Ora era onde 'l salir non volea storpio;
ché 'l sole avëa il cerchio di merigge
lasciato al Tauro e la notte a lo Scorpio:
per che, come fa l'uom che non s'affigge
ma vassi a la via sua, che che li appaia,
se di bisogno stimolo il trafigge,
così intrammo noi per la callaia,
uno innanzi altro prendendo la scala
che per artezza i salitor dispaia.
E quale il cicognin che leva l'ala
per voglia di volare, e non s'attenta
d'abbandonar lo nido, e giù la cala;
tal era io con voglia accesa e spenta
di dimandar, venendo infino a l'atto
che fa colui ch'a dicer s'argomenta.
Non lasciò, per l'andar che fosse ratto,
lo dolce padre mio, ma disse: “Scocca
l'arco del dir, che 'nfino al ferro hai tratto.”
Allor sicuramente apri' la bocca
e cominciai: “Come si può far magro
là dove l'uopo di nodrir non tocca?”
“Se t'ammentassi come Meleagro
si consumò al consumar d'un stizzo,
non fora,” disse, “a te questo sì agro;
e se pensassi come, al vostro guizzo,
guizza dentro a lo specchio vostra image,
ciò che par duro ti parrebbe vizzo.
Ma perché dentro a tuo voler t'adage,
ecco qui Stazio; e io lui chiamo e prego
che sia or sanator de le tue piage.”
“Se la veduta etterna li dislego,”
rispuose Stazio, “là dove tu sie,
discolpi me non potert' io far nego.”
Poi cominciò: “Se le parole mie,
figlio, la mente tua guarda e riceve,
lume ti fiero al come che tu die.
Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve
da l'assetate vene, e si rimane
quasi alimento che di mensa leve,
prende nel core a tutte membra umane
virtute informativa, come quello
ch'a farsi quelle per le vene vane.
Ancor digesto, scende ov' è più bello
tacer che dire; e quindi poscia geme
sovr' altrui sangue in natural vasello.
Ivi s'accoglie l'uno e l'altro insieme,
l'un disposto a patire, e l'altro a fare
per lo perfetto loco onde si preme;
e, giunto lui, comincia ad operare
coagulando prima, e poi avviva
ciò che per sua matera fé constare.
Anima fatta la virtute attiva
qual d'una pianta, in tanto differente,
che questa è in via e quella è già a riva,
tanto ovra poi, che già si move e sente,
come spungo marino; e indi imprende
ad organar le posse ond' è semente.
Or si spiega, figliuolo, or si distende
la virtù ch'è dal cor del generante,
dove natura a tutte membra intende.
Ma come d'animal divegna fante,
non vedi tu ancor: quest' è tal punto,
che più savio di te fé già errante,
sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto
da l'anima il possibile intelletto,
perché da lui non vide organo assunto.
Apri a la verità che viene il petto;
e sappi che, sì tosto come al feto
l'articular del cerebro è perfetto,
lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto
sovra tant' arte di natura, e spira
spirito novo, di vertù repleto,
che ciò che trova attivo quivi, tira
in sua sustanzia, e fassi un'alma sola,
che vive e sente e sé in sé rigira.
E perché meno ammiri la parola,
guarda il calor del sol che si fa vino,
giunto a l'omor che de la vite cola.
Quando Làchesis non ha più del lino,
solvesi da la carne, e in virtute
ne porta seco e l'umano e 'l divino:
l'altre potenze tutte quante mute;
memoria, intelligenza e volontade
in atto molto più che prima agute.
Sanza restarsi, per sé stessa cade
mirabilmente a l'una de le rive;
quivi conosce prima le sue strade.
Tosto che loco lì la circunscrive,
la virtù formativa raggia intorno
così e quanto ne le membra vive.
E come l'aere, quand' è ben pïorno,
per l'altrui raggio che 'n sé si reflette,
di diversi color diventa addorno;
così l'aere vicin quivi si mette
e in quella forma ch'è in lui suggella
virtüalmente l'alma che ristette;
e simigliante poi a la fiammella
che segue il foco là 'vunque si muta,
segue lo spirto sua forma novella.
Però che quindi ha poscia sua paruta,
è chiamata ombra; e quindi organa poi
ciascun sentire infino a la veduta.
Quindi parliamo e quindi ridiam noi;
quindi facciam le lagrime e ' sospiri
che per lo monte aver sentiti puoi.
Secondo che ci affliggono i disiri
e li altri affetti, l'ombra si figura;
e quest' è la cagion di che tu miri.”
E già venuto a l'ultima tortura
s'era per noi, e vòlto a la man destra,
ed eravamo attenti ad altra cura.
Quivi la ripa fiamma in fuor balestra,
e la cornice spira fiato in suso
che la reflette e via da lei sequestra;
ond' ir ne convenia dal lato schiuso
ad uno ad uno; e io temëa 'l foco
quinci, e quindi temeva cader giuso.
Lo duca mio dicea: “Per questo loco
si vuol tenere a li occhi stretto il freno,
però ch'errar potrebbesi per poco.”
“Summae Deus clementïae” nel seno
al grande ardore allora udi' cantando,
che di volger mi fé caler non meno;
e vidi spirti per la fiamma andando;
per ch'io guardava a loro e a' miei passi,
compartendo la vista a quando a quando.
Appresso il fine ch'a quell' inno fassi,
gridavano alto: “Virum non cognosco”;
indi ricominciavan l'inno bassi.
Finitolo, anco gridavano: “Al bosco
si tenne Diana, ed Elice caccionne
che di Venere avea sentito il tòsco.”
Indi al cantar tornavano; indi donne
gridavano e mariti che fuor casti
come virtute e matrimonio imponne.
E questo modo credo che lor basti
per tutto il tempo che 'l foco li abbruscia:
con tal cura conviene e con tai pasti
che la piaga da sezzo si ricuscia.
Now was it the ascent no hindrance brooked,
Because the sun had his meridian circle
To Taurus left, and night to Scorpio;
Wherefore as doth a man who tarries not,
But goes his way, whate'er to him appear,
If of necessity the sting transfix him,
In this wise did we enter through the gap,
Taking the stairway, one before the other,
Which by its narrowness divides the climbers.
And as the little stork that lifts its wing
With a desire to fly, and does not venture
To leave the nest, and lets it downward droop,
Even such was I, with the desire of asking
Kindled and quenched, unto the motion coming
He makes who doth address himself to speak.
Not for our pace, though rapid it might be,
My father sweet forbore, but said: "Let fly
The bow of speech thou to the barb hast drawn."
With confidence I opened then my mouth,
And I began: "How can one meagre grow
There where the need of nutriment applies not?"
"If thou wouldst call to mind how Meleager
Was wasted by the wasting of a brand,
This would not," said he, "be to thee so sour;
And wouldst thou think how at each tremulous motion
Trembles within a mirror your own image;
That which seems hard would mellow seem to thee.
But that thou mayst content thee in thy wish
Lo Statius here; and him I call and pray
He now will be the healer of thy wounds."
"If I unfold to him the eternal vengeance,"
Responded Statius, "where thou present art,
Be my excuse that I can naught deny thee."
Then he began: "Son, if these words of mine
Thy mind doth contemplate and doth receive,
They'll be thy light unto the How thou sayest.
The perfect blood, which never is drunk up
Into the thirsty veins, and which remaineth
Like food that from the table thou removest,
Takes in the heart for all the human members
Virtue informative, as being that
Which to be changed to them goes through the veins
Again digest, descends it where 'tis better
Silent to be than say; and then drops thence
Upon another's blood in natural vase.
There one together with the other mingles,
One to be passive meant, the other active
By reason of the perfect place it springs from;
And being conjoined, begins to operate,
Coagulating first, then vivifying
What for its matter it had made consistent.
The active virtue, being made a soul
As of a plant, (in so far different,
This on the way is, that arrived already,)
Then works so much, that now it moves and feels
Like a sea-fungus, and then undertakes
To organize the powers whose seed it is.
Now, Son, dilates and now distends itself
The virtue from the generator's heart,
Where nature is intent on all the members.
But how from animal it man becomes
Thou dost not see as yet; this is a point
Which made a wiser man than thou once err
So far, that in his doctrine separate
He made the soul from possible intellect,
For he no organ saw by this assumed.
Open thy breast unto the truth that's coming,
And know that, just as soon as in the foetus
The articulation of the brain is perfect,
The primal Motor turns to it well pleased
At so great art of nature, and inspires
A spirit new with virtue all replete,
Which what it finds there active doth attract
Into its substance, and becomes one soul,
Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves.
And that thou less may wonder at my word,
Behold the sun's heat, which becometh wine,
Joined to the juice that from the vine distils.
Whenever Lachesis has no more thread,
It separates from the flesh, and virtually
Bears with itself the human and divine;
The other faculties are voiceless all;
The memory, the intelligence, and the will
In action far more vigorous than before.
Without a pause it falleth of itself
In marvellous way on one shore or the other;
There of its roads it first is cognizant.
Soon as the place there circumscribeth it,
The virtue informative rays round about,
As, and as much as, in the living members.
And even as the air, when full of rain,
By alien rays that are therein reflected,
With divers colours shows itself adorned,
So there the neighbouring air doth shape itself
Into that form which doth impress upon it
Virtually the soul that has stood still.
And then in manner of the little flame,
Which followeth the fire where'er it shifts,
After the spirit followeth its new form.
Since afterwards it takes from this its semblance,
It is called shade; and thence it organizes
Thereafter every sense, even to the sight.
Thence is it that we speak, and thence we laugh;
Thence is it that we form the tears and sighs,
That on the mountain thou mayhap hast heard.
According as impress us our desires
And other affections, so the shade is shaped,
And this is cause of what thou wonderest at."
And now unto the last of all the circles
Had we arrived, and to the right hand turned,
And were attentive to another care.
There the embankment shoots forth flames of fire,
And upward doth the cornice breathe a blast
That drives them back, and from itself sequesters.
