While climbing the stairs to the next terrace, Dante is tormented with a question: how could it be that the gluttonous sinners were so terribly thin? At Virgil’s prompting, Statius delivers a long and fascinating lecture on the generation of the body, the implanting of the soul, and the formation of the shade after death. As Statius finishes, the travelers arrive at the seventh terrace where they are greeted by great flames shooting out from the walls, making their passage along the cliff edge very dangerous. Within the flames, Dante sees spirits singing hymns and praising the virtue of chastity.
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Since it was almost mid-afternoon, it was time to move onward in earnest. And so we started climbing the narrow stairs like men pressing on toward a goal and stopped by nothing along the way.[1]Dante is quite precise about the time of day in the opening tercet of this canto, measuring the distance between the constellations Taurus and Scorpio as they move above him. It’s close to 2:00pm. … Continue reading
As we climbed, though, I was like a baby stork wanting to fly, lifting a wing, but lacking boldness, and dropping it again. So there I was, dying to ask a question; but lacking the confidence at that moment, I withheld it. Nevertheless, Virgil, who could read my thoughts, urged me on: “I can see that you’ve drawn the bow of your speech right to the tip. Go ahead, now, let it go.”[2]In the previous canto, I noted that Dante’s poetry “flies.” Here, he cleverly uses the baby stork image to indicate just the opposite as he struggles with a question he lacks the confidence to … Continue reading
And so, with my confidence restored, I spoke to him. “I don’t understand how they could become so terribly thin like that since there’s no need to eat in this place.”[3]Aha! One might think that Dante should have asked this question in the previous canto. It has definitely been in the back of his mind. What Dante saw in Forese and the other gluttons were what looked … Continue reading
“Ah,” he replied, “but if you remember the story of how Meleager slowly died as the log burned on the fire, you should be able to understand. On the other hand, think about how your image in a mirror moves as you do. But, since Statius is here with us, set your mind at ease. I will ask him to heal this wound that troubles you so.”[4]Virgil passes Dante’s significant question to Statius, but not before he offers him two images to think about. The first is the long story of Meleager from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VIII:260-546). … Continue reading
“You know that I cannot deny your request,” replied Statius, “and so let me answer from God’s point of view.[5]In handing the matter over to Statius, Robert Hollander tells us, “Virgil himself understands that his explanations, relying on physical laws, do not explain the deeper principles involved in the … Continue reading
“My dear son,” he began, “listen carefully to what I am about to tell you because I will now explain how it can be that those souls are so thin.[6]What Statius begins here might seem highly imaginative to us nowadays, but it would have been considered quite scientific in Dante’s day. Within a man’s body there is a perfect blood, separate from that which flows through his veins. Within his heart this special blood acquires powers to form and shape the human body. This special blood, transformed, flows down through the man’s hidden parts and blends with the blood in the woman’s womb–one blood active, the other passive.[7]Here begins the first of the three parts of Statius’s exposition: On The Nature of the Generative Principle. Hollander notes the following in his commentary to insure that we’re still connected … Continue reading
“Joined together, these two bloods begin their work as they coagulate. Following this, it begins to move with life as it becomes the matter that will soon begin to take shape. This active force becomes a soul, like a plant’s soul at this point–except the plant’s growth stops here, whereas the new soul has only begun. Soon it reaches the stage of a simple creature, like a sea sponge. It now moves and feels, and then organs begin to take shape for the various faculties.[8]Here begins the second of the three parts of Statius’s exposition: Conception and the Birth of the Human Soul. The active blood of the male mixes with the passive blood of the female and begins to … Continue reading
“Now, my son, this living force keeps on growing, having originated in the man’s heart as nature’s seed for all the body’s parts. But how it moves from animal to human–this cannot be seen yet. It led Averroës astray in his teaching, where he separated the possible intellect from the soul because he couldn’t find an organ to contain it.[9]The movement from animal soul to human soul cannot be seen because Statius hasn’t explained it yet. Everything up to this point should (hopefully) be clear to Dante. But now we need a place for the … Continue reading
