🪞 Mirrors That Reflect Our Authentic Selves

(Purgatorio, Canto XXV): Statius explains the birth of our soul

“I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...”

― Jorge Luis Borges

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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 fifth Canto of the Purgatorio, Statius explains the formation of the soul. 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 ⭕️

Dante asks how the Gluttonous shades could be so lean, being only shades - Virgil gives the examples of Meleagar and the mirror - He calls on Statius to explain further - Statius explains the transformations of blood and the creation of a new being - The three types of soul; vegetative, sensitive and rational - The formation of the shade after death - The seventh terrace of the Lustful - The wall of flame - Summae Deus clementiae - The exempla of Mary, Diana, and the virtue of marriage.

Canto XXV Summary:

Time was of the essence, and as the afternoon advanced—evidenced by the timing of Taurus at the meridian, though unseen in the light of day—they made their way onward in single file, Virgil, then Statius, then Dante, through the gap in the wall that led to the steps leading upward to the seventh terrace.

Dante’s urge to ask a question that pressed on his mind rose and retreated like the young stork, longing to fly and as yet unsure.

And as the fledgling stork will lift its wing
because it wants to fly, but dares not try
to leave the nest, and lets its wing drop back,

so I, with my desire to question kindled
then spent, arrived as far as making ready
to speak.
xxv.10-15

Virgil, as always, read the signs of Dante’s desire and gave him the opening to speak: “The iron of the arrow’s touched / the longbow; let the shaft of speech fly off” (17-18).

The metaphor is that of an arrow in a bow drawn back so far that the head, the iron, touches the bow itself. The image of the bow and arrow implied in the verb scoccare was commonly used to express intention, purpose; here it refers to Dante’s pressing question.¹

Dante’s question found voice: How, if the shades are incorporeal and required no food, could they suffer the physical effects of hunger and starvation? How could they be so lean? The two examples that Virgil replied with pointed out the concept of the “external soul,” that there can be a connection between the human soul and something outside of itself.

The theme of the ‘external soul’ is common in folktale; Virgil seems to suggest that, as a correspondence may be established between soul and extraneous matter by sympathetic magic, so that life wastes with the wasting of the matter, so (conversely) divine power can establish a similar connexion, so that the sufferings of the soul are communicated to a material envelope.²

Dante Asks How the Souls of the Gluttons Could Be So Thin – Francesco Scaramuzza

The first example Virgil gave of this external soul was Meleager of classical myth. At his birth, the Fates announced to his mother, Althaea, that he was only fated to live as long as a piece of wood that was burning in the hearth. Upon hearing this, Althaea tricked fate by removing and smothering the piece of wood, keeping it safely wrapped away in order to give Meleager a longer life.

When Althaea was in the throes of labor,
the Threefold Sisters dropped a block of wood
into the fire; and as they wove the threads
of life beneath their fingertips, they sang,
“We give an equal span of time to you
and to this piece of wood, O newborn babe.”

As soon as their prophetic recitation
was over and the Fates had disappeared,
the mother snatched the branch out of the fire
and sprinkled it with water. Many years
it lay within its secret hiding place,
and guarded there, it guarded you, young man.
Ovid, Metamorphoses 641-652

In later years, Meleager was in a contest to kill the dangerous and destructive Calydonian boar; as Atalanta, the huntress, had struck the first blow to the boar even though he was the one to kill it, he awarded her the slain boar as prize. His uncles, enraged that the prize would go to Atalanta, protested and attempted to take it from her. Meleager, in his anger, killed them both in the ensuing fight. When his mother saw her brother’s bodies, in her own anger at her son Meleager, she ran for the hidden piece of wood, and after a tormented choice, threw it into the fire to avenge her brother’s deaths.

She turned away and with a trembling hand
flung the funereal torch into the fire;
and then it gave—or seemed to give—a groan,
as it burned in flames that bent away from it.

All unaware of that far distant fire,
Meleager felt his viscera consumed
by hidden flames and bore great suffering
with courage, although he was grieved to die
far from a battlefield.
Ovid, Metamorphoses 730-738

The second example of the soul external to the body was that of a mirror, and how something outside of oneself can correspond exactly to something within; the mirror being the external application of the movement of the internal soul.

