“In the two-page prologue to Justin Cartwright’s new novel, To Heaven by Water, two brothers, ‘no longer young,’ are sitting by a campfire in the Kalahari Desert. The elder is smoking dope and reciting Gerard Manley Hopkins’s tongue-twisting, syntax-bending sonnet ‘The Windhover’: ‘I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon. . . .’ (This can’t be very good weed he’s smoking, since he makes it through all 14 lines without losing his way.) In response, the younger ‘feels a rushing, unstoppable love’ for him, which he expresses by mouthing the conclusion of the Divine Comedy: L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle. (Cartwright goes on to translate for us, though such a familiar line needs Englishing far less than Hopkins does.) The scene ends with Cartwright’s own image of the stars, ‘implausibly bright, scattered carelessly like lustrous seed across the southern sky.'” [. . .] –David Gates, The New York Times, August 13, 2009
David Eggers, Zeitoun (2009)
“Imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina. He would find anger and pathos. A dark fable, perhaps. His villains would be evil and incompetent, even without Heckuva-Job-Brownie. In the end, though, he would not be able to constrain himself; his outrage might overwhelm the tale. . .
But within a week, the sense of menace and edgy despair becomes overwhelming. Now Zeitoun’s days are like a watery version of Dante’s Inferno, with flood and disease and tough moral choices around every bend: rescue or paddle on?” [. . .] —
Timothy Egan, The New York Times, August 13, 2009
“Caught in the Deceit of the Web”
“Given my firm moral bearings, cheating online should make me feel bad. A cheater is a fraud, after all, a class of person so despicable that Dante consigned them all to the depths of the eighth circle of hell. (He rated them worse than murderers, who got to live it up in the seventh circle.)” [. . .] –Michelle Slatalla, The New York Times, August 12, 2009
“Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book”
“So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Dore’ of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s Inferno that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dali'” [. . .] –Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, August 12, 2009
“Fa come natura fece in foco”: Glassworks Exhibit at the Venice Biennale
“In 1972, glass ceased to have its own section at the Venice Biennale, when the inclusion of what were considered ‘decorative arts’ was abandoned. But at this year’s event, glass has made a comeback in two separate shows: ‘Glasstress,’ an official parallel exhibition at Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti on the Grand Canal, and ‘Fa come natura fece in foco,’ which borrows a line from Dante’s Divine Comedy (‘Do as nature does in the flame’) [Paradiso IV, 59] to evoke the fiery glass furnaces of Murano, at the Padiglione Venezia in the Biennale’s Castello Gardens (both until Nov. 22).” [. . .] –Roderick Conway Morris, The New York Times, August 7, 2009
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