How To Satisfy Our Hunger for Meaning
(Purgatorio, Canto XXIII): Forese, Sacred Grove, Gluttony
Shukhov ate his supper without bread - a double portion and bread on top of it would be too rich.
So he'd save the bread. You get no thanks from your belly - it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day.
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Welcome to Dante Read-Along! ✨
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Welcome to Dante Book Club, where you and I descend into Hell and Purgatory to be able to ascend to Paradise. Our guide is the great Roman poet Virgil and in this Twenty third Canto of the Purgatorio, Dante meets his old friend Forese. You can find the main page of the read-along right here, reading schedule here, and the list of chat threads here.
In each post you can find a brief summary of the canto, philosophical exercises that you can draw from it, themes, character, and symbolism explanations.
All the wonderful illustrations are done specially for the Dante Read-Along by the one and only Luana Montebello.
This Week’s Circle ⭕️
The sixth terrace of Gluttony - The prayer Labia mea Domine - The penitents, gaunt and starving - Dante’s friend Forese Donati - Forese rebukes the women of Florence and gives a prophecy - Dante tells of his journey and introduces his companions.
Canto XXIII Summary:
Dante, Virgil, and Statius stood by the tree on the sixth terrace, from which they had just heard the disembodied voice calling out the whips of Gluttony in the form of temperance. Dante tried to see who might be sitting among the leaves, as one who would hunt birds might sit.
As those do who go around with their bow or arrow losing time running after birds and peering in among the leaves, waiting for a chance to shoot them.
L' ottimo commento della Divina Commedia
Virgil called Dante along, he who had grown into more than a father on their journey together, giving advice that everyone on such a path could heed:
Now come,
son, for the time our journey can permit
is to be used more fruitfully than this.
xxiii.4-6
As they walked, the words of the revered poets made Dante’s way feel light and at ease. They heard a chanted prayer from the Psalms, Labia mea Domine, sung with melancholy sweetness, the few words evoking the full prayer of the Miserere, one which we also saw the Indolent chanting in Antepurgatory:1
O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.
Psalm 51:15
Swiftly, from behind them, like reverent and focused pilgrims, came the group of chanting shades, glancing uneasily at Dante, perhaps wondering at his living form while keeping true to their task.
Ah pilgrims, moving pensively along,
thinking perhaps of things that are not here,
do you travel from towns as far away
as your appearance would make us believe?
Dante Vita Nuova xl.9
Dante’s first sight of them pointed out the contrapasso of this terrace in a most painful way.
The sin of Gluttony is-specifically-an undue attention to the pleasures of the palate, whether by sheer excess in eating and drinking, or by the opposite fault of fastidiousness. More generally, it includes all over-indulgence in bodily comforts-the concentration, whether jovial or fretful, on a “high standard of living.” It is accordingly purged by starvation within sight of plenty. Since Gluttony tends to be, on the whole, a warm-hearted and companionable sin, often resulting from, and in, a mistaken notion of good-fellowship, it is placed higher than the egotistical and cold-hearted sins.2
Dante described in aching detail the gaunt aspects of these shades, looking to accounts of both classical and biblical sources for the terrible suffering of those consigned to extreme hunger.
Erysichthon, son of the king of Thessaly, in his arrogance, cut down a tree sacred to the goddess Ceres:
[Erysichthon] was a man who spurned the gods
and would not offer fragrant sacrifice;
why, it is even said he violated
the sacred grove of Ceres with his axe,
defiling ancient woods with man-made iron.
Ovid Metamorphoses viii.1044-1048
As punishment for both felling the sacred tree and in killing the tree nymph that lived within it, Ceres, the goddess of grain and agriculture—also known by the Greek name Demeter—summoned the demon like being Famine to plague Erysichthon with insatiable hunger, a hunger so deep that it would be his undoing:
Famine obeyed the orders Ceres gave her
(although their functions are in opposition)
and swift upon the wind passed through the air
until she came to Erysichthon’s house
and introduced herself at once into
the bedroom of the sacrilegious one,
sunk in deep slumber, for it was the night;
she wrapped both arms around him in embrace,
and breathed herself, her essence, into him,
exhaling on his throat, his breast, his lips,
till hunger circulated through his veins;
her mission done, she fled the fruitful world,
returning to the homes of emptiness
and her accustomed caverns.
