Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“Today, we present German artist Thomas Zipp’s September 5, 2014 performance / exhibition, Effects of Stimulus-Range and Anchor Value on Psychophysical Judgement (The Laerdal Rehearsals). In it, Resusci Anne CPR dolls were brought “back to life” to the recorded sounds of a performance of Dante’s Divine Comedy.” –Emerson Rosenthal, Vice, October 17, 2014
“Allowing for translation, those are the immortal opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Here, some seven centuries later, are some of Lynn Darling’s opening lines from her new memoir, Out of the Woods: ‘The summer my only child left home for college, I moved from an apartment in New York City, to live alone in a small house at the end of a dirt road in the woods of central Vermont.'” —Maureen Corrigan, Connecticut Public Radio, January 9, 2014
Learn more about Lynn Darling’s 2014 book Out of the Woods here.
Out of the Woods can be found on Amazon.
“Gregorian chants play softly and a curl of incense drifts high into the air at Garry Shead’s studio in Bundeena on the coast of the Royal National Park.
“For almost five months, Shead, one of Australia’s best-known figurative painters, has been grappling with a new series based on Dante Alighieri’s poem, The Divine Comedy. Invoking the spirit of the 700-year-old poet has been “terribly difficult”. He grimaces as he recalls stepping up to the blank canvas every morning, regardless of whether he felt like it or not.” […] –Ali Gripper, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 12, 2014
Check out Garry Shead’s online art gallery here.
“With spring break right around the corner and, dare we say it, summer on its way, the day of reckoning is inching dangerously closer.
“We all know the horror, the shame. Our heads are bowed, shoulders sagging, arms hanging limply at our sides as we enter the store. Walls of brightly patterned spandex and neoprene tease us with possibility. Push-up, bandeau, triangle, bikini, tankini, one-piece, board shirt, options, options, options…The 10th circle of hell.” […] –Leslie Conway, Better After 50, March 14, 2014
“The Italian poet Dante Alighieri was kind of a twisted dude. His 14th-century opus, the Divine Comedy, led readers into the depths of a nine-layer hell filled with flaming tombs, rivers of boiling blood and giant worm-monsters. He spent plenty of time in the Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy, outlining all the sins that can get you a one-way ticket to Satan’s inner circle. But by 2014, a lot of those sins feel pretty out-of-date — we stopped burning heretics at the stake a while back, and I’m not even sure that simony is still a thing.
“With Dante’s colorful imagery in mind, I updated and localized his nine circles of hell as a reminder to Southeast Texans that if you’re not going to be polite because it’s the right thing to do, at least be polite to avoid retribution in the afterlife.” […] –Beth Rankin, Beaumont Enterprise, December 6, 2014
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.
