Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Farhad O’Neill, Divine Comedy-Inferno (1999)

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“I had first come into contact with the work of Dante Alighieri as a high school student in Canada. A senior’s English class had the Inferno included as part of their curriculum, and I was eager to read the masterwork, as some minor prior contact with the text had intrigued me greatly. I was not dissuaded by the inscription I saw above the vestibule:’“Abandon every hope, all ye who enter’! My interest in the fine arts guided my curiosity, and in time I was thrilled to discover the wealth of artists who had, in previous centuries, endeavoured to give a visual expression to that poet’s massive descriptive and symbolic structure.” […]  Read more here.

Austin Osman Spare, Earth Inferno (1905)

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Created and published when Spare was 18 years old.  “Influenced heavily by Dante’s Inferno the book is decorated with poems and aphorisms in an aesthetic style and clearly shows the design influence of Spare’s early supporter Charles Ricketts. Each pair of pages contains a painting and a commentary toward that painting. In addition to excerpts from Dante, the book also contains excerpts from Edward FitzGerald‘s translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”   –wikipedia

“London: Privately Published. 1905. First Edition. Hardcover. Folio (18″ x 13.75”). 30pp. … Eleven large black and white illustrations (mostly full page) and numerous decorations by Spare throughout. The scarce first edition of Spare’s first published book, SIGNED and numbered by the author. The book was printed for Spare at the Co-operative Printing Society in Tudor Street, London, in February 1905, in an edition of 265 signed and numbered copies… Earth Inferno was a truly remarkable first book. In it the young artist juxtaposed huge, sometimes sinister images with teasing lyrics to create a vivid image of the darkly magical philosophy which informed his world-view.”   —Weiser Antiquarian Books

Comics on display in honor of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

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“Un nuovo evento: La Fumettoteca Regionale scende in campo per il ‘International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women’ con ‘Beatrice Donna Dantesca’ L’immancabile sensibilizzazione alla ‘Giornata Internazionale per l’Eliminazione della Violenza contro le Donne’ ma non per un solo giorno! e tanti altri passati e in arrivo…”

Contributed by GianLuca Umiliacchi

Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm (2021)

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“In the opening scene of Episode 5 of Season 11 of the television show Curb Your Enthusiasm, titled “IRASSHAIMASE!”, Larry David and his friend Freddy Funkhouser argue about whether Freddy talked through Larry’s putt in their game of golf earlier in the day. Larry asks his friend Jeff Greene to weigh in, but he refuses to take a side. In response, Larry says, ‘Jeff, you know what Dante said: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of crisis retain their neutrality.’ He then jokes with Jeff, saying, ‘You’re goin’ straight to hell’ in reference to Jeff’s neutrality in Larry and Freddy’s argument about golf.

“Larry is referring to Canto III of Dante’s Inferno, in which Dante encounters cowardly and neutral souls who ‘lived without infamy and / without praise. / They are mixed with that cowardly chorus of / angels who were not rebels yet were not faithful to / God, but were for themselves. / The heavens reject them so as not to be less / beautiful, nor does deep Hell receive them, for the / wicked would have some glory from them’ (Canto III, lines 35–42, Englishtranslation by Robert Durling, 1996).
“Larry’s citing of Dante is actually a common misattribution of his placement in Hell of neutral souls. Dante does indeed encounter souls who retained their neutrality in times of crisis in Canto III of Inferno, but places them not actually in Hell, but rather outside of its gates, doomed to never enter Hell nor Heaven. The contrapasso of these neutral souls’ punishment is that they are neutral in the afterlife, being neither damned nor saved, as they were neutral in their Earthly life; they are forced to nakedly follow a blank banner, representative of their neutrality, while being stung by insects. Dante asserts that they were never even really alive because of their neutrality, and thus are not worthy of being named. His misattribution of Dante’s placement of those who remain neutral in the ‘hottest places in hell’ further alludes to a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 15, 1967, in which he stated ‘I am here because I agree with Dante, that: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.’    –Cesca Craig

Contributed by Cesca Craig (University of Arkansas, ’23)

How to Cite

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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