Virgil’s second example is directed to show how a movement may be projected upon an exterior substance without altering that substance, and without material contact between that which moves and that upon which the movement is projected.³

A page showing Leonardo's study of a foetus in the womb (c. 1510), Royal Library, Windsor Castle

Virgil then referred Dante to Statius for further explanation, and to heal his doubts. Statius graciously agreed to answer because Virgil asked it of him. Virgil had explained what happens, Statius will now explain how that came to be. This speech introduced a detailed explanation of the Aristotelian and Thomistic understanding of the types of soul that combine in a person and the resulting effect of the shade that we find in the afterlife, and how that shade interacts with its environment:

Purporting at the outset to be simply a plain answer to a plain question about the apparent bodies of the shades, the discourse leads up naturally to its real subject, which is the origin of the rational soul and the nature of the human body-soul complex. On the way it contrives to provide the curious inquirer with a handy guide to embryology, an explanation of what it is we see when we see ghosts, and the solution of various problems which may have presented themselves in the course of the poem.⁴

Statius began:

The thirsty veins drink up the perfect blood—
but not all of that blood: a portion’s left,
like leavings that are taken from the table.

Within the heart, that part acquires power
to form all of another’s human limbs,
as blood that flows through veins feeds one’s own limbs.
xxv.37-42

In this opening, Statius explained the Aristotelian concept of the way the body creates and then transforms the blood through a series of digestions; the first is in the stomach, the second is in the liver, and the third happens in the veins, where it becomes the “perfect blood” of line 37. This perfect blood will gather in the “lake of the heart” which then goes on to the fourth digestion, the formative “power to form all of another’s human limbs” of line 41; It is to this fourth and last digestion we turn next:

Digested yet again, that part descends
to what is best not named; from there it drops
into the natural receptacle,

upon another’s blood; the two bloods mix,
one ready to be passive and one active
because a perfect place, the heart, prepared them.
xxv.43-48

That blood purifies into its highest and most concentrated form in the male sperm, whose formative virtue is to aid in the creation of a new being. “Digested again” refers to the fourth level of purification, where it descends into the genitalia; there it blends with the “perfect blood” of the female (though, according to Aristotle, this is not as perfect, not having shed its red color as the males has). The feminine is the passive receptacle, the masculine the active force. Both essences in the form of blood were made perfect through the heart. Once conception happens, there are three levels of soul that are formed, and Statius goes through all three.

First the embryo develops the nutritive, or vegetative soul, which all life on earth has. It has the capacity for life, but without the ability for conscious movement or rational thought:

Having become a soul (much like a plant,
though with this difference-a plant’s complete,
whereas a fetus still is journeying),
xxv.52-54

Next, the embryo develops the second soul: the conscious, or sensitive soul. This can only develop by being built upon the vegetative soul. It is the animal consciousness of movement and desire, but without self reflection or reason.

the active virtue labors, so the fetus
may move and feel, like a sea-sponge; and then
it starts to organize the powers it’s seeded.

At this point, son, the power that had come
from the begetter’s heart unfolds and spreads,
that nature may see every limb perfected.
xxv.55-60

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos

Wherefore the vegetative power, whereby things live, is the foundation upon which rests the sensitive life, to wit, sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch; and this vegetative power may constitute a soul in itself, as we see in all the plants. The sensitive power cannot exist without this; there is nothing that feels, without being alive. And this sensitive power is the foundation of the intellectual power, to wit the reason; and therefore, amongst mortal things that have life, the rational power without the sensitive is not to be found; but the sensitive power is to be found without the other, as we see in the beasts and in the birds and in the fishes and in every brute animal.
Dante Convivio III.ii.11-13

So we have seen the first two types of soul build upon each other. The third and last form of soul is that which is given to humanity alone, and can only build on the forms beneath it. Its latent potentialities develop at this last stage within the womb, and constitute the greatest of all mysteries. It even confounded the wisest philosophers of the early middle-ages; Averroes the Arabic philosopher, in all his wisdom, could not even discern this mystery:

