The glottonous: Bonagiunta Orbicciani
VI cornice. The gluttonous are tormented by a neverending hunger and thirst provoked by the scent of fruits hanging from two trees, and by the gushing of a spring rising from a rock and flowing upwards. Bonagiunta Orbicciani was a poet active in the second half of the 13th century. He represents the initiator of the Sicilian-Tuscan poetic school, who argued about the rising of a new poetry - the so-called Stilnovistic school - in such a way that he even dedicated to its initiator Guido Guinizzelli a sonnet, where he criticized that new poetry's convoluted and abstruse features, which only now, after his death, does he claim to fully understand.
" 'Gentucca'
[...]
A maid is born, and wears not yet the veil,
Began he, "who to thee shall pleasant make
My city, howsoever men may blame it.
Thou shalt go on thy way with this prevision;
If by my murmuring thou hast been deceived,
True things hereafter will declare it to thee.
But say if him I here behold, who forth
Evoked the new-invented rhymes, beginning,
'Ladies, that have intelligence of love?'"
[...]
O brother, now I see," he said, "the knot
Which me, the Notary, and Guittone held
Short of the sweet new style that now I hear.
I do perceive full clearly how your pens
Go closely following after him who dictates,
Which with our own forsooth came not to pass;
And he who sets himself to go beyond,
No difference sees from one style to another"
Purgatory, XXIV, 37; 43-51; 55-62.
