For perdere la vita as meaning simply 'to spend one's life,' and as not necessarily implying any negative moralizing judgment, see Adolfo Jenni (“Il Canto XXIII del Purgatorio,” in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. V [Florence: Le Monnier, 1972]), p. 1n. The context here (Virgil's gentle chiding), however, would seem to support the more usual interpretation, one that sees the phrase as negative ('waste one's life'). In Purgatorio XXXI.61-63, the poet compares his earlier lustful self to a young bird being pursued by hunters. Teodolinda Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), pp. 46-48, notes the way in which Forese's final words (vv. 91-93) reflect this concern with wasting time and also suggests a connection between the diminutive pargoletta (young girl) in that later passage and the diminutive uccellino here; in this way Dante would be associating the apparently innocent 'sport' of birding with his sexual disloyalty to Beatrice.

The phrase that would make Virgil 'more than father' to Dante, according to the early commentators, praises his instruction of Dante in virtue, here redirecting his attention to the immediate task (and back from mere curiosity, in Carroll's view [comm. to vv. 1-6]). It may also reflect the Roman poet's extraordinary ability to bring a pagan – and perhaps even this backsliding Christian – to Christ, as Statius's narrative has established (and see Purg. XXX.51, Dante's ultimate gesture of farewell to his 'father': 'Virgil, to whom I gave myself for my salvation').

Virgil has broken off his conversation with Statius in order to address Dante (with an Italian version of the Latin vocative case: 'figliuole,' verse 4). As Singleton (comm. to verse 5) points out, all three of the similar warnings on the part of the protagonist's guide that the journey must be completed within a definite period occur in the 'next-to-last circle of each of the three realms' (see also Inf. XXIX.10-12; Par. XXII.124 [the eighth of the nine heavenly spheres]).

Dante does not find that having to resume his difficult task is unpleasant for a single reason: because the subject under discussion is poetry (see Purg. XXII.127-129).

'O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.' The song of the penitents in Gluttony derives from the defining moment of David's repentance, not for gluttonous behavior, but for lust (Psalm 50:17). For the five other citations of this Psalm in the Commedia see Hollander (“Dante's Use of the Fiftieth Psalm,” Dante Studies 91 [1973], pp. 145-50), who unaccountably did not include this clear reference. For the admixture of delight and grief typical of expressions of penitence on this terrace, see George Andrew Trone (“The Cry of Dereliction in Purgatorio XXIII,” Dante Studies 113 [1995], 111-29).

Beginning with Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 10-11), commentators have noted that this verse of the Psalm corrects the former sins of those who were gluttons because of its insistence on this better use of mouths – in songs of praise – than on the pleasures of the table. See the clear formulation of this idea in the presentation of Mary as exemplar of Temperance in the previous canto (Purg. XXII.142-144).

Dante's question and Virgil's tentative answer are necessitated by the fact that, as the following simile will make plain, the penitents here are currently behind the travelers. On the previous terrace they had become accustomed to looking upon stationary souls, prostrate on the ground before them. Here, as on the terraces of Pride, Wrath, and Sloth (and Lust, still ahead of them), the penitents are in motion. (Only in Envy and Avarice are they not.) For another understanding of the purport of these verses, see Lloyd Howard, “Virgil the Blind Guide in Purgatorio XV-XVI and Purgatorio XXII-XXIII,” Letteratura italiana antica 4 (2003), pp. 407-19, who argues that this passage (vv. 10-15), set into opposition with Purgatorio XVI.19-24, shows Virgil as a hesitant guide where he had, seven cantos before, been a self-confident one; Howard concludes that in Virgil, overwhelmed and chagrined by his own failure (at least compared with the success he has generated in Statius, this other Roman poet, saved by reading his texts), we see that 'the limitations of Virgil's competence to guide is again under scrutiny, and he becomes more tentative, losing the assurance that he had in Purgatorio XV and XVI' (p. 413).

The simile marks these penitents as 'serious,' earnestly seeking their ritual repentance to seal their salvation. We are perhaps reminded that the last two cantos, with their celebration of the completed purging of a single penitent, were absolutely unusual; now it is back to business as usual.

At least since the time of Poletto (comm. to these verses) commentators have thought of Dante's earlier treatment of pilgrims lost in thought, described in the penultimate sonnet of Vita nuova (XL.9).

The brief description of the gaunt visages of these penitents establishes the precise nature of the contrapasso here: starvation.

