4 - Purgatorial Gluttony

Summary

Abstract

After Inferno demonstrates how the unrepentant gluttons dilute their essence, descending into a bestial consumption that leads them to eat the flesh of their own loins, in Purgatorio Dante models how gluttony can be corrected and channeled into productivity. Coding the poetry of his former cohort as the consequence of overeating, Dante contrasts their now-obsolete poetic production with his own successful composition in the dolce stil novo. Turning once more to the question of procreation, but in the form of bodies and souls, Dante emphatically confirms the connection between consuming and creating, and insists that anyone who knows how to eat can contribute to the formation of a lasting human community, be it through poetry, politics, or procreation.

Keywords: embryology, poetics, politics, procreation, productivity

The affinity between Ciacco's pronouncement in Inferno 6 and Forese Donati's lines in Purgatorio 23 is not only generated by the repeated prophecy of Florence's demise. Just as the ostensible disconnect between Ciacco's sin and his speech organized a demonstration of the correlation between gluttony, identity, and civic duty, so too the peculiar selection of a place dedicated to punishing gluttons for a conversation about body and soul will reveal itself to articulate gluttony's crucial role in human reproduction and salvation. As Dante will learn when he nears the top of the purgatorial mountain, body and soul are first joined when God infuses a soul into the embryo—formed from male and female contributions that are themselves the result of the digestion of food. This explanation is delivered in a memorable and much-discussed monologue by the Roman poet Statius, who responds to the pilgrim's query about the shades’ bodies made thin by a lack of food, despite no longer requiring earthly sustenance: “Como si può far magro / là dove uopo di nodrir non tocca?” (How can thinness occur where there is no need for nourishment?; Purg. 25.20–21). At this prompting, Statius reveals a comprehensive embryology that demonstrates how the process of eating leads first to the production of human bodies, then to the infusion of human souls, then to the death of the body, the projection of souls into shades, and finally, to the reunification of body and soul at the end of time.