Ovid Metamorphoses viii.1143-1156
Erysichthon met a most bitter end, forced at the last into consuming even himself.
Another terrible tale, almost too awful to tell, compared the hunger of those shades to one Mary of Jerusalem, caught in the siege of the Roman Titus (whom we met as the Emperor who ruled in the era of Statius’ birth), who in her desperate hunger, consumed her own infant son. The account is told in Josephus’ first century text the Jewish War, but perhaps the details are, on this day, too present and familiar to recount, in honor of those who are currently suffering.
Their eyes seemed like a ring that’s lost its gems;
and he who, in the face of man, would read
OMO would here have recognized the M.
xxiii.31-33
There was a belief popular in Dante’s time that the word omo (i.e., homo, “man”) could be seen in a human face, the eyes forming the two o’s, and the nose and outline of the eye sockets forming the m; it was also believed that dei could be seen there.3
Now behold, ye blessed children of God, the Almighty has created you soul and body. And he has written it under your eyes and on your faces, that you are created in his likeness. He has written it upon your very faces with ornamented letters. With great diligence are they embellished and ornamented…the two eyes are two o’s…likewise the brows arched above and the nose down between them are an m, beautiful with three strokes. So is the ear a d, beautifully rounded and ornamented. So are the nostrils beautifully formed like a Greek ε, beautifully rounded and ornamented, So is the mouth an i, beautifully adorned and ornamented.
Brother Berthold, 13th century Franciscan friar of Regensburg
Dante marveled at the abundance of the tree in conjunction with those gaunt shades, the exact reasoning of which he was still unsure of, when a voice called out to him in recognition; so wasted was the form that Dante recognized him only by his voice. This was his friend, Forese Donati.
This man was a fellow-citizen of [Dante’s] by the name of Forese, Florentine by birth and noble, brother of the famous soldier Corso Donati, and he was the familiar friend of our poet, with whom he lived in friendly relations for a time. And because he [Dante] knew him to be much given to the vice of gluttony, though otherwise a good man, he therefore introduces him here as being thus punished.
Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola, Comentum Super Dantis Aligherii Comoediam
Not only were Dante and Forese friends, in life, they had engaged in a series of poetical letters in the form of sonnets, or Rime, and in two of them Dante directly references, jokingly, Forese’s famed gluttony, while Forese chides Dante’s cowardly nature and his father.
They wrote many sonnets and rhymes to each other. In one of these sonnets, in which he reprimands him for his vice of gluttony, Dante writes: “Partridge breasts, young Bicci, will truss you in Solomon’s knot all right! But loins of mutton will be still worse for you, for the skin will take revenge for the flesh!” This Forese Donati was called by the nickname Bicci.
Anonimo Fiorentino (The Anonymous Florentine).
Dante had been there when his friend Forese died, and seeing him so gaunt and wasted brought fresh grief to him. He asked the nature of that terrace, and Forese told him:
All of these souls who, grieving, sing because
their appetite was gluttonous, in thirst
and hunger here sanctify themselves.