Hence we must needs go on the open side,
And one by one; and I did fear the fire
On this side, and on that the falling down.
My Leader said: "Along this place one ought
To keep upon the eyes a tightened rein,
Seeing that one so easily might err."
"Summae Deus clementiae," in the bosom
Of the great burning chanted then I heard,
Which made me no less eager to turn round;
And spirits saw I walking through the flame;
Wherefore I looked, to my own steps and theirs
Apportioning my sight from time to time.
After the close which to that hymn is made,
Aloud they shouted, "Virum non cognosco;"
Then recommenced the hymn with voices low.
This also ended, cried they: "To the wood
Diana ran, and drove forth Helice
Therefrom, who had of Venus felt the poison."
Then to their song returned they; then the wives
They shouted, and the husbands who were chaste.
As virtue and the marriage vow imposes.
And I believe that them this mode suffices,
For all the time the fire is burning them;
With such care is it needful, and such food,
That the last wound of all should be closed up.
The constellations Taurus and Scorpio are 180o apart. The sun at the antipodes has now moved roughly two hours, from shining down from in front of the constellation Capricorn, then Sagittarius, and now Taurus, or from noon to two o'clock (as, half the world away, in Jerusalem it is two in the morning). Since the travelers had entered this terrace at roughly ten in the morning (Purg. XXII.115-120), 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 (see Purg. XXVII.65-66), the first two hours traversing the distance between the two terraces (see Purg. XXVI.4-6).
The simile stresses the renewed urgency of the climb, with the three poets, led by Virgil, mounting in single file. Statius is, as will eventually be made plain, in the middle position (see Purg. XXVII.48), from which he will shortly respond at length to Dante's question about the aerial body.
This second simile makes the protagonist a hesitant fledgling stork in relation to his unspoken request, manifest in the mouth he has opened without yet forming the words of his question.
Virgil's metaphor has Dante drawing the bowstring of his question so hard and far that the iron tip of his arrow is touching the shaft of his bow. These are the first words spoken by Virgil since Purgatorio XXIII.15 (see the note to Purg. XXIV.1-3).
Dante's question, which has been in the back of his mind since Purgatorio XXIII.37-39, addresses the apparent incongruity of the fact that the souls of the penitents of Gluttony seem to grow thin from not ingesting food. Such a phenomenon, he has wrongly assumed, should be associated only with the experience of starvation in a mortal body.
The reference is to Ovid's near-epic narrative of the hunt for the Calydonian boar with its unhappy outcome for Meleager (Metam. VIII.260-546). He, the son of the king of Calydon and of Althaea, killed this rampaging animal and gave its skin to Atalanta, with whom he was in love. Althaea's two brothers, Plexippus and Toxeus, take the remains of the beast back from her. Enraged at the insult to his honor, Meleager kills them. Seeing the corpses of her brothers brought into the temple where she was giving thanks for her son's victory, and learning who had killed them, Althaea is moved to take vengeance, even upon her own son. When he was born, the three Fates had determined that he would live only so long as a firebrand remained unconsumed in a fire into which it had been cast. Hearing this, Althaea snatched the burning log-end from the fire and doused it in water. Now she took up again this piece of wood, which she had preserved, and cast it into a fire, thus causing the death of her own son. Virgil's point is that if Dante had understood this principle, that there is a vital relationship between what seem unrelated phenomena (e.g., the burning of a log-end and the death of a man), he would have already understood the relationship between body and soul here in purgatory.
As a second instance of this principle, Virgil offers the example of a person's movements being reflected in a mirror; once again, to an ignorant observer, the two phenomena might seem to have independent and unrelated causes if the observer did not understand the principle of speculation (e.g., two Marx brothers in sleeping garments facing each other in an open doorway and moving in harmony).
It is as though 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. Dealing with this passage, Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to these verses) allegorizes Virgil as 'rational philosophy' and Statius, 'a Christian poet,' as 'moral philosophy.' It might seem more to the point to realize that Statius, as a saved Christian, simply knows by revelation some mysterious things that are not known by others, e.g., all ordinary mortals and all souls who are not saved.
Statius excuses himself for revealing an essential Christian mystery in the presence of a pagan because of his love for this particular pagan. John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 34-36), perhaps echoing his teacher, Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to Inf. I.10-12) speaks of Virgil's belief (learned from Plato's Timaeus, according to Benvenuto) that the souls of humans come from the stars and return to them. While we cannot be certain that Dante shared the first part of this view (and see Par. IV.22-24, for his denial of the second), the 'eternal plan' is at significant variance from Plato, as Statius's lecture will make plain.
Statius's lecture on embryology may be paraphrased as follows. He is willing to deal with Dante's desire to know how the aerial body is formed (Purg. XXV.34-36): (1) After the 'perfect blood' is 'digested' (the third digestion) in the heart, having now the power to inform all the parts of body, it is 'digested' once again and descends into the testicles; (2) it now falls upon the 'perfect blood' in the uterus; it is 'active,' the latter 'passive'; (3) the male blood now informs the soul of the new being in the female; (4) but how this soul becomes a human being is not yet clear (Purg. XXV.37-66). Once the fetal brain is formed, God, delighted with Nature's work, breathes into it the (rational) soul, which blends with the already existent souls (vegetative and sensitive) and makes a single entity, as wine is made by the sun (Purg. XXV.67-78). At the moment of death the soul leaves the body but carries with it the potential for both states, the bodily one 'mute,' the rational one more acute than in life, and falls to Acheron (if damned) or Tiber (if saved), where it takes on its 'airy body,' which, inseparable as flame from fire, follows it wherever it goes; insofar as this new being 'remembers' its former shape, it takes on all its former organs of sense and becomes a 'shade' (Purg. XXV.79-108). 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. Souls in Heaven, we will discover, have no such 'aerial bodies,' but are present as pure spirit.
As has been suggested (see the note to Purg. XVIII.99-138), the organization of each terrace is fairly formulaic. Dante remains free, however, to employ the interstices between terraces to address issues that would perhaps adversely affect the force of descriptions of intense penance if included among them (Marco Lombardo's lengthy disquisition on the necessary exercise of the will in canto XVI is an obvious exception, and it is 'excused' by the darkness, inhibiting descriptions of the penitents, on the terrace of Wrath). Now that we have come to the last of these 'lectures,' it may be useful to review them. At both the beginning and the end of the penitential sequence, the poet uses the liminal portions of each terrace only for physical descriptions of the ascent (Purg. X.1-21; Purg. XXVII.64-75). Leaving Pride, however, he addresses the protagonist's increasing lightness and the removal of his P's (Purg. XII.115-136); at the end of Envy the 'lecturing' really begins, when Virgil explains Guido del Duca's words about possession and sharing (Purg. XV.40-81); at the conclusion of Wrath, the poet reverts to a mere description of the ascent (Purg. XVII.61-69), but then, uniquely, devotes the time of arrival on a new terrace to doctrinal matters, Virgil's lengthy discourse on love (XVII.70-XVIII.85); having completed his description of Sloth, he has Virgil explain the meaning of the witch in Dante's dream (Purg. XIX.52-69); with Avarice left behind, he has Statius explain his debt to Virgil (Purg. XXII.1-126); and now the transit from Gluttony to Lust offers occasion for this lecture on the 'physiology of the spirit,' as it were.
For extremely useful notes on Dante's sources in these verses (37-88), Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, along with reference to Bruno Nardi's important contribution, “L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante” (1931-1932), reprinted in his Studi di filosofia medievale (Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,”1960), to our awareness of Dante's schooling in these matters, see Singleton's commentary to many of the passages between vv. 37 and 88 of Purgatorio XXV.
The 'perfect blood' is the end result of a series of four 'digestions' within the body: in the stomach, the liver, the heart, the members. Sperm is what remains after the 'fourth digestion' of the blood, which informs the various members of the body (e.g., heart, brain).
'The perfect place from which it springs' is the heart, from which it flows to become sperm.
The vegetative soul is the first one formed. Unlike the vegetative soul of things that have no higher nature, ours is only the beginning – our soul has not yet 'come to shore,' its 'voyage' has only begun. The vegetative soul enables the growth of the physical body. This capacity we share with animate matter (things that grow, e.g., plants, as opposed to inanimate matter, e.g., rocks) and the animals.
Now, at first resembling the lowest form of animate life, the sea-sponge, the animal soul begins to take life. This second soul is known as the 'sensitive soul,' and is the seat of human emotion, a capacity we share with the animals.
What Dante has not yet heard (and thus cannot understand) is how this 'animal' embryo can and does become a human being, i.e., how it receives its rational soul. The word 'fante,' here translated 'human,' strictly speaking means 'one who speaks.' Thus an 'infant' (in-fans) is a human who cannot yet speak. Here Dante, through Statius, is speaking precisely, but not technically. He means to indicate that the rational soul, once it is joined to the embryo, only then makes this new creature potentially fully human. And this third capacity of the soul we share with no other mortal beings (angels are nothing but rational soul, having no bodily form). For these three faculties as found in each single human soul, see the note to Purgatorio IV.1-15.
The question of the 'possible intellect' was of considerable interest in Dante's day and was variously addressed, even among 'orthodox' Christian thinkers (Albertus Magnus and his pupil Thomas Aquinas had major disagreements about it), partly because its most visible champion was Averroës (see Inf. IV.144), the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher who had decided that the possible intellect, which is the potential capacity to perceive universal ideas, existed apart from any particular human agent. An eventual result of such a view was to question or deny the immortality of the individual human soul. Dante's solution was to make the possible intellect co-terminous with the rational soul, breathed into the embryo directly by God. It is not surprising that Dante, whose ways are often extremely free-wheeling, simply appropriated the term to his own purpose and, in these few lines, makes the possible intellect 'orthodox.' See Cesare Vasoli, “intelletto possibile” (ED.1971.3).