“So now, attend to what I am going to tell you. When the brain has been shaped within the embryo, God rejoices at Nature’s art and breathes a new and powerful spirit into it. This spirit shapes everything together into a single, complete soul. It lives and feels and can think about itself. If you have difficulty understanding this, think about how the sun’s heat on the grapes works to form the wine.[10]Here, Statius concludes his discussion of how the soul is formed. He has taken us through the development of a simple, primitive, vegetative soul, then to a simple sensitive/sensate soul. When the … Continue reading)
“Now, then, when a person dies, the soul is released from the body, but carries away with it both human and divine faculties. The human faculties soon become muted, while those faculties of the spirit–intellect, memory, and will–become even more active and far more acute than they were in life. At the same time, immediately, the soul finds itself either on the shore of the Acheron in Hell or on the shore of the Tiber, bound for this place. And on either shore it learns its eternal destiny.[11]Here begins the third part of Statius’ exposition: the Formation of the Spirit-Body (or Shade) after Death. This part of the “lecture” is all a product of Dante’s imagination. Once a person … Continue reading
“Once there, the soul is enclosed in space and the powers active within it radiate outward, reshaping the body to its original form. It is like the air, filled with moisture after the rain. When the sun shines on it, the rainbow takes shape. So with the soul. The air around it takes the shape of the soul’s powers reflected on it. And as the flame follows the fire wherever it may move, so this new shape follows the soul everywhere.[12]In describing the formation of the shade, Statius follows a step-by-step pattern similar to the one he used earlier for human generation. The end-product, the shade, will be as perfect in this new … Continue reading
“The air around the soul makes it visible, and so we call it a shade. And out of that air it also forms the organs for every sense, including sight. We can speak, laugh, cry, and make sighs–like those you have heard here on this mountain. In the end, the shade takes the shape of our desires and changes according to how we feel. This is what so amazed you down below.”[13]Statius reminds Dante that all the souls he has encountered in Hell and here in Purgatory have undergone this transformation including all of the heightened powers, the senses, and the ability to … Continue reading
By now we had arrived at the final terrace, and we made our usual right turn. However, our attention was immediately drawn to something else: great flames shot out from the inner wall, and from the outer edge of the cliff came up a blast of air that forced the flames to bend back a bit, leaving a narrow path along the edge where we could only walk one by one. I was terrified! From the wall came the flames, and here I could fall off![14]All the while, during Statius’s amazing lecture in answer to Dante’s question about the physical appearance of the gluttons, the three travelers have been climbing to the next terrace where the … Continue reading
Seeing my panic, Virgil said: “Be very careful here. Make sure you keep your eyes straight on the path ahead. Otherwise, you could slip and fall.”[15]The scene that Dante describes here makes a wonderful visual sermon (which Virgil puts into words) on the nature of temptations of the flesh, represented by the flames, and the narrow path the soul … Continue reading
Then in the midst of that terrible heat I heard chanting: it was the hymn Summae Deus clementiae. Hearing this, I was more curious than ever to see what was there. And within the flames I could now see spirits walking. Frightened, but curious at the same time, I had to be careful where I stepped.[16]The Poet evokes several senses here: he feels the heat, he hears the hymn, and only then does he see the sinners within the flames. All the while, he has to be careful not to be so distracted that … Continue reading
When the hymn was finished, those flaming spirits cried out: Virum non cognosco. And then, more softly, they sang the hymn again. This time when it was finished, they cried out: “Diana stayed in the forest after chasing away Helice who had been seduced by Jove.” Then the hymn started again, and following it more shouts praising those who kept their marriage vows. As long as they walked within those flames they did this–the wounds of their sins healed by the fire and the hymns.[17]As with all the terraces below, pertinent examples of virtue of chastity (the “whip”) and its vices (the “rein” of chastity) are heard here as part of the sinners’ penitential program. As … Continue reading
Notes & Commentary
| ↑1 | Dante is quite precise about the time of day in the opening tercet of this canto, measuring the distance between the constellations Taurus and Scorpio as they move above him. It’s close to 2:00pm. Robert Hollander works out a very clear picture of the pilgrims’ whereabouts in his commentary here: “Since the travelers had entered this terrace [of the gluttons] at roughly ten in the morning, it results that they have spent roughly four hours among the penitents of Gluttony and will spend approximately the same amount of time from now until they leave the penitents of Lust, the first two hours traversing the distance between the two terraces.”
