Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
The Nocturnal Moans of the Fallen Angel is a 2997 album by the French metal band, Bloody Sign. The albums art is Gustave Doré’s, Errinys. Doré’s illustration is of Canto 9 of the Inferno.
Find The Nocturnal Moans of the Fallen Angel here.
Find The Erinnys by Gustave Doré here.
Contributed by Gianluca Giuseffi Grippa
The French metal band In Die Nacht released their album, Eradicum Humanest, in 2005 with Gustave Doré’s, The Avaricious as the album art. Doré’s illustration is from Canto 20 of Purgatorio.
Find Eradicum Humanest here.
Find The Avaricious by Gustave Doré here.
Contributed by Gianluca Giuseffi Grippa
Heavy metal band, Darken, released their album The Silent Bleeding of Eternity in 1996. The art of this album is an illustration by artist Gustave Doré. The illustration used by the band in The Erinnys is a depiction of Canto 9 from the Inferno.
Find The Silent Bleeding of Eternity here.
Find The Erinnys by Gustave Doré here.
Contributed by Gianluca Giuseffi Grippa
“Of this work, Schroeder writes: ‘After reading The Divine Comedy, I was interested in having my own version of Hell and its different circles… I wanted my version more like a play than a painting. I wanted to describe all the mixed feelings in Hell: justice, tears, cries, desperation, evil, suffering, redemption and sorrows. For me, Hell is not necessarily black and dark… The use of colors is also to illustrate the three parts of the poem: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. My Inferno becomes a ballet where souls, evils, judgments and penalties are mixed… Maybe we can be better and win our place in Heaven walking through the Good and The Bad. Our souls can be delivered from evil through this long and hard journey. My Inferno is a theatre, a global vision of Hell and its circles, but also a sacred song of redemption.'” —Artistic Interpretations: Frank Schroeder, Cornell University Library’s Visions of Dante Exhibition, curated by Andrew C. Weislogel and Laurent Ferri (2021; retrieved October 26, 2022)
“Soul—the term occurs often, meant in a rigorously philosophical sense as a ‘vital principle’ or ‘bodily entelechy.’ Just like all the medieval masters, Dante sees in man a being made up of both body and soul. As regards the relationship between the two components, Dante sticks to the Aristotolean solutions, adopted unanimously by the theologians of the day. Hence, the soul may be conceived and represented as separate from the body, in its definitive condition of a dweller in the kingdoms of the afterlife. In this sense, the term is used countless times to refer to the shadows of the dead in their concrete individuality: ‘O spirit courteous of Mantua’ (Inferno, Canto II, 58); ‘But all those souls who weary were and naked,/Their colour changed’ (Inferno, Canto III, 100).”
Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.
For more on the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia, see Wikipedia.
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Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
