Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
Students of a school in Florence have charted the 33 stone inscriptions of Dante’s Divine Comedy throughout the historical center of Florence. La Reppublica details the project in “Le lapidi dantesche sbarcano su Google Earth,” November 23, 2013. To see the locations of the 33 lapidi, see here. (Note: you must first download Google Earth in order open the file).
“ ‘In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.’ So begins one of the most celebrated and difficult poems ever written, Dante’s Divine Comedy, a more than 14,000-line epic on the soul’s journey through the afterlife. The tension between the pronouns says it all: Although the ‘I’ belongs to Dante, who died in 1321, his journey is also part of ‘our life.’ We will all find ourselves in a dark wood one day, the lines suggest. That day came six years ago for me, when my pregnant wife, Katherine, died suddenly in a car accident. Forty-five minutes before her death, she delivered our daughter, Isabel, a miracle of health rescued by emergency cesarean. I had left the house that morning at 8:30 to teach a class; by noon, I was a father and a widower.” –Joseph Luzzi, The New York Times, December 18, 2013
Contributed by Janet E. Gomez
See also the New York Times review of Luzzi’s 2014 memoir, In a Dark Wood.
Contributed by Stephanie Hotz, University of Texas at Austin
“She has floppy ears, eyes of exquisite sadness and an operatic tendency toward ecstasy, anguish and other big emotions. Leave her alone in a thunderstorm, and she may fall into despair. She is a dog named Rose, and her Dear John letter to the man she loved is the battered heart of Lee Breuer’s dark, joyous and utterly splendid musical fantasia La Divina Caricatura, Part 1, The Shaggy Dog, at La MaMa, in a co-presentation with St. Ann’s Warehouse. An East Village tale told in a subway, it’s a doomed cross-species romance inspired by The Divine Comedy, but Mr. Breuer uses Dante more as catalyst than template. The strongest classical link is to Japanese theater’s Bunraku.” –Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times, December 19, 2013
“The 100 illustrations that Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali did in the 1960s to mark the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ are being exhibited in Sao Paulo, the last stop on a tour of Brazil.
“The exhibition, which runs until Oct. 27 [2013], is being held at the Caixa Cultural in Sao Paulo.” [ . . . ] —EFE, September 2, 2013
Contributed by Vanessa Teixeira
“This book is a fascinating and original insight into two authors who have inspired us for centuries. Perhaps unique among world authors, Dickens and Dante create comprehensive moral systems still strikingly relevant in today’s world, filled with greed, religious hypocrisy, fraud, violence and war. At the same time their compelling characters can still move us to tears and laughter. By dropping them into their appropriate circles of Dante’s Inferno, Professor Jhirad delves deeply into Dickens’ villains in a way that is both scholarly and accessible to the average reader. Additional chapters on Dickens’ Purgatory and Paradise add richness to the book.” —Amazon
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.
