“…Masters of narrative have the power to expose the act of fabrication without invalidating the work: sublime puppeteers like Austen or Nabokov smiling at the audience above their creations, addressing the reader or discussing what they know or need to suppose about the puppets and their stage. Sometimes it’s done with backspin, as when Dante says he hesitated to say he saw a body walking along holding its severed head — but what can he do, he really saw it?” [. . .] –Robert Pinsky, The New York Times, October 21, 2011
“Damages” (Season 2)
“There is a reference to Dante in the TV show Damages with Glenn Close. In Season 2, episode 12 (‘Look What He Dug Up This Time’), scientist David Purcell repents for having falsified a report on contaminated water on behalf of finance tycoon Kendrik, who in exchange is protecting Purcell from a murder charge. Purcell decides to confess everything to the police after telling Kendrik about the nine circles of hell, and commenting upon the damned souls’ ability to see the future and the past, but not the present. Of course, Kendrik does not get the reference and tells Purcell that he is out of his mind.” –Matteo Soranzo, McGill University
“The Temperature of Hell, a Colloquium”
“According to the best scientific data currently available, both the average and the mean temperatures of Hell have risen 3.8 degrees since 1955. Although an increase of this size may seem insignificant, especially to those not spending eternity there, the reality of the situation is quite different when experienced in concrete terms. For example, occupants of Hell who in 1955 were standing night and day in boiling pitch up to their knees report that, owing to the expansion of pitch at higher temperatures, they now must endure the torment all the way up to mid-thigh, or even higher, during Hell’s warmer seasons. Condemned souls who have to lie on their backs chained to a flat rock while a white-hot sheet of iron is lowered to within inches of their faces have stated that the rise in Hell’s ambient temperature now makes the iron seem much closer to their faces than it actually is.
Former Vice-President Al Gore, who was among the first to raise concerns about this problem, convened an interdisciplinary gathering in December of 2008 to discuss some of Hell’s climate issues and how we might begin to address them.” [. . .] –Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, July 20, 2009
Contributed by Elizabeth Ann Coggeshall (Stanford University)
Musea/Colossus Project: “Dante’s Divine Comedy” Parts I, II, III (2009-2010)
“Musea’s collaboration with Finnish Colossus Society has been fruitful in these last years, and the newest release is the most ambitious so far: a 4 cd set, with a comprehensive booklet, featuring 34 bands to address the 34 cantos of the “Inferno” part of the legendary 14th century epic poem ‘The Divine Comedy’ by Dante Alighieri (Purgatory and Paradise will be the concept of future releases, in order to complete the trilogy).
With such an amount of bands coming from different grounds within the progressive aesthetics, it is only natural that the conducting line is only maintained by the story and by the usage of vintage instruments (moog, mellotron, etc) which are common to all the guest bands. In part, and besides the fact that this approach secures a wide array of styles and different musical perspectives, it is also true that it makes the album not being as cohesive and focused as the Epic Poem that muses it would deserve. But hey! There are 4hours+ of pure “regressive” symphonic rock to fully enjoy!” –Nuno, Proggnosis
Yi Zhou, The Ear (2009), The Greatness (2010)
“Imagine that van Gogh, after slicing off his ear, finds himself sucked down a passage into his own brain, which turns out to be the concentric onion of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Then capture that journey with three-dimensional digital imaging software and turn it, frame by computerized frame, into a five-minute animated movie. [. . .]
“She had her first breakthrough when she was taken on by the Jerome de Noirmont gallery in Paris in 2002. Since then, she has had a major sculpture and video projection work, ‘Paradise,’ installed in the Piazza della Signoria and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, in 2006 [. . .].
“Ms. Zhou’s solo show of video art, ink brush drawings and sculpture at Shanghai Contrasts, running to Dec. 9, is built around her most recent film, The Greatness, a variation on the theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
“The film is a sequel to The Ear: both star Pharrell Williams, one in the flesh and the other as a sculpted vase, and both explore transience and death. In The Greatness, Mr. Williams’s look-alike vase, shattered by a bullet, disintegrates into a fractured universe while the bullet, like Dante guided by Virgil, travels through visions of hell and redemption accompanied by an other-worldly soundtrack composed by Mr. Morricone.” [. . .] –Claudia Barbieri, The New York Times, December 1, 2010
Read more about The Greatness, on Vice.
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