The first reference is to Ovid's narrative concerning Erysichthon, who, having cut down trees in a sacred grove, was driven by its offended deity, Ceres, into boundless appetite that only ended when he engorged his own flesh (Metam. VIII.738-878). The second, as was noted by several of the early commentators, is to an incident recorded in the sixth book of Josephus's De bello judaico (Concerning the Jewish War) in which a young woman named Mary, during the general starvation brought about by Titus's siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, killed, cooked, and ate her infant son. Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 28-30) contrasts the actions of this cruel Mary with those of that other Mary, who watched as her son, Jesus, was crucified. For an English translation of the episode in Josephus's account see Longfellow, comm. to verse 30). It is noteworthy that the poet explicitly adds exemplars to those 'found' on the seven terraces. It is further noteworthy that he underlines the uniqueness of the gesture by having the first of the two added in his voice as poet, while the second is reported as his association at the time, back there upon the mountain. The protagonist thinks of Mary's fellow Hebrews (and not of her, since she had eaten) as being identically stricken as are these penitents, while the poet thinks of the starved aspect of Ovid's self-ingester. While Mary's fellow citizens are not necessarily guilty of anything, they may (or may not) be meant to be associated with her horrific act of impiety; Erysichthon, on the other hand, has his consuming hunger thrust upon him because of an impious act. Both references are, however, to 'tragedies,' whether of the Jews who lost their holy city or of Erysichthon, who lost his life. These penitents, however, are on the verge of entering the New Jerusalem. Thus Dante's associations move back to their sinful days on earth, leaving only latent their better endings.

For an interpretation of Ovid's tale as a parable, suggesting that the body should be read as indicating the condition of the soul, see William Stephany (“Erysichthon and the Poetics of the Spirit,” in Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds., The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's “Commedia” [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991], pp. 173-80), who begins by pointing out that Dante's penitents resemble not Erysichthon so much as the personified figure of hunger (Fames) in Ovid's story. Stephany is perhaps the only scholar who has treated the passage to deal with the change in Dantean point of view noted above; in his understanding, the poet's and the protagonist's associations are potentially at odds.

In the faces of the penitents, hollow-eyed, pale, skeletal, an observer might read only the 'm,' formed by the combination of cheekbones, eyebrows, and nose, but not the 'o's of the eyes, shrunken from view. Longfellow (comm. to verse 32), Scartazzini (comm. to verse 32), and others present a passage from one Berthold, a Franciscan of Regensburg (Germany), which describes the 'letters' found in human faces, first the 'omo' (Latin homo) that is man's name and then the 'dei' (Latin genitive of deus, 'of God'); our faces announce that each of us is a 'man of God.' For the text of his remarks in English, see the commentary of Longfellow or of Singleton to this passage.

For the fruit of the tree and the water flowing over its leaves that cause such appetite, see Purgatorio XXII.137-138; and see the later reference in this canto (vv. 62-63). That this desire is good but not yet realizable would seem again to point to the notion that this tree is descended from the Tree of Life. See the note to Purgatorio XXII.130-135.

The 'scaling skin' of these penitents, a sign of their advanced 'starvation,' will again be insisted on at vv. 49 and 58.

The penitent's quick and gentle recognition of Dante, whose visage is in its normal human condition, plays off the gradual recognition on the part of the protagonist of his interlocutor. This is his old friend, Forese Donati. He was the brother of two other personages referred to in his remarks, Piccarda (encountered by Dante in the heaven of the Moon in Par. III), praised generously (Purg. XXIV.13-15), and Corso, denounced savagely (Purg. XXIV.82-87). The interplay between these fellow Florentines develops as one of the most tender scenes in the entire poem.

It is perhaps worth noting that the words that Forese and the others have been singing (verse 11) happen to come from the very fiftieth Psalm that opens with what serves as the protagonist's first spoken word in the Comedy, Miserere (Inf. I.65). The stories of Forese and of Dante are certainly meant to show God's great mercy.

Forese's understandable desire to learn how his old friend is involved in such an extraordinary experience, and by what special souls he is accompanied, makes him sound like anyone surprised by the enormous success of an old friend of apparently ordinary abilities and of no apparent particular distinction.

Dante, turning the tables, is much more interested in finding out about Forese, given his dreadful disfigurement, than in responding to his old friend's question.