Recalling that Forese had warned about wasting time in the previous canto, the three travelers waste no time in moving onward as they begin the steep climb up the stairs to the next terrace. The narrowness of the stairway suggests that they are climbing in single file, and John Ciardi notes here that there’s a significant allegory to be found in the image of the narrow stairs: “…each soul must ultimately climb to salvation alone, inside itself, no matter how much assistance it may receive from others.” |
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| ↑2 | In the previous canto, I noted that Dante’s poetry “flies.” Here, he cleverly uses the baby stork image to indicate just the opposite as he struggles with a question he lacks the confidence to ask. Perhaps it’s because there’s now a third party in their group, but Virgil gently urges him to go ahead with his question, using yet another image–that of a tightly drawn bow. Not only does he read Dante’s mind, but he highlights something important about words–perhaps more importantly, about poetic words: they’re like arrows, precise and targeted both for the perfect affect and effect. Visually, there’s also something very physical here so that we don’t get too tangled up in the imagery. It’s a very common situation. Dante has a question. He stops, opens his mouth, draws in his breath, and is ready to speak…but he immediately loses the self-confidence to proceed, and stops. Often this happens with an important question and we’re not sure how to ask it. Not only this. Surely Dante is not the only one with the question he’s about to ask. The attentive reader will, like Dante, already have raised it in his/her head, and will nod in agreement as soon as he lets it fly. |
| ↑3 | Aha! One might think that Dante should have asked this question in the previous canto. It has definitely been in the back of his mind. What Dante saw in Forese and the other gluttons were what looked like mortal bodies–starving to death. And how do they feel hunger and thirst even though there’s no need to eat? How can this be? If we think back for a moment, much of the previous canto was taken up with the identification of various sinners and with poets and poetry. As he climbs, and in hindsight, Dante realizes that he missed a significant opportunity. But, really not. This is precisely the place the Poet wants the question to be asked, and in a moment, we (and Dante the Pilgrim) are going to be treated to something utterly amazing, something that will serve us well for the rest of the Poem. |
| ↑4 | Virgil passes Dante’s significant question to Statius, but not before he offers him two images to think about. The first is the long story of Meleager from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VIII:260-546). Basically, when Meleager was born, the Fates decreed that he would live only until a log burning in the fire was consumed. At that point he would die. Hearing this, Althaea, his mother, snatched the burning log out of the fire, extinguished it, and hid it. Thus, Meleager lived. As an adult, Meleager fell in love with Atalanta. When he killed a ferocious boar, he gave its skin to her as a gift. But her jealous uncles, took it from her. Whereupon, Meleager killed them. Hearing of this, Althaea took revenge upon her son for killing her brothers by taking the hidden log and throwing it into the fire. Far away and unconscious of what his mother had done, Meleager began to expire. Burning from within, as it were, his life force gradually left him into thin air.