These three tercets mark the climax of the argument and nearly shimmer with affection as they describe God's love for his human creatures, consummated in the breathing in of the rational soul, which immediately fuses with the vegetative and sensitive souls to form a single and immortal entity, capable of intellection and of will. For the central role of Dante's resolution of body-soul dualism in the glorified body of the resurrected, see Nancy Lindheim (“Body, Soul, and Immortality: Some Readings in Dante's Commedia,” Modern Language Notes 105 [1990], pp. 1-32.).
For a potential relationship between this lesson in embryology and Dante's poetics based in the inspiration of the loving God, see Mazzotta (Dante, Poet of the Desert [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979]), pp. 211-16. See also Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), pp. 201-5. Baranski (“Canto XXV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001], pp. 389-406) expresses some skepticism about this 'metaliterary' view of the canto proposed by these and other more recent American discussants.
God's love for us creates a new entity, an immortal soul, out of the raw material of nature just as the sun creates a new entity, wine, out of the moisture drawn up from the earth by the grapevine (Jacopo della Lana [comm. to these verses]). The emphasis is on the new entity's relation to its formative cause: a human being is the residue of God's spirit interacting with flesh; wine is a distillation of sunlight and matter.
At the moment of death (for the role of Lachesis and her two sister Fates, see the note to Purg. XXI.25-30) the lower faculties of the soul are once again in potential (rather than active) state. The higher faculties of the rational soul, on the other hand, are immediately said to be in atto (in action, i.e., fully existing), and more vigorously so than when they were inhibited by the lower souls.
There are three constitutive parts of the intellectual (or rational) soul according to St. Augustine (De Trinitate X.18, cited by Daniello [comm. to vv. 82-84]): 'The memory, the intellect, and the will are the components of a single mind.' These seem to be the sources of Dante's formulation here.
The 'afterlife' of a shade is compared to its taking the form of a rainbow when the soul 'imprints' itself upon the surrounding air to make itself reassemble the memory of its former body out of thin air. It is as inseparable from the higher soul as a flame is from its fire.
The conclusion of Statius's demonstration of the nature of a shade's aerial body relies, as readers since Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 103-106) have realized, on Virgil's description of the condition of the souls in his afterworld (Aen. VI.730-751). Among the details found there are the smiles and tears of which Dante speaks here (see Aen. VI.733 and Dante's vv. 103-104). See also Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 103-105). For a more recent discussion see Baranski (“Canto XXV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001]), pp. 397-98.
The word tortura (translated as 'circling') here perhaps has two meanings: 'turning' and 'torture,' thus describing both the spatial and the punitive aspects of the terrace: one makes a tighter circle there as one burns. Perhaps no dispute in the commentaries comes closer to being a draw than this on. The Ottimo (comm. to vv. 85-114) would seem to believe that tortura has both meanings; Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 109-111) believes it means 'turning'; Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-120) believes it means 'torture.' Over the years roughly half of those who have entered the fray believe it means 'turning.' Andreoli (comm. to this verse) was the first to suggest (citing the Accademia della Crusca) that the second meaning only entered the language later, an argument that was only answered a quarter millenium later by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 109-111), who point out that it did exist with the second significance in one of the Laude of Iacopone da Todi (ed. Mancini, 67, verse 15). In short, an interpreter is free to choose either alternative; a translator is forced to decide on one.
Some readers have difficulty visualizing what Dante here describes. Flames shoot out from the wall of the cliff, at first horizontally, but then driven back and up by a wind moving sharply upward from below at the edge of the terrace, thus making the flames move up and past the face of the wall and freeing a narrow path that is flame-free at the outer edge of the terrace.
The hymn sung by the penitents of Lust has caused some confusion in the modern age because the hymn Summae Deus clementiae ('God of supreme clemency') does not seem appropriate to the recriminations of the lustful, while the hymn Summae Parens clementiae does. However, the early commentators knew this hymn by the same first line as we today know the former. Its text, in a form that is probably close to or identical with that known by Dante, is found in the commentary of Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 121-124). The third stanza hopes for God's annealing fire to combat the passion of lust.
'I know no man.' These are part of Mary's words in answer to the angel's announcement (Luke 1.34) that she will bear a child: 'How shall this be, since I know no man?' This is Mary's seventh appearance on the mountain as the primary exemplar of a virtue opposing the relevant vice. Edward Moore (Studies in Dante, Second Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 (1899)]), pp. 63 and 194, suggests that Dante may have derived his idea of having Mary represent the 'antidote' to each of the seven sins from St. Bonaventure (Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis).
The second exemplar of Chastity is Diana, her story drawn from Ovid (Metam. II.401-530), the tale of the wood nymph Helice (Callisto), who paid for Jupiter's seduction and impregnation of her when, at the request of outraged Juno, Diana banished her from her woodlands. She was turned into a bear by Juno, and then, by the now more kind Jupiter, into the constellation Ursa Major.
See Pertile (“Quale amore va in Paradiso?” in “Le donne, i cavalieri, l'arme, gli amori”: Poema e romanzo: la narrativa lunga in Italia, ed. Francesco Bruni (Venice: Marsilio, 2001)), p. 62, for discomfort with Dante's unique use of anonymous exemplars here. Porena (comm. to these verses) was perhaps the first commentator to give voice to a similar disquiet (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 109-139] do also), suggesting that we expect a third example drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition but receive instead exemplars that Bosco rightly characterizes as being 'indeterminate' and 'impersonal.' John S. Carroll (comm. to these verses), while not dealing with this anomaly directly, may have found a reason for Dante's decision in a desire to champion the importance of marriage and the acceptability, indeed the desirability, of sexual concourse among husbands and wives. In this formulation Dante resorts to anonymity for his married couples in order to justify sexual pleasure for all who are married, in covert polemic against such overly zealous clerics as those who called for even marital abstinence. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 133-134) correctly rebukes Benvenuto (comm. to these verses) and Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 133-139) for misreading the text and making the wives guilty of sexual misconduct while their husbands were chaste. It is clear that the penitents are praising the chastely married of both sexes.
The word piaga (wound) is used here, as it was used at Purgatorio XXIV.38 for Bonagiunta and his companions, to refer to the 'wound' of sin. Does it also refer to the letter P incised on them? Those who believe that all the penitents on the mountain bear this sign would naturally believe so (see the notes to Purg. IX.112, Purg. XXI.22-24, and Purg. XXII.1-6). On the other hand, if only Dante bears this letter on his forehead, the reference would be to the inner wound of sin, as would seem more natural, and as Portirelli (comm. to vv. 121-139) believed, arguing that the cura (treatment) represented the external application of fire and pasti (diet), the internal process of reflection upon the exemplars of the chaste life.
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Ora era onde 'l salir non volea storpio;
ché 'l sole avëa il cerchio di merigge
lasciato al Tauro e la notte a lo Scorpio:
per che, come fa l'uom che non s'affigge
ma vassi a la via sua, che che li appaia,
se di bisogno stimolo il trafigge,
così intrammo noi per la callaia,
uno innanzi altro prendendo la scala
che per artezza i salitor dispaia.
E quale il cicognin che leva l'ala
per voglia di volare, e non s'attenta
d'abbandonar lo nido, e giù la cala;
tal era io con voglia accesa e spenta
di dimandar, venendo infino a l'atto
che fa colui ch'a dicer s'argomenta.
Non lasciò, per l'andar che fosse ratto,
lo dolce padre mio, ma disse: “Scocca
l'arco del dir, che 'nfino al ferro hai tratto.”
Allor sicuramente apri' la bocca
e cominciai: “Come si può far magro
là dove l'uopo di nodrir non tocca?”
“Se t'ammentassi come Meleagro
si consumò al consumar d'un stizzo,
non fora,” disse, “a te questo sì agro;
e se pensassi come, al vostro guizzo,
guizza dentro a lo specchio vostra image,
ciò che par duro ti parrebbe vizzo.
Ma perché dentro a tuo voler t'adage,
ecco qui Stazio; e io lui chiamo e prego
che sia or sanator de le tue piage.”
“Se la veduta etterna li dislego,”
rispuose Stazio, “là dove tu sie,
discolpi me non potert' io far nego.”
Poi cominciò: “Se le parole mie,
figlio, la mente tua guarda e riceve,
lume ti fiero al come che tu die.
Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve
da l'assetate vene, e si rimane
quasi alimento che di mensa leve,
prende nel core a tutte membra umane
virtute informativa, come quello
ch'a farsi quelle per le vene vane.
Ancor digesto, scende ov' è più bello
tacer che dire; e quindi poscia geme
sovr' altrui sangue in natural vasello.
Ivi s'accoglie l'uno e l'altro insieme,
l'un disposto a patire, e l'altro a fare
per lo perfetto loco onde si preme;
e, giunto lui, comincia ad operare
coagulando prima, e poi avviva
ciò che per sua matera fé constare.
Anima fatta la virtute attiva
qual d'una pianta, in tanto differente,
che questa è in via e quella è già a riva,
tanto ovra poi, che già si move e sente,
come spungo marino; e indi imprende
ad organar le posse ond' è semente.
Or si spiega, figliuolo, or si distende
la virtù ch'è dal cor del generante,
dove natura a tutte membra intende.
Ma come d'animal divegna fante,
non vedi tu ancor: quest' è tal punto,
che più savio di te fé già errante,
sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto
da l'anima il possibile intelletto,
perché da lui non vide organo assunto.
Apri a la verità che viene il petto;
e sappi che, sì tosto come al feto
l'articular del cerebro è perfetto,
lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto
sovra tant' arte di natura, e spira
spirito novo, di vertù repleto,
che ciò che trova attivo quivi, tira
in sua sustanzia, e fassi un'alma sola,
che vive e sente e sé in sé rigira.
E perché meno ammiri la parola,
guarda il calor del sol che si fa vino,
giunto a l'omor che de la vite cola.