But how the animal becomes a speaking
being, you’ve not yet seen; this point’s so hard,
it led one wiser than you are to err

in separating from the possible
intellect the soul, since he could see
no organ for the mind—so did he teach.
xxv.61-66

Averroes, who, finding no special organ for the discursive or ‘possible’ intellect which distinguishes man from the beasts, concluded that man’s rational soul was not individuated but one, universal, and transcendent. This intellect, in which the individual participated during his lifetime, was withdrawn from him at death; so that for Averroes there was no such thing as a rational and immortal individual human soul. This doctrine was vigorously combated by St. Thomas.⁵

Now that Statius had set the groundwork for the development of life, he continued onto the placement of the soul into a gestating being from an external source. The first two souls, the vegetative and sensitive, were inherent through conception. The third, and rational soul, is breathed in from an external source, the divine source, being God.

And that soul which embraces all these powers is the most perfect of all the rest. And the human soul, which is associated with the nobility of the highest power, to wit reason, participates in the divine nature after the fashion of an eternal intelligence; because the soul is so ennobled, and stripped of material, in this sovran power, that the divine light shines in it as in an angel; and therefore man has been called by the philosophers the “divine animal.”
Dante Convivio III.ii.14

Arrival at the Terrace of the Lustful – Christopher Dall’ Acqua

Open your heart to truth we now have reached
and know that, once the brain’s articulation
within the fetus has attained perfection,

then the First Mover turns toward it with joy
on seeing so much art in nature and
breathes into it new spirit-vigorous-

which draws all that is active in the fetus
into its substance and becomes one soul
that lives and feels and has self-consciousness.
xxv.67-75

“All that is active in the fetus” are the first two souls. A person is a product of all three of these souls combined, “one soul / that lives and feels and has self-consciousness.”

How the embryo acquires a rational soul is the point where Statius’ knowledge exceeds Virgil’s ken—i.e., the light of natural reason—and partakes of the ‘eternal view,’ of a revealed supernatural order of knowledge. Aristotle, to be sure, also held that the rational soul comes from without, but he left the mystery at that.⁶

Statius compared this action to that of the external heat of the sun (divine power) with the natural elements in the grape (the physical body of the fetus) to create a third substance, the rationally ensouled human being. There marks the beginning, and the life, but what marks the end? How do these elements interact after death?

And when Lachesis lacks more thread, then soul’s
divided from the flesh; potentially,
it bears with it the human and divine;

but with the human powers mute, the rest—
intelligence and memory and will—
are more acute in action than they were.
xxv.79-84

When the body dies, all three souls remain active, but the rational soul takes precedence, and its functions of “intelligence and memory and will” are all the more present, while the vegetative and sensible become passive forces, as there is no physical body for them to act upon. This essence then arrives “on one of two shores;” either at the river Acheron to enter the Underworld, or at the Tiber River, from which they travel to Purgatory.

The soul now exercises its formative power (“informing virtue”) to make for itself an apparent body, formed by air (the “aery body”), somewhat as the appearance of a rainbow is formed in the cloud. This is the body “ordained to it” by Providence, by means of which it can exercise those lower faculties to the degree required by its penance…this is what we call a “shade.”⁷

Since from that airy body it takes on
its semblance, that soul is called ‘shade’: that shape
forms organs for each sense, even for sight.

This airy body lets us speak and laugh;
with it we form the tears and sigh the sighs
that you, perhaps, have heard around this mountain.

Just as we are held fast by longings and
by other sentiments, our shade takes form:
this is the cause of your astonishment.
xxv.100-108

Lustful Sinners Singing the hymn, Summae Deus Clementiae – Bartolomeo Pinelli

Having finished this lengthy and detailed explanation, Virgil, Statius, and Dante arrived on the seventh and last terrace, and were met with a wall of flame that reached out horizontally from the wall of the mountain on their left, and was blown up by a wind from the edge of the terrace on their right creating a space through which they could walk, but which was precarious and instilled fear into Dante all the same.

