PURGATORIO, Episode 197. The Natural Process Of Life: PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, Lines 34 - 51

Dante the pilgrim has asked the pressing question of how immaterial souls can take on material attributes like leanness.

To answer that, Virgil has offered a couple of unsatisfying answers, then turned the lecture over to the redeemed Statius . . . who begins by discussing human digestion. As understood via Aristotle, Aquinas, and more, food is purified into blood which then coagulates into a fetus.

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Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[02:04] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, lines 34 - 51. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:13] Statius begins with two important words that signal the poetics of his lecture: "lume" ("light") at line 36 and "bello" ("beautiful") at line 43.

[07:48] Dante the poet cribs his understanding of digestion from several sources and sees digestion itself as the foundation of human reproduction.

[16:51] Reproduction begins as the mingling of female blood with purified, male blood.

[19:26] It then continues through coagulation and vivification.

[22:43] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, lines 34 - 51.

And here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, Lines 34 – 51

Then [Statius] began, “If your mind, son,

Guards and takes in my words,

They will be a light on what you said.

“The perfect blood in your heart, which is not imbibed

By the thirsty veins and so remains itself—

Like any food one removes from a table—

“Takes on the formative powers

For all your human parts, just as the blood

Flowing in your veins does.

“Digested more, it descends to where it’s more beautiful

To be silent than to speak. From that spot

It then drips into another’s blood in a natural container.

“There, the one and the other are mingled together—

One with a disposition to accept and one with a disposition to make—

All the result of the perfect place from which it is pressed.

Already there, it starts to do its work by

First coagulating, then bringing to life

What it has constituted as its material.