Forese begins by glossing for us the meaning of the tree and water encountered earlier on this terrace (Purg. XXII.130-138). Both of these are informed by divine power with the promise of eternal life – object of the true hunger of these penitents. As the expiation of their former gluttony leads to this better hunger, they have their pangs renewed at another tree as well. Many commentators have believed that the text here invites us to believe that there is a multitude of trees stationed along the rest of the terrace, an idea that probably must be discarded because we will in fact find only one more (in the next canto). Since the two that we do discover in the text are so dramatically emblematic of the two trees of Genesis, and since no other tree along this terrace is alluded to, it is almost certainly wise to reject that theory, as D'Ovidio (“Esposizione del canto XX dell'Inferno,” in his Nuovo volume di studi danteschi [Caserta-Rome: A. P. E., 1926]), p. 206, insisted. Manfredi Porena (comm. to Purg. XXIV.116-117) floats a curious hypothesis. Since these two trees are relatively close together, it seems reasonable to him that Dante would have wanted lots more trees along the ledge. If so, and if these two are shoots from the two Edenic trees, why should we not believe that there are many other shoots of them on this terrace, each repeating the same exemplars that we hear from these two? One might object, for instance, that then we should imagine a plurality of devils carving up the schismatics in Inferno XXVIII; it would have been niggardly of Dante to supply us (as he does at vv. 37-42) only with one. Porena, however, eventually throws in his hand and declares that both these shoots come from the Tree of Knowledge, a view that is probably even more dubious than his attempt to multiply the two trees that are described as being here.

The text used by most of the early commentators apparently offered a form of albore, 'tree' in the singular. Petrocchi's note, however, shows a preponderance of plural forms and all modern editors agree. We have seen the offshoot of the Tree of Life (and if the early commentators should happen to be correct in believing that the reference here is to a single tree, it would be to that one [see the note to Purg. XXII.130-135]). In the next canto (vv. 113-117) we shall come upon a second, clearly descended from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The most direct explanation of vv. 73-74, 'the same desire leads us to the trees / that led Christ to utter Elì with such bliss,' is that the first sin of Adam and Eve, eating of the fruit of that tree, deprived them of the fruit of the other, eternal life. Thus Christ's sacrifice is doubly restorative, redeeming the sin and restoring the reward.

See Matthew 27:46 for 'Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?' (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?), Christ's last words on the cross, uttered in Aramaic. (See also Mark 15:34, with the variant 'Eloi.') Many of the early commentators discuss the passage in the light of Jesus's request that the 'cup' (of crucifixion) pass from him, but then accepting it joyfully in favor of the resultant redemption of humankind. The human in Him momentarily despairs, but then the God in Him rejoices.

For the notion that the penitents, like Jesus on the cross, simultaneously wish and do not wish to suffer in order to achieve redemption, see George Andrew Trone (“The Cry of Dereliction in Purgatorio XXIII,” Dante Studies 113 [1995], 111-29).

The entire context of this intimate recollection invites us to believe that Forese (to leave to one side the question of Dante's own behavior), in his life on earth, had behaved in ways that suggested to his friend that his salvation was not exactly to be expected. Dante's question is amusing. Since Forese, dead for less than four years (he died in July of 1296), had lived most of his life a sinner (and thus was late in his repentance), why did Dante not find him down on the lower slopes of the mountain in ante-purgatory? (This is possibly a sort of compromise, a far more polite question than 'Why did I not find you in hell?')

The prayerful tears of Forese's wife, Nella, demonstrate emphatically that the efficacy of prayer is not limited to the benefit of the souls found in ante-purgatory, but extends to those involved in active purgation as well.

In a famous exchange of sonnets in a tenzone, a sort of poetic contest in the form of a series of exchanged insults, Dante and Forese heaped calumnies upon one another for sexual and other inadequacies. While there is continuing dispute concerning the authenticity of these poems (see the note to vv. 115-117), in which, among other things, poor Nella is presented as being cold at night because of the lack of sexual interest on the part of her impotent husband, this exchange between the two men would seem to be based on some personal reminiscence of a similar nature.