Quando Làchesis non ha più del lino,
solvesi da la carne, e in virtute
ne porta seco e l'umano e 'l divino:
l'altre potenze tutte quante mute;
memoria, intelligenza e volontade
in atto molto più che prima agute.
Sanza restarsi, per sé stessa cade
mirabilmente a l'una de le rive;
quivi conosce prima le sue strade.
Tosto che loco lì la circunscrive,
la virtù formativa raggia intorno
così e quanto ne le membra vive.
E come l'aere, quand' è ben pïorno,
per l'altrui raggio che 'n sé si reflette,
di diversi color diventa addorno;
così l'aere vicin quivi si mette
e in quella forma ch'è in lui suggella
virtüalmente l'alma che ristette;
e simigliante poi a la fiammella
che segue il foco là 'vunque si muta,
segue lo spirto sua forma novella.
Però che quindi ha poscia sua paruta,
è chiamata ombra; e quindi organa poi
ciascun sentire infino a la veduta.
Quindi parliamo e quindi ridiam noi;
quindi facciam le lagrime e ' sospiri
che per lo monte aver sentiti puoi.
Secondo che ci affliggono i disiri
e li altri affetti, l'ombra si figura;
e quest' è la cagion di che tu miri.”
E già venuto a l'ultima tortura
s'era per noi, e vòlto a la man destra,
ed eravamo attenti ad altra cura.
Quivi la ripa fiamma in fuor balestra,
e la cornice spira fiato in suso
che la reflette e via da lei sequestra;
ond' ir ne convenia dal lato schiuso
ad uno ad uno; e io temëa 'l foco
quinci, e quindi temeva cader giuso.
Lo duca mio dicea: “Per questo loco
si vuol tenere a li occhi stretto il freno,
però ch'errar potrebbesi per poco.”
“Summae Deus clementïae” nel seno
al grande ardore allora udi' cantando,
che di volger mi fé caler non meno;
e vidi spirti per la fiamma andando;
per ch'io guardava a loro e a' miei passi,
compartendo la vista a quando a quando.
Appresso il fine ch'a quell' inno fassi,
gridavano alto: “Virum non cognosco”;
indi ricominciavan l'inno bassi.
Finitolo, anco gridavano: “Al bosco
si tenne Diana, ed Elice caccionne
che di Venere avea sentito il tòsco.”
Indi al cantar tornavano; indi donne
gridavano e mariti che fuor casti
come virtute e matrimonio imponne.
E questo modo credo che lor basti
per tutto il tempo che 'l foco li abbruscia:
con tal cura conviene e con tai pasti
che la piaga da sezzo si ricuscia.
Now was it the ascent no hindrance brooked,
Because the sun had his meridian circle
To Taurus left, and night to Scorpio;
Wherefore as doth a man who tarries not,
But goes his way, whate'er to him appear,
If of necessity the sting transfix him,
In this wise did we enter through the gap,
Taking the stairway, one before the other,
Which by its narrowness divides the climbers.
And as the little stork that lifts its wing
With a desire to fly, and does not venture
To leave the nest, and lets it downward droop,
Even such was I, with the desire of asking
Kindled and quenched, unto the motion coming
He makes who doth address himself to speak.
Not for our pace, though rapid it might be,
My father sweet forbore, but said: "Let fly
The bow of speech thou to the barb hast drawn."
With confidence I opened then my mouth,
And I began: "How can one meagre grow
There where the need of nutriment applies not?"
"If thou wouldst call to mind how Meleager
Was wasted by the wasting of a brand,
This would not," said he, "be to thee so sour;
And wouldst thou think how at each tremulous motion
Trembles within a mirror your own image;
That which seems hard would mellow seem to thee.
But that thou mayst content thee in thy wish
Lo Statius here; and him I call and pray
He now will be the healer of thy wounds."
"If I unfold to him the eternal vengeance,"
Responded Statius, "where thou present art,
Be my excuse that I can naught deny thee."
Then he began: "Son, if these words of mine
Thy mind doth contemplate and doth receive,
They'll be thy light unto the How thou sayest.
The perfect blood, which never is drunk up
Into the thirsty veins, and which remaineth
Like food that from the table thou removest,
Takes in the heart for all the human members
Virtue informative, as being that
Which to be changed to them goes through the veins
Again digest, descends it where 'tis better
Silent to be than say; and then drops thence
Upon another's blood in natural vase.
There one together with the other mingles,
One to be passive meant, the other active
By reason of the perfect place it springs from;
And being conjoined, begins to operate,
Coagulating first, then vivifying
What for its matter it had made consistent.
The active virtue, being made a soul
As of a plant, (in so far different,
This on the way is, that arrived already,)
Then works so much, that now it moves and feels
Like a sea-fungus, and then undertakes
To organize the powers whose seed it is.
Now, Son, dilates and now distends itself
The virtue from the generator's heart,
Where nature is intent on all the members.
But how from animal it man becomes
Thou dost not see as yet; this is a point
Which made a wiser man than thou once err
So far, that in his doctrine separate
He made the soul from possible intellect,
For he no organ saw by this assumed.
Open thy breast unto the truth that's coming,
And know that, just as soon as in the foetus
The articulation of the brain is perfect,
The primal Motor turns to it well pleased
At so great art of nature, and inspires
A spirit new with virtue all replete,
Which what it finds there active doth attract
Into its substance, and becomes one soul,
Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves.
And that thou less may wonder at my word,
Behold the sun's heat, which becometh wine,
Joined to the juice that from the vine distils.
Whenever Lachesis has no more thread,
It separates from the flesh, and virtually
Bears with itself the human and divine;
The other faculties are voiceless all;
The memory, the intelligence, and the will
In action far more vigorous than before.
Without a pause it falleth of itself
In marvellous way on one shore or the other;
There of its roads it first is cognizant.
Soon as the place there circumscribeth it,
The virtue informative rays round about,
As, and as much as, in the living members.
And even as the air, when full of rain,
By alien rays that are therein reflected,
With divers colours shows itself adorned,
So there the neighbouring air doth shape itself
Into that form which doth impress upon it
Virtually the soul that has stood still.
And then in manner of the little flame,
Which followeth the fire where'er it shifts,
After the spirit followeth its new form.
Since afterwards it takes from this its semblance,
It is called shade; and thence it organizes
Thereafter every sense, even to the sight.
Thence is it that we speak, and thence we laugh;
Thence is it that we form the tears and sighs,
That on the mountain thou mayhap hast heard.
According as impress us our desires
And other affections, so the shade is shaped,
And this is cause of what thou wonderest at."
And now unto the last of all the circles
Had we arrived, and to the right hand turned,
And were attentive to another care.
There the embankment shoots forth flames of fire,
And upward doth the cornice breathe a blast
That drives them back, and from itself sequesters.
Hence we must needs go on the open side,
And one by one; and I did fear the fire
On this side, and on that the falling down.
My Leader said: "Along this place one ought
To keep upon the eyes a tightened rein,
Seeing that one so easily might err."
"Summae Deus clementiae," in the bosom
Of the great burning chanted then I heard,
Which made me no less eager to turn round;
And spirits saw I walking through the flame;
Wherefore I looked, to my own steps and theirs
Apportioning my sight from time to time.
After the close which to that hymn is made,
Aloud they shouted, "Virum non cognosco;"
Then recommenced the hymn with voices low.
This also ended, cried they: "To the wood
Diana ran, and drove forth Helice
Therefrom, who had of Venus felt the poison."
Then to their song returned they; then the wives
They shouted, and the husbands who were chaste.
As virtue and the marriage vow imposes.
And I believe that them this mode suffices,
For all the time the fire is burning them;
With such care is it needful, and such food,
That the last wound of all should be closed up.
The constellations Taurus and Scorpio are 180o apart. The sun at the antipodes has now moved roughly two hours, from shining down from in front of the constellation Capricorn, then Sagittarius, and now Taurus, or from noon to two o'clock (as, half the world away, in Jerusalem it is two in the morning). Since the travelers had entered this terrace at roughly ten in the morning (Purg. XXII.115-120), 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 (see Purg. XXVII.65-66), the first two hours traversing the distance between the two terraces (see Purg. XXVI.4-6).
The simile stresses the renewed urgency of the climb, with the three poets, led by Virgil, mounting in single file. Statius is, as will eventually be made plain, in the middle position (see Purg. XXVII.48), from which he will shortly respond at length to Dante's question about the aerial body.
This second simile makes the protagonist a hesitant fledgling stork in relation to his unspoken request, manifest in the mouth he has opened without yet forming the words of his question.
Virgil's metaphor has Dante drawing the bowstring of his question so hard and far that the iron tip of his arrow is touching the shaft of his bow. These are the first words spoken by Virgil since Purgatorio XXIII.15 (see the note to Purg. XXIV.1-3).
Dante's question, which has been in the back of his mind since Purgatorio XXIII.37-39, addresses the apparent incongruity of the fact that the souls of the penitents of Gluttony seem to grow thin from not ingesting food. Such a phenomenon, he has wrongly assumed, should be associated only with the experience of starvation in a mortal body.
The reference is to Ovid's near-epic narrative of the hunt for the Calydonian boar with its unhappy outcome for Meleager (Metam. VIII.260-546). He, the son of the king of Calydon and of Althaea, killed this rampaging animal and gave its skin to Atalanta, with whom he was in love. Althaea's two brothers, Plexippus and Toxeus, take the remains of the beast back from her. Enraged at the insult to his honor, Meleager kills them. Seeing the corpses of her brothers brought into the temple where she was giving thanks for her son's victory, and learning who had killed them, Althaea is moved to take vengeance, even upon her own son. When he was born, the three Fates had determined that he would live only so long as a firebrand remained unconsumed in a fire into which it had been cast. Hearing this, Althaea snatched the burning log-end from the fire and doused it in water. Now she took up again this piece of wood, which she had preserved, and cast it into a fire, thus causing the death of her own son. Virgil's point is that if Dante had understood this principle, that there is a vital relationship between what seem unrelated phenomena (e.g., the burning of a log-end and the death of a man), he would have already understood the relationship between body and soul here in purgatory.
