“[…] But the ethical value is a matter of my own judgment, independent of religious authority. And the understanding may be only a partial illumination that does not establish the ultimate truth of the ideas that provide it, as, for example, both Dante and Proust help us understand the human condition, despite their conflicting intellectual frameworks. None of this will interfere with a commitment to intellectual honesty. […]” –Gary Gutting, The New York Times, September 28, 2015
“My First Pumpkin Spice Latte: A Journey”
“Then I waited. For a total of two minutes, I stood at the end of the counter and maintained eye contact with the jug of ‘Pumpkin Spice Flavored Sauce’ that happened to be sitting behind the ledge. ‘Tell me your secrets, magical chalice of spicy pumpkin secretions. What exactly are you?’ I asked the jug with my eyes, like Dante seeking help from Virgil.” –Kelli Bender, “My First Pumpkin Spice Latte: A Journey,” People Magazine
Contributed by Victoria Williams (University of Delaware, ’19)
Yusef Komunyakaa, “Longitudes”
The New York Times Magazine published the above watercolor by Bernard Frize as a visual accompaniment to Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Longitudes”:
Longitudes
Before zero meridian at Greenwich
Galileo dreamt Dante on a ship
& his beloved Beatrice onshore,
both holding clocks, drifting apart.
His theory was right even if
he couldn’t steady the ship
on rough seas beyond star charts
& otherworldly ports of call.
‘‘But the damn blessed boat
rocked, tossing sailors to & fro
like a chorus of sea hags
in throes of ecstasy.’’
My whole world unmoors
& slips into a tug of high tide.
A timepiece faces the harbor —
a fixed point in a glass box.
You’re standing on the dock.
My dreams of you are oceanic,
& the Door of No Return
opens a galactic eye.
If a siren stations herself
between us, all the clocks
on her side, we’ll find each other
sighing our night song in the fog.
— “An Artist and a Poet Find Beauty in Solitude,” The New York Times Magazine
Guy Raffa, “Dante and Don”
In celebration of the poet’s 750th birthday, Guy Raffa (University of Texas, Austin) published an essay in the magazine Pop Matters, comparing Dante with fellow Gemini Don Draper:
“Matthew Weiner’s brilliant decision to end the series with, in his words, the ‘greatest commercial ever made‘, meshes beautifully — ‘in perfect harmony’ — with the ending of what many believe to be the greatest poem ever written. The culmination of Dante’s journey through the afterlife is his vision of God. He sees the mystery of the Incarnation, the paradoxical union of complete human and divine natures, the Word made flesh. Don’s Moment of Zen produces an equally paradoxical revelation: the marriage of commerce and community achieved by the famous 1971 TV ad. The Word made cash.
“The comparison appears less strange when we consider that Dante himself has become both a product and an ad man. He has become a hot commodity not just for the spiritually, intellectually, or literarily inclined, and not only in Italy, where Roberto Benigni has electrified audiences — in the piazza and on TV — over the past decade with his TuttoDante performances, brought to North America in 2009.” —- Guy Raffa, “Dante and Don: The Word Made Flesh and the Word Made Cash,” Pop Matters
“Dante Turns 750”
In an essay for the New Yorker in late May 2015 – the approximate date of the 750th anniversary of Dante’s birth – John Kleiner (Williams College) offers reflections on Dante’s enduring hold on the Italian imagination:
“Dante’s seven-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday is sometime in the coming month—he was born, he tells us in Paradiso, under the sign of Gemini—and, to mark the occasion, more than a hundred events are planned. These include everything from the minting of a new two-euro coin, embossed with the poet’s profile, to a selfie-con-Dante campaign. (Cardboard cutouts of the poet are being set up in Florence, and visitors are encouraged to post pictures of themselves with them using the hashtag #dante750.) There’s talk of extending the celebrations to 2021, the seven-hundredth anniversary of the poet’s death.” — John Kleiner, “Dante Turns Seven Hundred and Fifty,” The New Yorker
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