Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Lisa Aldin, “Dante Enters the Tenth Circle of Hell: Shoe Shopping for a Toddler,” McSweeney’s

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“Midway upon the journey of my life
I found myself within a shoe aisle in Target,
For the toddler’s sparkle unicorn shoes had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this shoe aisle savage, rough, and smelly,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

[. . .]

The way resumed my journey away from
The dollar bins and past the toy aisle,
Which never yet a living person left.
And lo! almost where a tantrum began,
My toddler spotted the stuffed animals,
After I hauled ass and made some airplane noises,
Steering the cart away from a stuffed panther with wild abandon,
My toddler’s lower lip ceased to tremble.

[. . .]

Behold the beast, for which I have turned back;
Do thou protect me from the snack aisle, famous Sage,
For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.”

–Lisa Aldin, “Dante Enters the Tenth Circle of Hell: Shoe Shopping for a Toddler”, McSweeney’s, August 18, 2022

Mommy’s Inferno, from Scary Mommy

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“In his poem Inferno, Dante travels through nine separate circles of human suffering on his journey towards spiritual salvation. Now I’m no major Italian poet, nor am I on a quest to save my soul, allegorically or spiritually. In fact, I haven’t even read Inferno, which is part of the epic poem the Divine Comedy, since the first time I trudged through (parts of) it in college, but I am a Mommy of three little kids. I have learned that motherhood is both divine and, often, a comedy….and yes, there is suffering. Hoo-boy is there suffering. I think, had Dante been a Mommy, his Nine Circles of Hell may have looked a bit different…but no less dreadful.

[. . .]

“Dante had to figuratively travel through hell and back before enjoying the peace that came at the end of his journey. I guess that’s the point of Mommy’s Inferno….that the inescapable moments of suffering we endure as mommies makes us stronger, better equipped to handle the challenges that come next, and more ready to enjoy the light of the good days that always follow the darkest nights of motherhood.

“So don’t ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter’ motherhood; for, though the hours and days of motherhood be long, the years are short…or so I hear.”   –Sarah Harris, “Mommy’s Inferno,” Scary Mommy (published May 21, 2010; updated December 2, 2020)

Read the nine circles of Scary Mommy’s Inferno here.

Catherine Cho, Inferno (2020)

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inferno-a-memoir-of-motherhood-and-madness“How could any sane woman kill her kids? A better question, and the one explored in Catherine Cho’s captivating first book, Inferno, would inquire about the factors (biological, cultural and environmental) that make some women vulnerable to episodes of acute, severe mental illness in the period after they become mothers.

“Cho’s title refers to the perceived hell in which the author finds herself a couple of months after her son is born, a hell that the reader quickly learns is the inpatient unit of a mental hospital. The book begins just as Cho is starting to recover from psychosis, struggling to remember who she is: “I write the words I can call myself. I am a daughter. A sister. A wife. Those words come easily. I can remember them. I stare at the page. And then I write MOTHER. The word looks strange. Next to the others, it stands separate.

“Inferno is a disturbing and masterfully told memoir, but it’s also an important one that pushes back against powerful taboos. We still don’t like to talk about postpartum mental illness, or the fact that, when a mother becomes ill and doesn’t have a support system or access to mental health care, the emotional damage to both her and her children can reverberate across generations.” [. . .]    –Kim Brooks, The New York Times, August 4 2020

The Wondering Mother’s Tenth Circle of Hell

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“Dante only wrote about the nine circles of hell because he was a man who never had to go to the DMV and the social security office in the same day.  But I have seen this place…I have experienced it…and I lived to tell the tale.

“When your beautiful, perfect, amazing child is born, there are many adult responsibilities you have to handle, in addition to cuddles.  One of those is making sure that your baby has a social security number, if for no other reason than you are going to want that tax write off come April.  Our hospital has a wonderful woman that comes to your room, helps you fill out lots of paperwork, and then mails everything to social security for you.  How wonderful!  All you have to do is wait for their card to come in the mail.

“So, I waited.

“And waited.”   –Britney Lowe, The Wondering Mother, 2019

Read the full blog entry 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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