From this flame they heard the prayer of the Lustful—Summae Deus clementiae—God of Supreme Clemency, a Matins hymn. Dante watched the Lustful sing this hymn while also carefully watching his step along the terrace. After singing this hymn came the exempla of the chastity of the Virgin Mary in the phrase Virum non cognosco, or “I know no man,” Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel at the annunciation:

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
Luke 1:34

The second exempla of chastity used that of a nymph of the virgin goddess Diana, who was cast out for succumbing to “Venus’ poison:”

Helice or Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, was one of Diana’s nymphs, but was dismissed when Diana discovered that she had been seduced by Jupiter, by whom she became the mother of Arcas.⁸

And finally, the third exempla were all those who in life held sacred chaste and virtuous marriages: these continuous examples of chastity, the singing of the hymn and the calling out of the exempla, time and again, “the way these spirits act / as long as they are burned by fire” (136-137) are the very last that must be served upon this tall and winding mount.

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💭 Philosophical Exercises

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

~ Goethe

The Lustful – Federico Zuccari

“The matter of the greatest interest is not the man’s struggle with the world, with his external destiny, but his struggle with his vocation.

How does he behave when faced with his inexorable vocation? Does he subscribe to it basically; or, on the contrary, is he a deserter from it, does he fill his existence with substitutes for what would have been his authentic life?

Perhaps the most tragic thing about the human situation is that a man may try to supplant himself, that is, to falsify his life.

Do we know of any other reality which can be precisely what it is not, the negation of itself, the void of itself?”⁹

A human being is the only creature capable of spending an entire lifetime without ever discovering who they truly are. No flower can survive in soil unfit for its roots or without being watered. And yet, a human being can endure decades, even an entire life, planted in the wrong soil, with a soul that has never once been nourished.

The reason for this is that we are not born with a soul, but with the capacity to form one. If you plant the seed of a beautiful flower and fail to water it, you will never see what it might have become had it been nourished as it was meant to be.

The thought-provoking passage I cited above comes from José Ortega y Gasset’s essay “In Search of Goethe from Within”, where he reflects on how we are born with two entities that lie entirely beyond our control. As the existentialists say, we are “thrown” into this world without choosing where, when, or in what form we are born. We do not choose our height, intelligence, or beauty. To this, Gasset adds our character traits, our natural inclinations, and whether we are gregarious or reserved, courageous or cautious.

For Ortega, a truly meaningful life comes when our inner destiny (our authentic self, or what we “ought to be”) is in active realisation with the outer world (our circumstances, environment, limitations). Life, in his vision, is the “unity of dramatic dynamism between the I and the world”.

Suffering arises when the two are in dissonance; happiness when they coincide.

Dante, Virgil, and Statius Ascend to the Terrace of Lust – Gustave Dore

I.

In modern neuroscience, there is a theory called Embodied Cognition, which asserts that our experience, our very consciousness, is inseparable from our body. Cognitive processes in the brain are not purely abstract mental activities; they are shaped and informed by our body’s sensory and motor perceptions. Our bodies are not neutral containers but active participants in shaping our mental experiences.

Experiments have even shown, for example, that “fake smiling” can boost one’s mood, demonstrating how bodily actions can influence our emotional state.

In a limited sense, we resemble octopuses (or, octopi), whose brains - unlike our own - are distributed throughout their bodies, allowing them to perceive the world in multiple, distinct ways.

Dante’s vision of unity of body and soul, or of our physical self and our consciousness, anticipated the theory of embodied cognition by seven hundred years.

On the Terrace of Lust – Gustave Dore

For Dante, the body and the soul are inseparable. My reader may recall Canto X of Inferno, where Dante addresses the Epicureans, who believed that life begins and ends with the physical body. This belief, in Dante’s view, was a complete denial of our dual nature, the physical self and the conscious self.

When Politics Becomes Our Religion

While the Epicureans focused exclusively on the physical life, a little further into the Inferno we encountered the forest of suicides; those who, in Dante’s vision, attempted, unsuccessfully, to sever their souls from their bodies.

