Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“San Francisco: The 9th Circle of Hell”

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“Dante learns a great many things about the metaphysical world, but this blog post is mostly concerned with the temperature of the 9th circle of hell. For those who haven’t read it, this circle is not a fire pit with little devils poking bare-bummed sinners with pitch forks. It’s frozen solid, and at the very epicenter, Satan is frozen mid-waist, eternally munching on Brutus, Cassius, and Judas in his three mouths. It’s pretty gruesome but not unlike what’s going on in San Francisco this winter.” [. . .]    —Snotting Black, January 15, 2013

Dante Traveling Exhibition, Athens (2021)

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“Athens is the second European city after Belgrade to host the show, titled ‘Dante Ipermoderno– Dante illustrated in the world, 1983-2021.’ After the Greek capital, the exhibition will travel to Prague, Moscow, London, and Madrid.

“Five internationally known illustrators took it upon themselves to depict the shocking images described by Dante in his monumental work The Divine Comedy: Paolo Barbieri, Monica Baisner, Domenico Palantino, Tom Phillips, and Emiliano Ponzi.” [. . .]    —Ekathimerini, January 6, 2021

See more information about the art exhibit here.

Relatedly, see our posts about Paolo Barbieri here and Tom Phillips here.

Josef Kalleya and Dante, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci (2021)

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“[. . .] a book that investigates Maltese 20th-century artist Josef Kalleya’s preoccupation with Dante’s masterpiece. Kalleya’s concepts of Apokatastasis referred continuously to the Italian masterpiece, as demonstrated by his numerous drawings, the majority of which were produced between the 1960s and the 1980s. These are reproduced and feature eloquently in this publication.

[. . .]

“According to the author, Kalleya’s work do not reflect the artist’s empirical visual interpretation of Dante’s verses: ‘Josef Kalleya’s works are, thus, not reflecting Dante’s, but exploiting and appropriating Dante, his alter ego. Kalleya makes us see this whole process of salvation not through the distanced eyes of a divinely protected pilgrim, but through the tormented soul of a soul in torment, a tormented saint with a soul full of doubt.'” [. . .]    —Times of Malta, July 18, 2021

The Mathematics of The Divine Comedy

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“As God’s Creation, we experience a physical realm of differentiated entities and perceive multiplicity in our material reality. The character of Beatrice utilizes this fact in Paradiso 2 when she proposes the mirror experiment. The experiment combines mathematical, geometrical, and optical/physical principles to demonstrate spiritual truths. This experiment, especially its utilization of reflection, plants a seed in Dante, prodding him on his journey to the Divine: ‘Nature offers to the symbolic poet clearly denotable objects in-depth and in the round, which yield the analogies to the higher senses.’ [19] In the Primo Mobile, Dante the poet utilizes these same principles as he approaches the dimensionless punto of the Divine, the source and ground of all being.”[. . .]    –Matthew Canonico, University of Notre Dame: Church Life Journal, April 28, 2021

Read the full analysis here.

Dante 700 Mural and Art Exhibit in Addis Abeba (2021)

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“The mural occupies an area of over 170 square meters and is divided into three connected sections in which Italian and Ethiopian artists interpret, in a modern key, the Supreme Poet and his life with the works Dante The Ethiopian (group ‘Addis Street Art’), The Divine Technic (Nicola Varesco), and Inside (Van Orton Design – Marco and Stefano Schiavon).

[. . .]

“The project, promoted with the patronage and support of the National Committee for the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death, is the result of the work of numerous illustrators, street artists, graphic designers, comic and graphic novel authors, very different from each other in terms of style (which ranges from tempera painting and geometric design to the use of 3D software), and in the approach to the reinterpretation of Dante’s iconography, but all of great impact.” [. . .]    —Italiana

Along with Dante’s 700th anniversary, this event commemorates the XXI week of the Italian Language in the world. Learn more through the Italian Cultural Institute of Addis Abeba, linked here.

Learn more about the exhibit here.

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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