As a second instance of this principle, Virgil offers the example of a person's movements being reflected in a mirror; once again, to an ignorant observer, the two phenomena might seem to have independent and unrelated causes if the observer did not understand the principle of speculation (e.g., two Marx brothers in sleeping garments facing each other in an open doorway and moving in harmony).
It is as though 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. Dealing with this passage, Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to these verses) allegorizes Virgil as 'rational philosophy' and Statius, 'a Christian poet,' as 'moral philosophy.' It might seem more to the point to realize that Statius, as a saved Christian, simply knows by revelation some mysterious things that are not known by others, e.g., all ordinary mortals and all souls who are not saved.
Statius excuses himself for revealing an essential Christian mystery in the presence of a pagan because of his love for this particular pagan. John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 34-36), perhaps echoing his teacher, Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to Inf. I.10-12) speaks of Virgil's belief (learned from Plato's Timaeus, according to Benvenuto) that the souls of humans come from the stars and return to them. While we cannot be certain that Dante shared the first part of this view (and see Par. IV.22-24, for his denial of the second), the 'eternal plan' is at significant variance from Plato, as Statius's lecture will make plain.
Statius's lecture on embryology may be paraphrased as follows. He is willing to deal with Dante's desire to know how the aerial body is formed (Purg. XXV.34-36): (1) After the 'perfect blood' is 'digested' (the third digestion) in the heart, having now the power to inform all the parts of body, it is 'digested' once again and descends into the testicles; (2) it now falls upon the 'perfect blood' in the uterus; it is 'active,' the latter 'passive'; (3) the male blood now informs the soul of the new being in the female; (4) but how this soul becomes a human being is not yet clear (Purg. XXV.37-66). Once the fetal brain is formed, God, delighted with Nature's work, breathes into it the (rational) soul, which blends with the already existent souls (vegetative and sensitive) and makes a single entity, as wine is made by the sun (Purg. XXV.67-78). At the moment of death the soul leaves the body but carries with it the potential for both states, the bodily one 'mute,' the rational one more acute than in life, and falls to Acheron (if damned) or Tiber (if saved), where it takes on its 'airy body,' which, inseparable as flame from fire, follows it wherever it goes; insofar as this new being 'remembers' its former shape, it takes on all its former organs of sense and becomes a 'shade' (Purg. XXV.79-108). 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. Souls in Heaven, we will discover, have no such 'aerial bodies,' but are present as pure spirit.
As has been suggested (see the note to Purg. XVIII.99-138), the organization of each terrace is fairly formulaic. Dante remains free, however, to employ the interstices between terraces to address issues that would perhaps adversely affect the force of descriptions of intense penance if included among them (Marco Lombardo's lengthy disquisition on the necessary exercise of the will in canto XVI is an obvious exception, and it is 'excused' by the darkness, inhibiting descriptions of the penitents, on the terrace of Wrath). Now that we have come to the last of these 'lectures,' it may be useful to review them. At both the beginning and the end of the penitential sequence, the poet uses the liminal portions of each terrace only for physical descriptions of the ascent (Purg. X.1-21; Purg. XXVII.64-75). Leaving Pride, however, he addresses the protagonist's increasing lightness and the removal of his P's (Purg. XII.115-136); at the end of Envy the 'lecturing' really begins, when Virgil explains Guido del Duca's words about possession and sharing (Purg. XV.40-81); at the conclusion of Wrath, the poet reverts to a mere description of the ascent (Purg. XVII.61-69), but then, uniquely, devotes the time of arrival on a new terrace to doctrinal matters, Virgil's lengthy discourse on love (XVII.70-XVIII.85); having completed his description of Sloth, he has Virgil explain the meaning of the witch in Dante's dream (Purg. XIX.52-69); with Avarice left behind, he has Statius explain his debt to Virgil (Purg. XXII.1-126); and now the transit from Gluttony to Lust offers occasion for this lecture on the 'physiology of the spirit,' as it were.
For extremely useful notes on Dante's sources in these verses (37-88), Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, along with reference to Bruno Nardi's important contribution, “L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante” (1931-1932), reprinted in his Studi di filosofia medievale (Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,”1960), to our awareness of Dante's schooling in these matters, see Singleton's commentary to many of the passages between vv. 37 and 88 of Purgatorio XXV.
The 'perfect blood' is the end result of a series of four 'digestions' within the body: in the stomach, the liver, the heart, the members. Sperm is what remains after the 'fourth digestion' of the blood, which informs the various members of the body (e.g., heart, brain).
'The perfect place from which it springs' is the heart, from which it flows to become sperm.
The vegetative soul is the first one formed. Unlike the vegetative soul of things that have no higher nature, ours is only the beginning – our soul has not yet 'come to shore,' its 'voyage' has only begun. The vegetative soul enables the growth of the physical body. This capacity we share with animate matter (things that grow, e.g., plants, as opposed to inanimate matter, e.g., rocks) and the animals.
Now, at first resembling the lowest form of animate life, the sea-sponge, the animal soul begins to take life. This second soul is known as the 'sensitive soul,' and is the seat of human emotion, a capacity we share with the animals.
What Dante has not yet heard (and thus cannot understand) is how this 'animal' embryo can and does become a human being, i.e., how it receives its rational soul. The word 'fante,' here translated 'human,' strictly speaking means 'one who speaks.' Thus an 'infant' (in-fans) is a human who cannot yet speak. Here Dante, through Statius, is speaking precisely, but not technically. He means to indicate that the rational soul, once it is joined to the embryo, only then makes this new creature potentially fully human. And this third capacity of the soul we share with no other mortal beings (angels are nothing but rational soul, having no bodily form). For these three faculties as found in each single human soul, see the note to Purgatorio IV.1-15.
The question of the 'possible intellect' was of considerable interest in Dante's day and was variously addressed, even among 'orthodox' Christian thinkers (Albertus Magnus and his pupil Thomas Aquinas had major disagreements about it), partly because its most visible champion was Averroës (see Inf. IV.144), the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher who had decided that the possible intellect, which is the potential capacity to perceive universal ideas, existed apart from any particular human agent. An eventual result of such a view was to question or deny the immortality of the individual human soul. Dante's solution was to make the possible intellect co-terminous with the rational soul, breathed into the embryo directly by God. It is not surprising that Dante, whose ways are often extremely free-wheeling, simply appropriated the term to his own purpose and, in these few lines, makes the possible intellect 'orthodox.' See Cesare Vasoli, “intelletto possibile” (ED.1971.3).
These three tercets mark the climax of the argument and nearly shimmer with affection as they describe God's love for his human creatures, consummated in the breathing in of the rational soul, which immediately fuses with the vegetative and sensitive souls to form a single and immortal entity, capable of intellection and of will. For the central role of Dante's resolution of body-soul dualism in the glorified body of the resurrected, see Nancy Lindheim (“Body, Soul, and Immortality: Some Readings in Dante's Commedia,” Modern Language Notes 105 [1990], pp. 1-32.).
For a potential relationship between this lesson in embryology and Dante's poetics based in the inspiration of the loving God, see Mazzotta (Dante, Poet of the Desert [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979]), pp. 211-16. See also Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), pp. 201-5. Baranski (“Canto XXV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001], pp. 389-406) expresses some skepticism about this 'metaliterary' view of the canto proposed by these and other more recent American discussants.
God's love for us creates a new entity, an immortal soul, out of the raw material of nature just as the sun creates a new entity, wine, out of the moisture drawn up from the earth by the grapevine (Jacopo della Lana [comm. to these verses]). The emphasis is on the new entity's relation to its formative cause: a human being is the residue of God's spirit interacting with flesh; wine is a distillation of sunlight and matter.
At the moment of death (for the role of Lachesis and her two sister Fates, see the note to Purg. XXI.25-30) the lower faculties of the soul are once again in potential (rather than active) state. The higher faculties of the rational soul, on the other hand, are immediately said to be in atto (in action, i.e., fully existing), and more vigorously so than when they were inhibited by the lower souls.
There are three constitutive parts of the intellectual (or rational) soul according to St. Augustine (De Trinitate X.18, cited by Daniello [comm. to vv. 82-84]): 'The memory, the intellect, and the will are the components of a single mind.' These seem to be the sources of Dante's formulation here.
The 'afterlife' of a shade is compared to its taking the form of a rainbow when the soul 'imprints' itself upon the surrounding air to make itself reassemble the memory of its former body out of thin air. It is as inseparable from the higher soul as a flame is from its fire.
The conclusion of Statius's demonstration of the nature of a shade's aerial body relies, as readers since Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 103-106) have realized, on Virgil's description of the condition of the souls in his afterworld (Aen. VI.730-751). Among the details found there are the smiles and tears of which Dante speaks here (see Aen. VI.733 and Dante's vv. 103-104). See also Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 103-105). For a more recent discussion see Baranski (“Canto XXV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001]), pp. 397-98.
The word tortura (translated as 'circling') here perhaps has two meanings: 'turning' and 'torture,' thus describing both the spatial and the punitive aspects of the terrace: one makes a tighter circle there as one burns. Perhaps no dispute in the commentaries comes closer to being a draw than this on. The Ottimo (comm. to vv. 85-114) would seem to believe that tortura has both meanings; Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 109-111) believes it means 'turning'; Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-120) believes it means 'torture.' Over the years roughly half of those who have entered the fray believe it means 'turning.' Andreoli (comm. to this verse) was the first to suggest (citing the Accademia della Crusca) that the second meaning only entered the language later, an argument that was only answered a quarter millenium later by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 109-111), who point out that it did exist with the second significance in one of the Laude of Iacopone da Todi (ed. Mancini, 67, verse 15). In short, an interpreter is free to choose either alternative; a translator is forced to decide on one.
