Commentary Purg XII 7-9

The protagonist walks erect, as Ovid describes humans doing so as to be distinguished from brutes (Metam. I.84-86).  Benvenuto cites Ovid's words and mentions the additional authority of Cicero, Sallust, and Juvenal on this matter in his comment to this passage (DDP Benvenuto.Purg.XII.4-9).

      The word scemi, which we have translated as 'shrunken,' has caused some discomfort.  What exactly does it mean?  Aurigemma (Auri.1970.1), pp. 109-10, claims that Oderisi's dour prophecy of Dante's future ills ([Purg XI 140-141]) leaves the protagonist feeling monco (incomplete) until such time as that disaster will finally confront him.  He is following the nearly unanimous view found in the earliest commentators.  However, since the time of Landino (1481) the more usual interpretation relates Dante's interior moral posture rather to his responses to Pride, whether in pity for the souls he now sees or in recognition of his own (former) pridefulness -- the most usual version of that position today, expressed in the form that currently rules by Torraca (DDP Torraca.Purg.XII.7-9), who notes the 'heavy swelling' ([Purg XI 119]) of pride that Dante is getting under control.  As a result, his thoughts are scemi in that they are lacking in pride.  In other words, even if he has finally straightened up and begun walking as a confident human being, his thoughts remain bowed under the burden of the recognition of his pridefulness.