Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Imago Dantis

By

screenshot-of-images-from-site

“I have a vast collection of publications related to the illustrations of Divine Comedy that extends to the most varied artistic expressions from the 18th C to date and beyond, along the latitudes of the poet’s visionary grip in the the world and its variousgeographic-cultural areas.

The work that I present here is the figurative result of my visual study of the iconographic themes of the first part of Dante’s poem, Hell, through the aforementioned tradition and illustrative plurality. The 34 songs of Hell are represented with a mixed technique: manual, marker + coloured ink, and digital, with insertions of manipulated images. An original version of collaging then. This blog is together [a] presentation of the illustrations and understanding of their creative process.

Hence, in each canto-cover you will find the following in-sight information:

My illustration of each canto/song

A choice of the main verses from the poem in ‘cloud’ format

My interpretative notes of the main figurative themes

A very small selection of the many sources that inspired me.”    –Contributor Maurizio Coglia

The digital collages can be viewed at Coglia’s website imagodantisinferno.com

 

Hadestown Musical – Music, Lyrics, and Book by Anaïs Mitchell (2019)

By

 

hadestown-staging-photo

“The musical Hadestown (music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell) brings a new take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Much like Dante in the Inferno, the characters of Orpheus in Hadestown travel through an inferno-like factory run by Hades, the god of the underworld. Although the tragic hero Orpheus is mentioned in Canto IV of Dante’s Inferno, the similarities between the Divine Comedy and Hadestown do not stop there.”    –Contributor Ava Buchanan

A notable link between the musical and the Inferno is the staging of the piece, which relies heavily on circular motion to move the plot forward (a common motif employed by Dante). Furthermore, the character of Hermes within the musical acts as a Virgil-like guide for Orpheus with the added omnipresent, post-narrative knowledge of Dante “the Poet”.

As a side note, the official Hadestown website notes that it is a “haunting and hopeful theatrical experience that grabs you and never lets go.” This statement echoes Peter Hawkins who – in his biographic essay on Dante – states that “no one remains unchanged by the Commedia.”

The original cast Broadway cast recording of Hadestown can be found here.

Contributed by Ava Buchanan (University of Arkansas, ’23)

Valley of the Painted Stones Murals in Sicily, Silvio Benedetto (1992)

By

valley-of-painted-stones-mural

“La Valle Delle Pietre Dipinte, or the Valley of Painted Stones (also known as the Park of the Divine Comedy), is a series of 110 painted marble slabs that depict events and people from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Artist and sculptor Silvio Benedetto began this endeavor in 1992. Benedetto, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1938, moved to Italy in 1964 and completed other well-known works there, such as the murals for Cinque Terre National Park. He has been called the ‘last of the great mural artists.’

“La Valle delle Pietre Dipinte is located in Campobello di Licata, Sicily. The park is a physical experience as well as an artistic one. Visitors walk through it, going from Hell to Purgatory to Paradise. The journey begins with a downward path into Hell, which features such recognized figures as La Lupa, Beatrice, Francesca and Paolo, and Ulysses. The viewer goes up from Hell to Purgatory, finally ascending the hill to Paradise, where a mural of the Virgin Mary can be seen. The last mural of the series says, ‘E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle’ or ‘And then we went out to see the stars.'”    –Contributor Abigail Williams

See also a collection of photographs of the murals at the Valley of Painted Stones here.

For more information about Campobello di Licata and the Valley of Painted Stones, click here.

Contributed by Abigail Williams (University of Arkansas, ’22)

Macrodosing Podcast’s “Hell” Episode

By

macrodosing-coverThe “Hell” episode of the podcast Macrodosing features Dante’s Inferno, hypothesizing which circles of Hell contemporary figures would find themselves in. Contributor Jack Switzer notes, “The podcast episode featured lengthy discussion of Dante’s Inferno and the structure of the Dante’s version of Hell, and the impact that the Inferno had on current views of Hell. The podcast’s hosts also placed contemporary figures in the respective circles of Hell. For the discussion, the hosts first briefly described each circle and then assigned modern day celebrities. Some notable celebrity examples included Jeff Bezos for the sin of avarice and Napoleon in the eighth circle of seducers and panderers.”

“When he wrote that, I don’t think he knew that eight-hundred years from now, that would be people’s idea of what Hell was, That’s what the majority of people in this country, they don’t get it from cartoons or pop culture, but even those derive themselves from what Dante wrote about Hell, just kinda like, yeah he was a scholar, but he was also just a hundred percent speculating on what Hell looked like. The one thing that I respect the hell out of Dante for doing is in the Inferno—he just put his enemies and his contemporaries that he thought were trash poets compared to him—he just put them in Hell. He was like, ‘I’m gonna write a book about hell just so I can roast my biggest enemies and I love the pettiness.” [. . .]    –PFT Commenter, Macrodosing, April 6, 2021

Watch or listen to the podcast episode here. Discussion of Dante’s Inferno begins at the timestamp, 1:10:09.

Contributed by Jack Switzer (University of Arkansas ’22)

Recent Dante Citings

Categories

Submit a Sighting

All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.

How to Cite

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

Creative