Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

NY Times Review: Dante’s Inferno Play, adapted/directed by Robert Scalan (1998)

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dantes-inferno-play-review-ny-times“Dante’s Inferno, a highly condensed and remarkably theatrical staged version of the 14th-century epic that takes Dante, played here by Bill Camp and guided by the poet Virgil (Reg E. Cathey), on a fantastic voyage into Hades. Mr. Willis and Leslie Beatty complete the cast, portraying an assortment of damned souls in this economical, two-hour production. And these two — how shall we put it? — have all the fun.

“Like more tormented versions of the sad sacks Dorothy collects on the yellow brick road, they confide their tales of woe to the visitor from another world. Mr. Willis and Ms. Beatty cringe and shudder, shrink and quake, affixing faces worthy of compassion to the teeming multitudes of the Underworld. As the acting opportunities pile up, the surprise of this Inferno becomes clear: even if it is not quite a fully realized verse play, it is much more than a staged reading.

“Mr. Scanlan and his designers, John Michael Deegan and Sarah G. Conly, transfer Dante’s hell to the late 20th century. Dressed in business clothes, the actors traverse a mirrored multilevel set that vaguely resembles one of those nondescript office buildings along the interstate (which are some esthetes’ idea of hell, anyway). As the story unfolds, so does the scenery, which is divided into compartments reached by ladders and stairs that denote the descending circles of hell.
“Dante’s Inferno reflects the poem’s episodic nature. It’s how skillfully Mr. Scanlan and his collaborators operate within the episodes that makes this an intriguing evening. Mr. Willis is especially rewarding in his myriad character roles, and on both the technical and interpretive level, all four actors speak with a grasp of the work’s power and lyricism. This is a piece that gets better the lower it goes.” [. . .]     –Peter Marks, New York Times, September 28, 1998 (retrieved November 26, 2021)

The Florentine, “Best Dante Books: A Deep Dive Into The Medieval Poet”

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best-dante-books-a-deep-dive-into-the-medieval-poet-2021“T.S. Eliot famously said, ‘Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third.’ While Dante is still rigorously read in Italian schools, most English-speaking countries limit themselves to a bit of the Inferno in Western literature courses, if at all. Approaching Dante for the first time can be daunting, especially since some knowledge about his life and times is essential for understanding the poem. Fortunately, there is no shortage of excellent books on the subject to help make the journey easier and more enjoyable.” [. . .]    –Alexandra Lawrence, The Florentine, March 5, 2021.

Victoria Ocampo, Autobiografía II: La rama de Salzburgo (1980)

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“Victoria utilizará también una serie de referentes literarios, teniendo siempre como principal a la pareja Francesca y Paolo, dos amantes que aparecen en la Divina Comedia en el Canto V del Infierno. Dante habla con ellos y siente gran compasión por su amor, de modo que entabla un diálogo con ellos – algo que el autor no hace con casi nadie de los personajes en los tres libros. Asimismo, habla de Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Emily Brönte, entre otros.”   –Review on El buen librero (August 8, 2014)

Ocampo also published De Francesca à Beatrice, a commentary on Dante’s Divine Comedy, in 1923.

Tom Stoppard’s Bookshelf

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“Stoppard is a maniacal reader who collects first editions of writers he admires. Asked on the BBC radio show ‘Desert Island Discs’ in 1984 to choose the one book he’d bring to a desert island, he replied: Dante’s Inferno in a dual Italian/English version, so he could learn a language while reading a favorite. His idea of a good death, he’s said, would be to have a bookshelf fall on him, killing him instantly, while reading.”   –Dwight Garner, “‘Tom Stoppard’ Tells of an Enormous Life Spent in Constant Motion,” New York Times review of Hermione Lee, Tom Stoppard: A Life (February 15, 2021)

Contributed by Guy Raffa (University of Texas, Austin)

Carolyn Wolfenzon, Nuevos fantasmas recorren México (2020)

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“In eight chapters, Wolfenzon focuses on different ghosts that haunt the pages of each of the novels. In her essay about Sada’s Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe (Because it Seems Like a Lie, The Truth is Never Known), for example, his ‘ghost is someone like you and me who works in a maquiladora,’ Wolfenzon said, referring to the factories prevalent along the US–Mexico border.

“‘The characters are only doing one thing in the entire novel,’ she continued. ‘They are like the dead but they are alive, in this setting, this space that doesn’t belong to anybody. It is the border between Mexico and the US, and it has the atmosphere of a new kind of hell.’

“Indeed, Wolfenzon was struck by how often the authors she examined describe new kinds of horrifying hells. She saw correlations with the Inferno, and in 2016, audited Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Arielle Saiber’s class on Dante.

“‘I felt it was important to carefully revisit the Divina Comedia (The Divine Comedy),’ Wolfenzon said. ‘Arielle’s class was very inspirational to me, even though it was in Italian!'”   –Rebecca Goldfine, “Carolyn Wolfenzon’s New Book Illuminates a Ghoulish Theme in Modern Mexican Literature,” Bowdoin News, December 14, 2020

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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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