiliations were Ghibelline. In 1275 he conspired with his son-in-law, Giovanni Visconti, to raise the Guelphs to power in Pisa. Although exiled for this subversive activity, Ugolino (Nino) Visconti took over the Guelph government of the city. Three years later (1288) he plotted with Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini to rid Pisa of the Visconti. Ruggieri, however, had other plans, and with the aid of the Ghibellines, he seized control of the city and imprisoned Ugolino, together with his sons and grandsons, in the “tower of hunger” (23). The two were evidently just at the boundary between Antenora and Ptolomea, for Ugolino is being punished for betraying his country (in Antenora), and Ruggieri for betraying his associate, Ugolino (in Ptolomea).
I dreamed of this one here as lord and huntsman, pursuing the wolf and the wolf cubs up the mountain(which blocks the sight of Lucca from the Pisans)
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with skinny bitches, well trained and obedient; he had out front as leaders of the pack Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfranchi.
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A short run, and the father with his sons seemed to grow tired, and then I thought I saw long fangs sunk deep into their sides, ripped open.
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When I awoke before the light of dawn, I heard my children sobbing in their sleep (you see they, too, were there), asking for bread.
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If the thought of what my heart was telling me does not fill you with grief, how cruel you are! If you are not weeping now—do you ever weep?
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And then they awoke. It was around the time they usually brought our food to us. But now each one of us was full of dread from dreaming;
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then from below I heard them driving nails into the dreadful tower’s door; with that, I stared in silence at my flesh and blood.
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I did not weep, I turned to stone inside; they wept, and my little Anselmuccio spoke: ’What is it, father? Why do you look that way?’
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For them I held my tears back, saying nothing, all of that day, and then all of that night, until another sun shone on the world.
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28-36. Ugolino’s dream was indeed prophetic. The “lord and huntsman” (28) is Archbishop Ruggieri, who with the leading Ghibelline families of Pisa (“Gualandi … Sismondi and Lanfranchi, ” 33) and the populace (“skinny bitches, ” 31), runs down Ugolino and his offspring (“the wolf and the wolf cubs, ” 29) and finally kills them.
50 . Anselmuccio was the younger of Ugolino’s grandsons, who, according to official documents, must have been fifteen at the time.
A meager ray of sunlight found its way to the misery of our cell, and I could see myself reflected four times in their faces;
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I bit my hands in anguish. And my children, who thought that hunger made me bite my hands, were quick to draw up closer to me, saying:
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’O father, you would make us suffer less, if you would feed on us: you were the one who gave us this sad flesh; you take it from us!’
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I calmed myself to make them less unhappy. That day we sat in silence, and the next day. O pitiless earth! You should have swallowed us!
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The fourth day came, and it was on that day my Gaddo fell prostrate before my feet, crying: ‘Why don’t you help me? Why, my father?’
69
There he died. Just as you see me here, I saw the other three fall one by one, as the fifth day and the sixth day passed. And I,
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by then gone blind, groped over their dead bodies. Though they were dead, two days I called their names. Then hunger proved more powerful than grief. ”
75
He spoke these words; then, glaring down in rage, attacked again the wretched skull with his teeth sharp as a dog’s, and as fit for grinding bones.
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O Pisa, blot of shame upon the people of that fair land where the sound of “sì” is heard! Since your neighbors hesitate to punish you,
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let Capraia and Gorgona move and join, damming up the River Arno at its mouth, and let every Pisan perish in its flood!
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68. Gaddo was one of U
80. The “fair land” is Italy. It was customary in Dante’s time to indicate a language area by the word signifying “yes. ”
For if Count Ugolino was accused of turning traitor, trading-in your castles, you had no right to make his children suffer.
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Their newborn years (O newborn Thebes!) made them all innocents: Brigata, Uguiccione, and the other two soft names my canto sings.
90
We moved ahead to where the frozen water wraps in harsh wrinkles another sinful race, with faces not turned down but looking up.
93
Here, the weeping puts an end to weeping, and the grief that finds no outlet from the eyes turns inward to intensify the anguish:
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for the tears they first wept knotted in a cluster and like a visor made for them in crystal, filled all the hollow part around their eyes.
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Although the bitter coldness of the dark had driven all sensation from my face, as though it were not tender skin but callous,
102
I thought I felt the air begin to blow, and I: “What causes such a wind, my master? I thought no heat could reach into these depths. ”
105
And he to me: “Before long you will be where your own eyes can answer for themselves, when they will see what keeps this wind in motion. ”
108
And one of the wretches with the frozen crust screamed out at us: “O wicked souls, so wicked that you have been assigned the ultimate post,
111
89-90. Brigata was Ugolino’s second grandson; Uguiccione was his fifth son.
91-93. Virgil and the Pilgrim have now entered the third division of Cocytus, called Tolomea (124) after Ptolemy, the captain of Jericho, who had Simon, his father-in-law, and two of his sons killed while dining (see 1 Macabees 16:11–17). Or possibly this zone of Cocytus is named after Ptolemy XII, the Egyptian king who, having welcomed Pompey to his realm, slew him. In Tolomea are punished those who have betrayed their guests.
break off these hard veils covering my eyes and give relief from the pain that swells my heart— at least until the new tears freeze again. ”
114
I answered him: “If this is what you want, tell me your name; and if I do not help you, may I be forced to drop beneath this ice!”