Some readers have difficulty visualizing what Dante here describes. Flames shoot out from the wall of the cliff, at first horizontally, but then driven back and up by a wind moving sharply upward from below at the edge of the terrace, thus making the flames move up and past the face of the wall and freeing a narrow path that is flame-free at the outer edge of the terrace.
The hymn sung by the penitents of Lust has caused some confusion in the modern age because the hymn Summae Deus clementiae ('God of supreme clemency') does not seem appropriate to the recriminations of the lustful, while the hymn Summae Parens clementiae does. However, the early commentators knew this hymn by the same first line as we today know the former. Its text, in a form that is probably close to or identical with that known by Dante, is found in the commentary of Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 121-124). The third stanza hopes for God's annealing fire to combat the passion of lust.
'I know no man.' These are part of Mary's words in answer to the angel's announcement (Luke 1.34) that she will bear a child: 'How shall this be, since I know no man?' This is Mary's seventh appearance on the mountain as the primary exemplar of a virtue opposing the relevant vice. Edward Moore (Studies in Dante, Second Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 (1899)]), pp. 63 and 194, suggests that Dante may have derived his idea of having Mary represent the 'antidote' to each of the seven sins from St. Bonaventure (Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis).
The second exemplar of Chastity is Diana, her story drawn from Ovid (Metam. II.401-530), the tale of the wood nymph Helice (Callisto), who paid for Jupiter's seduction and impregnation of her when, at the request of outraged Juno, Diana banished her from her woodlands. She was turned into a bear by Juno, and then, by the now more kind Jupiter, into the constellation Ursa Major.
See Pertile (“Quale amore va in Paradiso?” in “Le donne, i cavalieri, l'arme, gli amori”: Poema e romanzo: la narrativa lunga in Italia, ed. Francesco Bruni (Venice: Marsilio, 2001)), p. 62, for discomfort with Dante's unique use of anonymous exemplars here. Porena (comm. to these verses) was perhaps the first commentator to give voice to a similar disquiet (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 109-139] do also), suggesting that we expect a third example drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition but receive instead exemplars that Bosco rightly characterizes as being 'indeterminate' and 'impersonal.' John S. Carroll (comm. to these verses), while not dealing with this anomaly directly, may have found a reason for Dante's decision in a desire to champion the importance of marriage and the acceptability, indeed the desirability, of sexual concourse among husbands and wives. In this formulation Dante resorts to anonymity for his married couples in order to justify sexual pleasure for all who are married, in covert polemic against such overly zealous clerics as those who called for even marital abstinence. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 133-134) correctly rebukes Benvenuto (comm. to these verses) and Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 133-139) for misreading the text and making the wives guilty of sexual misconduct while their husbands were chaste. It is clear that the penitents are praising the chastely married of both sexes.
The word piaga (wound) is used here, as it was used at Purgatorio XXIV.38 for Bonagiunta and his companions, to refer to the 'wound' of sin. Does it also refer to the letter P incised on them? Those who believe that all the penitents on the mountain bear this sign would naturally believe so (see the notes to Purg. IX.112, Purg. XXI.22-24, and Purg. XXII.1-6). On the other hand, if only Dante bears this letter on his forehead, the reference would be to the inner wound of sin, as would seem more natural, and as Portirelli (comm. to vv. 121-139) believed, arguing that the cura (treatment) represented the external application of fire and pasti (diet), the internal process of reflection upon the exemplars of the chaste life.
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Ora era onde 'l salir non volea storpio;
ché 'l sole avëa il cerchio di merigge
lasciato al Tauro e la notte a lo Scorpio:
per che, come fa l'uom che non s'affigge
ma vassi a la via sua, che che li appaia,
se di bisogno stimolo il trafigge,
così intrammo noi per la callaia,
uno innanzi altro prendendo la scala
che per artezza i salitor dispaia.
E quale il cicognin che leva l'ala
per voglia di volare, e non s'attenta
d'abbandonar lo nido, e giù la cala;
tal era io con voglia accesa e spenta
di dimandar, venendo infino a l'atto
che fa colui ch'a dicer s'argomenta.
Non lasciò, per l'andar che fosse ratto,
lo dolce padre mio, ma disse: “Scocca
l'arco del dir, che 'nfino al ferro hai tratto.”
Allor sicuramente apri' la bocca
e cominciai: “Come si può far magro
là dove l'uopo di nodrir non tocca?”
“Se t'ammentassi come Meleagro
si consumò al consumar d'un stizzo,
non fora,” disse, “a te questo sì agro;
e se pensassi come, al vostro guizzo,
guizza dentro a lo specchio vostra image,
ciò che par duro ti parrebbe vizzo.
Ma perché dentro a tuo voler t'adage,
ecco qui Stazio; e io lui chiamo e prego
che sia or sanator de le tue piage.”
“Se la veduta etterna li dislego,”
rispuose Stazio, “là dove tu sie,
discolpi me non potert' io far nego.”
Poi cominciò: “Se le parole mie,
figlio, la mente tua guarda e riceve,
lume ti fiero al come che tu die.
Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve
da l'assetate vene, e si rimane
quasi alimento che di mensa leve,
prende nel core a tutte membra umane
virtute informativa, come quello
ch'a farsi quelle per le vene vane.
Ancor digesto, scende ov' è più bello
tacer che dire; e quindi poscia geme
sovr' altrui sangue in natural vasello.
Ivi s'accoglie l'uno e l'altro insieme,
l'un disposto a patire, e l'altro a fare
per lo perfetto loco onde si preme;
e, giunto lui, comincia ad operare
coagulando prima, e poi avviva
ciò che per sua matera fé constare.
Anima fatta la virtute attiva
qual d'una pianta, in tanto differente,
che questa è in via e quella è già a riva,
tanto ovra poi, che già si move e sente,
come spungo marino; e indi imprende
ad organar le posse ond' è semente.
Or si spiega, figliuolo, or si distende
la virtù ch'è dal cor del generante,
dove natura a tutte membra intende.
Ma come d'animal divegna fante,
non vedi tu ancor: quest' è tal punto,
che più savio di te fé già errante,
sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto
da l'anima il possibile intelletto,
perché da lui non vide organo assunto.
Apri a la verità che viene il petto;
e sappi che, sì tosto come al feto
l'articular del cerebro è perfetto,
lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto
sovra tant' arte di natura, e spira
spirito novo, di vertù repleto,
che ciò che trova attivo quivi, tira
in sua sustanzia, e fassi un'alma sola,
che vive e sente e sé in sé rigira.
E perché meno ammiri la parola,
guarda il calor del sol che si fa vino,
giunto a l'omor che de la vite cola.
Quando Làchesis non ha più del lino,
solvesi da la carne, e in virtute
ne porta seco e l'umano e 'l divino:
l'altre potenze tutte quante mute;
memoria, intelligenza e volontade
in atto molto più che prima agute.
Sanza restarsi, per sé stessa cade
mirabilmente a l'una de le rive;
quivi conosce prima le sue strade.
Tosto che loco lì la circunscrive,
la virtù formativa raggia intorno
così e quanto ne le membra vive.
E come l'aere, quand' è ben pïorno,
per l'altrui raggio che 'n sé si reflette,
di diversi color diventa addorno;
così l'aere vicin quivi si mette
e in quella forma ch'è in lui suggella
virtüalmente l'alma che ristette;
e simigliante poi a la fiammella
che segue il foco là 'vunque si muta,
segue lo spirto sua forma novella.
Però che quindi ha poscia sua paruta,
è chiamata ombra; e quindi organa poi
ciascun sentire infino a la veduta.
Quindi parliamo e quindi ridiam noi;
quindi facciam le lagrime e ' sospiri
che per lo monte aver sentiti puoi.
Secondo che ci affliggono i disiri
e li altri affetti, l'ombra si figura;
e quest' è la cagion di che tu miri.”
E già venuto a l'ultima tortura
s'era per noi, e vòlto a la man destra,
ed eravamo attenti ad altra cura.
Quivi la ripa fiamma in fuor balestra,
e la cornice spira fiato in suso
che la reflette e via da lei sequestra;
ond' ir ne convenia dal lato schiuso
ad uno ad uno; e io temëa 'l foco
quinci, e quindi temeva cader giuso.
Lo duca mio dicea: “Per questo loco
si vuol tenere a li occhi stretto il freno,
però ch'errar potrebbesi per poco.”
“Summae Deus clementïae” nel seno
al grande ardore allora udi' cantando,
che di volger mi fé caler non meno;
e vidi spirti per la fiamma andando;
per ch'io guardava a loro e a' miei passi,
compartendo la vista a quando a quando.
Appresso il fine ch'a quell' inno fassi,
gridavano alto: “Virum non cognosco”;
indi ricominciavan l'inno bassi.
Finitolo, anco gridavano: “Al bosco
si tenne Diana, ed Elice caccionne
che di Venere avea sentito il tòsco.”
Indi al cantar tornavano; indi donne
gridavano e mariti che fuor casti
come virtute e matrimonio imponne.
E questo modo credo che lor basti
per tutto il tempo che 'l foco li abbruscia:
con tal cura conviene e con tai pasti
che la piaga da sezzo si ricuscia.
Now was it the ascent no hindrance brooked,
Because the sun had his meridian circle
To Taurus left, and night to Scorpio;
Wherefore as doth a man who tarries not,
But goes his way, whate'er to him appear,
If of necessity the sting transfix him,
In this wise did we enter through the gap,
Taking the stairway, one before the other,
Which by its narrowness divides the climbers.
And as the little stork that lifts its wing
With a desire to fly, and does not venture
To leave the nest, and lets it downward droop,
Even such was I, with the desire of asking
Kindled and quenched, unto the motion coming
He makes who doth address himself to speak.
Not for our pace, though rapid it might be,
My father sweet forbore, but said: "Let fly
The bow of speech thou to the barb hast drawn."
With confidence I opened then my mouth,
And I began: "How can one meagre grow
There where the need of nutriment applies not?"