Fate, Free Will and Despair: What Helps Us Endure?

In the final anguished sighs and cries of Inferno, we witnessed the metamorphoses of souls so deeply damned that even their bodies began to change; shape twisting into beasts, serpents, and other unrecognisable forms.

Ripley & Dante: I Wear the Skin of Those I’ve Robbed

Our soul shapes our physical self, and the physical self, in turn, shapes the soul. They are like a river and its banks: the soul flows like a current, pressing outward, while the body forms its banks, guiding and containing it.

And just as the strength of the current can carve the banks wider or deeper, so too does the soul shape the boundaries of the body, while the body, in turn, channels the soul’s flow.

III.

In Dante’s vision our existence unfolds as followed:

Body → Soul → Life → Soul → Body

Our physical selves are first formed in our mother’s womb. Then we receive the gift of divine consciousness, and we live our lives in virtue or in vice (often in the middle between the two). When Lachesis finally cuts the thread, our soul draws the shape of our body into the place it has earned, whether Inferno, Purgatory, or Paradise.

IV.

Dante’s vision goes even further than the theorists of embodied cognition, and even beyond Gasset. For Dante, between our environment and the character we are given, between our physical body and our consciousness, as the theory of embodied cognition suggests, there stands our soul.

Our soul discerns, shapes, and refines the character we are born with. Our embodied self reacts instinctively; on the frontline, instinct might urge a soldier to retreat or surrender, but the soul, strengthened by virtues like courage, can order those instincts and act in the face of fear.

In Ortega y Gasset’s view, one might be born with a cowardly character just as one is born short or tall; it is part of the unchangeable “givens” of life, and one must simply deal with it. Dante’s vision is more dynamic: the soul is precisely what can elevate us beyond our natural dispositions. A person who is born timid can, through the cultivation of virtue, become courageous.

V.

There is an unbreakable unity between our body and our soul. When the body falls into addiction, say, to sugar, it can overpower the intellect, driving us to consume far more than we need. If that addiction persists, the body slowly reshapes itself, and as our physical form changes, our mind’s control weakens even further.

It is not only the body that becomes ill, but the soul alongside it. Yet healing is possible. By cultivating virtue and discipline, the soul can reclaim its rightful place as guide and master, restoring harmony between what we desire and what we truly need.

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This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭

(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)

Lustful Sinners in the Flames – Ezio Anichini

I. Myth of Meleager

In Ovid’s myth, Meleager was a great warrior whose life was tied to a piece of wood. When he was born, the Fates told his mother Althaea, that he would live only as long as a firebrand (a burning log) in the hearth remained unconsumed. She immediately took the log from the fire and hid it away to protect her son.

Years later, after a quarrel in which Meleager killed his uncles, Althaea, consumed by incessant anger, threw the hidden log back into the fire. As it burned to ashes, Meleager’s life was extinguished, even though he was far away.

II. Narrowness of the passage

The gates of hell were wide while the passage through Purgatory gets narrower and narrower. My reader might remember that our path through Inferno became easier and easier (to a degree) the deeper we descended, and at some point Geryon and then the giants took us further down.

III. Mirrors

Virgil’s explanation of the unity between body and soul is beautiful as well. My favourite writer, Jorge Luis Borges, was also fascinated by mirrors and believed them to have magical powers.

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Quotes 🖋️

(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):

And as the fledgling stork will lift its wing
because it wants to fly, but dares not try
to leave the nest, and lets its wing drop back,

so I, with my desire to question kindled
then spent, arrived as far as making ready
to speak. But my dear father, though our steps

were hurrying, did not stop talking, for
he said: “The iron of the arrow’s touched
the longbow; let the shaft of speech fly off.”

~ 10-18 (Mandelbaum)

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Mount Purgatory

1. Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on the Purgatorio 591

2. Dorothy L. Sayers, Purgatory 268

3. Sayers 268

4. Sayers 268

5. Sayers 269

6. Singleton 607

7. Sayers 270

8. Singleton 622

9. Jose Ortega y Gasset, In Search of Goethe from Within, p 144