INFERNO, Episode 205. Placing Count Ugolino Inside The Scope Of Dante's Hell: INFERNO, Canto XXXIII, Lines 1 - 78

In the last episode of this podcast, we've looked at Count Ugolino's speech as a narrative arc, taking apart and looking at the ways both the poet Dante has changed the historical record and the details that may be too removed by time for us to see clearly.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we now situate the last great sinner of hell, Count Ugolino, inside the larger framework of Dante's INFERNO. Ugolino gets the longest speech in INFERNO. What's it doing here? How does it echo other parts of INFERNO? How does it sum up INFERNO?

Giant questions with attempted answers--as always on this podcast.

Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:42] Once again, my English translation of this passage: INFERNO, Canto XXXIII, lines 1 - 78. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or drop a comment, just scroll down this page.

[06:52] Here's a list of the seven great sinners of INFERNO: Francesca da Rimini, Farinata degli Uberti, Pier della Vigne, Brunetto Latini, Ulysses, Guido da Montefeltro, and Count Ugolino.

[13:04] The great sinners convey dramatic stories, provoke profound ambivalences, and offer a deeper understanding of the human condition.

[19:16] Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri as one of the three great pairs in INFERNO.

[20:23] Echoes between Francesca da Rimini and Count Ugolino: the beginnings and endings of INFERNO.

[23:15] Echoes among Francesca, Ugolino, and Aeneas: heroism or irony?

[26:15] Echoes between Ciacco the glutton and Ugolino: the insanity of the damned, the trustworthiness of the damned.

[29:40] Echoes between Filippo Argenti and Ugolino: the uses of rage.

[30:56] Echoes between Farinata and Ugolino: the possibilities of peace.

[34:54] Echoes between Cavalcante and Ugolino: where is my son?

[36:31] The schismatics and Ugolino: the body in pain, the body in political strife.

[38:46] Four possible reasons for Ugolino's placement in INFERNO: 1) as a test for the reader, 2) as a tragic figure of fallen humanity, 3) as a ravenous wolf who blocks the way (as in Canto 1), and 4) as a repeated strategy of moving from narrative clarity to interpretive murk.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXXIII, Lines 1 – 78

Raising his mouth from his savage meal

And wiping it on the hair of the head

He’d been gnawing from behind,

This sinner began, “You wish me to renew

The despairing sorrow that already presses down on my heart

Just by thinking about it, even before I tell it.

“Well, if my words will be the seeds

Which become the fruits of infamy for the traitor that I munch,

You’ll see me cry and speak at the same time.

“I don’t know who you are, nor in what fashion

You’ve made your way down here; but sure enough, it seems to me

You’re a Florentine when I hear your voice.

“You’ve got to know that I was Count Ugolino

And that this one is Archbishop Ruggieri.

Now I’ll tell you why I’m his neighbor.

“That the final result of his evil reckonings,

Despite my trust in him, was that I was seized

And put to death—there’s no need to tell all that.

“But there’s no way you could be able to learn

How cruel my death was.

Listen up and figure out if he wronged me.

“A little peephole in the hawks’ mew—

That’s now called by the name of Hunger on account of me

And in which others are yet to be shut up—

“Had already shown me through its slit

Several waxing and waning moons, when I had a nightmare

That tore open the veil of the future for me.

“This one appeared to be the master and the lord,

Tracking the wolf and its cubs over the mountain

That obscures Lucca from the Pisans.

“Driving lean, eager, and trained dogs,

He had Gualandi along with Sismondi and Lanfranchi

Arrayed out in front of him.

“After a short run, the father and his sons

Were worn out. It seemed to me that the flesh

Was torn from their haunches with razor-sharp fangs.

“When I woke up, a little before daylight,

I heard the cries of my own sons,

Who were locked up with me, asking for some bread in their dreams.

“You are truly cruel if you’re not already suffering

At the things my heart was predicting for me.

If this doesn’t make you cry, what would?

“Then they woke up and the time approached

When our meal was usually brought up to us.

We were awfully afraid because of our dreams.

“That’s when I heard the nails being driven into the door

Down at the base of that horrible tower. That’s when I looked

At the face of my children without saying a word.

“I didn’t cry. I’d turned into stone inside.

But they cried and my little Anselm

Said, ‘You look so weird, father? What’s up?’

“Even then I didn’t cry, nor offer a reply

All that day and the following night,

Until the sun shone on the world again.

“The moment a few rays of light shone into

That sorrowful cell, I could see

My own face stamped in their four faces.

“I chewed on my hands out of grief.

And they, thinking I did what I did

Because I wanted something to eat, stood up all at once

“And said, ‘Father, we’d have a lot less pain

If you’d just eat us. You clothed us

In this miserable skin and you can peel it off.’

“That’s why, to spare them more grief, I calmed myself down.

That day and the next we didn’t speak a word.

Oh, hard earth, why did you not open wide to swallow us?

“After we’d gotten to the fourth day.

Gaddo threw himself at my feet,

Saying, ‘My father, why won’t you help me?’

“At that he died, and as sure as you see me right now,

I watched the other three fall one by one

Between the fifth and sixth days. At that point, utterly blind,

“I started groping over the corpses,

And calling for them for two days, even though they were dead.

That’s when fasting had more power than grief.”

When he’d said this, with his eyes rolling in his head,

He sank his teeth into the wretched skull

And held it tight, like a dog with a bone.