Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“James Hutchinson was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in July and has been detained at Al Wathba jail – known as Dante’s Inferno. The Brit, 52, has been told he will not be released unless he pays £170,000 in “blood money” compensation to the family of a cyclist he killed in a road accident in 2013.” —Patrick Hill, “Brit held in jail known as Dante’s Inferno won’t be freed until he pays ‘blood money’,” The Mirror, August 12, 2023 (retrieved November 25, 2023)
On March 10, 2022, British-owned IFA Magazine posted an article titled “Dante was wrong. There are in fact 10 circles of hell.” The authors state:
“The tenth is occupied by former Government housing ministers and is named Ineptitude.
“If you’re into psychological self-flagellation, have a read. If you’re not, all you need to know is that, in the final three months of last year, a lot less houses were built than in the preceding quarter and the same quarter of 2020. In short, the housebuilding omnishambles continues apace.” [. . .] —IFA Magazine, March 10, 2022 (retrieved March 22, 2022)
“The second-largest island in Greece, not far from Athens, Evia has (as I write this) been on fire for a week. It is – or was – a natural paradise of forests, mountains, and clear streams, popular with the tourists who prop up the country’s shaky economy.
“Sadly, it takes something special, something unusual, to stand out from the nonstop evidence of the damage done by global heating. If the Evia fire ferry video seems extraordinary, it’s not only because of what it shows but because of how it shows it – because of its strangeness.
“At first, the video is simply disorienting. It takes a while – it took me a while – to figure out what I was seeing.
“Perhaps what makes the film clip so scary is also a matter of timing. The Greek fire video surfaced around the time of the release of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That document states definitively: We are on the brink of too late. Unless we dramatically reduce our emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels, our world will soon become ‘a hell’.
“The ferry video is a vision of hell. It’s as if Dante filmed the Inferno on his iPhone.” [. . .] –Francine Prose, The Guardian, August 10, 2021 (retrieved November 27, 2021)
“Il existe un lien insolite entre le nom du groupe de musique électronique Nine Circles, le film Behemoth, du réalisateur chinois Zhao Liang (2015), et l’univers terrifiant du jeu vidéo Resident Evil : Revelations. Une convergence souterraine, qui remonte à un poème du XIVe siècle : La Divine Comédie, à laquelle Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) a consacré les deux dernières décennies de sa vie. Tous trois puisent leurs références dans cette œuvre qui expose, en trois cantiques que sont Enfer, Purgatoire et Paradis, une traversée de l’au-delà dont la colossale influence est documentée par l’étonnant projet Dante Today.
“Depuis 2006, ce site tenu par des spécialistes américains archive toutes les références à Dante dans la culture populaire contemporaine. Ghana, Chili, Irak, Vietnam, Islande : les mentions, qui se comptent en milliers, dessinent une cartographie planétaire de l’aura du poète florentin. Comme si, sept siècles après sa mort, le 14 septembre 1321, toute représentation de l’au-delà demeurait inévitablement aimantée par la puissance d’évocation de ses 14 233 hendécasyllabes. [. . .] –Youness Bousenna, Le Monde, October 3, 2021
“Per celebrare i 700 anni dalla morte di Dante Alighieri anche Tokyo promuove numerosi eventi culturali.
“In occasione di Dante, Terzine from the World, per esempio, eventi poi da tutto il mondo declameranno versi della Divina Commedia con appuntamenti settimanali a partire da lunedì 29 marzo, seguibili dal sito della Casa della poesia di Como: sarà possibile ascoltare Dante in giapponese con Mariko Sumikura e Taeko Uemura, responsabili della Japanese Universal Poetry Association.
“È poi la stessa Ambasciata d’Italia in Giappone a comunicare, in accordo con gli Istituti Italiani di cultura di Tokyo e Osaka, il Consolato Generale a Osaka ed Enit, di aver messo in calendario, per tutto il 2021, oltre venticinque tra iniziative ed eventi dedicati alla figura di Dante Alighieri.
“‘Per celebrare in Giappone la figura del padre della lingua italiana abbiamo inteso mettere a sistema il meglio della nostra offerta culturale con la fitta rete di scuole, università e media giapponesi, certi di raggiungere il grande pubblico locale’, ha spiegato Giorgio Starace, Ambasciatore d’Italia a Tokyo.” [. . .] —Affari Italiani, March 13, 2021 (retrieved October 27, 2021)
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
