Whereas earlier, Dante searched for rhymes that would help alleviate the suffering of the shades in the upper circles, now he calls out for “rhymes rugged and harsh and hoarse/ fit for the hideous hole” [Sayers’ translation]—horrible words befitting the utter horror of this most horrendous place, the very bottom of Hell, reserved for the most heinous sinners.
A soul cries out for Dante to be careful not to tread on the heads of the souls in that frozen lake, and Dante turns and sees that the sinners are frozen according to their sin. Dante and Virgil are in the first of four rounds of the final circle, Cocytus. The first round is called Caina, and the sinners here have their heads bowed toward the ice, chattering their teeth and crying.
Dante looks around and sees two sinners clamped tightly together, breast-to-breast, and asks them who they are, to which they do not reply but butt their heads together like goats. A nearby sinner with his ears frozen off replies that these two were brothers, and that there are no two more deserving of punishment in all of Caina than these two. He goes on to name other sinners, and finally himself.
Moving further towards the center of Hell, Dante accidentally kicks the face of a sinner, who yells at Dante, asking him why he would want to cause him more pain. Dante asks Virgil for a moment to speak with the sinner, and his wish is granted. The sinner asks Dante who he thinks he is, kicking the faces of the sinners in Antenora, the second round of the ninth circle. Dante replies that if the shade tells him his name, he will make him famous on Earth. The shade does not want to comply, and Dante grabs a handful of the shade’s hair and threatens to tear it out if he does not give his name. The shade says he does not care if Dante should rip until his brain lies bare; he will not tell, to which Dante rips out tufts of the sinner’s hair. A nearby sinner tells Dante the name of the reluctant sinner, Bocca, who then will not shut up as Dante commands, telling him the names of many other sinners in the round with him.
Upon leaving Bocca, Dante comes across two sinners in such close proximity that one is feeding off of the back of the other’s neck. Dante offers to tell the sinner’s story in the upper world, if the sinner would tell it.
Canto XXXIII opens with the sinner’s tale. He was Count Ugolino, and the soul he feeds upon was Archbishop Ruggieri, on whom he trusted. Ruggieri imprisoned Ugolino and his four sons in a tower, nailed the doors shut, and starved them all to death. Ugolino is forced to watch his young boys starve one by one. And his hatred for Ruggieri increases with each of his son’s death. Once through with his long and passionate tale, Ugolino goes back to feeding on Ruggieri.
As the poets move along, they come to a place where the souls are not placed vertically in the ice, but they are supine with only their faces raised out of the ice. As a result, their tears freeze in their eyes, creating little crystal visors over their eye sockets. Dante is beginning to feel chilled and also feels a wind blowing over the ice—Virgil says that the source of the wind will soon be known.
One of the shades locked up to the face in the ice of Ptolomea, the third round of the ninth circle, begs Dante to remove the sheath of ice over his eyes so that he may cry freely for a while. Dante promises to do so if the shade tells him his name, saying that he will go to the last rim of the ice if he does not keep his promise. The shade complies, saying that he was Friar Albergio.
Dante, sure that Friar Albergio is not yet dead, is shocked at this confession. Albergio tells Dante that his sin was so terrible that the moment he committed it, he was taken out of his body and thrust here, and that a demon took the place of his soul in his worldly body. He names another person that Dante knows for certain is alive that this has also happened to, and Dante does not believe him, though the shade is convincing. Dante refuses to keep his promise to remove the frozen tears from the shade’s eyes, saying that rudeness in Hell is a courtesy. Dante makes a plea to the city of Genoa about this sinner, telling them that they have a demon in their midst, and says that he wishes the whole lot of them driven from the Earth.