The fragrance of the fruit and of the water
that’s sprayed through that green tree kindles in us
craving for food and drink; and not once only,
as we go round this space, our pain’s renewed—
I speak of pain but I should speak of solace,
for we are guided to those trees by that
same longing that had guided Christ when He
had come to free us through the blood He shed
and, in joyousness, called out: ‘Elì.’
xxiii.64-75
While that tree heightened their hunger and thirst more and more each time they walk round the terrace, the joy of purgation, even in their suffering—which seems more corporeal and physical than many of the other terraces—does not leave them; that pain is also solace:
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Matthew 27:46
Dante remembered again Forese’s death, noting that it had been five years previous; since Dante knew that he had repented at the last moment, he expressed his amazement that his friend had made it so high up Mount Purgatory, and was not still biding time with the Indolent in Antepurgatory, waiting out the number of years that he had spent in an unrepentant state. Forese praised his wife’s prayers back on earth, which helped to move him so quickly along:
And he to me: “It is my Nella who,
with her abundant tears, has guided me
to drink the sweet wormwood of torments: she,
with sighs and prayers devout has set me free
of that slope where one waits and has freed me
from circles underneath this circle.”
xxiii.85-90
Forese praised the piety of his wife, contrasting the scandalous women of the Barbagia region—a mountainous region of Sardinia notorious for its immorality—with the immodest women of Florence; he thought even the Saracens—whom he pointed out had a natural modesty—would not need to be taught how to be moderate.
[The Barbagia is] a mountainous district in the central part of Sardinia, the inhabitants of which are said to have descended from a settlement of prisoners planted by the Vandals. They were proverbial in the Middle Ages, according to the early commentators, for the laxity of their morals and their loose living. Benvenuto says that the women were in the habit of exposing their breasts: “Because of heat and indecent custom they go clothed in white linen dresses so low at the collar as to expose their breasts.”4
The extravagance of fashion, apparently, had gotten so out of hand that decrees for a more sedate method of dress and adornment had to be enacted in Florence; the decade after Dante’s death, the decrees became even more extreme:
In that year [1330]...because the women of Florence had fallen into the habit of adorning themselves extravagantly with coronets and garlands of silver and gold, pearls and jewels, with nets and braids studded with pearls, and other very expensive ornaments devised for the head…it was ruled that women could not wear a coronet or a garland of gold, silver, pearls, jewels, or silk, nor anything even resembling a coronet or garland, even of colored paper; nor could they wear nets or braids of any sort, unless they were very simple…nor could they wear more than two rings on their fingers, or any kind of belt or girdle that had more than twelve silver links. Giovanni Villani, Cronica di Giovanni Villani, 1844
Forese’s pointed accusations against the women of Florence ended with a prophecy of the pain they will suffer when their sons—infants now, but once grown to men—will be brought to grief over the struggles between the political factions of the Black and White Guelfs parties.
Forese, finished with his speech, asked for news of Dante, and pointed out his corporeal, living figure, at which all the shades were staring. Dante made reference to their days together, perhaps thinking of their jesting sonnets and the dissipation of their youth:
At this I said to him: “If you should call
to mind what you have been with me and I
with you, remembering now will still be heavy.”
xxiii.115-17
Dante told of his journey with Virgil, “though the deep night of the truly dead” (122), and his journey moving from the disorder of the Inferno to the path that makes all things straight in Purgatory.
Once they met Beatrice, Dante said, he would have to continue on without Virgil. He introduced Statius, standing nearby, as he who had just caused the mountain to tremble with his release.
💭 Philosophical Exercises
Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.
~ Victor Hugo
A great wisdom gains strength the more it is repeated, so I ask my reader’s forgiveness as I return to a question I first posed back in Inferno:
Are you building your day around appetite or around prayer?
I can only answer for myself, and I must admit that my bocca (Italian for “mouth”) is used far less for singing prayers than it is for thinking about what next I might consume.
And—there!—”Labia mea, Domine” was wept and sung and heard in such a manner that it gave birth to both delight and sorrow.
This resonates with one of the Psalms “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.” As Hollander notes: “commentators have noted that this verse of the song corrects the former sins of those who were gluttons because of its insistence on this better use of mouth – in songs of praise – than on the pleasures of the table.”
What, of course, shocked me the most is the state of those who are punished here. My reader can look at how Zuccari portrayed these shriveled figures, so thin they seem on the verge of disappearing entirely.