"If thou wouldst call to mind how Meleager
Was wasted by the wasting of a brand,
This would not," said he, "be to thee so sour;
And wouldst thou think how at each tremulous motion
Trembles within a mirror your own image;
That which seems hard would mellow seem to thee.
But that thou mayst content thee in thy wish
Lo Statius here; and him I call and pray
He now will be the healer of thy wounds."
"If I unfold to him the eternal vengeance,"
Responded Statius, "where thou present art,
Be my excuse that I can naught deny thee."
Then he began: "Son, if these words of mine
Thy mind doth contemplate and doth receive,
They'll be thy light unto the How thou sayest.
The perfect blood, which never is drunk up
Into the thirsty veins, and which remaineth
Like food that from the table thou removest,
Takes in the heart for all the human members
Virtue informative, as being that
Which to be changed to them goes through the veins
Again digest, descends it where 'tis better
Silent to be than say; and then drops thence
Upon another's blood in natural vase.
There one together with the other mingles,
One to be passive meant, the other active
By reason of the perfect place it springs from;
And being conjoined, begins to operate,
Coagulating first, then vivifying
What for its matter it had made consistent.
The active virtue, being made a soul
As of a plant, (in so far different,
This on the way is, that arrived already,)
Then works so much, that now it moves and feels
Like a sea-fungus, and then undertakes
To organize the powers whose seed it is.
Now, Son, dilates and now distends itself
The virtue from the generator's heart,
Where nature is intent on all the members.
But how from animal it man becomes
Thou dost not see as yet; this is a point
Which made a wiser man than thou once err
So far, that in his doctrine separate
He made the soul from possible intellect,
For he no organ saw by this assumed.
Open thy breast unto the truth that's coming,
And know that, just as soon as in the foetus
The articulation of the brain is perfect,
The primal Motor turns to it well pleased
At so great art of nature, and inspires
A spirit new with virtue all replete,
Which what it finds there active doth attract
Into its substance, and becomes one soul,
Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves.
And that thou less may wonder at my word,
Behold the sun's heat, which becometh wine,
Joined to the juice that from the vine distils.
Whenever Lachesis has no more thread,
It separates from the flesh, and virtually
Bears with itself the human and divine;
The other faculties are voiceless all;
The memory, the intelligence, and the will
In action far more vigorous than before.
Without a pause it falleth of itself
In marvellous way on one shore or the other;
There of its roads it first is cognizant.
Soon as the place there circumscribeth it,
The virtue informative rays round about,
As, and as much as, in the living members.
And even as the air, when full of rain,
By alien rays that are therein reflected,
With divers colours shows itself adorned,
So there the neighbouring air doth shape itself
Into that form which doth impress upon it
Virtually the soul that has stood still.
And then in manner of the little flame,
Which followeth the fire where'er it shifts,
After the spirit followeth its new form.
Since afterwards it takes from this its semblance,
It is called shade; and thence it organizes
Thereafter every sense, even to the sight.
Thence is it that we speak, and thence we laugh;
Thence is it that we form the tears and sighs,
That on the mountain thou mayhap hast heard.
According as impress us our desires
And other affections, so the shade is shaped,
And this is cause of what thou wonderest at."
And now unto the last of all the circles
Had we arrived, and to the right hand turned,
And were attentive to another care.
There the embankment shoots forth flames of fire,
And upward doth the cornice breathe a blast
That drives them back, and from itself sequesters.
Hence we must needs go on the open side,
And one by one; and I did fear the fire
On this side, and on that the falling down.
My Leader said: "Along this place one ought
To keep upon the eyes a tightened rein,
Seeing that one so easily might err."
"Summae Deus clementiae," in the bosom
Of the great burning chanted then I heard,
Which made me no less eager to turn round;
And spirits saw I walking through the flame;
Wherefore I looked, to my own steps and theirs
Apportioning my sight from time to time.
After the close which to that hymn is made,
Aloud they shouted, "Virum non cognosco;"
Then recommenced the hymn with voices low.
This also ended, cried they: "To the wood
Diana ran, and drove forth Helice
Therefrom, who had of Venus felt the poison."
Then to their song returned they; then the wives
They shouted, and the husbands who were chaste.
As virtue and the marriage vow imposes.
And I believe that them this mode suffices,
For all the time the fire is burning them;
With such care is it needful, and such food,
That the last wound of all should be closed up.
The constellations Taurus and Scorpio are 180o apart. The sun at the antipodes has now moved roughly two hours, from shining down from in front of the constellation Capricorn, then Sagittarius, and now Taurus, or from noon to two o'clock (as, half the world away, in Jerusalem it is two in the morning). Since the travelers had entered this terrace at roughly ten in the morning (Purg. XXII.115-120), 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 (see Purg. XXVII.65-66), the first two hours traversing the distance between the two terraces (see Purg. XXVI.4-6).
The simile stresses the renewed urgency of the climb, with the three poets, led by Virgil, mounting in single file. Statius is, as will eventually be made plain, in the middle position (see Purg. XXVII.48), from which he will shortly respond at length to Dante's question about the aerial body.
This second simile makes the protagonist a hesitant fledgling stork in relation to his unspoken request, manifest in the mouth he has opened without yet forming the words of his question.
Virgil's metaphor has Dante drawing the bowstring of his question so hard and far that the iron tip of his arrow is touching the shaft of his bow. These are the first words spoken by Virgil since Purgatorio XXIII.15 (see the note to Purg. XXIV.1-3).
Dante's question, which has been in the back of his mind since Purgatorio XXIII.37-39, addresses the apparent incongruity of the fact that the souls of the penitents of Gluttony seem to grow thin from not ingesting food. Such a phenomenon, he has wrongly assumed, should be associated only with the experience of starvation in a mortal body.
The reference is to Ovid's near-epic narrative of the hunt for the Calydonian boar with its unhappy outcome for Meleager (Metam. VIII.260-546). He, the son of the king of Calydon and of Althaea, killed this rampaging animal and gave its skin to Atalanta, with whom he was in love. Althaea's two brothers, Plexippus and Toxeus, take the remains of the beast back from her. Enraged at the insult to his honor, Meleager kills them. Seeing the corpses of her brothers brought into the temple where she was giving thanks for her son's victory, and learning who had killed them, Althaea is moved to take vengeance, even upon her own son. When he was born, the three Fates had determined that he would live only so long as a firebrand remained unconsumed in a fire into which it had been cast. Hearing this, Althaea snatched the burning log-end from the fire and doused it in water. Now she took up again this piece of wood, which she had preserved, and cast it into a fire, thus causing the death of her own son. Virgil's point is that if Dante had understood this principle, that there is a vital relationship between what seem unrelated phenomena (e.g., the burning of a log-end and the death of a man), he would have already understood the relationship between body and soul here in purgatory.
As a second instance of this principle, Virgil offers the example of a person's movements being reflected in a mirror; once again, to an ignorant observer, the two phenomena might seem to have independent and unrelated causes if the observer did not understand the principle of speculation (e.g., two Marx brothers in sleeping garments facing each other in an open doorway and moving in harmony).
It is as though 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. Dealing with this passage, Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to these verses) allegorizes Virgil as 'rational philosophy' and Statius, 'a Christian poet,' as 'moral philosophy.' It might seem more to the point to realize that Statius, as a saved Christian, simply knows by revelation some mysterious things that are not known by others, e.g., all ordinary mortals and all souls who are not saved.
Statius excuses himself for revealing an essential Christian mystery in the presence of a pagan because of his love for this particular pagan. John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 34-36), perhaps echoing his teacher, Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to Inf. I.10-12) speaks of Virgil's belief (learned from Plato's Timaeus, according to Benvenuto) that the souls of humans come from the stars and return to them. While we cannot be certain that Dante shared the first part of this view (and see Par. IV.22-24, for his denial of the second), the 'eternal plan' is at significant variance from Plato, as Statius's lecture will make plain.
Statius's lecture on embryology may be paraphrased as follows. He is willing to deal with Dante's desire to know how the aerial body is formed (Purg. XXV.34-36): (1) After the 'perfect blood' is 'digested' (the third digestion) in the heart, having now the power to inform all the parts of body, it is 'digested' once again and descends into the testicles; (2) it now falls upon the 'perfect blood' in the uterus; it is 'active,' the latter 'passive'; (3) the male blood now informs the soul of the new being in the female; (4) but how this soul becomes a human being is not yet clear (Purg. XXV.37-66). Once the fetal brain is formed, God, delighted with Nature's work, breathes into it the (rational) soul, which blends with the already existent souls (vegetative and sensitive) and makes a single entity, as wine is made by the sun (Purg. XXV.67-78). At the moment of death the soul leaves the body but carries with it the potential for both states, the bodily one 'mute,' the rational one more acute than in life, and falls to Acheron (if damned) or Tiber (if saved), where it takes on its 'airy body,' which, inseparable as flame from fire, follows it wherever it goes; insofar as this new being 'remembers' its former shape, it takes on all its former organs of sense and becomes a 'shade' (Purg. XXV.79-108). 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. Souls in Heaven, we will discover, have no such 'aerial bodies,' but are present as pure spirit.
As has been suggested (see the note to Purg. XVIII.99-138), the organization of each terrace is fairly formulaic. Dante remains free, however, to employ the interstices between terraces to address issues that would perhaps adversely affect the force of descriptions of intense penance if included among them (Marco Lombardo's lengthy disquisition on the necessary exercise of the will in canto XVI is an obvious exception, and it is 'excused' by the darkness, inhibiting descriptions of the penitents, on the terrace of Wrath). Now that we have come to the last of these 'lectures,' it may be useful to review them. At both the beginning and the end of the penitential sequence, the poet uses the liminal portions of each terrace only for physical descriptions of the ascent (Purg. X.1-21; Purg. XXVII.64-75). Leaving Pride, however, he addresses the protagonist's increasing lightness and the removal of his P's (Purg. XII.115-136); at the end of Envy the 'lecturing' really begins, when Virgil explains Guido del Duca's words about possession and sharing (Purg. XV.40-81); at the conclusion of Wrath, the poet reverts to a mere description of the ascent (Purg. XVII.61-69), but then, uniquely, devotes the time of arrival on a new terrace to doctrinal matters, Virgil's lengthy discourse on love (XVII.70-XVIII.85); having completed his description of Sloth, he has Virgil explain the meaning of the witch in Dante's dream (Purg. XIX.52-69); with Avarice left behind, he has Statius explain his debt to Virgil (Purg. XXII.1-126); and now the transit from Gluttony to Lust offers occasion for this lecture on the 'physiology of the spirit,' as it were.
