Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
Mary Beard of The New Yorker makes a superficial reference to The Divine Comedy with her article titled “The Divine Comedy of Roman Emperors’ Last Words,” as there is seemingly no other connection to Dante’s epic. Instead she finds comedy in the mundane deaths of such heavenly figures.
“In the end, godlike aspirations often met with all too human final moments.” —Mary Beard, “The Divine Comedy of Roman Emperors’ Last Words,” The New Yorker, June 26, 2023 (retrieved January 31, 2024)
“As I mulled over the treatment he deserved for the havoc he continues to wreak on the lives of countless others here in the United States and across the globe, I turned almost automatically to the work of Dante Alighieri, the Italian poet whose Divina Commedia minutely recreated in the verse form terza rima what awaited the readers of his time once they died. Dante (1265–1321) laid out his otherworldly landscape in three volumes—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso —that have rightly been considered among the towering and influential literary achievements of humanity.
“There was nothing abstract about the Hell he created. Dante pictured himself personally taking a voyage into the hereafter to meet men and women, both of his time and from the past, who were being rewarded for their virtue or eternally castigated for their offenses. Of that journey through purgatorial fires and heavenly wonders, guided by his dead childhood sweetheart, Beatrice, it was the Florentine writer’s descent into the saturated circles of Hell that most fascinated and enthralled readers throughout the centuries. We listen to stories of the wicked as they express their remorse and experience the excruciatingly sophisticated torments he dreamt up as suitable reprisals for the damage they did during their earthly existence.
“Witnessing the infernal realities President Trump has unleashed on America, I can’t help wondering where Dante would have placed our miscreant in chief in his afterlife of horror. In the end, perhaps not surprisingly, I realized one obvious thing: The 45th president has such a multitude of transgressions to his name that he fits almost every category and canto that Dante invented for the sinners of his age.” —Ariel Dorfman, “What Would Hell Be Like for Donald Trump?,” The Nation, October 23, 2020 (retrieved February 6, 2024)
“It is hard to envision any grown adult less equipped to lead the country during a crisis like this, or one who would have behaved in a more damnable manner than Donald J. Trump. A navy blue suit filled with steaming horse feces would do no worse, and probably better, since at least it would not actively do harm and try to line its pockets in the process.
“Truly, a special circle of Hell awaits this monster. For my money he cannot take up residence soon enough.” —Robert Edwards, “A Special Circle of Hell Awaits,” Moyers, April 17, 2020 (retrieved February 6, 2024)
“Italy’s far right has misguidedly claimed the medieval poet as one of its own for more than a century.
“The nightmarish visions of Dante Alighieri, with their many circles of hell, ringed in blood and fire, would seem perhaps a natural draw for politicians who traffic in the rhetoric of us versus them, good versus evil. But this doesn’t fully explain why the poet—who, after all, lived and wrote 700 years ago—finds himself quoted and adored like a medieval poster boy by Italy’s newly resurgent extreme right.
[. . .]
“The newly appointed Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano who, like Meloni, once belonged to a now-defunct neofascist party, said in a recent interview that he viewed Dante as ‘the founder of right-wing thought in our country.’” —Anna Momigliano, “Why Do Fascists Love Dante?,” The Atlantic, February 10, 2023 (retrieved December 28, 2023)
Read more at The Atlantic.
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.
