To wit:
Through me you go into the doleful city;
through me you go into eternal grief;
through me you go among the lost people.
Justice moved my lofty Builder;
Divine Power made me;
and the supreme Wisdom and the first Love.
Ere me were no things created—unless eternal, and I eternal last;
relinquish all hope, you who enter.
Now compare with Parsons's:
"Through me you reach the City of Despair:
Through me eternal wretchedness ye find:
Through me among perdition's tribe ye fare.
Justice inspired my lofty Founder's mind:
Power, Love, and Wisdom—Heavenly First Most High—
Created me. Before me naught had been
Save things eternal—and eterne am I:
Leave ye all hope, O ye who enter in!"
Can any translation be more literal? Can it be more faithful? We have tried to find fault with it, but gave it up in despair; yea, the more we strain our critical eye, the more perfectly does the original beauty appear reflected in the translation. It is not the reflection of the mirror; it is the reflection of the sun's light on the moon's face.
To economize room, we shall give no more text: we will only add a lineal translation by way of note, presuming on the reader for his trust in our knowledge of both languages, and in our honesty.
The long extract we are going to make is, perhaps, the noblest specimen of descriptive poetry in the Italian language. It is, however, founded on a historical mistake, inasmuch as Ugolino was starved to death not by Archbishop Ruggieri, but by Guido da Montefeltro, Lord of Pisa. The true account runs thus: Ugolino dei Gherardeschi, Count of Donovatico, and a Guelf, had, with the connivance of the archbishop, made himself master of Pisa. But having put to death a nephew of Ruggieri, and sold some castles to the Florentines, that prelate, at the head of an infuriated mob, and aided by Gualandi, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, three powerful leaders, attacked the count in his own palace, and made him prisoner with his two sons Gaddo and Uguccione, and three nephews, Ugolino Brigata, Arrigo, and Anselmuccio. Thus bound, they were all thrown into the donjons of the Tower at the Three Roads. Montefeltro, having meanwhile got the power into his own hands, forbade any food to be administered to his prisoner rival, whereby Ugolino and the rest died of hunger. Dante, (Inferno, c. xxxii. and xxxiii.,) admitted to the ninth circle, or bolgia, on entering that part of it which was called Antenora, witnessed the horrible punishment of the traitor and of the murderer:
[Transcriber's note: Rendering 1]
"In a single gap,
Fast froze together other two I saw,
So that one head was his companion's cap:
And as a famished man a crust might gnaw,
So gnawed the upper one the wretch beneath,
Just where the neck-bone's marrow joins the brain:
Not otherwise did Tydeus fix his teeth
On Menalippus' temples in disdain.
While thus he mumbled skull and hair and all,
I cried: 'Ho! thou who show'st such bestial hate
Of him on whom thy ravenous teeth so fall,
Why feedest thou thus? On this agreement state:
That, if thou have good reason for thy spite,
Knowing you both, and what his crime was, I
Up in the world above may do thee right,
Unless the tongue I talk with first grow dry.'
From his foul feast that sinner raised his jaw,
Wiping it on the hair, first, of the head
Whose hinder part his craunching had made raw.
Then thus: 'Thou wouldst that I renew,' he said,
'The agony which still my heart doth wring,
In thought even, ere a syllable I say;
But if my words may future harvest bring
To the vile traitor here on whom I prey
Of infamy, then thou shalt hear me speak,
And see my tears too. I know not thy mien,
Nor by what means this region thou dost seek;
But by thy tongue thou'rt sure Florentine.
Know then, Count Ugolino once was I,
And this Archbishop Ruggieri: fate
Makes us close neighbors—I will tell thee why.
'Tis needless all the story to relate,
How through his malice, trusting in his words,
I was a prisoner made and after slain.
But that whereof thou never canst have heard,
I mean how cruelly my life was ta'en,
Thou shalt hear now, and thenceforth know if he
Have done me wrong. A loophole in the mew
Which hath its name of Famine's Tower from me,
And where his doom some other yet must rue,
Had shown me now already through its cleft
Moon after moon, when that ill dream I dreamed
Which from futurity the curtain reft.
He, in my vision, lord and master seemed,
Hunting the wolf and wolf-cubs on the height
Which screeneth Lucca from the Pisan's eye:
With eager hounds, well trained and lean and light,
Gualandi and Lanfranchi darted by,
With keen Sismondi—these the foremost went;
But after some brief chase, too hardly borne,
The sire and offspring seemed entirely spent,
And by sharp fangs their bleeding sides were torn.
When before morn from sleep I raised my head,
I heard my boys, in prison there with me,
Moaning in slumber and demanding bread.
If thou weep not, a savage thou must be:
Nay, if thou weep not, thinking of the fear
My heart foreboded, canst thou weep at aught?
Now they woke also, and the hour was near
When used our daily pittance to be brought.
His dream made each mistrustful; and I heard
The door of that dread tower nailed up below:
Then in my children's eyes, without a word,
I gazed, but moved not; and I wept not: so
Like stone was I within, that I could not.
They wept, though, and my little Anselm cried,
'Thou look'st so! Father, what's the matter, what?'
But still I wept not, nor a word replied,
All that long day, nor all the following night,
Till earth beheld the sun's returning ray;
And soon as one faint gleam of morning light
Stole to the dismal dungeon where we lay,
And soon as those four visages I saw
Imaging back the horror of my own,
Both hands through anguish I began to gnaw;
And they, believing want of food alone
Compelled me, started up, and cried, 'Far less,
Dear father, it will torture us if thou
Shouldst feed on us! Thou gavest us this dress
Of wretched flesh—'tis thine, and take it now.'
So to relieve their little hearts, at last
I calmed myself, and, all in silence, thus
That and the next day motionless we past.
Ah thou hard earth! why didst not ope for us?
On the fourth morning, Gaddo at my feet
Cast himself prostrate, murmuring, 'Father! why
Dost thou not help me? Give me food to eat."
With that he died: and even so saw I,
As thou seest me now, three more, one by one,
Betwixt the fifth day and the sixth day fall;
By which time, sightless grown, o'er each dear son
I groped, and two days on the dead did call:
But, what grief could not do, hunger did then.
This said, he rolled his eyes askance, and fell
To gnaw the skull with greedy teeth again,
Strong as a dog upon the bony shell.
Ah Pisa! shame of all in that fair land
Where si is uttered, since thy neighbors round
Take vengeance on thee with a tardy hand,
Broke be Capraja's and Gorgona's bound!
Let them dam Arno's mouth up, till the wave
Whelm every soul of thine in its o'erflow!
What though 'twas said Count Ugolino gave,
Through treachery, thy strongholds to the foe?
Thou needst not have tormented so his sons,
Thou modern Thebes!—their youth saved them from blame—
Brigata, Hugh, and those two innocent ones
Whom, just above, the canto calls by name."
[Transcriber's note: Rendering 2; the dash at the end of each line is probably a typesetting artifact; all the poetic lines are run together.]