No doubt, the connection Virgil wants Dante to understand here is a complicated one. Basically, he wants Dante to see that there is a definite relationship between things that seem to be unrelated–in this case, the burning log and Meleager’s death. Or, here among the gluttons, the fact that they are dead but still experience physical hunger, thirst, and emaciation. Without pause, Virgil immediately offers a second (complicated?) image to help Dante out of his confusion. The image in the mirror and the reality outside of it seem to be separate, yet they are definitely related. Here is how Dorothy Sayers explains the matter in her commentary: “Virgil’s second example is directed to show how a movement may be projected upon an exterior substance [the mirror] without altering that substance, and without material contact between that which moves and that upon which the movement is projected.” Before moving on, Virgil has characterized Dante’s question as a “wound” that Statius–a doctor–will heal. It seems apparent that this “wound” is simply ignorance or a lack of understanding, the bane of the unreflected life and, perhaps, another manifestation of the human condition affected by the sin of our original parents (whose first home is now so close). |
| ↑5 | In handing the matter over to Statius, Robert Hollander tells us, “Virgil himself understands that his explanations, relying on physical laws, do not explain the deeper principles involved in the fact that these souls respond with physical symptoms to a moral sensation.” At the same time, we can expect a different approach from Statius than from Virgil because Virgil is a pagan and represents Human Reason unaided by divine revelation. Statius, on the other hand, is a Christian, and we can expect that his explanation, aided in a mysterious way by divine revelation, will make greater sense when all is said and done. Both Virgil and Statius are capable of answering Dante’s question; but like two professors, Virgil courteously hands the rest of his lecture over to the “guest professor” to complete the answer. Statius, as we see, is delighted and makes it quite clear that his answer, illuminated by God, will untie the knot that human reason alone cannot do. In a very real sense here, Statius acts as a kind of bridge or link between the pagan and the Christian. He has a great love for Virgil and, at the same time, a great love for his adopted faith. |
| ↑6 | What Statius begins here might seem highly imaginative to us nowadays, but it would have been considered quite scientific in Dante’s day. |
| ↑7 | Here begins the first of the three parts of Statius’s exposition: On The Nature of the Generative Principle. Hollander notes the following in his commentary to insure that we’re still connected to Dante’s original question: “This ‘lecture’ is put to the task of justifying Dante’s presentation of spiritual beings as still possessing, for the purposes of purgation, their bodily senses even though they have no bodies.”
Basically, Statius explains that: 1) In a man’s body only, there are two kinds of blood: a) what we think of as “generic” blood, and b) a special blood that does not circulate throughout the body, but has particular properties that enable it to form and shape a human body. 2) During sexual intercourse, this special (active) blood flows down from the heart (here, Dante follows Aristotle) through the penis in the form of sperm and blends with the (passive) menstrual blood in a woman’s womb. 3) Then, as we will see in a moment, when these two bloods mix and coagulate, the formative (active) work of the male blood begins to work upon the woman’s (passive) blood. A scientific understanding of how the blood circulates through the body was still several centuries away. In Dante’s time, the male heart was thought to be a kind of container within which, among other things, was a place or chamber for this special blood. Sometimes it was referred to as a lake, as Dante does in verse 20 of Canto 1 of the Inferno. In her commentary here, Dorothy Sayers writes: “the theory that the female’s part in generation was purely passive (the womb being merely as it were the soil that receives the ‘seed’) was almost universally accepted until very recent times, when it became possible to distinguish microscopically the action of the genes in sperm and ovum.” This, and what follows, must have fascinated Dante’s early readers, giving them a picture into the workings of human reproduction, embryology, the growth of the fetus, the creation of the soul, and the formation of a spirit-body after death. At the risk of complicating matters, the inquiring reader will want to know more about this “special blood.” Though he doesn’t use it specifically, Dante (through Statius) follows Aristotle’s teaching here as it was expanded into the theory of “The Four Digestions” put forth by the famous tenth-century Islamic scholar, Avicenna. The food we eat passes through four digestions or processes: first in the stomach, second in the liver, third in the veins as blood which nourishes the various members/parts of the body, particularly the brain and the heart. The fourth takes place in the various parts of the body as it nourishes and keeps them healthy. But there is a part of this fourth digestion during which an unused portion of the ordinary blood becomes this “special blood” and is stored in a particular section of the male heart. When it is changed into sperm it then has the formative powers to begin the development of a new organism. |
| ↑8 | Here begins the second of the three parts of Statius’s exposition: Conception and the Birth of the Human Soul. The active blood of the male mixes with the passive blood of the female and begins to clot it into matter which can be shaped and formed. This is the purpose of the “special blood,” whose active or formative power now becomes the simple plant or vegetative soul. The plant soul would stop here, but the human soul continues in its development. As with other creatures, the vegetative soul gives our bodies animation. But there is still more development needed on the way to a human/immortal soul.