For extremely useful notes on Dante's sources in these verses (37-88), Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, along with reference to Bruno Nardi's important contribution, “L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante” (1931-1932), reprinted in his Studi di filosofia medievale (Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,”1960), to our awareness of Dante's schooling in these matters, see Singleton's commentary to many of the passages between vv. 37 and 88 of Purgatorio XXV.
The 'perfect blood' is the end result of a series of four 'digestions' within the body: in the stomach, the liver, the heart, the members. Sperm is what remains after the 'fourth digestion' of the blood, which informs the various members of the body (e.g., heart, brain).
'The perfect place from which it springs' is the heart, from which it flows to become sperm.
The vegetative soul is the first one formed. Unlike the vegetative soul of things that have no higher nature, ours is only the beginning – our soul has not yet 'come to shore,' its 'voyage' has only begun. The vegetative soul enables the growth of the physical body. This capacity we share with animate matter (things that grow, e.g., plants, as opposed to inanimate matter, e.g., rocks) and the animals.
Now, at first resembling the lowest form of animate life, the sea-sponge, the animal soul begins to take life. This second soul is known as the 'sensitive soul,' and is the seat of human emotion, a capacity we share with the animals.
What Dante has not yet heard (and thus cannot understand) is how this 'animal' embryo can and does become a human being, i.e., how it receives its rational soul. The word 'fante,' here translated 'human,' strictly speaking means 'one who speaks.' Thus an 'infant' (in-fans) is a human who cannot yet speak. Here Dante, through Statius, is speaking precisely, but not technically. He means to indicate that the rational soul, once it is joined to the embryo, only then makes this new creature potentially fully human. And this third capacity of the soul we share with no other mortal beings (angels are nothing but rational soul, having no bodily form). For these three faculties as found in each single human soul, see the note to Purgatorio IV.1-15.
The question of the 'possible intellect' was of considerable interest in Dante's day and was variously addressed, even among 'orthodox' Christian thinkers (Albertus Magnus and his pupil Thomas Aquinas had major disagreements about it), partly because its most visible champion was Averroës (see Inf. IV.144), the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher who had decided that the possible intellect, which is the potential capacity to perceive universal ideas, existed apart from any particular human agent. An eventual result of such a view was to question or deny the immortality of the individual human soul. Dante's solution was to make the possible intellect co-terminous with the rational soul, breathed into the embryo directly by God. It is not surprising that Dante, whose ways are often extremely free-wheeling, simply appropriated the term to his own purpose and, in these few lines, makes the possible intellect 'orthodox.' See Cesare Vasoli, “intelletto possibile” (ED.1971.3).
These three tercets mark the climax of the argument and nearly shimmer with affection as they describe God's love for his human creatures, consummated in the breathing in of the rational soul, which immediately fuses with the vegetative and sensitive souls to form a single and immortal entity, capable of intellection and of will. For the central role of Dante's resolution of body-soul dualism in the glorified body of the resurrected, see Nancy Lindheim (“Body, Soul, and Immortality: Some Readings in Dante's Commedia,” Modern Language Notes 105 [1990], pp. 1-32.).
For a potential relationship between this lesson in embryology and Dante's poetics based in the inspiration of the loving God, see Mazzotta (Dante, Poet of the Desert [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979]), pp. 211-16. See also Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), pp. 201-5. Baranski (“Canto XXV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001], pp. 389-406) expresses some skepticism about this 'metaliterary' view of the canto proposed by these and other more recent American discussants.
God's love for us creates a new entity, an immortal soul, out of the raw material of nature just as the sun creates a new entity, wine, out of the moisture drawn up from the earth by the grapevine (Jacopo della Lana [comm. to these verses]). The emphasis is on the new entity's relation to its formative cause: a human being is the residue of God's spirit interacting with flesh; wine is a distillation of sunlight and matter.
At the moment of death (for the role of Lachesis and her two sister Fates, see the note to Purg. XXI.25-30) the lower faculties of the soul are once again in potential (rather than active) state. The higher faculties of the rational soul, on the other hand, are immediately said to be in atto (in action, i.e., fully existing), and more vigorously so than when they were inhibited by the lower souls.
There are three constitutive parts of the intellectual (or rational) soul according to St. Augustine (De Trinitate X.18, cited by Daniello [comm. to vv. 82-84]): 'The memory, the intellect, and the will are the components of a single mind.' These seem to be the sources of Dante's formulation here.
The 'afterlife' of a shade is compared to its taking the form of a rainbow when the soul 'imprints' itself upon the surrounding air to make itself reassemble the memory of its former body out of thin air. It is as inseparable from the higher soul as a flame is from its fire.
The conclusion of Statius's demonstration of the nature of a shade's aerial body relies, as readers since Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 103-106) have realized, on Virgil's description of the condition of the souls in his afterworld (Aen. VI.730-751). Among the details found there are the smiles and tears of which Dante speaks here (see Aen. VI.733 and Dante's vv. 103-104). See also Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 103-105). For a more recent discussion see Baranski (“Canto XXV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001]), pp. 397-98.
The word tortura (translated as 'circling') here perhaps has two meanings: 'turning' and 'torture,' thus describing both the spatial and the punitive aspects of the terrace: one makes a tighter circle there as one burns. Perhaps no dispute in the commentaries comes closer to being a draw than this on. The Ottimo (comm. to vv. 85-114) would seem to believe that tortura has both meanings; Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 109-111) believes it means 'turning'; Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-120) believes it means 'torture.' Over the years roughly half of those who have entered the fray believe it means 'turning.' Andreoli (comm. to this verse) was the first to suggest (citing the Accademia della Crusca) that the second meaning only entered the language later, an argument that was only answered a quarter millenium later by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 109-111), who point out that it did exist with the second significance in one of the Laude of Iacopone da Todi (ed. Mancini, 67, verse 15). In short, an interpreter is free to choose either alternative; a translator is forced to decide on one.
Some readers have difficulty visualizing what Dante here describes. Flames shoot out from the wall of the cliff, at first horizontally, but then driven back and up by a wind moving sharply upward from below at the edge of the terrace, thus making the flames move up and past the face of the wall and freeing a narrow path that is flame-free at the outer edge of the terrace.
The hymn sung by the penitents of Lust has caused some confusion in the modern age because the hymn Summae Deus clementiae ('God of supreme clemency') does not seem appropriate to the recriminations of the lustful, while the hymn Summae Parens clementiae does. However, the early commentators knew this hymn by the same first line as we today know the former. Its text, in a form that is probably close to or identical with that known by Dante, is found in the commentary of Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 121-124). The third stanza hopes for God's annealing fire to combat the passion of lust.
'I know no man.' These are part of Mary's words in answer to the angel's announcement (Luke 1.34) that she will bear a child: 'How shall this be, since I know no man?' This is Mary's seventh appearance on the mountain as the primary exemplar of a virtue opposing the relevant vice. Edward Moore (Studies in Dante, Second Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 (1899)]), pp. 63 and 194, suggests that Dante may have derived his idea of having Mary represent the 'antidote' to each of the seven sins from St. Bonaventure (Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis).
The second exemplar of Chastity is Diana, her story drawn from Ovid (Metam. II.401-530), the tale of the wood nymph Helice (Callisto), who paid for Jupiter's seduction and impregnation of her when, at the request of outraged Juno, Diana banished her from her woodlands. She was turned into a bear by Juno, and then, by the now more kind Jupiter, into the constellation Ursa Major.
See Pertile (“Quale amore va in Paradiso?” in “Le donne, i cavalieri, l'arme, gli amori”: Poema e romanzo: la narrativa lunga in Italia, ed. Francesco Bruni (Venice: Marsilio, 2001)), p. 62, for discomfort with Dante's unique use of anonymous exemplars here. Porena (comm. to these verses) was perhaps the first commentator to give voice to a similar disquiet (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 109-139] do also), suggesting that we expect a third example drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition but receive instead exemplars that Bosco rightly characterizes as being 'indeterminate' and 'impersonal.' John S. Carroll (comm. to these verses), while not dealing with this anomaly directly, may have found a reason for Dante's decision in a desire to champion the importance of marriage and the acceptability, indeed the desirability, of sexual concourse among husbands and wives. In this formulation Dante resorts to anonymity for his married couples in order to justify sexual pleasure for all who are married, in covert polemic against such overly zealous clerics as those who called for even marital abstinence. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 133-134) correctly rebukes Benvenuto (comm. to these verses) and Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 133-139) for misreading the text and making the wives guilty of sexual misconduct while their husbands were chaste. It is clear that the penitents are praising the chastely married of both sexes.
The word piaga (wound) is used here, as it was used at Purgatorio XXIV.38 for Bonagiunta and his companions, to refer to the 'wound' of sin. Does it also refer to the letter P incised on them? Those who believe that all the penitents on the mountain bear this sign would naturally believe so (see the notes to Purg. IX.112, Purg. XXI.22-24, and Purg. XXII.1-6). On the other hand, if only Dante bears this letter on his forehead, the reference would be to the inner wound of sin, as would seem more natural, and as Portirelli (comm. to vv. 121-139) believed, arguing that the cura (treatment) represented the external application of fire and pasti (diet), the internal process of reflection upon the exemplars of the chaste life.
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