Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Nine Circles of Internet Hell

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nine-circles-of-internet-hell

“1. Limbo = Facebook/Twitter/Gmail

“This is where internet hell frequently starts. In Dante’s hell, this is the circle for people who did not accept Christ, but did not sin either. They are the ‘guiltless’ damned, doomed to live in a subpar version of heaven in the first circle. This is where most people fall.

“In the circles of internet hell, the innocents are often just in the triumvirate of Facebook, Twitter and Gmail. If you frequent just these three sites, you are a normal person who has not sinned. You are a guiltless damned in the internet world. You need not go beyond into the further circles of hell.” [. . .]    –Gaby Dunn, Thought Catalog, October 23, 2012

Contributed by Steve Bartus (Bowdoin, ’08)

Dale E. Basye, “Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go” Series

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dale-e-basye-heck-where-the-bad-kids-go-seriesHeck: Where Bad Kids Go is a series of books that seems to have drawn heavy inspiration from Dante’s Inferno. After the first installment in the series, each subsequent book is focused on a specific “circle of Heck.” The characters’ names seem to draw inspiration from different sources of “infernal” literature – more specifically, Dante, Milton, and Goethe: Virgil, Milton, and Fauster, for example. At one point in the series, the protagonists have to cross “the great tunnel of dung-the River Styx, the final, fecal resting place of all the world’s sewage.”

Contributed by Gianluca P., 4th grade

The Nine Circles of Hell, as Depicted in LEGO (2012)

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lego-commedia

“Here’s a series of play sets that won’t be debuting in the toy aisle anytime soon. Sculptor Mihai Mihu has built this fantastic and creepy nine-part collection of LEGO dioramas based on Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. Witness the Divine Comedy depicted in tiny plastic bricks, from the River Styx to the frozen head of Satan.” [. . .]   –Cyriaque Lamar, io9, May 12, 2012

Contributed by Carol Chiodo

See also:
The Telegraph, August 17, 2013 (note that in slide 10, the artist says that he knew the structure of Dante’s vision of hell, but that he didn’t read the Commedia, because he wanted to imagine his own version of punishments for each given sin/s)

Contributed by Leslie Morgan

“Alchemists Needed for Mets’ Golden Anniversary”

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mets-logo “Two years ago, I quoted Dante in warning Met fans to expect nothing. (“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”) That still works in 2012. But Mets fans need to take stock of the hope and humor that course underground, like a long-forgotten creek under a municipal dump.” [. . .]    –George Vecsey, The New York Times, March 31, 2012

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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.

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