This physical depiction reveals a deeper, metaphysical truth about their state. Those who indulged excessively in “the pleasures of the table” starved their souls of meaning. The emaciated bodies of these souls now reflect the shallowness of their souls that consumed them in life.
But, of course, Dante adds layers to the true meaning of Gluttony by citing the Ovidian myth of Erysichton.
Erysichthon once ordered that every tree in the sacred grove of Ceres (the Roman version of Demeter) to be felled. Among them stood a towering oak, adorned with votive wreaths left as tokens of gratitude for prayers Ceres had answered.
The men refused to follow Erysichthon’s commands, but the Thessalian king, enraged, seized an axe and struck the tree himself, killing the nymph who dwelled within it. With her dying breath, the nymph placed a curse upon him.
The arrogant Erysichthon was overtaken by relentless insatiable hunger, the hunger that led to his destruction. His gluttony swallowed his entire wealth. In the end, left with nothing, Erysichthon ate his own flesh.
Dante’s warning to us is clear: gluttony swallows us entirely. The gluttonous might think they are eating food, but what they truly chew is their own soul.
I.
The fragrance of the fruit and of the water that’s sprayed through that green tree kindles in us craving for food and drink; and not once only, as we go round this space, our pain’s renewed— I speak of pain but I should speak of solace, for we are guided to those trees by that same longing that had guided Christ when He had come to free us through the blood He shed and, in His joyousness, called out: ‘Eli.'” ~ lines 67 - 75
Forese’s explanation of the Tree of Life reminded me of this wisdom:
“The Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert talk about the two "hungers". There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger. The Little Hunger wants food for the belly; but the Great Hunger, the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning...
There is ultimately only one thing that makes human beings deeply and profoundly bitter, and that is to have thrust upon them a life without meaning.
There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness. But of far more comfort to the soul is something greater than happiness or unhappiness, and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all. Once what you are doing has meaning for you, it is irrelevant whether you're happy or unhappy. You are content - you are not alone in your Spirit - you belong.”
~ Laurens van der Post
It is undeniable that our modern-day insatiable consumerism represents our hunger for meaning. We know we are hungry, we can feel it in our being, but misconstrue the rumbling we feel in our stomach with the rumbling that aches within our hearts.
The fruits of the Tree of Life are there not to bulk the bodies of those shriveled souls, but to nourish and cultivate the garden they neglected within themselves.
III.
Dante, and this read-along, transforms my being from within. I see things that I have noticed before, but I find interpretations that I was once blind to when I read on my own.
This read-along also helps tame my gluttony for knowledge. I recently counted the books in my library, and the number was 1,153; over a thousand volumes I had carefully chosen, each one I believed worthy of my attention.
And yet… is this not a form of gluttony as well?
Is my gluttony for knowledge a substitute for meaning?
This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭
(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)
I. Prayers for Forese’s Soul
The prayers of Forese’s wife, Nella, hasten his ascent and purification. Dante reminds us that prayers are effective not only in Ante-Purgatory, but also while souls are already undergoing their purification.
II. The Reverse of Mary
Other than Erysichthon, Dante also recalls the story of Mary, who, during the siege of Jerusalem as described in Josephus’s Jewish War, was driven by desperation to eat her own child.
III. Our Faces Resembling Letters ‘M’ and ‘O’
In his commentary, Hollander mentions Berthold, a Franciscan monk of Regensburg, who observed that our faces resemble the letters O (the eyes) and M (the nose and cheekbones), forming the word omo (homo). Combined with dei (God), he suggested, our very faces bear the inscription: man of God.
IV.
Quotes 🖋️
(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):
Who—if he knew not how—would have believed
that longing born from odor of a tree,
odor of water, could reduce souls so?~ 34-36
Purgatorio v.22-24
Dorothy Sayers, Purgatory 251
Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on the Purgatorio 546
Singleton 553
>inhabitants of which are said to have descended from a settlement of prisoners...
*nervous laughter*