The next stage shows the development of a very simple organism like a primitive sponge which continues toward the goal of a human body/fetus. This creature, still without a human soul, continues to grow and move and feel. |
| ↑9 | The movement from animal soul to human soul cannot be seen because Statius hasn’t explained it yet. Everything up to this point should (hopefully) be clear to Dante. But now we need a place for the mind, the intellect. Before he takes this up, though, Statius (Dante) takes the opportunity to correct an error of Averroes, a twelfth-century Islamic scholar and philosopher. Every organ in the body has a function and purpose. But Averroes couldn’t find an organ that contained the ability to reason and think (called here the possible intellect, a medieval philosophical term) because it’s not an act or function of a corporeal organ. So, he proposed a kind of universal or transcendent intellect that existed on its own outside of us that we might use as a resource for thinking, but not possess it. This, of course, conflicted with the Christian doctrine that all humans possess intellect, an immortal soul, and free will. Having corrected this error, Statius can continue with his “lecture.” |
| ↑10 | Here, Statius concludes his discussion of how the soul is formed. He has taken us through the development of a simple, primitive, vegetative soul, then to a simple sensitive/sensate soul. When the brain is completed, however, everything changes. At that instant, God, rejoicing in what Nature has done up to this point, breathes his Spirit into the fetus, giving it an immortal soul. Though not yet born, this body-soul human being has all the “equipment,” as it were, that will enable it to sense and to reason. And to think about itself!
Earlier, Virgil had offered the examples of Meleager and the mirror. Statius offers a third one here in his analogy of the grape and the wine. The vine grows up out of the earth and produces grapes with the help of the sun, which also turns the juice within the grapes into wine. (As with the circulation of the blood, the process of fermentation had not been discovered in Dante’s time. |
| ↑11 | Here begins the third part of Statius’ exposition: the Formation of the Spirit-Body (or Shade) after Death. This part of the “lecture” is all a product of Dante’s imagination. Once a person dies, the body and soul separate. The immortal soul, created directly by God, takes with it the “higher” faculties of memory, intelligence, and will, all of these now amplified because they no longer need the corporeal body for their expression. The “lower” vegetative and sensate faculties are muted because they are no longer animated by the soul.
Furthermore, Statius tells Dante that upon death souls apparently know immediately whether they are saved or damned. This is as close as the Poet comes to the Christian theological concept called the “Particular Judgment,” the judgment by God immediately upon one’s death. In some senses, this is akin to what is also called the Last Judgment, the judgement of all at the end of time. Statius then explains to Dante what he and we have already seen: souls of the dead gather either on the shore of the River Acheron in Hell (Inferno 3), where they are ferried by Charon to Hell proper, or on the shore of the Tiber River west of Rome, where they are ferried by an angel to the shore of Mount Purgatory (Canto 2). |
| ↑12 | In describing the formation of the shade, Statius follows a step-by-step pattern similar to the one he used earlier for human generation. The end-product, the shade, will be as perfect in this new state as it was at the end of its human formation in the womb of its mother.
Enclosed within the new space or “atmosphere” of the afterlife, the heightened powers this soul took with it–memory, intelligence, and will–radiate outward giving the shade an incorporeal form similar to the one it had before it died. The classical literary tradition (and beyond) with which Dante was familiar was filled with shades, spirits, and ghosts, etc., so this transformation was not new to his readers. Here he gives it a kind of Christian foundation. Not to mention the fact that Dante the Poet has given countless generations of readers after him a literary vision of the afterlife, so vivid and realistic, that he has no difficulty in urging, expecting us to take it for real in order to enjoy the full breadth and depth of the experience it presents to us. |
| ↑13 | Statius reminds Dante that all the souls he has encountered in Hell and here in Purgatory have undergone this transformation including all of the heightened powers, the senses, and the ability to think, feel, laugh, cry, and feel pain, etc. At this point, more than halfway through his journey, all of this has now been explained to Dante in careful detail. Finally, as it were, everything he has seen begins to make sense, including the fact that the gluttonous sinners on this terrace could be so unbelievably thin and hungry. Their assigned penitence becomes their desire, and their desire becomes what they experience and what we and Dante see.
