Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“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
“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
“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
“Dante, torn between heaven and hell and between good and evil, must collect the heavenly Soul Jewels to determine his place in the hereafter, along the way Demons will try and thwart Dante by destroying the landscape of purgatory making it impossible to collect the Soul Jewels, but there is good on his side in the form of Cherubs that will lend a hand placing power-ups and special items to help him in his task.
Will the forces of good win out and lay open the gates to heaven? or will the Denizens of Hell, the vile Demons strike back and force Dante to a Millennia of Torment?, Dante’s fate is in your hands, do not fail him.
Fully Optimized for the iphone 3G and ipod touch, Dante’s Conundrum is a fast paced fun filled arcade style puzzle game that will provide hours of not stop action and fun pushing reflexes and mental prowess to the limit, enjoy dazzling graphics and multiple levels of play with the upgraded version or play the first level for free.” —http://mobile.e-axis.com/dante/ (retrieved July 22, 2009)
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
“I am convinced that economic and cultural affairs, that money and literature and poetry, are much more closely linked than many people believe. We should recall that writing came into being in Sumer, the cradle of civilisation between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, 6,000 years ago. Sumer’s administrators made a record of everyday items, of quantities, of transactions, on clay tablets. By recording these economic activities, these ‘proto-accountants’ created the first documents in human history and paved the way for all of the world’s written literature.
There is a relationship between poetry and money which has always struck me. Poems, like gold coins, are meant to last, to keep their integrity, sustained by their rhythm, rhymes and metaphors. In that sense, they are like money – they are a ‘store of value’ over the long term. They are both aspiring to inalterability, whilst they are both destined to circulate from hand to hand and from mind to mind.
Both culture and money, poems and coins belong to the people. Our currency belongs to the people of Europe in a very deep sense: it is their own confidence in their currency which makes it a successful medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. Our culture is the wealth of literature and art that the confidence of the people has decided to preserve over time.
European-ness means being unable to understand my national literature and poetry without understanding Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare. And as the Spanish philosopher Jose’ Ortega y Gasset wrote in his The Revolt of the Masses in 1930: ‘If we were to take an inventory of our mental stock today – opinions, standards, desires, assumptions – we should discover that the greater part of it does not come to the Frenchman from France, nor to the Spaniard from Spain, but from the common European stock.’
It is no coincidence that the European Central Bank chose European architectural styles to illustrate our banknotes. These architectural styles were born in very different areas of Europe. They provide another powerful illustration of this unique concept of unity within diversity, which is the central trait of our continent.
European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet was speaking at the Centre for Financial Studies in Frankfurt earlier this week.” —The Independent, March 19, 2009
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
