Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
This how-to book, published in 2010, was written as a guide for managers and entrepreneurs to navigating the business world. Through the sections Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, Enrico Cerni creates a book-long metaphor using the famous characters and sites from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
See Dante for Life for more information.
“My novel ‘My Visit to Hell‘ (rev. ed, Realms, 2007, originally appeared in 1992 under the title ‘Gehenna’) explicitly borrows the basic story line and what might be called the ‘moral topography of hell’ from Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ but the story begins in 21st-century Atlanta. For an analysis of the book and an author interview, see ‘Eschatology: Paul Thigpen’s ‘My Visit to Hell” (chapter 5) and ‘An Interview With Paul Thigpen’ (Appendix I) in Darren J. N. Middleton, ‘Theology After Reading: Christian Imagination and the Power of Fiction‘ (Baylor University Press, 2008).” –Paul Thigpen
Contributed by Paul Thigpen
Today (28 June 2013) Lele Mora, involved in the famous Ruby-sex-case as Berlusconi’s personal “talent scout”, delivered a speech in front of his judges stating that he wants to break free from the hellish (lustful!) hurricane to see the stars: “Voglio uscire da questa bufera infernale che mi ha tolto la luce voglio vedere le stelle e il cielo azzurro.”
Found at: La Repubblica Milano
See Also: “Ruby bis: Lele Mora in aula. L’udienza del talent scout dopo quella di Nicole Minetti e Emilio Fede (Diretta),” L’Huffington Post, June 18, 2013
“People can’t seem to let go of the Divine Comedy. You’d think that a fourteenth-century allegorical poem on sin and redemption, written in a medieval Italian vernacular and in accord with the Scholastic theology of that period, would have been turned over, long ago, to the scholars in the back carrels. But no. By my count there have been something like a hundred English-language translations, and not just by scholars but by blue-chip poets: in the past half century, John Ciardi, Allen Mandelbaum, Robert Pinsky, W. S. Merwin. Liszt and Tchaikovsky have composed music about the poem; Chaucer, Balzac, and Borges have written about it. In other words, the Divine Comedy is more than a text that professors feel has to be brushed up periodically for students. It’s one of the reasons there are professors and students.” [. . .] –Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, May 27, 2013
“. . .One night in Damascus, I met a 33-year-old computer programmer named Amir who had been part of the nonviolent protest movement from the beginning. . .
I asked if he was still active in the rebellion. ‘They put me in prison for two days,’ he said. ‘I was not tortured, no one even said a bad word to me. But for me it was — ‘ He stumbled for words, then turned toward me. ‘You know how Dante went to hell and was allowed to return? This cell was 10 meters square, with 152 people in it. It was two stories underground. There is no air, you feel constantly that you will choke. They had an undeclared system: for the first week, you stand, all day and all night. Then you get to lean against the wall for a few days. Then you get to sit. When you are standing, you are terrified to fall asleep, because you may never get up. Some people were there for only a few hours, some for days or weeks, and some had been tortured in ways I never imagined. For food, you get a bit of bread and some water, but that does not matter. You get about 30 seconds, once a day, in the bathroom, but trust me, you are not even worried about that. Because there are people in there who are literally asking for death.'” [. . .] –Robert F. Worth, The New York Times, June 19, 2013
