Dante Today
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary and Popular Culture
Written Word Archive
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Sarah Symmons, "John Flaxman and Francisco Goya: Infernos Transcribed"
http://www.jstor.org/view/00076287/ap020283/02a00040/0
The Burlington Magazine (1971)
Contributed by Susan Wegner
"Dante on Drugs" (review by Peter Hainsworth)
Peter Hainsworth reviews Barbara Reynolds' book Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man (2006)
"....But the novelties come thick and fast, beginning (so far as I was concerned) with the suggestion on page 10 that Dante and other poets he associated with in Florence as a young man might have given their visionary and dreamlike imaginings a boost with the stimulus of love-potions. These herbal stimulants, cannabis perhaps, may, it turns out later, be what Dante is referring to in the comparison, near the start of Paradiso, between his own “trans-human” experience and what Glaucus felt “on tasting of the herb” (nel gustar dell’erba) which made him into a sea-god. As Reynolds explains at greater length when she comes to the final vision of the Godhead, mystics did often use drugs of one kind or another in conjunction with fasting and meditation in their pursuit of visionary illumination. There is no reason, she argues, why Dante should not have done so too. Dante as a substance abuser? It is not a key argument and Reynolds may be being provocative, even mischievous. She herself gives much more importance to her decoding of the two prophecies that have always been a problem for Dante commentators..." (Hainsworth)
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25341-2409872,00.html
http://www.amazon.com/Dante-Poet-Political-Thinker-Man/dp/1593761244/sr=8-1/qid=1161262032/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-3583991-1927918?ie=UTF8
Contributed by Jenny Davidson
Jack Handey, "My First Day in Hell"
"It is odd, but Hell can be a lonely place, even with so many people around. They all seem caught up in their own little worlds, running to and fro, wailing and tearing at their hair. You try to make conversation, but you can tell they are not listening."
The New Yorker, October 30, 2006
http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/articles/061030sh_shouts
Contributed by Darren Fishell (Bowdoin, '09)
Mary Shelley, "Frankenstein" (1818, 1831)
Victor Frankenstein comments on the horrific monster he has created:
"Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived." (p. 36)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (New York: Dover, 1994).
http://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-Dover-Thrift-Editions-Shelley/dp/0486282112/sr=8-9/qid=1161041963/ref=pd_bbs_9/104-3583991-1927918?ie=UTF8&s=books
Contributed by Kate Geraghty (Bowdoin, '07)
Anne Isba, "Gladstone and Dante: Victorian Statesman, Medieval Poet" (2006)
"From the point at which he first read the Commedia, at the age of twenty-four, William Gladstone was to consider Dante Alighieri one of the major influences in his life, on a par with Homer and St Augustine, and to identify himself strongly with the poet. Both were statesmen as well as scholars, for whom civic duty was more important than personal convenience. Both were serious theologians as well as simple spiritual pilgrims. Both idealised women. This book shows how Gladstone found in Dante an endorsement of his own beliefs as he negotiated a path through life. Isba traces the development of his enthusiasm against the background of a resurgent Italy in a new Europe, and in the context of the Victorian fashion for all things medieval. She also examines the parallels between the two men's attitudes to sex and religion in particular, and closes by analysing the quality of Gladstone's own writing on Dante (he was to become an internationally recognised Dante scholar)."
http://www.boydell.co.uk/61932773.HTM
Contributed by Michael Richards
Infernal entertainment, "New Yorker" magazine cartoon
The New Yorker, October 16, 2006
http://www.newyorker.com/
Contributed by Peter Schwindt
"The Secret Letter From Iraq"
A Marine's letter home, with its frank description of life in "Dante's inferno"...
Time Magazine, October 6, 2006
http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,1543658,00.html
Richard Schaub and Bonney Gulino Schaub
Translation of Dante's Path: A Practical Approach to Achieving Inner Wisdom (2004)
http://www.amazon.com/Dante-s-Path-Richard-Schaub/dp/1592400833
http://www.bol.it/libri/scheda/ea978883847512.html
Yann Martel, "Life of Pi" (2003)
"I read a great new book called Life of Pi by Yann Martel that draws from the Commedia. It deals with religion and a pilgrimage of sorts. Also, the narrator/author specifically states a desire to tell his story in exactly 100 chapters (which he does). Are there parallels between Virgil and Pi's tiger? It's tough to say-I guess you could find some loose similarities between the two figures. The tiger acts as a guide for Pi in the realm of animal survival, helping him to overcome his civilized taboos and do whatever it takes to live. Also, training the tiger and getting enough food to keep it healthy gives Pi a purpose, and keeps him from being overcome by the immensity of his predicament. Pi professes love and admiration for the tiger on many occasions. The book is a really clever religious allegory, and it challenges you to read it on all four levels of interpretation Dante discusses in his letter to Can Grande. It's a Commedia for the disillusioned 21st century cynic." (Chris Moxhay)
Contributed by Chris Moxhay (Bowdoin, '03)
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Pi-Yann-Martel/dp/0156027321
Matthew Pearl, "The Dante Club" (2003)
"1865 Boston, a small group of literary geniuses puts the finishing touches on America’s first translation of The Divine Comedy and prepares to unveil the remarkable visions of Dante to the New World. The powerful old guard of Harvard College wants to keep Dante out—believing that the infiltration of such foreign superstitions onto our bookshelves would prove as corrupting as the foreign immigrants invading Boston harbor. The members of the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and publisher J. T. Fields —endure the intimidation of their fellow Boston Brahmins for a sacred literary cause, an endeavor that has sustained Longfellow in the hellish aftermath of his wife’s tragic death by fire."
Background Image: Domenico di Michelino, Dante and His Comedy, 1465
