Inferno
The Ninth Circle: Traitors. The Frozen Lake of Cocytus. First Division, Caina: Traitors to their Kindred. Second Division, Antenora: Traitors to their Country. Bocca degli Abati. Buoso da Duera.
If only I possessed words harsh and grating,
fitting for this most wretched pit
where all the weight of hell converges—
then I could press my thoughts into full expression.
But since I lack such brutal poetry,
I speak with trembling fear,
for this is no task to approach lightly:
to describe the very bottom of the universe
is not for childish tongues.
May those divine Muses who helped Amphion
raise the walls of Thebes with song
now help my verse, so that my words
might match the terrible truth I witnessed.
O you damned souls, the worst of all creation,
trapped in this place too horrible to name—
better you had been born as sheep or goats
than to inhabit this frozen hell.
When we descended into that dark well
beneath the giant's massive feet,
and I still gazed up at the towering wall,
I heard a voice: "Watch where you step!
Be careful not to trample with your feet
the heads of these exhausted, wretched souls."
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COCYTUS—TRAITORS
“beneath the giant's massive feet, / and I still gazed up at the towering wall, / I heard a voice: "Watch where you step!”
I turned and saw before me,
stretching beneath my feet,
a lake so frozen it looked like glass, not water.
Never did the Danube in Austrian winter
or the Don beneath its frigid sky
wear ice so thick as this.
If Mount Tambernicchi or Pietrapana
had crashed down upon it,
even at the edge it would not crack.
Like frogs that sit with snouts above the surface
when peasant girls dream of harvest time,
so the damned souls protruded from the ice—
blue-faced up to where shame would show,
their teeth chattering like storks' beaks.
Each held his face turned downward,
their mouths proclaiming the cold,
their eyes the sorrow of their hearts.
After I had looked around,
I glanced down and saw two souls so close together
their hair was intermingled.
"You who press your chests so tight," I said,
"tell me who you are."
They craned their necks toward me,
and when they lifted up their faces,
their eyes, which had been merely damp,
overflowed, and the frost immediately
froze their tears and sealed them shut again.
No clamp ever joined wood to wood so firmly—
and like two rams they butted heads together,
overcome by rage.
One soul who had lost both ears to the cold
but kept his face turned down, said:
"Why do you stare at us so intently?
If you want to know who these two are:
the valley where the Bisenzio flows
belonged to them and their father Albert.
They came from the same womb,
and you can search all of Caina
without finding shades more deserving
to be set in this ice—
not even he whose chest and shadow
were pierced by a single blow from Arthur's hand,
nor Focaccia, nor this one who blocks my view,
his head so close to mine,
who was called Sassol Mascheroni.
If you're Tuscan, you know who he was.
And so you won't make me speak further,
know that I was Camicion de' Pazzi,
and I wait for Carlino to make my crimes seem less."
Then I saw a thousand faces
turned purple by the cold.
Even now I shudder at frozen ponds,
and always will.
As we moved toward the center
where all weight converges,
and I shivered in that eternal chill—
whether by will or fate or chance I cannot say—
while walking among the heads
I kicked hard into one soul's face.
Weeping, he snarled: "Why do you kick me?
Unless you've come to add to the vengeance
of Montaperti, why do you torment me?"
"Master," I said, "wait here for me
while I resolve a doubt through him,
then hurry me along as you see fit."
My guide stopped, and I spoke to the soul
who was still cursing violently:
"Who are you to condemn others?"
"And who are you," he replied,
"to go through Antenora striking
other people's faces—
if you were alive, that would be too much!"
"I am alive," I answered,
"and if you want fame,
it might serve you well
for me to write your name among my notes."
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TRAITORS—BOCCA DEGLI ABATI
“"and if you want fame, / it might serve you well / for me to write your name among my notes."”
"I want the opposite!" he said.
"Get away from here and stop bothering me.
You know nothing of flattery in this frozen pit."
Then I grabbed him by the hair behind his head:
"You will tell me your name,
or I'll tear every hair from your skull."
"Even if you rip out all my hair," he replied,
"I will not tell you who I am or show my face,
not if you beat my head a thousand times."
I already had his hair twisted in my hand
and had pulled out several clumps,
while he barked with his eyes fixed downward,
when another cried: "What's wrong with you, Bocca?
Isn't it enough to chatter your teeth—
must you bark too? What devil possesses you?"
"Now I don't need you to speak," I said.
"Cursed traitor, I will carry true news
of you to shame you in the world above."
"Go away!" he answered. "Tell whatever you want,
but if you escape from here, don't stay silent
about him whose tongue was so quick just now.
He weeps here for French silver.
'I saw him of Duera,' you can say,
'there where sinners stand frozen in the cold.'
If anyone asks who else was there,
beside you stands him of Beccaria,
whose throat Florence cut open.
Gianni de' Soldanieri, I think,
is over there with Ganelon and Tebaldello,
who opened Faenza's gates while the city slept."
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UGOLINO AND ARCHBISHOP RUGGIERI
“is over there with Ganelon and Tebaldello, / who opened Faenza's gates while the city slept."”
We had already moved away from him
when I saw two souls frozen in one hole,
one head serving as a cap for the other.
As bread is devoured by hunger,
so the upper soul set his teeth
into the other's skull where brain meets neck.
Just as Tydeus gnawed in fury
at Menalippus' temples,
so this one devoured skull and flesh alike.
"You who show by such bestial sign
your hatred for the one you're eating," I said,
"tell me why—with this understanding:
if your complaint against him is just,
and I know who you are and his sin,
I may repay you for it in the world above,
if my tongue does not dry up before then."