Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

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the-hero-with-a-thousand-faces-jospeh-campbell“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest-as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars.”  —Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Chapter 2)

 

Higher Self Yoga: Consciousness in the Divine Comedy

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spiritual-painting-of-two-dante-characters-floating-in-front-of-large-yellow-circle-with-many-faces

“[. . .] As an example, consider this scene at the bottom of the mountain of Purgatory.  These souls have figured out how to get out of hell and have crossed the river to this mountainous island. The journey up the mountain (toward increasing freedom from destructive patterns and closer to higher consciousness) waits for them.

“What do they do?  They turn away from the mountain, hang out on the shoreline, and stare out at the water waiting for entertainers to arrive:  TV channel surfing, 14th Century style.  Fortunately, Dante himself is being guided to start to climb the mountain because there is much more waiting for him if he ascends. He does so, and at the very top he meets Beatrice, his Higher Self, who then guides him into higher states of consciousness in paradise.” [. . .]    –Dr. Richard Schaub Ph.D., Higher Self Yoga, July 8, 2020

The Mathematics of The Divine Comedy

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painting-of-dante-looking-at-scores-of-angels

“As God’s Creation, we experience a physical realm of differentiated entities and perceive multiplicity in our material reality. The character of Beatrice utilizes this fact in Paradiso 2 when she proposes the mirror experiment. The experiment combines mathematical, geometrical, and optical/physical principles to demonstrate spiritual truths. This experiment, especially its utilization of reflection, plants a seed in Dante, prodding him on his journey to the Divine: ‘Nature offers to the symbolic poet clearly denotable objects in-depth and in the round, which yield the analogies to the higher senses.’ [19] In the Primo Mobile, Dante the poet utilizes these same principles as he approaches the dimensionless punto of the Divine, the source and ground of all being.”[. . .]    –Matthew Canonico, University of Notre Dame: Church Life Journal, April 28, 2021

Read the full analysis here.

Temple St. Clair’s “Astrid” Bracelet and Ring

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18K gold bracelet by jeweller Temple St. Clair, featured on the site The Picket Fence: “The inside of the bracelet features an intimate detail: an inscription of the last verse of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy–– Amor Che Move Il Sole E L’Altre Stelle (The love that moves the sun and other stars).”    —The Picket Fence

The image above also features the matching ring, available at The Editorialist: “Marrying science and art, the Astrid Ring unfolds like an astronomical model of the cosmos, revealing multiple rings that can be worn on the finger, or around the neck as a pendant. Engraved with symbols representing the planets, as well as the last verse of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy—’Amor Che Move Il Sole E L’Altre Stelle’ (The love that moves the sun and other stars)—this timeless ring expresses the belief that it is love that moves the universe.”    —The Editorialist

Donna Distefano’s “The Love That Moves the Sun and the Other Stars” Ring

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“I created a one-of-a-kind ring inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto 33, The Final Vision. I’ve studied The Divine Comedy in both English and Italian and have always loved the way the poem combines so many seemingly disparate elements: mythology, realism, love, judgment, geometry, and astronomy to name a few. In Canto 33, Dante faces God and sees ‘the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.’ It is the moment when his life on earth intersects with his life outside of this earth.”   –Donna Distefano

The ring, which features pieces of actual meteorite, was featured in the exhibit “Out of this World: Jewelry in the Space Age” at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia (November 7, 2020 – October 24, 2021). In Style magazine did a piece on it, too (see image below).

See also our previous post on Distefano’s “Elixir of Love” ring.

Contributed by Donna Distefano

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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