Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Le interviste impossibili: Umberto Eco incontra Beatrice

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7HkeMWCOvk&feature=youtu.be

“Qui puoi ascoltare ‘l’intervista impossibile’ che Umberto Eco realizzò con Beatrice, la ‘donna di Dante.’

[. . .]

In questo dialogo, il filosofo italiano è il primo a offrire a Beatrice la possibilità di esprimere le proprie opinioni e i propri sentimenti. La vostra immagine di Dante Alighieri ne uscirà certamente alterata.

Beatrice discute con Eco in un ottimo italiano, ma utilizza spesso (siamo infatti, almeno dal suo punto di vista, nella Firenze del XIII secolo) espressioni e forme che non appartengono all’italiano standard di oggi.”    –Italiana Lingua e Cultura, YouTube, June 29, 2016

Interview with Maru Ceballos

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“De la mano artística de Maru Ceballos, y para todos aquellos fanáticos de Dante Alighieri y su Divina Comedia, llega una muestra súper interesante al Museo Mitre. Hasta el 10 mayo de este año se podrá visitar la obra ‘Los círculos del Dante: La Divina Comedia ilustrada por Maru Ceballos’. ¿En qué consiste la obra? En la ilustración de los 100 cantos de La Divina Comedia más los mapas correspondientes a cada cántica (Infierno, Purgatorio, Paraíso). A continuación, la palabra de la mismísima autora.

“Maru Ceballos y su idea de ‘Los círculos del Dante’

‘Me contactó Luciana Ferrazzi del Museo Mitre (habían visto la serie en redes sociales a través de la movida #Dante2018 que inició en Twitter Pablo Maurette). Fue así que me propusieron armarla en el marco de varias actividades que se realizarán alrededor de Dante y la Divina Comedia. Mitre fue un fanático de la obra y – creo – el primer traductor latinoamericano de esa obra en español’ [. . .]

“¿Quiénes pueden participar de esta obra?

Maru Ceballos explica que al tratarse de una obra con énfasis en los simbolismos, hay mucha crudeza y violencia visual. ‘Nada que no esté en los textos de la Divina Comedia”, aclara. “Supongo que no apunta a un público que guste de resoluciones visuales texto-imagen literales. No se van a encontrar a Dante de la mano con Virgilio, sino con un cúmulo de situaciones con énfasis en lo simbólico. Creo que apunta a un público curioso con ganas de ver una versión no tradicional de las ilustraciones de la obra de Dante’

[. . .]    –Julieta B. Mollo, .ITBuenosAires, March 14, 2018.

To view more of Maru Ceballos’ artwork, you can follow her on VSCO, Instagram, and Twitter.

See other posts related to #Dante2018 here.

Contributed by Pablo Maurette (Florida State University)

“This Was a Hell Not Unlike Anything Dante Conjured”

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“This week Herb Childress’s essay in The Chronicle Review, ‘This Is How You Kill a Profession,’ prompted many readers to think about their own tortuous relations with the academy. Childress wrote that the adjunct structure is filled with ‘fear despair, surrender, shame,’ and that rang true for many readers.

“So we asked readers to share their stories about their careers in academe. Here are a selection of responses to our questions about academic life.

“The responses have been edited for length and clarity.” […]    —The Chronicle, March 29, 2019

Tina Turner and Dante Alighieri

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In an interview with the New York Times Book Review, Tina Turner mentioned Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy in her answers to Jillian Tamaki’s literary questions.

Ms. Turner on the Divine Comedy as a book she can read again and again:

“In 2017, my kidneys were failing and I went through a prolonged period of dialysis. Every time I went to the clinic, I brought the same three books with me: The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra, the Divine Comedy, by Dante, and a book of photography by the extraordinary Horst P. Horst. I needed something for the spirit, something for the intellect and something for the senses, and the ritual of studying the same books while I was undergoing treatment was comforting to me because it imposed order on a situation I couldn’t otherwise control.” [. . .]

Ms. Turner on Dante as her first-choice guest for her literary dinner party:

“I like a dinner party to be a lively mixture of different kinds of people — young, old and everything in between. So my first choice would be Dante — after all my years of studying the Divine Comedy, I need to ask him a lot of questions! I could be his Beatrice! Since I can’t choose between Anne Rice and Stephen King, I’d set places for both of them. Their books have kept me awake for many a night because there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good scare! And I’d definitely serve Thai food, because I like things spicy.” [. . .]    –Tina Turner interviewed by Jillian Tamaki, the New York Times Book Review, October 18, 2018.

You can read the full interview on the New York Times.

The Virtual Memories Show: Prue Shaw on Time, Memory, Friendship, Poetry, & Art

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Reading DanteThe Virtual Memories Show is a weekly podcast featuring interviews by Gil Roth. In Episode 111 of Virtual Memories, scholar and writer Prue Shaw discusses her book, Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity.

“We talk about our favorite parts of the Dante’s Commedia, the poem’s transformation for her over the decades, Dante’s challenge of expressing the inexpressible (especially in Paradiso), the fate of Jews in Dante’s afterworld, and the reasons why we all — poets and non-poets, believers and non-believers — should be reading Dante. [. . .]

We also talk about readers’ reticence toward starting the Commedia, why the Paradiso is the most difficult of the three books, the strange role of Ulysses in the poem, Dante’s ‘mercy rule,’ why she chose the structure and themes for Reading Dante, the perfect epigraph to her book, which she discovered too late for inclusion, and why I need to get to the Uffizi!”    —The Virtual Memories Show

Listen to the podcast here.

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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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