Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“I first read Dante’s Inferno in high school and many times since. I was fascinated by the Catholic concept of punishment and by the magnificent structures Dante built to accommodate those souls Dante felt should be there. My attempts at capturing the suffering souls, the colorful monsters and the hellish landscape are feeble compared to the illustrations of Dore’ and others but they are my honest attempts drawn and painted only to bring Hell into focus for me.” –Mike Donovan
The New York Times Magazine published the above watercolor by Bernard Frize as a visual accompaniment to Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Longitudes”:
Longitudes
Before zero meridian at Greenwich
Galileo dreamt Dante on a ship
& his beloved Beatrice onshore,
both holding clocks, drifting apart.
His theory was right even if
he couldn’t steady the ship
on rough seas beyond star charts
& otherworldly ports of call.
‘‘But the damn blessed boat
rocked, tossing sailors to & fro
like a chorus of sea hags
in throes of ecstasy.’’
My whole world unmoors
& slips into a tug of high tide.
A timepiece faces the harbor —
a fixed point in a glass box.
You’re standing on the dock.
My dreams of you are oceanic,
& the Door of No Return
opens a galactic eye.
If a siren stations herself
between us, all the clocks
on her side, we’ll find each other
sighing our night song in the fog.
— “An Artist and a Poet Find Beauty in Solitude,” The New York Times Magazine
“Beauty awakens the soul to act. Dante Alighieri is one of many works Petra Greule-Bstock creates based on inspiration from a famous quotation. On Greule-Bstock’s blog, she provides background information about herself and her artwork: “I love to paint with natural pigments mixed and prepared like a meal, it’s like working in a color kitchen. Also I use oil pastels, Chinese ink, well let’s say just all I can find in my studio. I love the sensation of feeling lost in colors, materials and forms. Since I was able to keep a paint brush in my hands for the first time, painting was, still is and always will be necessary for me. It’s impossible living without. I was born in the south of Germany and lived there until 2000 before moving to France/Burgundy. Since 2011 I have my studio in Barcelona. Mostly I live with the feeling: I’m not going through the world but the world is going straight through me. The world, the daily life, people, surrounding, colors, smells, views, buildings, plants… all is impressing me, touching me, forming me. Painting is the way of how the “footprints” of all the impressions entering into my body, into my soul, my brain, my senses can communicate with those who are watching the result. With my paintings I’m offering a sight into the mirror of my emotional universe and it is like a dairy of subconsciousness, left footprints, dreams, . . .” —Petra Greule-Bstock
“Denise Poncher before a Vision of Death”
Master of the Chronique scandaleuse
French, about 1500
Tempera colors, ink, and gold on parchment
5 1/4 x 3 7/16 in.
MS. 109, FOL. 156
“Heaven, Hell, and Dying Well: Images of Death in the Middle Ages” at the Getty Museum
See also: film screenings
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.
