Exploring The Waste Land - Show supplementary textInferno
Canto XXXIII
Dante Alighieri
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poetic translation
- His mouth uplifted from his grim repast,
- That sinner, wiping it upon the hair
- Of the same head that he behind had wasted.
- Then he began: "Thou wilt that I renew
- The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already
- To think of only, ere I speak of it;
- But if my words be seed that may bear fruit
- Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw,
- Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together.
- I know not who thou art, nor by what mode
- Thou hast come down here; but a Florentine
- Thou seemest to me truly, when I hear thee.
- Thou hast to know I was Count Ugolino,
- And this one was Ruggieri the Archbishop;
- Now I will tell thee why I am such a neighbour.
- That, by effect of his malicious thoughts,
- Trusting in him I was made prisoner,
- And after put to death, I need not say;
- But ne'ertheless what thou canst not have heard,
- That is to say, how cruel was my death,
- Hear shalt thou, and shalt know if he has wronged me.
- A narrow perforation in the mew,
- Which bears because of me the title of Famine,
- And in which others still must be locked up,
- Had shown me through its opening many moons
- Already, when I dreamed the evil dream
- Which of the future rent for me the veil.
- This one appeared to me as lord and master,
- Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain
- For which the Pisans cannot Lucca see.
- With sleuth-hounds gaunt, and eager, and well trained,
- Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfianchi
- He had sent out before him to the front.
- After brief course seemed unto me forespent
- The father and the sons, and with sharp tushes
- It seemed to me I saw their flanks ripped open.
- When I before the morrow was awake,
- Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons
- Who with me were, and asking after bread.
- Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not,
- Thinking of what my heart foreboded me,
- And weep'st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at?
- They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh
- At which our food used to be brought to us,
- And through his dream was each one apprehensive;
- And I heard locking up the under door
- Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word
- I gazed into the faces of my sons.
- I wept not, I within so turned to stone;
- They wept; and darling little Anselm mine
- Said: 'Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?'
- Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made
- All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter,
- Until another sun rose on the world.
- As now a little glimmer made its way
- Into the dolorous prison, and I saw
- Upon four faces my own very aspect,
- Both of my hands in agony I bit;
- And, thinking that I did it from desire
- Of eating, on a sudden they uprose,
- And said they: 'Father, much less pain 'twill give us
- If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us
- With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.'
- I calmed me then, not to make them more sad.
- That day we all were silent, and the next.
- Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?
- When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo
- Threw himself down outstretched before my feet,
- Saying, 'My father, why dost thou not help me?'
- And there he died; and, as thou seest me,
- I saw the three fall, one by one, between
- The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me,
- Already blind, to groping over each,
- And three days called them after they were dead;
- Then hunger did what sorrow could not do."
- When he had said this, with his eyes distorted,
- The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth,
- Which, as a dog's, upon the bone were strong.
- Ah! Pisa, thou opprobrium of the people
- Of the fair land there where the 'Si' doth sound,
- Since slow to punish thee thy neighbours are,
- Let the Capraia and Gorgona move,
- And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno
- That every person in thee it may drown!
- For if Count Ugolino had the fame
- Of having in thy castles thee betrayed,
- Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons.
- Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes!
- Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata,
- And the other two my song doth name above!
- We passed still farther onward, where the ice
- Another people ruggedly enswathes,
- Not downward turned, but all of them reversed.
- Weeping itself there does not let them weep,
- And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes
- Turns itself inward to increase the anguish;
- Because the earliest tears a cluster form,
- And, in the manner of a crystal visor,
- Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full.
- And notwithstanding that, as in a callus,
- Because of cold all sensibility
- Its station had abandoned in my face,
- Still it appeared to me I felt some wind;
- Whence I: "My Master, who sets this in motion?
- Is not below here every vapour quenched?"
- Whence he to me: "Full soon shalt thou be where
- Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this,
- Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast."
- And one of the wretches of the frozen crust
- Cried out to us: "O souls so merciless
- That the last post is given unto you,
- Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I
- May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart
- A little, e'er the weeping recongeal."
- Whence I to him: "If thou wouldst have me help thee
- Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not,
- May I go to the bottom of the ice."
- Then he replied: "I am Friar Alberigo;
- He am I of the fruit of the bad garden,
- Who here a date am getting for my fig."
- "O," said I to him, "now art thou, too, dead?"
- And he to me: "How may my body fare
- Up in the world, no knowledge I possess.
- Such an advantage has this Ptolomaea,
- That oftentimes the soul descendeth here
- Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it.
- And, that thou mayest more willingly remove
- From off my countenance these glassy tears,
- Know that as soon as any soul betrays
- As I have done, his body by a demon
- Is taken from him, who thereafter rules it,
- Until his time has wholly been revolved.
- Itself down rushes into such a cistern;
- And still perchance above appears the body
- Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me.
- This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down;
- It is Ser Branca d' Oria, and many years
- Have passed away since he was thus locked up."
- "I think," said I to him, "thou dost deceive me;
- For Branca d' Oria is not dead as yet,
- And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes."
- "In moat above," said he, "of Malebranche,
- There where is boiling the tenacious pitch,
- As yet had Michel Zanche not arrived,
- When this one left a devil in his stead
- In his own body and one near of kin,
- Who made together with him the betrayal.
- But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith,
- Open mine eyes;"--and open them I did not,
- And to be rude to him was courtesy.
- Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance
- With every virtue, full of every vice
- Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world?
- For with the vilest spirit of Romagna
- I found of you one such, who for his deeds
- In soul already in Cocytus bathes,
- And still above in body seems alive!
Exploring The Waste Land
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File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002