Nella continues Dante's 'legends of good women' here in purgatory, tales of women who lived thoroughly virtuous lives. Such as these begin with Pia de' Tolomei (Purg. V.130-136), continue with Alagia (if one reads her character positively) in Purgatorio XIX.142-145, include in the briefest of mention virtuous pagan women (Purg. XXII.109-114, adding eight more to the earlier eight found in Limbo), possibly include the enigmatic reference to 'Gentucca' in the next canto (Purg. XXIV.37), and conclude with Piccarda, Costanza, and St. Clare in the third canto of Paradiso. None of the other three prominent women who are seen in these realms of salvation, Sapia (Purg. XIII) and then both Cunizza and Rahab (Par. IX), quite fill the bill, since at least portions of their lives on earth were spectacularly sinful. As for Lucy (Purg. IX), Matelda (Purg. XXVIII), Beatrice, the Hebrew matriarchs seen seated in the heavenly Rose (Par. XXXII), and the Virgin Mary, they are all creatures of a still higher order of saintly virtue. For discussions of the women of the Commedia see Joan Ferrante (Woman as Image in Medieval Literature from the Twelfth Century to Dante [New York: Columbia University Press, 1975]); Rachel Jacoff (“Transgression and Transcendence: Figures of Female Desire in Dante's Commedia,” Romanic Review 79 [1988], pp. 129-42); and Victoria Kirkham (“A Canon of Women in Dante's Commedia,” Annali d'Italianistica 7 [1989], pp. 16-41).

Forese compares the sexually provocative women of Florence with the women of a wild region of Sardinia, renowned (according to some of the early commentators) for their crude behavior and indecent dress.

For the sumptuary laws (laws governing attire) reflected in Forese's prediction and which were contained in the Constitutions of Florence drawn up by the new Bishop of the city, Antonio d'Orso Biliotti, in 1310, see Anthony Cassell (“'Mostrando con le poppe il petto' (Purg. XXIII, 102),” Dante Studies 96 [1978]), p. 79. Cassell argues that the exiled Dante, writing only a few years later, nevertheless had ample time to have gotten word of these.

What activities do Dante's words indicate? The first commentators believed that he refers to, in the phrase of Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 115-117), their mutual pursuit of delectabilia non honesta (improper pleasures). No commentator before the Anonimo Fiorentino had apparently read or heard of their tenzone (one of the main reasons that those who deny its authenticity do so). And it was only in the late nineteenth century that some offered the opinion that this passage referred to the tenzone. Nearly all of the more recent discussants are firmly of the opinion, agreeing with the first commentators, that Dante is referring to the actual relationship he had with Forese and the sort of delectabilia non honesta that they shared in their companionship. It is not clear exactly what activities the poet has in mind, but it is clear that his own are seen as afflicting him when Virgil rescued him from sin and led him into the afterworld. This is the first time we have any indication that Dante's sins on earth might be characterized as having involved moral turpitude. (John of Serravalle [comm. to vv. 115-117] is close to being specific in a scabrous understanding: 'They were comrades in various lascivious behaviors, which they engaged in mutually and together.' Naturally, the apparent reference to homosexuality has not received later attention.)