Mark Musa, in his commentary here, offers a fitting end to Statius’s presentation: “The aerial body, as has been said, is an invention of Dante; it was obviously necessitated by the demands of his poetic fiction, particularly the problems of representation. The Pilgrim, the reader, must see and hear Virgil, he must see and hear Francesca and Ulysses and tutti quanti; he must be able to observe the punishments of the Damned and Penitent. “On these visible dramas depend the power and persuasion of the Inferno and the Purgatorio, which are first of all scenes that engage our own formative powers, our ability to utilize memory, intelligence, and will to imagine these torments and understand them. The question has been raised why Dante waits until so late a moment to present his vision of the creation of aerial bodies; but it seems evident that especially in the case of the Gluttonous, their contrappasso most perfectly dramatizes that turning point where mankind’s sick hunger is overtaken by the soul’s desire for God.” |
| ↑14 | All the while, during Statius’s amazing lecture in answer to Dante’s question about the physical appearance of the gluttons, the three travelers have been climbing to the next terrace where the lustful sinners are purified. When they arrive, an unexpected sight greets them. One can easily visualize what Dante saw: great jets of flame shooting straight out from the wall across the path, and a blast of air (only here, apparently) shooting up from below bending the ends of the flames upward, leaving a precarious path along the edge of the cliff to walk along. Presenting the most dangerous experience he’s faced on the mountain so far, he’s rightly terrified. |
| ↑15 | The scene that Dante describes here makes a wonderful visual sermon (which Virgil puts into words) on the nature of temptations of the flesh, represented by the flames, and the narrow path the soul often finds it must follow in eluding them. John Ciardi’s commentary here gives us the sense of Virgil’s warning: “On the allegorical level, however, he can certainly be read to mean that lust (the excess of love) is the most readily inviting sin, but that it is as dangerous as a fall off the cliff, and that all men must guard their souls against it and refuse, like the souls of the carnal sinners now in Hell, who “abandoned reason to their appetites.” It was a convention of the “sweet new style,” moreover, that love always enters through the eyes.” |
| ↑16 | The Poet evokes several senses here: he feels the heat, he hears the hymn, and only then does he see the sinners within the flames. All the while, he has to be careful not to be so distracted that he’ll fall off the cliff. Lust is often referred to as a kind of burning, and one can imagine the immense heat the flames generate here. The tenth-century hymn Dante hears is Summae Deus Clementiae, usually sung in the prayers at the Office of Matins early on Saturday mornings. These three verses of the hymn give us the appropriate connection to what Dante experiences here: 1. O God of highest mercy, \ Creator of the fabric of the world, \ You are Three in your gracious divinity, \ And One in the strengthening of all things. 2. Kindly receive our tears \ With holy hymns, \ That with our heart purged of lust, \ We may enjoy you more and more. 3. Burn from our loins / Whatever needs purifying, \ That clothed with the fire of love / We may enjoy you more and more. As usual, Dante’s curiosity gets the better of him, and hearing this lovely hymn, his “burning desire” leads him to peer deeply into the flames to see where the singing is coming from. |
| ↑17 | As with all the terraces below, pertinent examples of virtue of chastity (the “whip”) and its vices (the “rein” of chastity) are heard here as part of the sinners’ penitential program. As usual, the first refers to Mary the mother of Jesus, and comes from the scene in St. Luke’s Gospel (1:34) where the angel Gabriel tells her that she is to be the mother of Jesus. She wonders about this and tells the angel, “I know not man”(Virum non cognosco), meaning that she’s not married. Then a pattern begins: the hymn is repeated, followed by another example of chastity. This one comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (II: 401-507), and tells the story of the rape of Helice by Jupiter. Helice was one of the forest nymphs of Diana, the chaste virgin goddess. When it was discovered that the nymph was pregnant, Diana drove her out of the forest so as not to corrupt the other chaste nymphs. When Helice bore a son, Jupiter’s wife, Hera, in a fit of jealousy, turned the boy into a bear. Having the last word, Jupiter turned both the boy and his mother into the Bear Constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Following another singing of the hymn, the fiery souls sing in praise of those who are married and keep their vows. Note how Dante’s examples move from the praise of virginity to the praise of sexuality within the bonds of marriage.
Finally, the antiphonal back-and-forth chanting and story-telling remind one of the litany-like singing of prayers in monasteries and churches. And this almost ritual repetition of fire and hymns effects the cure of lust in the penitents on this terrace. |