Inferno: Canto XXXII

If I had rhymes rough and hoarse, as would befit the dismal hole, on which all the other rocky steeps converge and weigh,

I should press out the juice of my conception more fully; but since I have them not, not without fear I bring myself to tell thereof:

for to describe the bottom of all the Universe is not an enterprise for being taken up in sport, nor for a tongue that cries mamma and papa.

But may those Ladies help my verse, who helped Amphion with walls to close in Thebes; so that my words may not be diverse from the fact.

O ye beyond all others miscreated rabble, who are in the place, to speak of which is hard, better had ye here on earth been sheep or goats!

When we were down in the dark pit, under the Giant’s feet, much lower, and I still was gazing at the high wall,

I heard a voice say to me: “Look how thou passest: take care that with thy soles thou tread not on the heads of the weary wretched brothers.”

Whereat I turned myself, and saw before me beneath my feet a lake, which through frost had the semblance of glass and not of water.

Never did the Danube of Austria make so thick a veil for his course in winter, nor the Don afar beneath the frigid sky,

as there was here: for if Tambernic had fallen on it, or Pietrapana, it would not even at the edge have given a creak.

And as the frog to croak, sits with his muzzle out of the water, when the [peasant-woman] oft dreams that she is gleaning:

so, livid, up to where the hue of shame appears, the doleful shades were in the ice, sounding with their teeth like storks.

Each held his face turned downwards; by the mouth their cold, and by the eyes the sorrow of their hearts is testified amongst them.

When I had looked round awhile, I turned towards my feet; and saw two so pressed against each other, that they had the hair of their heads intermixed.

“Tell me, ye who thus together press your bosoms,” said I, “who you are.” And they bended their necks; and when they had raised their faces towards me,

their eyes, which only inwardly were moist before, gushed at the lids, and the frost bound fast the tears between them, and closed them up again.

Wood with wood no cramp did ever gird so strongly: wherefore they, like two he-goats, butted one another; such rage came over them.

And one, who had lost both ears by the cold, with his face still downwards said: “Why art thou looking so much at us?

If thou desirest to know who are these two, the valley whence the Bisenzio descends was theirs and their father Albert’s.

They issued from one body; and thou mayest search the whole Caina, and shalt not find a shade more worthy to be fixed in gelatine:

not him, whose breast and shadow at one blow were pierced by Arthur’s hand; not Focaccia; not this one, who so obstructs me

with his head that I see no farther, and who was named Sassol Mascheroni: if thou beest a Tuscan, well knowest thou now who he was.

And that thou mayest not put me to further speech, know that I was Camicion de’ Pazzi, and am waiting for Carlino to excuse me.”

Afterwards I saw a thousand visages, made by the cold: whence shuddering comes over me, and always will come, when I think of the frozen fords.

And as we were going towards the middle at which all weight unites, and I was shivering in the eternal shade,

whether it was will, or destiny or chance, I know not; but, walking amid the heads, I hit my foot violently against the face of one.

Weeping it cried out to me: “Why tramplest thou on me? If thou comest not to increase the vengeance for Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?”

And I: “My Master! now wait me here, that I may rid me of a doubt respecting him; then shalt thou, however much thou pleasest, make me haste.”

The master stood; and to that shade, which still kept bitterly reviling, I said: “What art thou, who thus reproachest others?”

“Nay, who art thou,” he answered, “that through the Antenora goest, smiting the cheeks of others; so that, if thou wert alive, it were too much?”

“I am alive,” was my reply; “and if thou seekest fame, it may be precious to thee, that I put thy name among the other notes.”

And he to me: “The contrary is what I long for; take thyself away! and pester me no more: for thou ill knowest how to flatter on this icy slope.”

Then I seized him by the afterscalp, and said: “It will be necessary that thou name thyself, or that not a hair remain upon thee here!”

Whence he to me: “Even if thou unhair me, I will not tell thee who I am; nor shew it thee, though thou fall foul upon my head a thousand times.”

I already had his hair coiled on my hand, and had plucked off more than one tuft of it, he barking and keeping down his eyes,

when another cried: “What ails thee, Bocca? is it not enough for thee to chatter with thy jaws, but thou must bark too? what Devil is upon thee?”

“Now,” said I, “accursed traitor! I do not want thee to speak; for to thy shame I will bear true tidings of thee.”

“Go away!” he answered; “and tell what pleases thee; but be not silent, if thou gettest out from hence, respecting him, who now had his tongue so ready.

Here he laments the Frenchman’s silver. ‘Him of Duera,’ thou canst say, ‘I saw there, where the sinners stand pinched in ice.’

Shouldst thou be asked who else was there, thou hast beside thee the Beccheria whose gorge was slit by Florence.

Gianni de’ Soldanier, I think, is farther on, with Ganellone, and Tribaldello who unbarred Faenza when it slept.”

We had already left him, when I saw two frozen in one hole so closely, that the one head was a cap to the other;

and as bread is chewed for hunger, so the uppermost put his teeth into the other there where the brain joins with the nape.

Not otherwise did Tydeus gnaw the temples of Menalippus for rage, than he the skull and the other parts.

“O thou! who by such brutal token shewest thy hate on him whom thou devourest, tell me why,” I said; “on this condition, that if thou with reason complainest of him, I,

knowing who ye are and his offence, may yet repay thee in the world above, if that, wherewith I speak, be not dried up.”