There has been a continuing effort to deny the authenticity of the tenzone. This began with Domenico Guerri's debate with Michele Barbi in the early 1930s, which Guerri's student, Antonio Lanza, reopened in the early 1970s. His opposition to authenticity is currently supported by his student, Mauro Cursietti (La falsa Tenzone di Dante con Forese Donati [Anzio: De Rubeis, 1995]). (Their position is supported by Ruggero Stefanini [“'Tenzone' sì e 'tenzone' no,” Lectura Dantis (virginiana) 18-19 (1996), pp. 111-24].) For a recent overview of the current debate, with necessary bibliography and polemical insistence on inauthenticity, see Lanza (“A norma di filologia: ancora a proposito della cosiddetta 'Tenzone tra Dante e Forese,'” L'Alighieri 10 [1997], pp. 43-54); see also Cursietti (“Nuovi contributi per l'apocrifia della cosiddeta 'Tenzone di Dante con Forese Donati': ovvero la 'Tenzone del Panìco,'” in Bibliologia e critica dantesca: saggi dedicati a Enzo Esposito, ed. V. De Gregorio, vol. II: Saggi danteschi [Ravenna: Longo, 1997], pp. 53-72). But see Fabian Alfie's arguments (“For Want of a Nail: The Guerri-Lanza-Cursietti Argument regarding the Tenzone,” Dante Studies 116 [1998], pp. 141-59) for retention of the tenzone in the Dantean canon on the basis of the evidence of the manuscripts. The debate is probably far from over. For studies of the reflection of the tenzone in the Commedia see Fredi Chiappelli (“Proposta d'interpretazione per la tenzone di Dante con Forese Donati,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 142 [1965], pp. 321-50); Piero Cudini (“La tenzone tra Dante e Forese e la Commedia [Inf. XXX; Purg. XXIII-XXIV],” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 159 [1982], pp. 1-25); and Teodolinda Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), pp. 46-57. For more recent studies that, countering Cursietti's interventions, continue to maintain the authenticity of the tenzone, see Bernhard König (“Formen und Funktionen grober Komik bei Dante [zu Inferno XXI-XXIII],” Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 70 [1995], pp. 7-27) and Antonio Stäuble (“La tenzone di Dante con Forese Donati,” in Le “Rime” di Dante, ed. M. Picone [= Letture classensi 24 (1995)], pp. 151-70). Also defending authenticity is De Robertis (“Ancora per Dante e Forese,” in Feconde venner le carte. Studi in onore di Ottavio Besomi [Bellinzona: Casagrande, 1997], vol. I, pp. 35-48); but see the response by Lanza in his review in La Rassegna della letteratura italiana 8 (1997), pp. 208-11. For a collection of essays regarding the medieval tenzone, see Pedrone and Stäuble, editors, Il genere “tenzone” nelle letterature romanze delle origini (Ravenna: Longo, 1999). Giovanni Borriero (“Considerazioni sulla tradizione manoscritta della Tenzone di Dante con Forese,” Antico / Moderno 4 [1999], pp. 385-405), has, like De Robertis, attempted to restore the garment of legitimacy to these poems; he is answered by Cursietti (“Dante e Forese alla taverna del Panìco: le prove documentarie della falsità della tenzone,” L'Alighieri 16 [2000], pp. 7-22), offering evidence that makes the central negative arguments difficult to counter. But now see Alfie again (“Rustico's Reputation: Ramifications for Dante's Tenzone with Forese Donati,” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [March 2002]).

For the similarity of the biting poems attributed to Forese to the poesia burlesca found in Meo dei Tolomei, Aimeric de Peguilhan, Uc de Saint-Cir, Cecco Angiolieri, and others, see Franco Suitner (La poesia satirica e giocosa nell'età dei comuni [Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1983]), pp. 76-78. There remains the possibility that there is a citation of the tenzone in the Decameron, which, if it were accepted as such, would indicate that no one less than Giovanni Boccaccio had seen the text of one at least of these playful poems by 1351, thus greatly increasing the likelihood that they were exchanged by Dante and Forese and confirming, at any rate, that they were written well before the advent of the fifteenth century. See Vittore Branca's note to Decameron IV.10.4, where the wife of Mazzeo della Montagna is cold because she is not 'blanketed' by her husband, phrasing that Branca believes is derived expressly from the identical word (infreddata) and concepts in Dante's poem about the similarly unloved wife of Forese.

See Inferno XX.127-129 for the moon being full in the opening scene of Inferno. While there is debate (debate so diffuse and disheveled that one finds Singleton [comm. to vv. 119-120] translating the word as 'you' and in his commentary saying it means 'there') as to whether the particle vi (which may mean 'there' or 'you') here refers to the dark wood of Inferno I or to the penitents on this mountain, our translation follows Daniello (comm. to vv. 119-120) in accepting the first possibility. We are reminded that the action of the poem began on a Friday and that it is now Tuesday afternoon, the fifth day of the journey.

With regard to the phrases veri morti and vera carne, Antonino Pagliaro (Ulisse: ricerche semantiche sulla “Divina Commedia” [Messina-Florence: D'Anna, 1967]), p. 654n., points out that on occasion, as here, Dante uses the adjective vero as indicating that 'behind an apparent reality lies an absolute reality,' in this case because the dead in hell are really dead for having lost God, while Dante's flesh is really flesh (while the 'flesh' of the penitents is only apparent).

The phrasing here is reminiscent of that describing both Dante's errant soul (Purg. XVIII.43) and its love for the 'stammering woman' (Purg. XIX.8 and 13), language depending on the notion of making what is straight crooked, or the obverse.

Forese is the only penitent to whom Dante names Beatrice, thus perhaps indicating that he was aware, in the period of their shared improper behavior, that Dante was not being loyal to her. Similarly, Forese is, once again uniquely among all penitents (Statius has just gone beyond that state when Dante names Virgil for him [Purg. XXI.125]), allowed to hear the name of Virgil from Dante's lips. That Dante does not here refer to Statius by name might seem to indicate (at least hypothetically) that, while the two men spoke of Virgil in their earthly conversations, they had not discussed Statius.